ST. BONAVENTURE – It’s appeared on T-shirts, in the locker room and as a hashtag in official team tweets.
“Let’s Get To It.”
The St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team has a clear goal for the coming season: To contend for both an Atlantic 10 title and a berth in the NCAA Tournament. With Jaylen Adams and Matt Mobley back as seniors, and what they feel is a strong supporting cast, the Bonnies have every expectation of making this a season to remember.
Bona held its first official practice of the 2017-18 season Sunday before about 100 fans inside the Reilly Center. The emphasis was defense, working on a packline approach that improved noticeably toward the end of last season.
From this point forward, their focus is on one thing, its slogan for the season: getting to it.
“What it basically means is, we know what we gotta do,” said Mobley, who happily took credit for coining the four-word phrase. “We might as well just go ahead and do it to the best of our ability. There’s no point in crying about it or being disappointed. We know what we gotta do. We just gotta get to it.”
Bona took the court for about three hours Sunday, touching on everything from transition defense to free throws. Coach Mark Schmidt, now in his 11th season, often reminded his team that it led the Atlantic 10 in free throw percentage last year and just how important those freebies are.
All 11 of this year’s scholarship players plus UNLV transfer Jalen Poyser, who has to sit this year, were in uniform, including the previously injured Courtney Stockard and Ndene Gueye.
Stockard, who missed the last two seasons with a broken foot, participated in the bulk of practice and seemed to be moving well. Gueye, who tore his rotator cuff over the summer, watched most of practice from the sideline, but did join in drills late.
A majority of the team was here over the summer, and the entire group has been through individual workouts since the school year began. There was a deeper excitement, however, to finally starting the season in earnest.
“It feels great to be out there with the guys,” Mobley said. “This is the year we’ve all been waiting for. It was a long summer, a lot of hard work, a lot of conditioning, but it feels good to be out there with the guys, and (we’re) ready to get to it.”
On Day 1, in the first handful of drills that called for it, anyway, Schmidt went with a group of five consisting of Adams, Mobley, Idris Taqqee, LaDarien Griffin and Josh Ayeni. That’s the four returning starters plus a third-year veteran in Griffin.
That could very well be the starting five come November 10.
The Bonnies brought a lot of energy in their first practice of the year, as if they’d been waiting with bated breath for this day to come. Perhaps they had. They know there’s been a buzz like none other in Schmidt’s tenure for this season, and they’re welcoming the expectations.
“We’re just embracing it,” Mobley said. “Like Coach said, throughout the past years, we’ve been the hunters and now we’re the hunted. We’re looking forward to it, we just got to embrace it and just try to go out there and win every game.”
Added Taqqee, a fellow senior: “You try to pass the talk, but it’s something we like. With our guys, that’s what we work for, that’s why we do what we do. That’s why we work as hard as we do.
“That’s never really something that guys are shying away from. It’s something that, (we’re) just looking past the talk or whatever’s going on on the outside and just looking forward to the progress we can make on the inside. Together.”
Adams stepped up and made good on both ends of a 1-and-1 to save his team from running and to end practice.
For the most part, however, Sunday was about defense.
Bona had a rough go on that end during nonconference play last winter, especially at the 3-point line. In conference play, though, it finished fifth in scoring defense (69.6 points), fourth in field goal percentage defense (.424) and fifth in 3-point field goal percentage defense (.331).
Schmidt’s team is hoping to carry that level of defense into the new season.
“You know how Coach Schmidt is,” Mobley said with a smile. “Packline defense. That’s No. 1. If we play great defense, that’s going to lead to easy offense. Everybody on the team knows that. We’re all buying in, we’re all ready to get stops on the defensive end.”
