By SPENCER BATES
PHILADELPHIA, PA — For the first time in 19 years, the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team has started Atlantic 10 conference play without a win through its first four games.
The most recent loss, a 68-64 result delivered by Saint Joseph’s, came via heartbreaking fashion as the Bonnies found themselves up by four points with just over two minutes to play, but failed to score after that point. Making the loss sting all that much more was the fact that they had roared back from a dicey start to the game to nearly complete the comeback.
Despite 18 straight points in just over 12 minutes from Frank Mitchell, who finished with 20 of his 22 points for the game in the first half, Bona still found itself down by as many as 11 points. It trailed by that many in the early minutes after the intermission, but eventually the team’s usual suspects started to step up.
First, it was Cayden Charles, who scored 11 points in a four-minute 13-1 scoring run that saw the Bonnies take their first lead of the game at 43-42. Not long after, Darryl ‘Buddy’ Simmons II scored seven consecutive points in under two minutes which gave the guests on Hawk Hill for the night its largest lead of the game (seven points).
The run forced a timeout out of St. Joe’s, which looked to be on the ropes. But nearly just as quick as Bona had turned things in their favor, its momentum faded.
The Hawks landed a 9-2 punch of their own and over the final 8.5 minutes of the contest, they out scored the Bonnies 21-10, including an 8-0 run to seal the deal.
Bona had a number of chances in the dying moments to try and claw back and shift the pressure, but each time St. Joe’s was able to come up with the answer defensively.
“I thought (St. Joe’s) locked up a little bit defensively,” St. Bonaventure associate head coach Sean Neal said. “They were keying on Buddy a lot. In the last couple minutes, I thought we ran some good stuff, we got him an open look, but they put bigger guys on him. We want him with the ball, certainly, at the end of the game. But credit their defense there at the end. There’s obviously some things we could have done differently that we’ll look at. It’s really disappointing, because I thought we had a chance to go up seven with three minutes to go.”
As for the late defensive struggles, Neal acknowledged that there were mistakes made in coverage which left the door open for the Hawks to nail big time shots in pursuit of a third straight A10 victory.
“They ran some stuff in the last couple minutes that we messed up a couple switches on and anytime you’re on the road, you need those stops late,” Neal said. “You can’t hope they miss. You have to force them to miss if you want to win late-game situations. I think that’s something we can clean up for sure. Offensively, I think we got some good looks late. I think we could have made some different decisions, but that’s how it goes.”
Neal, head coach Mark Schmidt and the rest of the Bona staff will be looking to find an answer relatively quickly as they have just two days to prepare for their team’s next game.
St. Bonaventure will look to put an end to its barren start in conference play on Jan. 17 at La Salle with tip-off slated for 2:30 p.m.
