By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — St. Bonaventure women’s basketball head coach Jim Crowley found out a lot about his new roster in their final exhibition game against Daemen University.
He witnessed how resilient this group of players truly is as they banded together to gut out a 79-68 comeback win in the second half. But he also saw that there is much to improve upon.
And with the start of the 2025-26 season now only days away, he is looking for his players to show their ability to adapt come Nov. 3 when the Bonnies are set to host Div. II Mansfield.
“The reason we do exhibitions is to find out stuff about ourselves,” Crowley said. “(It helps us) find out what nerves are there and find out how we perform if things go astray. You can have a great plan, but you got to have the ability to do some things on the fly, and we didn’t do it on the fly very well (against Daemen). … What I want to see in the Mansfield game is do we need to make the mistakes in-game to fix them, or have we learned?”
What he’s looking to get from his players isn’t anything unheard of either. It is the basics that he is hoping his players pick up on.
“It’s just about getting back to the basics, making sure we’re executing the stuff we want to that we’ve worked on from day one, and doing it at game pace,” Crowley said. “That’s really been our big focus, just the basics. We need to do it at a high level all the time and get as many people ready as we can to do it in every moment, not just the moments when we’re down 12 points.”
There were flashes of that adaptability in the exhibition against the Wildcats on Oct. 29, mainly in the second half when Bona out-scored Daemen 47-24. To that, he credited the team’s veterans.
Crowley did not have a heaping amount of experience to rely on in last season’s team aside from point guard Dani Haskell. So, in the offseason, he and his staff made bringing in players with plenty of in-game experience a top priority. Now, they’re seeing the benefits.
“The response (in the second half against Daemen) was really good, we could have had some panic, so credit to our leadership and our players,” Crowley said. “That’s hard for a new team of 12 new people, to not fold and go into finger pointing mode. Instead, they understand who we are, what we’re doing, and to got back to it. So, there are a lot of positives to build on there, but also a lot of stuff to improve on, which is what this time of year is about. We certainly hope that what happened allows us to avoid it again, where it could cost us a game.”
Two of those experienced veterans are Laycee Drake and Aaliyah Parker. The duo combined for 32 of Bona’s 79 points against Daemen, and that was with Drake sitting on the bench for the majority of the first half due to foul trouble.
Contradicting each other in the best of ways, Parker will not hesitate to drive through the lane and take contact on her way to a layup. While Drake will put on display the shiftiness she picked up from her days of studying Kyrie Irving highlights and make you pay with a big bucket.
“That’s why they’re there, they’re both players that we believe in, they’re both players that have a lot of game experience,” Crowley said. “When we brought them both in, we felt they could play really well together and we just want to keep increasing their minutes together. Laycee had some foul trouble (in the first half against Daemen), Aaliyah is still working herself back (from injury). But, they’re two talented veteran players who understand the game. Both have really good IQs and their calmness in all the craziness of the first half (against Daemen) really allowed the rest of the team to calm down and play.”
Drake and Parker will be set to lead the Bonnies into battle for the first official time this season against the Mounties on Nov. 3 at 6 p.m. in the Reilly Center.
