By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — Forget the matchup against North Carolina. Forget Florida Atlantic and East Carolina and Buffalo and Ohio.
The Atlantic 10 schedule is officially upon us and everything that has happened up to this moment can be cast aside.
And for its first in-conference bout, the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team has been handed no short order. For the third year in a row, it will square off against VCU, the reigning conference champions, this time, at the Siegel Center.
The Bonnies pulled off a thrilling win over the Rams to start A10 play last season at home thanks to an acrobatic Melvin Council Jr. game-winning layup. But throw that out the window too. Xander Wedlow is the only player still on the team that featured in that game and he hasn’t played since Nov. 27.
“We’re 0-0, this is a clean slate,” Bona head coach Mark Schmidt said. “Everything goes up. Intensity goes up. There’s better scouting. Everybody knows what you’re running. The physicality, referees let you play a little bit more. VCU is going to have a great crowd and we got to play that much better. If you get behind, especially on the road, it’s hard to come back. That’s why you have to play for 40 minutes. Every night, it’s going to be a test, and if we don’t play well, we’re not going to win.”
With one of the nation’s top home court advantages, the environment at VCU is something that Schmidt admitted is far easier to describe than to play in. Therefore, his team will need to be airtight if they want to emerge victorious in their lone meeting of the season with the Rams.
“We don’t have a guy that has played there in a Bonaventure uniform,” Schmidt said. “It’s one thing to tell guys what it’s going to be like. It’s a different thing to experience it. But I think anytime you go on the road, I don’t care where you’re playing, Dayton, Saint Louis, all those tough venues with really good teams, you can’t play scared, you can’t play on your heels. You got to go at them. But at the same time, you’ve got to know when to go and when to pull back. At VCU, if you turn the ball over and they hit a 3 or a dunk, it’s like a grand slam. You can’t give them grand slams.”
Part of what makes this VCU team so difficult is its depth. Not one player on the roster averages over 26 minutes per game and its leading scorer averages just 18.5 minutes per contest. The well of scoring runs deep too. Not one player with over six games to their name this year averages under four points per game — all but two average at least 5.7 per game.
Terrence Hill Jr. leads the Rams with 13.1 points per game, but he is followed closely by Lazar Djokovic (12.2), Jadrian Tracey (10.5) and Nyk Lewis (10.3). Former Bonnie Barry Evans, who followed head coach Phil Martelli Jr. from Bryant after he accepted the job in the offseason, is the first player that does not average double figures per outing. However, his physicality makes him a factor on the glass as he leads the team with 5.7 boards per game to go along with his nine points.
“Hill comes off the bench and he’s their leading scorer,” Schmidt said. “He’s playing 18 minutes a game. They got a good punch off the bench. We got to guard each guy, try to take away their strengths, just like we always do, just like every team does, and just try to play our game. If we can play our game, then hopefully we can hang in there and keep the crowd out of it. But they’re a good team, they’ve had some good wins because they get good players and they’re well-coached. We got our hands full.”
Just one facet of the Rams’ high-powered, by-committee offense is their ability to shoot the deep ball. VCU has drained the most 3s of any A10 team so far this season (10.5 per game) and hold the second-highest 3-point percentage (37.7%) in the conference. This is why Schmidt is preaching disciplined defense before heading down to Richmond.
“We got to keep the ball in front of us because they drive and they kick, and with one more pass, that’s when they hit their 3s,” Schmidt said. “They make 10.5 3s a game. But there’s a lot more (we have to do) than just knock them off the 3. It’s about transition defense, taking care of the basketball, trying to keep it in the half court as much as we can. And really, the big key is trying to keep them in front. If we can keep them in front, that eliminates a lot of the 3-point shooting.”
But scoring the ball is not all VCU does well. The Rams have dominated the points off turnovers and fastbreak points categories as of late, getting those “grand slam” moments with regularity. And while there may not be a one-size-fits-all method to keep them from doing so, the goal for Schmidt and Co. is to to play the game on their terms and be sound and confident in each aspect.
“You got to take care of the basketball, you want to have more points in the paint, you want to have more points off of turnovers,” Schmidt said. “What they do well, we want to try to do well. There’s no magical formula. The team that keeps the ball above the foul line, the team that can knock them off the 3s, the team that can rebound the ball, the team that can take care of the ball, is going to be the team that’s going to win.”
St. Bonaventure is set to tip-off A10 play at VCU on Dec. 31 at 2 p.m.
