By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — The St. Bonaventure women’s basketball team has finally been able to take a breath.
After preparing for and playing five games in a span of just 11 days, the Bonnies were able to take a moment to pause prior to its next match.
But there was no vacation and the focus of the team was kept firmly on the campaign. According to head coach Jim Crowley, the days off consisted of critical growth, installation and restoration after an exhaustive stretch of fixtures.
“One of the things that’s happened over the last couple of weeks is I’ve pulled back in practice,” Crowley said. “We’ve just played so much and it has shown in some of our games. So, to be able to have three straight days of practice, we really got back to the intensity that we had had prior to that stretch of games. … I thought (the days off) were a real benefit. We were able to look at some things, our physicality offensively has faded a little bit, our consistency of improvement on defense wasn’t where it needed to be, so we were able to do some things on that and of course spend the time we needed to prepare for Mercyhurst.”
Bona will head to Mercyhurst for its penultimate game of the non-conference portion of the calendar. The Lakers are yet to pick up a win on the season, but their 0-8 record is merely on paper. Within those eight losses are games against No. 23 ranked Michigan State, No. 12 ranked Iowa State and No. 25 ranked West Virginia.
Those games build resilience and establish an understanding of what it takes to succeed at a higher level. Crowley knows this and sees the similarities between this Mercyhurst side and the Saint Louis team that handed the Bonnies their first Atlantic 10 loss of the season.
“They’re very scrappy,” Crowley said. “They attack with the dribble. They have four guards that can produce good numbers. Obviously we didn’t take care of business like we should have against Saint Louis, so this is a chance to see how we’ve grown and hopefully gotten better from it.”
Leading the lines for Mercyhurst is Lena Walz, a name that will be familiar to Bona fans as she was a member of the team last year before transferring away. In 15 games with the Bonnies, Walz recorded four starts and averaged 2.9 points and 2.0 rebounds per game. This season, playing for her hometown Lakers, she is excelling with an average of 13.0 points, 3.4 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game.
“She shoots it well, she’s playing at a comfortable place and she’s physical,” Crowley said. “We can’t let the emotion go the wrong way. But one thing I think we’ve done pretty well is take away teams’ best scorers. We’ll hopefully continue that tomorrow night.”
Walz started each of Mercyhurst’s first six games of the season prior to missing the last two through an injury. But Crowley noted that his side is prepared for the return of Walz on Friday. In the absence of Walz, Jenna Van Schaik and Erica Hall each had outstanding games, making them the dangerous duo to look for when Walz is not on the ball.
One area in which the Bonnies are poised to have an advantage is on the glass. Walz leads the Lakers’ rebounds per game averages with no other member of the team averaging over 2.8 per game. Bona heavily relies on its guards to rebound the ball as well, but alongside those guards are bigger players that can be an X-factor.
“We’re at our best when our guards rebound and start our tempo,” Crowley said. “We think it’s an advantage for us all the time, and certainly tomorrow night. We do feel like we can get to the offensive glass pretty well. We think we have some people that can cause them problems on the offensive boards. So those are areas that we really want to make sure we’re getting after.”
Of course, this game, occurring on the final day of classes for the semester, comes with an understandable amount of stress. Crowley knows there’s no avoiding it, but is prepared, along with his staff, to help mitigate some of the anxiety and exhaustion that simply comes with this time of year in collegiate athletics.
“(It’s about) talking people through it, not letting them get too worked up about what’s coming … heading into finals,” Crowley said. “You can look at the opponent’s record (and take a step back), but we’ve got to be better than that and I think we will be.”
The Bonnies will be looking for their ninth win of the season at Mercyhurst, but for Crowley a win would take him over the 400-mark for his coaching career. At Le Moyne on Dec. 6, he recorded his 400th, a moment, he joked, that just proves that he’s, “old and been able to stay ahead of the hatchet man.”
In all seriousness, he said he hadn’t thought all that much about the milestone prior to reaching it, but is proud of it at the end of the day.
“I drove back on my own Saturday after the Le Moyne game, and really just found myself thinking about a lot of the players that I’d coached, and how fortunate I’ve been to have been around so many different people,” Crowley said. “I’m a small town guy and grew up just watching basketball. Now to have made my life college basketball is just pretty lucky. If you figure out what you want to do with your life, and you get to do it, and you figure out where you want to live, and you get to live there, and you figure out who you want to spend your life with, and you get that person, you’re pretty blessed. And I got all three.”
St. Bonaventure is set to take on Mercyhurst at 6 p.m. on Dec. 12.
