By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — For the final time, at least in the Atlantic 10 regular season, St. Bonaventure will face off against UMass ahead of the latter’s switch to the Mid-American Conference next year.
The final meeting between the Bonnies and one of the flagship teams of the A10 will take place at the Reilly Center and will act as the penultimate game of the regular season for both sides.
But despite the sentiment of the affair, Bona will be looking for a bounce back win after falling on the road at Saint Joseph’s last time out, as it looks to cap off its regular season on the right note.
Against the Hawks, it was a tale of two halves. Through the first 20 minutes, the Bonnies led the whole way. However, after conceding their lead late and entering the halftime interval tied, St. Joe’s took momentum into the second half and walked away with the win.
“I thought we played decently in the first half,” Schmidt said of the game at Saint Joseph’s. “Our offense got a little bit stagnant in the second half, we missed some layups. … They’re a good team. They can really score the basketball and we went into a little bit of a lull for a few minutes in the second half. We had it (down to) 55-51, we had a layup and we missed. You have to play nearly perfect on the road and we didn’t do that.”
But as Schmidt and his side return home for their final game of the regular season at the RC, his side will not be able to take their foot off the pedal with “blue collar” UMass coming to town. The Bonnies and Minutemen have already met once this season, on Feb. 15, a game in which the Bonnies managed to win 73-59. However, the asterisk hanging over that game is the fact that UMass was without its second-best scorer on the season in Jaylen Curry, who is averaging 13.2 points, 3.8 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game.
“They didn’t have Curry … so they’re a whole different team,” Schmidt said. “You take Diggins off the ball, he’s much more effective off the ball, and we’re expecting a totally different game with those two guys in the starting lineup. … Frank (Martin) does a really good job with them, they’re really physical and they do a good job on the offensive backboard. Even though they shot the ball well against Rhode Island, they’re not a great shooting team, but they’re attacking, they get offense off of their defense, they turn guys over. So those two guards are the key … you can’t let them get off. … That first game, throw that out the window. It has nothing to do with tomorrow night at seven o’clock.”
Curry made his return from injury for the Minutemen in their last game out, a 91-88 win over Rhode Island in which he netted 22 points on 50% shooting and dished out eight assists while turning the ball over just once.
“He can score, he can really push the heck out of the ball, he’s really fast, he’s one of the best scoring point guards in our league when he’s shooting the ball well from 3s, he’s really unguardable, but he makes them go,” Schmidt said. “Diggins can play off the ball and play off of Curry and it just makes them both more effective. When you lose your starting point guard, it’s a struggle, and they’ve struggled without Curry. But with him, they’re a whole different team.”
For Bona to negate the impact of Curry and Diggins, it will need to shore up on the turnovers that plagued it in the first half of the reverse fixture. At UMass, Bona turned the ball over 11 times in the first 20 minutes of play. Granted, Bona still won in the category of points-off-turnovers as UMass struggled with giving the ball up as well in that game — both sides having finished with 15 turnovers apiece — but those will not be waters Schmidt would like to test again, especially with a pure scorer like Curry back in the lineup.
“It wasn’t their pressure, we just made some dumb plays, uncharacteristic plays, we threw the ball out of bounds when there wasn’t anybody there,” Schmidt said. “You can’t turn the ball over 11 times in a half and expect to win. For the most part, we’ve taken care of the ball and we need to do that against UMass if we’re expecting to win.”
Chance Moore had himself a big game last time out against the Minutemen with a 15-point, 10-rebound double-double and the Bonnies will be looking for a performance of equal quality from him because, as Schmidt has mentioned before, when Moore plays well, the team plays well.
“When he’s engaged and he plays hard and he’s active on the backboard, like he was against UMass, we’re a much better team,” Schmidt said. “So, hopefully Chance plays well (because) when he plays well, we’re a different team.”
Lajae Jones, Melvin Council Jr., Noel Brown and Jonah Hinton each also made a big impact on offense in the previous game against the Minutemen, each finishing with double-figure points.
St. Bonaventure will hope for another well-rounded performance in its last game in front of a true home crowd this season, and its final A10 game against UMass. The Bonnies and Minutemen will tip off at 7 p.m. on March 5 at the Reilly Center.
