By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — Following its loss to Fordham on Jan. 10, the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team currently stands as the only Atlantic 10 team to not have a win in conference play this season.
And although it is still early in the conference portion of the calendar, the Bonnies will be wanting to get back on track as quickly as possible so as to not be left behind. They have played three games so far against fellow Atlantic 10 opponents and by no means have they been battered on the scoreboard in any affair. In each they have had a chance to win in the later stages, but whether it be due to offensive or defensive deficiencies, each time they fell short.
Following his team’s two most recent losses, an 89-80 defeat to Richmond and an 81-77 defeat to Fordham, Bona head coach Mark Schmidt pointed to his team’s lack of ability to stop opposition guards as the main cause.
Against the Spiders, it was the 24 second-half points scored by Will Johnston along with the 19 points from AJ Lopez and 10 points from Mikkel Tyne — a combined 53 of their team’s 89 points. Against the Rams it was Dejour Reaves, as he recorded a career-high 31 points — the most by any one Fordham player in a game this season — along with six assists, four rebounds, four steals and zero turnovers.
Putting a stop to that trend will be of the utmost importance for the Bonnies in their upcoming game against the Hawks as they have a corps of guards that are just as capable of causing damage.
Jaiden Glover-Toscano, Derek Simpson and Dasear Haskins will be the main threats at the guard position, averaging 15.3, 11.8 and 10.1 points per game, respectively.
“In the Atlantic 10 every team is guard heavy, it’s always been like that,” Schmidt said. “It always will be like that. You win with guards. And they have very good guys, not just the three of them, they got four or five of them. They got the big guy inside who sets a lot of ball screens. They’re very talented. They’re not shooting the ball great if you look at the percentages, but they can all score. Then they bring guys off the bench that can do the same thing. So, we’ve got to do a good job on the ball-screen defense. We got to do a good job to try to keep the ball in front of us, and that’s where we’ve struggled. That’s the challenge tomorrow.”
But those guards are not just good for scoring. They will be threats everywhere else on the floor as well, especially cleaning the glass. St. Joe’s currently ranks third in the A10 in combined team rebounds, averaging 39.9 per game, and a significant number of those are being grabbed by those listed as guards. Schmidt pointed out this is because of its desire to shoot the 3-ball.
The Hawks have attempted the second-most 3s of any team in the A10 this season, just two shy of George Washington, at 458. Those deep attempts lead to longer rebounds, which means if Bona wants to win the battle of the boards it will need every player on the floor to pull their weight.
“I thought if there was a positive in the Fordham game it was that we out-rebounded them,” Schmidt said. “They were averaging over 40 rebounds a game and they had 28, we had 29. So we did a good job there. We just got to continue to have, from a defensive standpoint, all five guys in there rebounding. On long shots, (St. Joseph’s) shoots a lot of 3s, long shots create long rebounds. So, while the big guys get caught up in all the physicality, the guards have to come in and get those loose ones. That’s what we have to continue to do.”
Now, Hawk Hill is being overseen by a new boss this year after a late off-season move saw former head coach Billy Lange step away from St. Joe’s to take a front office position with the New York Knicks. Stepping into the head coaching position in his place was former Penn head coach Steve Donahue.
Fortunately for Donahue, he was added to the staff as an associate head coach in the very early aftermath of the 2024-25 season. Meaning, he knows the players that remained and did not exercise their short transfer portal opportunity after Lange left. And after two losses in his first two A10 games, Donahue now has consecutive wins over Duquesne and Richmond in that order.
“Steve’s been very successful,” Schmidt said. “Cornell, BC, he was on the staff at Penn, then head coach at Penn, and he was on the staff (at St. Joseph’s), so he knows all those players. I didn’t think (the coaching change) was chaos, he was there. He’s been a head coach for probably 20 years, so he knows what he’s doing. They’re running very similar stuff. Five-out, just like most guys are running nowadays. He knows what he’s doing. He’s got good players, and they’ve had two really good wins.”
St. Bonaventure will make the trip to Philadelphia on Jan. 14 where it will tip-off against St. Joseph’s at 7 p.m.
