BY TOM SEIPP, MANAGING EDITOR
It’s been 283 days since the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team stepped off the court after 40 minutes of basketball.
After two quarantines, five games canceled and days of waiting, the Bonnies finally were able to begin their 2020-2021 season at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Bonnies wasted no more time, as they took care of securing their first win against the Akron Zips Tuesday, 81-74.
“Overall, we made baskets when we needed to make them, we made decent stops. I thought [Osun Osunniyi] did a good job inside, Kyle [Lofton] did a good job handling the ball, and I thought Eddie Creal did a great job for us,” head coach Mark Schmidt said.
The Bonnies were able to come out of the gate strong, as their starting lineup that returned four games out aggressive in the opening minutes on the rebounds.
The majority of the rebounds came from Osunniyi, who ended up bringing in eight boards along with a career-high 25 points.
“Shoon’s been really working, I thought he played really well,” Schmidt said. “He gave us that inside scoring, he even hit a 15-footer he’s been working on. He’s been putting in the time.”
The Bonnies held their lead for the entire game, as they came out firing early on. They led by as much as 15 in the first half.
Akron tried to shoot their way back into the game. Unsuccessfully, they shot 6-for-32 for three. St. Bonaventure didn’t perform too much better beyond the arc, as their lone three came from Dominick Welch; the team shot 1-for-14.
Even with the struggles from beyond the arc, the Bonnies were able to put up big numbers inside, scoring 56 of their 81 points in the paint.
“It’s good to score 81 points shooting 1-for-14 [from three], that’s a positive. It’s not a positive shooting 1-for-14, but it’s a positive scoring 81 points when only three of them came from beyond the arc,” Schmidt said.
Seventy-five of St. Bonaventure’s points came from the starting group. Along with Osunniyi’s 25, Welch added 18 and Kyle Lofton had 17.
Schmidt’s notorious deep bench went nine deep today, but two of those players (Jalen Shaw and Justin Winston) both only played fewer than five minutes. Nonetheless, Schmidt expressed his concern about the team’s lack of conditioning.
“We’re not nearly where we need to be conditioning wise,” he said. “We’re sluggish, we didn’t play fast enough and we weren’t active all the time. But, like I said, it was a good win.
“We did a good job of hiding it,” Osunniyi said of the tiredness of the team. “We’re not in the shape we need to be in to play at the level we should be playing in.”
Looking to build off their opening win, the Bonnies return to action Saturday afternoon to host Hofstra at 2 p.m. in the Reilly Center.
