By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — It really is just that simple.
For the third time in as many games, the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team has been plagued by the same problems: keeping their defensive assignments in front of them and being unable to extend its positive minutes.
Their struggles culminated into what ultimately became a 81-77 loss to Fordham, which picked up its first win of the Atlantic 10 campaign.
The first signs of trouble did not take long to emerge either, as Bona head coach Mark Schmidt was forced to call a timeout less than three minutes into the contest as a poor start saw the Rams jump ahead 10-4 — a deficit that may not seem all that wide on paper, but it was the way in which they conceded those 10 points that upset Schmidt.
Defensively, the game plan went out the window. Fordham’s big men were being found running the floor for fast break points or unmarked in the paint after incisive drives from its guards. And when they had nothing going inside, they found a guard or a wing on the perimeter for gut-punch 3s.
“We had a hard time keeping the ball in front of us,” Schmidt said. “They made five 3s, four 3s at the end of the shot clock in the first half where we needed to press up a little bit. We just got to continue to work on trying to keep the ball in front of us, that will alleviate a lot of the problems that we’re having defensively.”
But right as the Bonnies were able to right the ship, taking an 18-16 lead, the Rams found a way to knock them right back down, by going on a 10-3 run.
That would be the case for the entire affair — right when the hosts had a glimmer for hope Fordham would rip it away.
Most notably, in the second half, the Bonnies managed to flip the game around and take a 63-57 lead behind a 25-6 run. The Reilly Center was rocking and momentum looked to be completely on their side.
But immediately after that run, Fordham retook control with a 12-5 run of its own.
The leads changed hands a few times down the stretch, but it was the Rams that landed the knockout blow, capping the affair with an 8-3 run. Six points of that run were scored by DeJour Reaves, who was the engine of the Fordham machine, recording 31 points (a career-high and season-high tally for any one Fordham player), four steals and six assists all while not turning the ball over once. He also shot a perfect 12-for-12 from the charity stripe which is a new individual season-high tally for the Rams.
“We had some good moments, we got down 51-40 and I think we out-scored them by 15 in six or seven minutes. We had some energy. We just couldn’t keep Reaves in front of us,” Schmidt said. “We’re fouling too much. We can’t keep the guy in front of us. I thought we did a decent job keeping them off the backboard. That’s one of their strengths and we out-rebounded them by one. We just couldn’t get that stop that we needed. I thought we had a good look at the end, but it’s us trying to keep the ball in front of us without fouling, that’s been the challenge. … I thought we fought. We just didn’t have enough.”
St. Bonaventure’s Achille Lonati (20) rises up for a tough layup. Lonati scored 11 points off the bench for the Bonnies in their loss. (Hunter O. Lyle)
Despite the loss, there were at least some individual positives for the Bonnies. Darryl ‘Buddy’ Simmons II scored a team-high 24 points on 8-for-14 shooting and 6-for-7 from 3. Cayden Charles scored an even 20 points and it was his high-effort buckets that helped lift Bona to that big second half scoring run.
Achille Lonati added 11 points to the cause off the bench as well, a significant impact considering the Bonnies have two guards, Ilia Ermakov and Amar’e Marshall, out with foot injuries.
“He made some shots, … he had some other opportunities that he could have knocked down, but hopefully it gives him some confidence,” Schmidt said. “With Amar’e out, it’s next man up, and hopefully with this game, he can get better, because we’re going to need him. Right now, we got eight guys, and all those guys have to have to be able to contribute.”
Ultimately, it was not a good enough performance from start to finish according to Schmidt. There were certainly moments in which he saw what his team can be capable of, the key now is finding a way to take those good spells of time and extend them for entire games.
“We were just more active,” Schmidt said. “When we got down by 11 there was a sense of urgency. But if we’re going to win, that urgency has to be there for 40 minutes. I’m not saying that we didn’t play hard. … We got to bottle those six or seven minutes and try to bring it for 35, 40 minutes.”
St. Bonaventure is now the only A10 team without an in-conference win. It will look to put an end to that and get back to winning ways in its next game, on the road against St. Joseph’s on Jan. 14 at 7 p.m.
