By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — After falling to an incredibly efficient and effective Richmond team on Jan. 7, the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team was left still in search of its first Atlantic 10 win of the season.
The Spiders were as accurate as can be, dialing up scoring plays on more possessions than not. They shot 53% from the floor, 42% from 3-point range and as time ticked away, they only got better, shooting over 60% from the field in the second half alone.
It was a tough loss for the Bonnies, who did not play all that poorly on the offensive side of the ball. They shot 45% from the floor and had every single starter finish with double figures in the score column. It was simply their struggles on the defensive end that just kept a win out of reach.
But it’s been more than 24 hours since the loss, beyond the time Bona head coach Mark Schmidt wants his players to think about their last game. If his team is going to get back on track, they need to move on and focus on the conference affairs still yet to come.
“You’re not going to win all the games,” Schmidt said. “And when you don’t win, you got to bounce back. We’ve had two good days of practice and we’re trying to win the next game. You can’t worry about what happened. You got to move on. We have that 24 hour rule. … We knew we weren’t going to go undefeated. We knew the VCU game was going to be difficult, but we had a chance. We didn’t play very well against Richmond, and now we have to bounce back. I told the team, ‘it’d be really difficult if Richmond was our last game of the year, but it isn’t, we got 16 more regular season games to play.’ Hopefully we can play well in all of them.”
The Bonnies’ next chance at turning things around will come against Fordham.
The Rams, along with the Bonnies, are one of three teams yet to pick up a win in the early goings of A10 play. Their offense ranks 11th of 14 in the conference, scoring an average of 73.1 points per game. But where they make up for what they don’t score is on the defensive end and on the glass. Fordham currently sports the best statistical defense in all of the A10, holding opponents to an average of 63.1 points per game, and is in the top two of every rebounding statistic, out-rebounding its opponents by a margin of 11.7 each game.
The size and depth of big men make the Rams a force to score against, as can be seen by them having held both Dayton and George Mason well below their average points per game in those respective contests. The more sizable players make a big impact on the offensive side of the floor as well, drawing attention away from the guard duo of Dejour Reaves and Christian Henry and collecting their misses for extra opportunities as they reel in a conference-high 13.8 offensive rebounds per game.
“From a defensive standpoint, they’re big and they’re physical,” Schmidt said. “They’re number one in the league in rebounding differential. They got the best rebounder in the league, numbers-wise. So they play a power game. Their fours and fives rebound the heck out of the ball. That’s their identity. So we got to do a good job of keeping them off the glass. But at the same time, their guards are really downhill, aggressive guys. Their backcourt is taking the most shots. So, the big guys are good, but their guards are good as well. … We got to do a good job keeping the ball in front of us on the perimeter.”
That amount of size is a point of concern for the Bona, which just got a taste of how much depth at the four and five positions can hurt against Richmond. The Spiders had a constant rotation of bigs — led by Mike Walz (10 rebounds, three assists, two blocks) — that made their presence known, an area in which depth is a bit of a concern for the Bonnies as Andrew Osasuyi, while making a return from injury against Richmond, played just three minutes, making it impossible to take Frank Mitchell out.
Now, Mitchell held up his end of the bargain. Arguably Bona’s best player this season, he recorded a double-double with 14 points and 12 rebounds to go along with five assists. But in order to circumvent a possible 1v5 (five being the number of Fordham’s top eight scorers that are 6-7 or taller), Schmidt is calling for a full team effort in shutting them down.
“We can’t get any bigger,” Schmidt said. “We are who we are. You just got to be aggressive if you’re going to box them out, you got to hit them first. They can’t knock you under the basket. But a lot of it is on dribble penetration. You’re helping, and you’re out of position, and those big guys come in and get better angles. So we just got to gang rebound. It’s not going to be one guy. Our guards have to do a good job of rebounding. And hopefully we can secure some.”
Another similarity between the Spiders and the Rams is that their guards operate well amongst the towering figures in the paint. Reaves and Henry average 16.5 and 12.3 points per game, respectively, and take the grand majority of their team’s field goal attempts. In fact, just one other player (Rikus Schulte) has even taken over 100 shots on the season.
In an attempt to prevent that duo from having a field day, Schmidt is looking for his team to do the exact thing they were unable to do against Richmond: keep them in front.
“Both the backcourt players are very aggressive,” Schmidt said. “They can shoot the ball, and when they’re knocking down 3s, they’re really hard to guard, because they can go off the bounce and they get in the lane. They have a mid-game and they can get to the basket. So we got to do the best job we can of keeping the ball in front of us.”
There is a lot of work ahead of the Bonnies and the Rams’ record should not be taken lightly. They are a staunch defensive team with more than capable scorers that can strike at any given moment. It will be imperative Bona does not allow its guests to dictate the game.
St. Bonaventure will look to pick up its first win in conference play on Jan. 10 with tip-off against Fordham set for 12 p.m.
