February 6, 2026
By CHUCK POLLOCK, Wellsville Sun Senior Sports Columnist
It hasn’t been a good month for St. Bonaventure basketball coach Mark Schmidt.
A year after signing ESPN NBA icon, Adrian Wojnarowski, the Bonnies got off to a 12-1 non-conference start, went 9-9 in the Atlantic 10 and earned a berth in the NIT.
This season started in similar fashion, beginning at 11-2, but the wheels soon fell off. Bona opened with an ugly 2-8 in the Atlantic 10 including that blown 14-point lead at home against George Mason that devolved into a four-point loss immediately followed by a two-point defeat by at Dayton.
The loss to Mason, by any measure, was one of the worst in Schmidt’s 19 seasons at St. Bonaventure.
But, the reality is, he’s won a school-record 324 games at St. Bonaventure, taken the Bonnies to three NCAA Tournaments and a trio of NIT’s while compiling seven 20-wIn seasons.
The point is this … I’m a Mark Schmidt guy.
This isn’t VCU, nor Dayton, it’s St. Bonaventure and he’s not Bill Self or Rick Pitino.
This is the coach of barely 2,000 students at the smallest school in the Atlantic 10.
But Bona’s stumbling start got the attention of the “faithful.”
I’m not nor ever have been a social media user. But the Bonnies current struggles have become an issue and tweaked the sensitivity of the team’s fans.
The loss to George Mason stirred their anger and prompted a shower of vitriol that assessed it was time for Schmidt to be fired.
Fired.
The gravity of the loss George Mason and the way it unfolded touched the nerves of Bona nation which immediately went to social media. And it showed up in the comment section of Facebook.
Nobody wants to say it, but this team is an absolute joke. I usually refrain from these post, but the Woj effect taking time is getting old. I see people post about how talented this team is and wonder what they’re watching or reading.
— They choked that George Mason game away in the last minute of the first half. Unreal bad coaching. The writing was on the wall after blowing a 15-point lead that easy.
— The Bonnie’s all star team is playing in the Big 12.
— Finishing in the bottom 4 of the A10 every year with woj is an absolute joke. He’s brought in a nice Adidas deal, WWE belts, great marketing, BUT a consistently horrible basketball team.
Isn’t Woj supposed to be keeping talents like Council, Moore? And I’ll stop there and forget about the other transfers.
This team is rock bottom. Best win over UB? We couldn’t contend in the MAC.
Until the NCAA is held accountable to completely revamp the NIL and transfer portal, Bonas will field a team of 12 to 14 newbies every year and have the good players pilfered by bigger programs who pay more money.
— I said this to the Bona’s President as well as many alumni several times: There will not be watch parties in three years as we won’t have a team worth watching.
— I said it before and now again: Turn Woj and his influence loose on the NCAA to change the NIL and portal. Until that gets done, college sports will continue to be ruined more every year.
— WWE belts etc., are not addressing the core problem and the administration seems to feel sooner or later they can avoid the financial impacts.
We put a ton of money into athletic facilities the last few years. How about addressing the core problems of the NIL and portal?
Leave it be for two or three more years and bye-bye Bonas basketball as well as loads of other mid-major programs across the country.
— I didn’t realize Woj doesn’t make as much as I thought ($75,000). It sounds like the president is lost. It’s not just one bad year … we’re becoming bottom feeders with Woj in charge. Bad look. I know Mark Schmidt is a great coach and I could hear my father telling me, “It takes time.” But very frustrating after blowing a lead like that.
Until the NCAA fixes the NIL and portal, Bona will struggle to compete. The problem however is that so long as the NCAA and big schools rake in the cash, they are not going to change anything.
(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
