By SPENCER BATES
PITTSBURGH, PA — As the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team gets set to make the short trip down to Pittsburgh to face Duquesne, its most frequent opponent in the Atlantic 10, a win would mean very different things to each team.
The Bonnies are looking to stay on the winning side of things after they secured a bounce-back win over Richmond on the back of consecutive losses. Meanwhile, the Dukes are winners of six of their last seven games, sit 3-1 in-conference and are looking to stay hot as opposed to get hot.
The meeting will have a slightly different feel to it this year compared to the ones over the last seven seasons as Duquesne is no longer being led by Keith Dambrot, who retired after the team’s A10 Championship and NCAA tourney run last season. But Bona coach Mark Schmidt is not expecting too much to change in the wake of Dambrot’s departure as the program was left to his trusted assistant coach Dru Joyce III, who, he noted, will look to run some of the same things Dambrot did in his time.
“(They’re) very similar, they’re a good defensive team, they’re very aggressive, they push the ball in transition, advanced passing, trying to get easy baskets, get numbers,” Schmidt said. “They’re running, relatively, the same stuff: A lot of ball screens, really trying to play downhill. They got good players. They have a deep bench, they play 10 or 11 guys. So, we got our hands full.”
And as Duquesne’s offensive scheme has gone relatively unchanged, so too will Bona’s defensive plans, which will need some adjusting after its Richmond game due to the different type of personnel that will be on the floor.
“You have to play Richmond a little bit different,” Schmidt said. “You can’t get into the gaps, you can’t allow back cuts. With Duquesne, you want to get into the gaps and force jump shots. They’re really good one-on-one players. Against us, it cannot be one-on-one. It’s always going to be two-on-one, three-on-one. And they’re a better offensive rebounding team. Richmond really has the philosophy of, when a shot is taken, they get back, and they want to really prevent numbers, where Duquesne is just the opposite. They’re sending four guys to the backboard, and their five-men are really, really active, their four-men as well. So, rebounding the ball is going to be a big key. (We’re going to) try to keep the ball in front of us (and) keep them out of transition. But rebounding the ball, that’s going to be a huge emphasis.”
The Dukes’ offense is led by guards Tre Dinkins, Jake DiMichele and Jahsean Corbett who average 11.4, 10.9 and 10.2 points per game respectively. But while Dinkins, DiMichele and Corbett may be the headlines of the act, the guard play beneath them is just as capable of getting on the scoresheet as the next three highest points-per-game tallies on the team are all courtesy of guards as well.
So, when going against an aggressive offense, a premium is set on being smart on defense and not getting into foul trouble. Something the Bonnies have done successfully throughout the campaign thus far.
“We’ve been fouling, but we’re not fouling as much as our opponent,” Schmidt said. “We try to be aggressive, we try to go downhill, we try to get the ball inside to Noel and we try to emphasize in practice keeping your hands free and trying to play as legal as you can. … I firmly believe the team that shoots the most foul shots is going to be the team that ultimately wins. You know, 25% of all points are scored from the foul line. … Our goal is to try to make more (free throws) than the opponent shoots. If we can do that, and we’ve done that in the Atlantic 10, and we’ve done it overall, I think that’s a huge key.”
Last time out, the Bonnies were led on the scoring front by Jonah Hinton’s game-high 19 points — nine of which came during a stretch of three consecutively made deep balls with no answer by the Spiders. He noted after the game that his confidence since entering the starting lineup in lieu of Dasonte Bowen, who will not feature against the Dukes, has grown exponentially along with his comfort shooting the ball. Still, there is more from a defensive standpoint that Schmidt wants to see from his shooting guard.
“We want him to play better defense, we want him to rebound the ball better, we want him to take care of the ball better, be stronger on the ball,” Schmidt said. “He’s got to continue to shoot the ball, hopefully he can shoot it better than he is. We need a 40% 3-point shooter. He’s got to be able to guard his position better. He’s got to get more than one rebound a game. We don’t have that one guy that can go and get 20, so our guards … they got to get five, six, seven rebounds. That’s the key and Jonah’s capable of doing that, he just has to be disciplined and tough enough to do it going down to Duquesne tomorrow.”
And as Hinton picked up the Bona offense against Richmond, Noel Brown and Lajae Jones struggled to see their shots fall. Both Brown and Jones entered the game, each on the back of a several-game stretch with double-figure points, but that streak came to an end as they combined for just six points against the Spiders. However, this lull in scoring from the Bona duo is something Schmidt simply chalked up to a tough night shooting the ball. But what he liked from them was that while they may not have been scoring, they were doing all the other small things right.
“They’re not going to play well every night,” Schmidt said. “There are just some days you don’t have it. But I thought both those guys played defense. They were double-teaming (Noel). I thought Noel did a good job of getting the ball out of there. He didn’t get assists, but he got hockey assists. We were swinging the ball, they doubled-teamed him and he’s expecting that. He’s an unselfish player. I felt both of them played good defense. The offense isn’t always going to be there, that’s just part of the game.”
Hinton, Brown and Jones will look to be crucial pieces for St. Bonaventure once again on Jan. 18 against Duquesne. That game is set to tip-off at 2 p.m.
