By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — The St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team never trailed in its game against Robert Morris.
For just under 39 minutes, the Bonnies were in the driver’s seat. But they were far from cruising.
In the end, they grabbed a solid 75-61 victory, moving to 5-0 on the year. But the Colonials had a real interest in playing the spoiler in the Bonnies’ final game of a four-game homestand.
Frankly, things couldn’t have started much better for the Bonnies. Opening the affair with a 12-0 run, everything was falling for the hosts and they were getting the stops on the other end.
It was poetry in motion until it wasn’t.
Robert Morris responded with a 7-0 run of its own, and thus kicked off a tug-of-war that saw Bona’s lead bounce between as much as 12 and as little as two in the opening half.
“The first half wasn’t our best basketball,” Bona’s Cayden Charles admitted. “We honestly came out flat, and this was a trap game, as Coach said. We just weren’t there defensively or offensively. We tightened it up in the second half. But obviously, if we want to be the team we want to be, we have to have better starts.”
The Bona offense went shockingly cold at times, compared to how it started. It is not like it was all shots from range that weren’t falling either. In total the team combined for 13 misses in the paint.
“We got off to a really good start, then it’s almost like it became too easy for us and went into a lull,” Bona head coach Mark Schmidt said. “I didn’t think we played great in the first half. We gave up too many open shots. We didn’t rotate the way we needed to. We missed some easy ones. We weren’t sharing the ball. We weren’t moving the ball from side to side as well as we have been.”
But the misses are not eating away at Schmidt. The number of points his team left on the table from inside 15 feet are points he knows will not be missed again, noting that they are ‘the least of his worries’ and that the issue is ‘already fixed.’
The second half was more of the same until about the final 10 minutes when the Bonnies finally put everything together and got back to being the team that dominated early on. They closed out the game, doubling up the offense the Colonials could muster, with an 18-9 run.
“In the end, we found a way,” Schmidt said. “We can all get better. We can coach better. We can play better. That’s the goal. The only thing that’s guaranteed right now is five wins, and five wins isn’t good enough. We got to continue to go back to work tomorrow and get better, both on the offensive and the defensive end.”
Just about every aspect of the Bonnies’ game improved over the final stretch of minutes. Defensively, they shut down the Colonials — whose leading scorer on the night netted just six points in the second half. And offensively, improved ball movement and communication led to more successful trips up the floor.
“I thought we did a better job, especially in the last 10 minutes of switching ball screens and communicating better,” Schmidt said. “We had some miscommunication in the first half, but I thought in the second half we shared the ball. We had 21 assists on 27 field goals. That tells you a lot. (Defensively,) we blocked some shots and we got into passing lanes. We played much better in the second half, but the offense has to be smoother.”
St. Bonaventure’s Frank Mitchell (00) dives on the ground to collect a loose ball. Mitchell had 19 points and 16 rebounds for the Bonnies in their win. (Taylor Komidar)
Perhaps the biggest feat Bona accomplished on the defensive end was that it held Robert Morris’ biggest threat entering the game in Nikolaos Chitikoudis to just 13 points and five rebounds, both figures that were under his average through four games. Frank Mitchell and Joe Grahovac were the bigs on Chitikoudis’ case all night and both had extremely productive nights, with Schmidt going as far to say this was the latter’s best game from a defensive standpoint.
“We knew going into the game that (Chitikoudis) was going to be a force,” Schmidt said. “He’s a good player, so you’re not going to stop him. You just have to try to make it difficult. We tried to double him a few times, Frank tried to body him up … and he was minus-13 while he was in there. So, we did a decent job. He’s a really good player, someone that’s going to have a terrific season.”
Mitchell led the Bonnies in scoring and rebounding, recording his 21st career double-double with 19 points and 16 rebounds. He received the Bona Belt for his performance, but also making his presence known on both ends was Cayden Charles who also recorded a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds, making them the first Bona teammates to record a double-double in the same game since 2022.
“When I go for a post move, I know either I’m going to get (the rebound) or Cayden is,” Mitchell said. “Cayden is one of the best rebounders, as a guard, that I’ve seen in a while, even (from my time) in the Big 10. He has no agenda. His motor is high. … Me and him just want to win. We do whatever we have to do to win.”
Charles handed the praise right back to Mitchell.
“It’s easy to play with guys like Frank,” Charles said. “He’s probably the best rebounder I’ve seen, that I’ve played with. We challenge each other. He jokes around that I steal his rebounds and he steals mine, but at the end of the day, we just want to win. We know rebounding is what it takes. We’re both just high-motor, high-energy guys that just want to do whatever it takes.”
In terms of personnel, Bona was given another boost as this was the first game all season in which it had every single player on the roster healthy. Daniel Egbuniwe made his return from the ankle injury he picked up against Bradley in the team’s season-opener and Ilia Ermakov made his debut for the Bonnies after picking up a lower leg injury before the season began.
“It was Ilia’s first Division One game, so there were nerves, but hopefully, going through this game, he can get those nerves out,” Schmidt said. “Same thing with Daniel, even though he’s a senior and he played the first game, just to be able to get in there and get some rust off … hopefully it gives those guys confidence.”
Having as many options available will be all the more important for Schmidt as he and his staff get to work on preparing for their next opponent, No. 18 North Carolina. Bona heads into its midseason tournament with a blemish free record, taking a 5-0 record into a game against a ranked opponent for the first time since 1969.
The Bonnies will head to Fort Myers to take on the Tarheels on Nov. 25 at 6 p.m.
