PHOTO COURTESY OF GOBONNIES
BY JONNY WALKER, ADVISORY EDITOR
NEW YORK — Two games away.
For the first time since 2021, the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team advanced to the Atlantic 10 Championship Semifinals, defeating Loyola Chicago in double overtime, 75-74, Thursday night. But without late-game heroics from guard Daryl Banks III, Bonaventure’s season likely would have died on the Barclays Center court.
“This is really special,” Banks, a fifth-year senior, said after the game. “My career didn’t come to an end tonight, so that’s always special. I love moments like this and just trying to talk the guys through it.”
Eighteen of Banks’ game-high-tying 22 points came in the final five minutes of regulation and in extra time. And with 12.7 seconds remaining in double overtime, Banks handed his Bonnies the game’s final lead at the free-throw line.
“He showed us today what he’s all about,” Bona head coach Mark Schmidt said of Banks.
But Banks wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to seal a Bona win in double overtime if he hadn’t first made a bevy of clutch plays at the end of regulation and in the game’s first overtime period.
In regulation, Bona trailed 58-50 with 4:08 remaining. Then, Banks manufactured Bona’s final eight points of regulation to keep his team alive.
It started with the 6-foot-3 guard securing an offensive rebound through traffic while drawing a loose ball foul. It put Bona into the double bonus, and Banks sank both free throws. Just over two minutes later, Banks earned and made three more free throws after drawing contact on a 3-point attempt.
Down one possession with under 90 seconds to go and a defender bearing down on his back, Banks raced across the baseline and around a screen, flashing open near the free-throw line. A second defender met Banks, now with the ball and driving hard to his right, at the rim. Once airborne, Banks dropped off a no-look, behind-the-head pass for a patiently waiting Noel Brown.
“So when I came off the down screen from him [Brown], I curled it,” Banks later explained. “And my man was trailing a little bit. So, I just wanted to play off too, and I saw the big jump at the same time. I knew Noel [Brown] always rolls with me, so I knew he was still there. So it was just a matter of placing it there for him. And he converted it.”
In the first five-minute overtime period, neither team scored until 3:06 remaining. Then, Banks scored all seven of Bona’s points in OT to keep his team alive.
It started with the second-year team captain hitting two more free throws. On the ensuing Ramblers’ possession, Banks scooped up a loose ball that dribbled off his man’s foot and layed in the transition 2.
As his team trailed by one with roughly 30 seconds remaining, Banks caught a cross-court pass on the right wing just beyond the 3-point line. With Loyola’s 6-foot-10 center closing out hard, arms extended, Banks rose up in rhythm and nailed the shot.
“I feel like a lot of his buckets were just tough buckets,” Loyola forward Phillip Alston said of Banks. “He was doing a lot of stepbacks, a lot of fadeaway 3s. He just had the hot hand. So, I think that just made it tough — him making tough buckets.”
In double overtime, Noel Brown fouled out and Loyola narrowed its deficit to one with 2:44 remaining. Then, Banks scored Bona’s final six points in 2OT to keep his team’s season alive.
It started with the former all-conference honoree receiving a dribble hand off on the right wing, about five feet beyond the 3-point arc. After switching onto one of Loyola’s big men, Banks created separation with a double crossover move, side stepping to his left. With two defenders’ hands in his face, Banks appeared unbothered and swished the shot.
Trailing by two on what would be Bona’s final possession, Banks went back to that same spot. He dribbled toward big man Chad Venning setting a perimeter screen before picking up his dribble and setting his feet to shoot. But before Banks could rise up, his defender launched to contest the shot.
“When Chad [Venning] set the screen, they [Loyola Chicago] switched the big, and I knew that he was gonna kind of jump at whatever I really did,” Banks said. “So I got a little bit of space with a move. And so I knew once I pump faked he was gonna jump at me. So, I really just jumped into him. I knew he was going to foul me.”
12.7 seconds of game time later, Bonaventure officially advanced to the A-10 Semifinals for the first time since 2021.
Despite being named to the A-10 Preseason All-Conference First Team, Banks struggled to find his shooting stroke for most of Bona’s season. After leading his team in scoring with over 15 per game a season ago, Banks’ scoring average hovered around eight points per game for most of this year. And after a 3-point, 0-5 shooting performance against Fordham in mid-January, Schmidt was all but forced to relegate Banks to a bench role.
But Thursday night, Banks looked like the player Bonnies fans had once come to love and expect.
“The guy next to me has struggled throughout the year,” Schmidt said while sitting next to Banks during Bona’s postgame press conference. “But those struggles — he never quit. And he kept on fighting and fighting and deserved a game like today.”
walkerjc20@bonaventure.edu
