Photo: St. Bonaventure Athletics
BY: WILL NUNN, STAFF WRITER
The St. Bonaventure women’s basketball team kicks off their regular season at the Reilly Center with an in-state clash against the Binghamton Bearcats today.
The Bonnies enter Saturday’s contest coming off a 71-57 win in an exhibition against Daemen College. Redshirt senior guard Dani Haskell and graduate student guard Payton Fields led the Bonnies to victory.
Haskell led the way with 20 points and Fields added 19 points and 5 rebounds off the bench.
Bonaventure fired 28 3-pointers in the win over Daemen, a figure that head coach Jim Crowley believes will continue.
“We have people who can shoot it.” said Crowley. “And if they’re open, they’re supposed to shoot it. Binghamton will give us some of those if we’re able to get where we want to get, so, it wouldn’t surprise me if we took a decent number of them tomorrow too.”
The Bearcats came into the game 2-0, after victories over the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown and the University of Akron this week.
Crowley aims to use his team’s fresh legs to slow down a Binghamton team playing its third game in five days.
“They only really played seven people last night, and a lot of people played high minutes,” said Crowley. “There will be a little bit of clunkiness with us at times, but as the game goes on hopefully our fresh legs will pay off.”
Through their two wins, junior guard Jadyn Weltz leads the Bearcats in scoring, averaging 17.5 points per game.
Weltz is the key returner for the Bearcats from a season ago. As a sophomore, she started all 31 games and was named second-team all-conference, averaging 10.7 points, 4.5 assists, and five rebounds per game.
Other impactful returners for Binghamton include senior forward Genevieve Coleman and junior guard Camryn Fauria. They each started 29 games for the Bearcats last season and averaged 10.3 and 5.7 points per game, respectively.
Five players return to Bonaventure from last year’s squad, all of who will have a huge role in maintaining team chemistry and uplifting morale, said Crowley.
“Obviously when you play together you have a little bit more loyalty to one another,” said Crowley. “[he returners] have a chance to be a really good example of how that loyalty has to be put on the backburner for what’s good for the group.”
The game will tip off at 1:00 p.m. in the Reilly Center and will streamed on ESPN+.
