By SPENCER BATES
PITTSBURGH, PA — The message was simple.
Put aside schematics, statistics and matchups. All St. Bonaventure men’s basketball head coach Mark Schmidt needed his team to do was play better.
Consider that message received.
What started off as another poor outing from the Bonnies that forced Schmidt into calling a timeout under four minutes in, wound up as a solid 87-79 victory on the road over Duquesne.
“We finally won a game where we held a lead and we held on in the last five minutes and closed it out,” Schmidt told ESPN+ broadcasters after the game. “It was positive.”
The Dukes shot out of the gates with a 14-5 run and ultimately built as much as a 13-point advantage in the first half. Contributing to the stumble out of the gates for Bona was that it was without Frank Mitchell for a significant portion of the half as he picked up two quick fouls and, while he did tie his career-high in assists in the time he had in the first half, failed to score.
Granted, Bona did manage to finish the half strong, shaving its deficit to just four points. But still its streak of trailing at the half continued as the Bonnies have failed to hold a lead going into the break since their Dec. 6 game against Buffalo. They trailed the Dukes 39-35 at half.
But there were signs that something was brewing for the visitors. Most notably, Darryl ‘Buddy’ Simmons II shot 5-for-7 from the field and racked up 14 points through the first 20 minutes. And as Mitchell, who has been arguably the most reliable option for the Bonnies this season, was forced to get comfortable on the bench, Joe Grahovac and Andrew Osasuyi shined in his wake. Each threw down emphatic jams and got themselves in the right positions to cause problems for Duquesne’s big men.
The Bonnies used those first-half positives and built upon them, unleashing a storm of efficient basketball upon the Dukes in the second half.
Simmons’ red-hot shooting carried over through the break as he recorded a game-high 31 points on 8-for-11 shooting. Mitchell once again got in some foul trouble and was relegated to the bench for some time, but Grahovac (nine points, five rebounds) and Osasuyi (seven points, eight rebounds) had not cooled off in the time they were on the bench as they combined for an effective 14 points and 13 rebounds.
“Frank is (our) guy inside, but I thought Andrew came in and played tremendous. I thought Joe came in and really gave us a lift,” Schmidt said. “And Buddy can score. When he’s shooting the ball, we’re that much better. He’s struggled at times this year. But when he’s on, he can put the ball in the basket.”
Mitchell did eventually make a return to the court and set a new career-high in assists with seven to his four points and three rebounds.
Dasonte Bowen also had a brilliant second half, setting a new career-high in points with 19 on 7-for-11 shooting to go along with six assists, three rebounds and three steals.
The Bonnies found their stride on multiple occasions through the second half, going on a 13-4 run not long after the intermission and a 12-4 run later in the half that consisted of three consecutive 3s from Simmons and another deep ball from Bowen.
For Schmidt, this was exactly the response he needed to see after his side was handedly beaten by Saint Louis last time out and following a string of games early in A10 play in which they had late leads, but were just incapable of hanging on.
“We have enough talent,” Schmidt said. “We got eight guys, we got some injuries, but we got eight guys. When we play, we have a shot. And it shows, leading five of the seven games that we have, the talent. We just gotta put it all together. The Loyola (Chicago) game was a step, and this was another.”
He has seen the growth of the team and for as poor as their recent run of form has been, Schmidt admitted that it is all experience for the first-year players in the program. Fortunately, he was able to see a return on his investment in the form of a win over his program’s oldest rival.
“This is the first time these guys have been in our program, so it’s a learning curve, but you learn from experience,” Schmidt said. “Out of the seven (A10) games, we won one of them, but the other five, … we’d led for 35 minutes of those games, and we just couldn’t finish. We didn’t execute. We fouled too many times. But I thought today we played better, even though it didn’t look pretty at the end.”
St. Bonaventure extended its lead in the all-time series against Duquesne, making it now three wins in a row. It will look to build on the momentum of a second A10 win in its next game, set for 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 31 at home against George Mason.
