A column by CHUCK POLLOCK, Senior Sports Columnist, Wellsville Sun, Olean Star
Talk about sneaking up on you.
What with the baseball playoffs, NFL, college football, an intense election and myriad other distractions, all of a sudden we look up and it’s St. Bonaventure men’s basketball season.
The scrimmages and exhibition versus Alfred U. are over and come Monday night at the Reilly Center, coach Mark Schmidt begins his 18th season coaching the Bonnies against Cal-State Northridge (19-15, 9-11 Big West last season).
And, for the third straight year, Schmidt, who turns 62 in February, will have a totally rebuilt roster.
IT’S ACTUALLY one more that he expected.
After the 21-22 season’s 23-10 record, Schmidt hoped that four of the architects of that campaign — Kyle Lofton, Dominick Welch, Jaren Holmes and Osun Osunniyi — would return for their final year of eligibility.
But, alas, that talented foursome fell under the spell of the wide-open transfer portal and the NCAA’s vague NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) statue that permitted them to earn money as players.
Osunniyi and Holmes opted for Iowa State, Lofton for Florida and Welch for Alabama.
Schmidt didn’t blame any of them, but he was forced to build a roster at the last minute and that team ran out of gas and lost six of its last seven games to finish 14-18.
Virtually that whole team left and Rebuild No. 2 went much better, finishing 20-13 but ending embarrassingly when the Bonnies opted out of an NIT bid, a move that ultimately cost athletic director Joe Manhertz his job.
Now Schmidt is in Rebuild No. 3 and here’s a bit of advice, if you’re going to the Cal-St. Northridge game, grab a program.
THE CURRENT Bonnies have 10 new faces including three freshmen and seven transfers from Iowa, Valparaiso, Missouri State, Wagner, Barton, Panola and Salt Lake C.C.
There are also three returnees, headed by center Noel Brown, himself a transfer from George Washington, redshirt freshman Duane Thompson and sophomore Miles Rose who saw action in one game a season ago.
In a conference call earlier this week, Schmidt, in assessing his goal for a virtually all-new team, said, “We want to win, but we want to get everybody involved and we want to play really, really hard. Ever since I’ve been a head coach, I want fans to leave the game saying, ‘Wow, those guys play hard.’
“We want to give our fans their money’s worth … that’s what we owe them.”
Schmidt added, “The expectation is that we play extremely hard, we play unselfish, we play smart, we know what we’re doing and that we made the right play.”
After Northridge, Bona is at Canisius (Nov. 4) and Florida Gulf Coast (Nov. 13) before returning home for a game against LeMoyne (Nov. 16).
THE RIGHT DECISION A SEASON LATE
From the moment Bona announced before last season that its broadcasts, particularly men’s hoops, would switch from WPIG to the Bonnies Online Network, I had concerns which were shared in this space.
What would happen to people without a computer or those who listened in a vehicle? SBU’s response, which never came to fruition, was that an effort would be made to also air games on WSBU, a weak-signaled FM station that doesn’t extend beyond the city, let alone into Cattaraugus and Allegany Counties or Pennsylvania.
This season, Bona has partnered with Bradford’s 100,1 FM (and sister station B107.5) to give over-the-air coverage to parts of Pennsylvania and the Southern Tier via radio.
All Bona men’s games and select women’s contests will be broadcast by the Bradford stations, good news to those without computers or driving.
NOT JUST THE YANKEES
Yankee fans know that their team’s major TV outlet is YES, it’s in the initials (Yankees Entertainment $ Sports Network) and this basketball season it will broadcast nine St. Bonaventure game (five men’s and four women’s) in an agreement it reached with the school
The men’s games will be Le Moyne (No. 16), UB (Dec.7), La Salle (Jan. 11), Richmond (Jan. 15) and Dayton (Jan. 28).
The four women’s games: Cornell (Dec. 5), Niagara (Dec. 17), UMass (Jan. 12) and Duquesne (Feb. 2) .
All Bona basketball games broadcast on YES will also still stream through ESPN+.
(Chuck Pollock, an Olean Star and Wellsville Sun senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
