By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — For the first 15 minutes of its second and final regular-season matchup against Fordham, the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team had the wind in its sails.
Its dominance in the paint shined through with Noel Brown and Xander Wedlow combining for 17 of the first 33 points it put on the board, and 21 of the 40 points the team compiled by halftime.
And for that amount of time it seemed as though the Bonnies were in for a repeat of the reverse fixture in which they strutted over the finish line with a 20-point win in the Bronx.
But after a shaky second half, the 74-72 victory was secured with less of a strut and more of a stumble and gasp.
What was, at a time, a 16-point lead for the hosts was ground into dust by the Rams, eventually evaporating entirely with just 2.5 minutes left to play.
What changed?
Well, according to Bona coach Mark Schmidt, the most glaring — and effective— adjustment Fordham made was simply its defensive shape.
“For the first 15 minutes, I thought we played extremely well,” Schmidt said. “We defended, we rebounded, we got out on the break, we pushed the ball, we got the ball inside, we were attacking, we were going downhill. Then, they went to that little 1-2-2 zone, and that stopped us a little bit in the last four or five minutes of the first half. … Then, in the second half, they did it again for a while and we got a little bit stagnant. We got the ball to the high post, we were missing some shots, and then we had a hard time keeping them in front of us in the second half.”
What that 1-2-2 zone did most specifically was negate the impact that Brown and Wedlow had. The Bona big men had their way in the first half with Brown scoring 13 before the intermission and Wedlow, a freshman, received an ovation from the Bonnies’ faithful after recording a big eight points on 4-for-4 shooting and four rebounds.
“It slowed us down a little bit, a zone forces jump shots and we didn’t do a great job, initially, of running what we needed to run to get the ball to the high post,” Schmidt said. “But, I thought we figured it out.”
St. Bonaventure men’s basketball guard Melvin Council Jr. (11) looks to drive past Fordham’s Jackie Johnson III (15). Council finished with 13 points and seven assists against the Rams. (Taylor Komidar)
And when you look at the box score it’s clear that it wasn’t the offense that tripped up Bona. In the second half, the team improved upon the 53.6% tick it was scoring at, shooting 58.3% from the field in the second half.
And as the Fordham defensive scheme continued to take different shapes throughout the final 20 minutes, the Bonnies continued to find avenues of success down low with Noel Brown finishing the game tying his career-high in points with a game-high 22 points along with eight rebounds.
But it wasn’t his own performance that Brown took special interest in. It was the 10-point 5-for-5 display of his understudy Wedlow that had him all smiles after the fact.
“You can quote me from the beginning of the year, I told him I believe in him,” Brown said of Wedlow. “I think he’ll come to play later in the season. For me, it’s nothing unexpected from X. I think he’s a great player, I think he has a bright future. I just want him to stick with it, however I can help him do that. I want to be the best leader, role model I can for him. I think the kid is fantastic.”
Another standout on the day for Bona was Melvin Council Jr. who dished out seven assists without turning the ball over against Fordham. This performance, coming on the back of a seven-assist, two-turnover night against Dayton last time out, had Schmidt thanking his lucky stars that he never bet against his “makeshift” point guard after Dasonte Bowen’s injury.
“He’s growing into the position, he’s not a true point guard, he’s more of a scoring point guard, but if someone told me when Dasonte went down, that Melvin would have games of seven assists and zero turnovers, I probably wouldn’t have a house. He’s really improved, that position is really difficult. … For him to be able to play the way he’s playing is a credit to him.”
Unfortunately for the hosts, Fordham had a high scoring duo of its own in the form of Jackie Johnson III and Japhet Medor who needed no invitation to get going.
At the half, Medor and Johnson had just six points apiece, a testament to how well Bona defended them throughout the opening 20 minutes. However, come the final whistle, they had combined for 38 of their team’s 72 total points, their performances only compounded by the mistakes the Bonnies imparted upon themselves.
“The two guards, Johnson and Medor are really good, they’re small, but they’re really good,” Schmidt said. “And then we made some uncharacteristic mistakes at the end of the game, missing some foul shots, making some bad decisions, but in the end, we won, and that’s what this business is all about. But we got to get better. We can’t make those mistakes in the second half. When we got a team down, we got to keep them down.”
St. Bonaventure men’s basketball center Noel Brown (24) goes up for a layup. Brown tied his career-high of 22 points against Fordham. (Taylor Komidar)
As the Rams crept ever-closer to the Bonnies late on, the latter left the window of opportunity open for much longer than Schmidt would have liked, hitting just two of a possible eight free throws down the stretch.
Those missed shots from the charity stripe gave Fordham two opportunities to tie the game with just seconds on the clock. Luckily for those filling the sold-out Reilly Center, they did not have to relive the dying moments from the La Salle game earlier in the year as both shots went wayward.
And while a win is a win in this business, this game will stand as a big learning experience according to Schmidt.
“Those are things you learn, you hope that they had learned it by now, I guess they hadn’t, but that’s not going to happen again,” Schmidt said. “Thankfully, we won, but those are things that we need to make sure we’re covering. We can’t make those errors.”
St. Bonaventure has now won back-to-back games for the first time since its first two Atlantic 10 games of the season. It will have the chance to push the winning trend to a streak in its next game, away from home at Loyola Chicago on Feb. 4. That game will tip-off at 9 p.m.
