A column by CHUCK POLLOCK, Sun Senior Sports Columnist
Five times in 18 Atlantic 10 games this season, Mark Schmidt and his St. Bonaventure basketball team had to sweat out an opponents’ three-pointer in the air as time expired with a win or a tie on the line.
The Bonnies survived four of them against Virginia Commonwealth, Fordham, UMass and Davidson and had their hearts broken at the Reilly Center in January as La Salle’s Deuce Jones nailed an off-balance, 30-foot banker to produce an 83-82 overtime victory.
That missed trey by Davidson in Saturday’s regular-season finale ended Bona’s campaign at 21-10, after a 14-1 start, the third-most wins Schmidt has recorded in his 18 seasons at St. Bonaventure.
But the most important stat in that record was 9-9.
That was the Bonnies mark in the A-10 and absolutely critical for the conference tournament seedings which begins in Washington’s Capital One Arena come Wednesday.
IT WAS an odd campaign in the Atlantic 10 as 13 of the15 teams had at least six losses … only co-leaders Virginia Commonwealth and George Mason (both 15-3) were exempt with the Rams claiming the top seed thanks to a regular-season win over the Patriots.
And that’s where those four buzzer-beating survivals come in.
Schmidt, throughout his SBU career, has expressed a disdain for playing in an A-10’s first-round, a fate that makes — due to the extra game — it nearly impossible to claim the event’s title and the NCAA bid that goes with it.
THIS SEASON’S Atlantic 10 schedule was the most competitive in recent memory.
How weird was it?
With four games to play, the Bonnies could either ease into the Top Four and claim a double bye, or slip into the bottom six to play in the dreaded first-round game.
As it turned out, a loss at Saint Joe’s ended that Top 4 bid, but two season-ending wins put Bona in the 8-9 game and a meeting with Duquesne (8-10) Thursday morning. The Bonnies and Dukes split their regular-season series, Duquesne winning 75-57 in Pittsburgh and Bona prevailing 70-63 in the RC. The reality is, six teams had between six and nine losses in a season when the A-10 has never been so jumbled.
That’s where the Bonnies’ four wins on missed treys at the buzzer come in.
Had they lost two of those, they’d have finished at 7-11 and ended up in the bottom six with a Wednesday game. Two wins over UMass, with the same record, would have broken that tie but not put Bona over Rhode Island, which had the advantage of a head-to-head victory.
That’s how close St. Bonaventure was to a first round game.
WEDNESDAY’S opening round will match No. 12 Davidson (6-12) against No. 13 Richmond (5-13); No. 10 Rhode Island (7-11) versus No. 15 Fordham (3-15); and No. 11 UMass (7-11) against No. 14 LaSalle (5-13).
In Thursday’s second round, eighth seed St. Bonaventure meets ninth-seeded Duquesne (8-10) at 11:30, fifth seed St. Louis (11-7) faces the Davidson-Richmond winner at 2 p.m.; seventh seed George Washington (9-9) meets the Rhode Island-Fordham winner at 5 p.m.; and No. 6 Saint Joseph’s (11-7) faces the UMass-La Salle winner at 7:30.
If the Bonnies beat Duquesne, Friday morning at 11:30 they will face top-seeded VCU in the first quarterfinal.
All quarterfinal games will be on USA-TV except the last one which will be on Peacock. The two semifinals are set for CBSSN.
The A-10’s championship game will be Sunday at 1 o’clock on CBS.
(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun and Olean Star senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
