By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — Despite showing some early signs of improvement, a string of empty possessions derailed the St. Bonaventure women’s basketball team, which suffered a heavy 81-37 loss to VCU.
In its penultimate home game of the regular season, Bona was in search for a momentum-swinging win to carry them through the remainder of the season. In order to do so, coach Jim Crowley noted his team needed to use what VCU knew about them in the scouting report to their advantage. That meant tricking the Rams’ defense with fakes, making the extra pass when they anticipated a shot and being more methodical in possession when they would normally take a quick shot.
Unfortunately, while the Bonnies managed to get some nice early buckets via that method, a number of turnovers, empty possessions and general inconsistency kick-started the unraveling process for the hosts.
“It was 14-11 with two minutes to go in the first quarter, at the media timeout we come right out and give away two turnovers, they score (on those), we take a bad shot and they score (on the other end) and all of a sudden it’s 20-11,” Crowley said. “The year kind of caught up to us there. We made another run in the third quarter where I thought we were pretty competitive through the whole quarter, and then in the fourth quarter we just didn’t stay with it. The consistency is an issue, and I gotta do a better job getting that to where it needs to be.”
Bona’s struggles in possession can be seen in the box score. VCU finished the game with a staggering 16 steals to Bona’s five assists. The Rams scored 26 points off turnovers and dominated in the paint 44-18.
“(Preventing run-outs is) something we had been pretty good at,” Crowley said. “But we had 10 turnovers in the first half, one in the third quarter and seven in the fourth. It’s just that consistency thing.”
St. Bonaventure forward Caitlin Frost (21) battles through contact from a VCU defender on her way to the basket. (Craig Melvin)
Another big point of emphasis ahead of the clash was the rebounding battle. VCU’s Mykel Parham entered the affair as, statistically, the second-best rebounder in the entirety of the Atlantic 10, averaging 10.8 boards per game. Bona managed to hold her to just six on the night, but overall struggled to keep the Rams off the glass, losing the battle of the boards 41-22.
“I mean, we missed a lot more shots than they did and they made a lot more, so there wasn’t as many opportunities for rebounds,” Crowley said. “I thought we were OK on the offensive boards, but we just gave them a lot of chances to rebound because of how many times we missed.”
But while the Bona bigs of Caitlin Frost, Gabby Robinson Forde and Hannah Richardson may have ultimately lost the war against Parham, Jennifer Ezeh and Lucia Sotelo Miguez, each having roped in six rebounds for the Rams, there were a number of defensive battles that they did win that pleased Crowley.
“I thought we got beat to positions sometimes, I thought we also did a great job on those kids at times,” Crowley said. “I thought Gabby really did a good job. I thought, early, Hannah took stuff away and limited them to one. It’s just, again, the consistency of it. They keep coming and we’ve got to keep it coming as well. We didn’t do that today and I think as we missed shots, we kind of went in that direction.”
St. Bonaventure guard Zoe Shaw (32) launches a 3-pointer. (Craig Melvin)
Now, as the Bonnies get set to hit the road for one final regular season road trip before returning home, Crowley’s message to the team is one of identity.
“Who do you want to be,” Crowley said of what he’s told his players. “What team do you want to be? Do you want to be the team that competes hard and executes the game plan? Or do you want to be a team that gets bothered by a missed shot, or whatever else it might be?”
Crowley will hope to see his team return positive answers to those questions next time out when St. Bonaventure faces La Salle away from home on Feb. 22 at 2 p.m.
