By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — Mark Schmidt’s St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team has seen its fair share of adversity this season.
They went toe-to-toe with a ranked North Carolina team, they went into, and defeated, Florida Atlantic and then-unbeaten Buffalo on their home courts.
You would have been hard pressed to find someone who would have told you that of all the quality teams Bona has played so far this season, Colgate would pose the biggest challenge.
Prior to their matchup with the Raiders, who held a 13-point lead at the intermission, the largest halftime deficit the Bonnies had faced this year was two points against the Tarheels.
This prompted some tough conversations in the locker room, but ones that Schmidt’s group were receptive of. Internalizing and understanding they were playing far below their capabilities, Bona shot out of a cannon in the second half, wiping away Colgate’s advantage in just about nine minutes of game time, and eventually winning by an eight-point margin.
“We’ve had adversity before, in a number of games this year we’ve lost the lead and we’ve gathered ourselves, but this was the first time that at halftime we were down by a considerable amount,” Schmidt said. You can tell a lot about people, a lot about a player, about a team, when things aren’t going well. I was proud of how our guys responded. They weren’t complaining to one another, they weren’t pointing fingers. They just knew that they didn’t play well, and they told each other that they were going to go out there and do a better job. And they did. We can’t put ourselves in that situation, and I think they understood that. But it was good for them, good for me, to see them fight out of some trouble.”
Four of the Bonnies’ starters for the game, Frank Mitchell, Cayden Charles, Darryl ‘Buddy’ Simmons II and Dasonte Bowen, each finished in double figures. The one outlier was Joe Grahovac, who still contributed nine points in the winning effort and, aside from the team’s game against Div. II Bloomsburg, played his most minutes since the season-opener.
Still, he did wind up in some foul trouble which caused him to leave the floor. Entering in his place was the like-for-like four-man Daniel Egbuniwe, who has proven he can provide a spark off the bench. He scored Bona’s only five bench points against Colgate, further cementing Schmidt’s admiration for the Grahovac-Egbuniwe tandem.
“Joe’s getting better, it’s a process,” Schmidt said. “Joe hasn’t played a lot of organized basketball and he’s learning as we go. And Daniel has been good. He wasn’t great in the first half (against Colgate) but in the second half, he responded. Daniel has done a good job coming off the bench for us since he’s been healthy, and it has helped us win a couple games.”
That depth, along with the strengthened resilience the team got from the Colgate affair, is all the more important with the end of the non-conference portion of the season on the horizon. The Bonnies’ penultimate game before Atlantic 10 play starts will be against Ohio University — a team that started the season 1-6, but have some wind in their sails behind back-to-back wins.
The Bobcats scored a big win over Maine and, most recently, put together a complete performance against Marshall in which all five of their starters racked up double-figure points. That sort of well-rounded attack is poised to draw a full-team defensive effort out of Schmidt’s crew.
“Team defense is everything,” Schmidt said. “You got to be able to stop the opponent. You got to make it hard for them to score. You can’t do that with one or two guys. You got to do it collectively. The more we’re connected and the more we’re disciplined, the better chance we have of stopping the opponent. (Ohio) had five guys in double figures (in their last game). They had a tough early part of the season in terms of scheduling, … but they’re playing better now. They got good guards, they got good big guys. We got our hands full.”
Leading the charge for Ohio is Jackson Paveletzke, a senior that has played over 30 games in each of his last three seasons — one apiece at Wofford, Iowa State and Ohio. In his second year with the Bobcats, he is averaging 17.2 points on nearly 51% shooting from the floor, along with 4.0 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game.
The Bonnies just got a taste of playing against a quality point guard in Colgate’s Jalen Cox, who tied his career-high of 26 points against them. This will be another, albeit different in terms of play style, challenge for the team’s defense.
“We saw a good player in Cox the other day, we’ve played against really good point guards, but (Paveletzke’s) a little bit different in that he’s more of a power guy,” Schmidt said. “He gets into the paint and lowers his shoulder. He’s very aggressive going downhill. He can shoot it good enough, but he’s more about getting into the paint and being overly aggressive. He’s going to present problems. We’re going to try to do whatever we can to keep him out of the paint.”
Part of what makes Paveletzke so effective are the big men that Ohio head coach Jeff Boals surrounds him with. The next three top scorers on the team, Aidan Hadaway, Javan Simmons and Jalen Breath are all listed as forwards and can manipulate space to get Paveletzke open and, when their number is called, hit the big bucket themselves.
“They can shoot the ball decently from 3, probably not as good as Colgate, but they can shoot it,” Schmidt said. “They can back you in, they’re strong, they got good feel. They cause problems because they’re really powerful guys. Coach Boals does a really good job with them. They’re just strong, physical, they got good footwork, and they isolate you on the block or off the block, and they back you in. So there’s a lot of concerns.”
It will need to be a more sound defensive effort against the Bobcats than it was against the Raiders for the Bonnies if they are to extend their win streak to six games and move to 11-1 on the season.
The game between St. Bonaventure and Ohio, set for 5 p.m. on Dec. 12, will be the first of two games in the Cleveland Hoops Showdown MTE, hosted at Rocket Arena in Cleveland.
