A column by CHUCK POLLOCK, Senior Sports Columnist, Wellsville Sun
Whenever he’s made the statement, in my view it was a joke.
Mark Schmidt, heading into his 19th season as St. Bonaventure’s men’s basketball coach, isn’t averse to sharing his sense of humor … though at times it hard to know when he’s kidding.
Over the past three seasons, he’s been heard to say, “I don’t intend to be doing this after I turn 65.”
He always gives a slight turn of the lip so that you’re not quite sure if he’s serious.
But, given the mess that college basketball has become, methinks Mark means it.
He turned 62 in February and should have it made: a salary just short of $2 million a season plus perks, the school record for career victories, seven 20-win seasons, three trips to the NCAAs and four invitations to the NIT. This man is hardly in job jeopardy in this town. His outlook was hardly hurt when he made the phrase “We got Woj” into part of the Bona hoops lexicon after alum Adrian Wojnarowski, the country’s leading NBA insider, was hired away from ESPN to be SBU’s basketball manager.
Unfortunately “Woj” inherited the NCAA mess that is the transfer portal — where virtually every player is a free agent — and the Name Image and Likeness (NIL) statute where the most talented performers go to the highest bidder.
PART OF Schmidt has to be longing for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons when his Bonnies first earned an NCAA berth then, a season later, won games at Colorado, Oklahoma and Virginia to make the NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden.
Those teams started Kyle Lofton, Osun Osunniyi, Jaren Holmes, Dominick Welch and Jalen Adaway and though the portal was open to them and NIL was just getting started, even though they were seniors, and went their separate ways, they owed Schmidt nothing … by his own admission.
The next two years he built new rosters virtually from scratch.
In my naivete I thought this coming season Schmidt would get a break … that loyalty would prevail.
Silly boy.
Ten Bonnies have declared for the portal which was bombarded with over 1,000 requests the day it opened.
Gone for St. Bonaventure are Duane Thompson, he of the on-campus DWI arrest following a single-car crash, Jaxson Edwards, who missed the season with a groin injury, Miles Rose. the victim in Thompson’s crash, Jonah Hinton, Lajae Jones, Noah Bolanga, the freshman from France, Ebrahim Kaba and Michael Folarin.
There are two asterisks as Melvin Council Jr. applied for the portal but insisted he might come back and Chance Moore, bidding for another year of eligibility in the portal though in appears he played in too many games in the season he’s hoping to get back.
So what does that leave Schmidt beside his two walk-ons?
Dasonte Bowen, who missed most of the season with a foot injury, and Xander Wedlow, sidelined by a knee problem, the possible return of Council, and two recruits: Frank Mitchell a 6-foot-8 forward from Minnesota and Canisius and Joe Gerhovac, a 6-10 center from Fullerton County Community College in Califofrnia.
Small wonder Schmidt seemingly can’t wait until he turns 65.
(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun and Olean Star senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
