BY TOM SEIPP, MANAGING EDITOR.
RICHMOND, VA (March 6, 2021) – Just shy of two years ago in the Atlantic 10 Championship game, St. Bonaventure and St. Louis met. St. Louis snuck away with a two-point victory to win the conference championship.
Since then, St. Louis has dominated the last two matchups; St. Bonaventure has dropped the last three against the Billikens.
Saturday in the 2021 A10 Semifinal, it was all brown and white, as St. Bonaventure advanced to the A10 Championship with a 71-53 win against St. Louis.
“I thought, from the defensive standpoint, we couldn’t have played better,” St. Bonaventure head coach Mark Schmidt said. “St. Louis is a very physical team, they dominated us out in St. Louis earlier in the year.. I’m just proud of our effort. We couldn’t have played harder, and we couldn’t have played better.”
“They had guys step up from every position for them and they played at a very high level,” St. Louis head coach Travis Ford said. “They just played at a high level, all five of them… You have to give them credit.”
From the jump, St. Bonaventure came out strong. Only 47 seconds into the game, Jalen Adaway had to exit after a bloody nose; it was “the next man up” for the Bonnies, as A.J. Vasquez came in and immediately hit two three-pointers to give the Bonnies an 11-2 lead. His quick six points provided a spark for St. Bonaventure.
“I thought A.J. Vasquez came in and gave us a huge lift,” Schmidt said. “Six points, it doesn’t seem like much, but he gave us a spark off the bench.”
In what appeared like a dominant first half for the Bonnies, the lead only was eight at the halftime break. A large part of that was from the work of Osunniyi, who had six first-half blocks.
“Osun was the difference,” Schmidt said. “When we make mistakes, he’s the one that corrects them. I think [St. Louis] became tentative.. He had seven blocks, it seemed like he had 17 blocks… He’s a special player, especially defensively.”
Jalen Adaway proclaimed Osunniyi as the conference defensive player of the year during his press conference session; Lofton agreed.
“I think he did a good job of blocking shots, he set the tones on both ends,” said St. Louis’s Jordan Goodwin. “He made me shoot over him, he made our shots difficult.
In the second half, the Bonnies came out of the gate strong and never looked back. St. Bonaventure outscored St. Louis by 10 in the second half. A big reason was thanks to Jalen Adaway, who finished the game with 17; he had 13 in the second half.
“I was just refusing to lose,” Adaway said. “I feel like we just dug deep as a team, believing in each other, believing in me and made it happen.”
Kyle Lofton recorded his first double-double of the season, as he finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds, a career high.
For St. Louis, this loss puts them farther outside the NCAA Tournament. Entering today, the Billikens were considered one of the first four teams out, according to Joe Lunardi.
“They played with a lot more confidence,” Javonte Perkins said on St. Bonaventure’s performance.
“You’ve got to give them credit,” said Goodwin, who led the Billikens with 11 points. “We weren’t expecting them to ice ball screens… You’ve got to give them credit for playing great defense.
St. Bonaventrue will now head back to Olean where they’ll take off the next two days. On March 14, they’ll play at UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio to play in the Atlantic 10 Championship game on CBS at 1 p.m.
“It’s a blessing,” Lofton said on making the A10 Tournament Championship. “Two years able to go and I’m in it… I just have to make it count this year.
