by Mikael DeSanto
Sports Editor
The Bonnies had not won a true regular season road game in almost a year (Feb. 20 at La Salle), but that came to an end Thursday night when they downed UMass 55-38. The road losing streak had reached nine games.
“I was just pleased with the way we played. It was 2-3 zone for 40 minutes,” head coach Jesse Fleming said. “They played super hard. You watch the film and we won every 50/50 ball, we flew around, we had multiple deflections; we deserved that thing yesterday. It was good for the kids to finally get one because they have been putting in the time and working, so [I was] thrilled for them to get it.”
Fleming explained what contributed to the Bonnies struggles on the road in previous games.
“It is hard to win on the road. You can look at last year’s team that was an NCAA tournament team, I think was a sub-.500 team on the road,” Fleming said. “It is a different level, just like it is easier to win at home. You sleep in your own bed, it is the gym you play in everyday, but it is no excuse. To be a good team, you have to at least be a .500 team on the road, we haven’t been there yet, and we keep working on different ways we can prepare the kids: travel, where we are staying and things like that. We are always tweaking it to see what the best way is to get them ready and we are still working on that.”
Heading into the Duquesne game on Saturday, the Bonnies took advantage of the little time between games.
“This is kind of new to me, just a really quick turn around,” Fleming said. “We did two days of prep in one day. They came in early and watched film with Jeff [Clapacs] who has the scout, we watched our UMass highlights and lowlights, we got them some shooting, we got them a good stretch and then we got them about 20 minutes of going against Duquesne’s stuff.”
But the preparation for a road game is different, according to Fleming. He talked about how the extra things that come with road games affect how he gets his team ready to play.
“You have a shoot-around at a different gym. You can’t control what time those shoot-arounds are, so you could be doing it at six a.m.,” Fleming said. “We have kind of changed it to do some energetic walkthroughs in the hotel where we get them going if it is really early in the morning. At least the older kids have played in these gyms before, some of these kids, this is the first time they are playing on the road.”
Fleming said the younger members of the team have started to adjust to the schedule and get used to the way they need to operate during the season.
“I think it has been up and down,” Fleming said. “If they had responded absolutely perfect, we would be winning more on the road. I think they are still learning. I thought really early in the year they had to learn that lesson a bunch of times. It is such a different level on the road that you have to play with. I thought [Sarah] Hart and [Jalisha Terry] especially, yesterday if you looked at them they didn’t look like freshman and it didn’t look like a road game. I hope that continues.”
The Bonnies will hit the road again on Jan. 29 when they take on the Saint Joseph’s Hawks at 3 p.m.
desantmj13@bonaventure.edu
