ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — Funny how your confidence can ebb away.
After St. Bonaventure beat Richmond in the Atlantic 10 quarterfinals on Friday night at the Capital One Center in Washington, D.C., I was convinced … the Bonnies’ basketball team had punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament.
Their resume was too good, 25-6 record, 13 straight wins, impressive non-conference victories and a high Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) … much stronger than when St. Bonaventure was snubbed by the “Big Dance” two years earlier.
Indeed, I was sold after Richmond coach Chris Mooney pronounced the Bonnies NCAA-worthy after his team lost to them in the quarters, and particularly when veteran Davidson boss Bob McKillop echoed that sentiment after his team downed an undermanned Bona team in the semifinals.
After the semifinal loss, several Bona fans emailed me and wondered, “But what if Davidson beats (A-10 regular-season champion) Rhode Island in the A-10 finals?”
My response was, “If that happens, it will bump a team from the NCAAs, but not the Bonnies … their body of work is too strong.”
But Mark Schmidt, St. Bonaventure’s 11-year coach, wasn’t convinced.
Indeed, a friend of his saw Schmidt having breakfast at the Bartlett Country Club on Sunday morning, alone with his thoughts … consciously unbothered by the other patrons.
Last night he admitted, “When I woke up this morning, you just hope that you get in … you don’t know what those eight people in that (NCAA Tournament Committee) room are doing. “We thought we had a good enough resume to get into ‘The Dance.’”
But there was no guarantee.
“Everybody was saying (Saturday), or shoot, last week … ‘You’re in … you’re in.’ And it’s like, we’re not in. That’s just how this business works, how March Madness works, how the “Big Dance’ works.
“We just (had) to keep on winning … play with a chip on our shoulder, we understand. It’s not just Bonaventure … there’s a litany of schools that deserve to be in and are better than some of the teams that get in … but that’s the business we’re in and that’s just how it works.”
And even last night as the brackets were announced on TBS’ telecast before a crowd of about 800 Bona fans at a viewing party in the Reilly Center, there was some tension.
The at-large bids were revealed alphabetically in groups of six. The fourth group ended with Seton Hall. Suddenly I wondered if the NCAA was spelling it Saint Bonaventure or St. Bonaventure? It occurred to me, that for the second time in two years, another NCAA snub might be unfolding.
Happily, St. Bonaventure was the first school named in the next group of six.
When I asked if that scenario caused him to shudder, Schmidt allowed, “I didn’t think of it … I guess I wasn’t smart enough to figure that out.”
But senior guard Matt Mobley, who was part of the press conference, conceded, “That’s the first thing I thought of” and so did a number of other Bona fans.
This time, though, justice was done.
“It’s hard to get an automatic bid (as conference champ) … but it’s harder to get an at-large bid,” Schmidt maintained. “We’re not a high major and they have so many more opportunities to get big wins and move up. For us to get an at-large, is tougher … a bigger thing.”
Of Sunday’s scenario, he admitted, “The way they did it this year was a little more nerve-wracking … they did it alphabetically and ‘S’ is very low in the alphabet. At the end you hope that ‘S’ shows up and it did.”
But it clearly wasn’t easy as Bona, one of the last four teams in, even though an 11th seed, must endure a play-in game against UCLA (21-11), also seeded 11th, Tuesday night in Dayton.
“I’ve never been in the room to know how it all plays out,” Schmidt said of the NCAA Tournament Committee. “The hard thing is, every year they tell you that ‘This is important’ and then you set your schedule and find out what you set your schedule for, those things weren’t important.
“This whole quadrant stuff (newly added criterion grading a team’s opposition), I don’t even know where it came from. The RPI was important at one point, now it’s not as important. It changes all the time.”
He added, “When we were going through that winning streak, everybody was asking, ‘Do you think you’re in?’ and my response was, ‘We have to continue to win games because you never know what happens in that room. If we had won only 12 games in a row, or 11, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here.
“We couldn’t have done anything more than we did. (But) we’re one of the last four in so if we lose to Richmond, or whoever … one game and we’re out. We could have been 24-8 and not gotten in.”
And that’s the fate of teams below the power conferences.
“That’s what it’s so difficult at our level to get at-large bids,” Schmidt said. “Look at some of those mid-majors that didn’t make it … Middle Tennessee St. The next level programs get so many opportunities. When (power conference teams) lose, it doesn’t hurt. When you’re a mid-major and you lose, it hurts you. If Xavier loses to Providence or Providence loses to Villanova, it doesn’t hurt them as much as when a Middle Tennessee St. loses to Murray State (in the conference finals).”
And that’s what made Middle Tennessee this year’s 2016 Bonnies.
But as Schmidt concluded, “What happened two years ago is now history … water under the bridge.”
This time St. Bonaventure is in.
(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
