PHOTO COURTESY OF GOBONNIES
BY JONNY WALKER, ADVISORY EDITOR
After his St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team got knocked out of the Atlantic-10 Tournament Saturday afternoon by Duquesne, head coach Mark Schmidt summarized the result rather simply.
“We had open shots — we missed them. They had open shots — they made them,” Schmidt said. “That was the ballgame.”
In a game they would eventually lose by 10, the Bonnies surrendered a 13-0 Dukes run stretching from the 4:11 mark of the first half to the 15:29 mark of the second half. That’s 8 minutes and 42 seconds of game time without a Bonaventure bucket.
“We got some open looks that we missed,” Schmidt said. “And that’s just how it is. We’re not going to make every shot.”
But by and large, that’s not “just how it is” for teams with conference-champion level talent.
At his preseason media availability, Schmidt said he expected this year’s Bonnies to compete for the A-10 title and make the NCAA Tournament. That expectation was a product of Bonaventure’s experience as the nation’s most-veteran team, Bonaventure’s position as potentially the deepest team of the Mark Schmidt era and Bonaventure’s talent as winners of power-conference-capable transfers via the portal.
But despite those ingredients, the Bonnies could never solve their scoring droughts. And they simply surrendered more back-breaking runs than a tournament-worthy résumé has room for.
Early in non-conference play against Canisius, Bona went scoreless for 4:34 and surrendered a 25-2 second-half run. Midway through conference play against Duquesne, Bona went scoreless for 5:32 and suffered a 15-point first half. And in their penultimate regular-season game against bottom-ranked George Washington, Bona went scoreless for 4:12 while surrendering a 10-0 second-half run.
But on Saturday, another scoring drought didn’t just cost Bona another game. It cost them their season.
In a win-or-go-home game, the Bonnies posted a 22-point first half while committing eight turnovers. They had just one scorer over 10 points while shooting 6-24 from beyond the arc. And in a game that felt eerily reminiscent of Bonaventure’s previous matchup with this same Duquesne team, the Bonnies had to watch as the Dukes advanced to Sunday’s A-10 Championship.
When Bona cut into Duquesne’s second-half lead, the Dukes routinely turned to senior guards Jimmy Clark III and Dae Dae Grant. The pair combined for 45 of Duquesne’s 70 points on 18-30 shooting, and both elevated their play in clutch time, scoring tough buckets to preserve Duquesne’s lead.
“Credit to those guys,” Bona team captain Daryl Banks III said after the game. “They’re all-league players, and they made big-time plays when they had to. So, they just did what they had to do.”
In Clark and Grant, Duquesne proved it had what Bonaventure had been searching for all season: a consistent solution to scoring droughts. Clark, with 2:16 remaining and his Dukes’ lead down to five, nailed a step-back 3 in Banks’ face. Grant, with 5:21 remaining and his Dukes’ lead down to 4, banked in a deep 3 around Bona big man Chad Venning as the shot clock expired.
Three days prior, Bona nearly dropped its A-10 Tournament opener to 10-seeded La Salle in a game featuring two three-plus minute scoring droughts in the second half. After that game, Schmidt appeared oddly unbothered by the scoring droughts that had plagued his team all season.
“It’s the 30th game of the year — I’m not sure we’re going to fix that,” Schmidt said.
But Saturday’s result proved Bona’s experience, depth and talent never suited them for the NCAA Tournament they once hoped to make. To make a March run, the Bonnies needed to find a consistent solution to their scoring droughts.
And no Bonnie stepped up.
walkerjc20@bonaventure.edu
