ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — It’s become an anticipated, almost expected, segment of the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball season.
The February run.
Indeed, the Bonnies’ success in recent years — the 20-win campaigns, a share of the regular season Atlantic 10 title, an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament — has hinged upon a lights-out February.
In 2015-16, Bona answered a mid-January three-game losing streak by winning 10 of its final 11 regular season games. In 2017-18, coach Mark Schmidt’s team took all eight of its contests in February, a portion of a 13-game win streak that helped to secure its place in the Big Dance.
And last year, after a disappointing 85-55 home loss to VCU on Feb. 9, it settled in for good, winning six-straight and nine of 10 going into the A-10 Tournament championship against Saint Louis.
Which brings us to 2019-20.
With a win under their belt to close out January and a favorable schedule — six of the next nine are at home and two of those road games are against teams with league records of 1-7 and 0-8 — ahead, the Bonnies would seem to be in a prime position for yet another February run.
Heading into today’s Homecoming Weekend rematch with George Mason (4 o’clock, WPIG-FM, WHDL-AM, Stadium-TV) at what is expected to be a sold out Reilly Center, Bona surely recognizes the opportunity ahead of it. But, as most Schmidt-coached teams do this time of year, all it really wants to do is keep improving.
“Our job is to try to get better everyday,” the 13th-year coach said. “I’ve always said that no team stays the same; either you get better or you get worse, and we want to try to improve. We go to practice everyday to improve our team, and hopefully we can improve today. In order to beat George Mason, we’ve got to play well, and that’s the goal (today).”
Asked about the Bonnies’ penchant for catching fire in February, senior Amadi Ikpeze, a member of both the 2017-18 and 2018-19 teams, said: “Just knowing at this point in the season, it’s one of the most important spots.
“We had a bunch of games (recently) on the road, and at home, it’s defending our home court, and really just knowing we’re halfway through the A-10 at this point and the main goal is finishing in the top four seeding. So it’s just really taking every game one game at a time and trying to come out with a W.”
Bona (13-8, 5-3) did just that in its first meeting with the Patriots, rallying from an early 15-point deficit to not only win at George Mason, but triumph rather comfortably, 61-49, earlier this month. It was yet another in the series for Schmidt’s team, which has won eight of nine over Mason since it joined the conference in 2013.
And though it wasn’t pretty, and took a couple of close calls and overtime, it did the same on Wednesday, topping Fordham, 62-55, to snap a three-game slide and give itself a fresh start heading into Feb. 1.
By topping the Rams, the Bonnies moved back into that top four cluster, now among a four-way tie for the No. 4 spot alongside Saint Louis, Duquesne and Richmond (with Dayton, URI and VCU, predictably, occupying the top three).
And much like last year, when it met the Patriots in the RC on the day Schmidt was going for the program’s all-time wins record, Bona will get George Mason on an ostensibly good day: before what promises to be an electric Alumni Weekend audience.
But only, “if we play well,” Schmidt warned.
“If we’re not playing well, the crowd’s not going to help us. We’ve got to get the crowd energized by playing well. The crowd’s not going to beat George Mason, the crowd’s not going to make us play our A-game … we’ve gotta play. If we’re dead and have no energy, then it doesn’t matter if we have 10,000 people here or one person.”
He added, though: “It’s our job to go out there and perform and play hard. The support that we get from the community and the alums is great, and it’s appreciated, but we still have to go out there and play the game the right way.”
The Patriots (13-8, 2-6) have dropped four of six since losing Bona, topping La Salle (on the road) and UMass, while coming off double-digit losses to Davidson and Rhode Island, to fall to 11th in the league standings.
GMU, led by double-digit scoring guards Javon Greene (14 points, 6 rebounds) and Jordan Miller (12 points) and shot-blocking forward A.J. Wilson (12 points, 8 boards), are now also without preseason all-conference guard Justin Kier, sidelined until at least March after reinjuring a stress fracture in his right foot.
Bona forward Bobby Planutis said the key for Bona is to pick up where it left off on Jan. 11, when it held the Patriots to just 30 points over the final 34 minutes while completely flipping the complexion of that game.
But there’s more to it than that, Schmidt said.
“They’re a different team, we’re a different team,” he noted. “They’re doing a few things differently, just like we’re doing a few things differently. (But) it’s the same emphasis (his familiar trifecta now includes a fourth component: getting to the free throw line).
“And it’s like that in every game. We didn’t take care of the ball against them in Game 1. There’s a number of things that we didn’t do well in Game 1, and hopefully we can improve on those things. Those four things you need to be good at if you’re going to win in this league.”
