If the St. Bonaventure women’s basketball team needs a dose of confidence before its Atlantic 10 Tournament first round game at George Mason, its managers will do their best to provide it.
The team’s managing crew took to its Twitter account on Sunday evening to post a picture of 10 cases of water and Gatorade, along with packed bags. The caption: “Another solid day of work, if we do say so ourselves! The prep/packing for our tourney run is well in the works and we are excited to be hitting the road for the week starting tomorrow!”
During the 1985 NBA Playoffs, when the first round was still a best-of-five series, there were rumors that the Celtics, up 2-0, didn’t pack suitcases to Cleveland because they expected to sweep the Cavs and leave that night; Boston lost Game 3. No. 13 seed Bona’s support staff hopes what the public may view as overpacking turns out to be faith rewarded.
As SBU coach Jesse Fleming said after Saturday’s regular season finale defeat to Duquesne, “there are no secrets” between his team and the Patriots. This is the third meeting of the season, GMU the winners of the previous two.
By now, everyone knows how good graduate student Natalie Butler is; Butler earned her 29th consecutive double-double on Saturday. The Bonaventure coaching staff is well-aware of Butler’s “supporting cast,” with Nicole Cardano-Hillary, Jacy Bolton, Sarah Kaminski and Tayler Dodson all posting strong performances against the brown and white in 2018.
Mason (22-8, 11-5) is the fourth seed, after all. While it seems inconceivable that the Patriots weren’t in closer contention for the regular season championship with Butler in the lineup threatening to put up 20-plus points and pull down 20-plus rebounds each night, Mason has proven to have a major edge on Bonaventure. Bonnies freshman Abigail Johnson is shut down for the season with a nagging shoulder injury, so the Patriots will enjoy another clear size advantage down low.
The scouting report doesn’t contain brand new information after two games played; the Bonnies (8-21, 3-13) just need to bring their “A” game with their season on the line.
“We have to team rebound. Butler is going to get her rebounds, but we need to win the rebounding matchups at the other spots,” Fleming said. “We will need to have all seven of our players doing positive things. We’ve done a good job on Cardano-Hillary for three of the four halves we’ve played against her, but we let her get loose in the second half of the last game. Obviously we need to do a good job on her.
“In our previous matchups, a third player has had a big game, Kaminski in game one and Dodson in game two. We can’t allow that to happen again.”
The Bonaventure program has not won a game in the A-10 Tournament since 2014, while senior Mariah Ruff, junior Mckenna Maycock and sophomore Jalisha Terry are the only players on the roster to play more than 10 minutes in tournament play.
Ruff scored 22 points on 7-of-20 shooting and dished out four assists at La Salle last year. Maycock posted 10 points on a 3-of-7 clip, while Terry made two of her four field goal attempts and scored five. Rhianna Council logged eight minutes but did not register a point.
Sophomore guard Danielle Migliore did not play that game against the Explorers, but she will be key to victory this go-around. After a difficult six-game stretch from Jan. 25 to Feb. 14 where she scored a total of 25 points and did not record double-digits once, the Frankfort, N.Y. native has scored 40 points over the last three.
“I’d like to see us get to the foul line more than we have in our first two matchups,” Fleming said. “George Mason sags their defense and forces you to take outside shots, but we have to do a good job of not settling.”
As for his team’s mindset, Fleming kept it positive.
“This is championship week,” he said. “I think our team will play with desperation.”
