(Photo: GoBonnies.com)
BY NATHAN SOLOMON, MANAGING EDITOR
Last year’s theme for St. Bonaventure men’s basketball: experience.
This year’s theme: youth.
“With a young group, you’re going to have your good days and your bad days,” coach Mark Schmidt said. “They are enthusiastic. There’s a lot of energy at practice. Guys are willing to learn and listen.”
After a senior-laden team brought Bonaventure to the National Invitational Tournament semifinals last season, the Bonnies have a brand new team in 2022-23. Just three players — Justin Ndjock-Tadjore, Brett Rumpel and Anouar Mellouk — return to Bonaventure after the team lost four starters to the transfer portal and one to the professional ranks.
But, that doesn’t seem to faze Schmidt, who is starting his 16th season at the helm of the Bonnies.
“You don’t build programs anymore. You’re building teams for every single year,” Schmidt said. “Usually, you have veteran guys back that know what they are doing and that dummy and show how our players run or how a defense runs. Now, in essence, we’ve got 12 new guys.”
Of the three returners, Ndjock-Tadjore tallied four total points and two rebounds last season, while Rumpel and Mellouk never played and redshirted. All three are expected to contribute this season.
To fill the rest of the roster, the Bonnies brought in 10 newcomers — six transfers and four freshmen. Notably, Bonaventure landed Daryl Banks lll, who scored 27 points for Saint Peters in a first-round NCAA Tournament upset of Kentucky in March.
Complementing Peters, the Bonnies snagged Moses Flowers, a 34.6% 3-point shooter in three seasons at Hartford, as well as centers Max Amadsun (Pittsburgh) and Chad Venning (Morgan State). Kyrell Luc (Holy Cross) and Anquan Hill (Fairleigh Dickinson) also join after winning conference rookie of the year awards last season in the Patriot League and the NEC, respectively.
Freshman Barry Evans is the latest addition from Putnam Science Academy — a program that fielded Kyle Lofton and Osun Osunniyi, a pair of 1,000-point scorers with the Bonnies. Yann Farrell, who held several offers from power conference teams, and forward Melian Martinez highlight Bonaventure’s freshman class.
Just two of Bonaventure’s 13 players are upperclassmen: Banks and Flowers, who are the team captains.
“Those two guys are going to be main guys. They have to play well for us to be successful,” Schmidt said. “They want to see if they can do it and they have the confidence that they can do it.
“It’s like being a teacher and having a whole new class and they don’t understand what one plus one is, and you’re trying to teach them calculus… As coaches, we look at ourselves as teachers — we’re trying to teach the game of basketball to them. How to play, where to go. Trying to teach our system, and our system isn’t the easiest thing to learn.”
Bonaventure will start the season with 11 of its 13 non-conference games in the state of New York. They’ll kick off the season in the Reilly Center on Nov. 7 against Saint Francis (Pa.) before the 90-minute drive north to Buffalo to face Little Three rival Canisius on Nov. 12.
The Bonnies will also play in the Gotham Classic, hosting Bowling Green (Nov. 19) and Southern Indiana (Nov. 22) before the primary game against Notre Dame (Nov. 25) at UBS Arena in Belmont Park, New York.
They’ll also host Middle Tennesse (Nov. 30), Cleveland State (Dec. 7) and Florida Gulf Coast (Dec. 16), and will travel to Buffalo (Dec. 3), Siena (Dec. 19) and Northern Iowa (Dec. 22). The Bonnies will also play neutral site games South Dakota State (Nov. 15) and Iona (Dec. 11) at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, respectively.
But, the goal of non-conference play is to prepare for the 18-game Atlantic 10 Conference slate, which the Bonnies were picked to finish 10th in last week.
“We’ve got a lot of room for improvement,” Schmidt said. “We’re learning every day. Hopefully, we get better… we’re far from a finished product.”
solomonj20@bonaventure.edu
