By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — This season has been one for the books for the St. Bonaventure women’s basketball team.
Just to name a few accolades, it was its first season with a winning record in a decade, the first time it had finished above the bottom three in the Atlantic 10 standings since 2016-17, and its 10-win improvement upon last year’s tally is one of the most significant positive shifts in all of Div. I basketball.
Now, the Bonnies are set to add two more achievements to the ever-growing list. They earned a bid to the WNIT, marking the first postseason appearance for the team since 2015-16, and are set to host Drexel in their first-round game, signifying the return of postseason women’s basketball in the RC for the first time since the 2013-14 season.
After the regular season had come to a conclusion, head coach Jim Crowley was hesitant to speak to the upward trajectory of the program after a number of difficult years and what this season could mean for future seasons. Granted, he did admit that this kind of year can only help.
He shared a similar view of this postseason bid ahead of his team’s matchup against the Dragons.
“We’ll reflect on that a little bit more afterwards,” Crowley said. “I think it’s certainly a reward for a group of folks who had to kind of blindly buy-in. We brought in a lot of new people, we had people stick when it might have been a little easier to not do that. So I think that it’s a reward for the work they put in, the belief they put in each other, and the openness they had. When recruiting, when you say, ‘Hey, we played in the postseason.’ That helps a lot as you’re recruiting your own team and recruiting new people. I think those are the big things there.”
This year’s Bona team does not have much postseason experience to draw on.
This is where Crowley’s expertise will be critical. The last time Bona was in the postseason was during Crowley’s first stint with the program. They secured a victory in the first round of the NCAA Tournament over Oklahoma State before falling in the second round to Oregon State. His experience and the lessons learned in their loss to Loyola Chicago in the second round of the A10 tournament, he hopes will pay dividends.
“I thought our A10 game really helped us,” Crowley said. “That was a pretty intense environment, and certainly playing someone for the third time, I think that level has prepped us. We’re ready for two things: we’re ready for some nerves, and we’re ready for some heavy breathing, having not played in a minute. (We have to) survive the first five minutes, and then it’s another game against a really good opponent. Thankfully, we’re playing at a place we’re very comfortable at.”
The ‘rest vs. rust’ debate will certainly play a role in the affair. The Bonnies have not played since their conference tournament loss to the Ramblers on March 5. Meanwhile, Drexel’s most recent game will have been just five days ago at tip-off.
That extended period of time off has led to Bona entering the contest with a fully healthy roster. However, whether or not it did more good or harm overall won’t be determined until tip-off.
“If it goes badly, we were rusty. If it goes well, we were rested,” Crowley joked. “I think this time of the year, rest is a good thing. I think it was Joe Mihalich who always used to say, ‘When in doubt, rest.’ And once you get to February, when in doubt, rest. Certainly there’s some aspects of having played recently that are positive for (Drexel). The way I’ve seen a couple of people move the last couple days, I think rest was positive for us.”
Leading Drexel into battle will be Amaris Baker. She had the second-best points-per-game average of any player in the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) this year at 19.1 points per game. She also makes a significant impact on the glass, even with her 5-8 standing, with 4.2 boards per game, and at the free throw line, having attempted 129 shots from the stripe this season.
“She’s a really good scorer with multiple years in their offense so she knows where to get and how to get,” Crowley said. “When she gets going from the perimeter, she’s exceptionally dangerous because she hits them in a row. Our number one goal is keep her off the foul line. If we can make her earn baskets on some of the great reads she does on screens, instead of just going to the wrong place, bumping her and giving her opportunities at the foul line, (that’ll help us). She’s still going to get hers, but I would hope we can keep her in the low double figures instead of the upper 20s. … The secondary thing is we have to limit her transition scores. We certainly can do that by taking care of the ball, but she’s great at getting the rebounding going, and she’s a really competitive kid, so when they need a hoop, she’s getting some good action to go after that basket.”
Laine McGurk and Deja Evans are the other two significant scoring threats for the Dragons. McGurk averages 12.6 points and 3.9 rebounds per game. And while Evans falls just short of the double-figure mark in her scoring average (9.9 points per game), at 6-2 her presence will be impossible to ignore and will require a committed, physical effort. She leads the Dragons with 6.4 rebounds per game.
“We’ve got to have people physically be able to keep her off the boards,” Crowley said. “We saw her two years ago, when she was a freshman, she came in with Albany, and she had a pretty good game against us then, and she’s certainly gotten better. We can’t give her put-backs, and we can’t let her have dribbles to get comfortable, whether it’s with a back-to-the-basket move or a cross-body move. Obviously, they’re a really good team … they have a lot of kids who can put in the basket. So, it’s going to be a good defensive challenge for us.”
The winner between the Bonnies and the Dragons will face Middle Tennessee State in the second round of the tournament.
St. Bonaventure will look to get its first postseason win in a decade at the expense of Drexel. Tip-off in the Reilly Center is set for 6 p.m. and the game will be broadcast on ESPN+.
