PHOTO COURTESY OF GOBONNIES
BY JONNY WALKER, ADVISORY EDITOR
Sports fans are often more willing to excuse their teams’ shortcomings following a win rather than a loss. But only a fool would forgive the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team for its transgressions following Wednesday night’s win over La Salle.
Despite surviving the Explorers in the Atlantic 10 Tournament’s Second Round, the Bonnies continued to embody the quality that has defined their season: inconsistency.
Some teams struggle to find consistency from one season to the next. Some struggle to find consistency from one stretch of their season to the next. Others struggle to find consistency from one game to the next.
The Bonnies struggle to find consistency from one half to the next.
In a 42-point first half against La Salle, Bona shot 47% from the field and 55% from 3. They went into the break on an 8-4 run, capped by a buzzer-beating turnaround hook shot from center Noel Brown.
And then came the second half.
It was a half that featured two separate scoring droughts of three-plus minutes in little more than 10 minutes of game time. It was a half that featured a 10-0 La Salle run that didn’t just get the Explorers back into the game but briefly handed them the lead. It was a half that saw the Bonnies’ shooting drop nearly 10 percentage points overall and nearly 40 percentage points from 3.
“It’s the 30th game of the year — I’m not sure we’re going to fix that,” Bona head coach Mark Schmidt said of his team’s scoring lulls after the game. “But I thought we hung in there. And we’ve had a lot of practice at it this year because we go through those lulls.”
For a team that entered the season with NCAA Tournament aspirations, “those lulls” have cost Bona too many meaningful games. Those lulls resulted in a résumé-sinking loss to Canisius early in non-conference play. Those lulls resulted in a 15-point half at Duquesne midway through conference play. And just two games ago in a second-half collapse against bottom-ranked George Washington, those lulls crushed Bona’s viability for a double bye in this A-10 Tournament.
And while those lulls ultimately didn’t cost Bona its season Wednesday, they turned a talent mismatch into a last-second nailbiter. The Bonnies’ season survived by virtue of La Salle forward Daeshon Shepherd missing a wide-open putback dunk as time expired. That should be cause for concern.
But Schmidt — who even after blowout wins earlier this season hammered his team for not playing a complete 40 minutes — doesn’t seem to share that concern.
“I thought we recovered,” Schmidt continued regarding his team’s scoring lulls. “You know, we made some shots when we needed to make shots a lot of times. I think they [La Salle] got up by two or three — 55-52, maybe — and then we started playing again, you know, offensively. But I thought our effort was really good.”
Effort may have been enough to sneak the Bonnies past the A-10’s 10th seed Wednesday night. But beginning with No. 2 Loyola Chicago Thursday evening, it’ll take more than some extra effort to keep Bonaventure’s postseason aspirations alive.
A likely path to this year’s A-10 title would require the Bonnies to conquer at least two of their conference’s top three teams by seeding. And more pressingly, it would require the Bonnies to find a consistent solution to their scoring droughts — something they’ve spent all season searching for. Don’t expect either to happen.
walkerjc20@bonaventure.edu
