Five years ago, it was a fun way to finish off a work night.
My friend and former co-worker, the assistant city manager at the time, happened to work the same late hours that we’ve always been accustomed to in our office. Like me, he had a long-running interest in sports and, more than my own, an extensive knowledge of all things sports trivia.
Given that background, and the fact we’d generally wrap up around the same time — around 12:30 a.m., right at our old deadline — we eventually found ourselves ending almost every night the same way: By taking a Sporcle quiz.
Sporcle, for those that don’t know, is a trivia website that allows users to either create or take quizzes on a range of subjects, including pop culture, history and sports.
Much of the enjoyment derives from the set-up: Almost every quiz features an easy-to-use design, running score counter and time limit. And they’ve only grown in popularity, as Sporcle now features over 800,000 quizzes that have been played a total of over 3.4 billion times.
ON THOSE late TH nights, we’d find a quiz on anything that came to mind, from NFL career rushing leaders, to No. 1 picks in the NBA Draft, to Super Bowl MVPs, to the last 40-home run hitter for every MLB team.
They’re a lot of fun.
And now, in these strange times of social distancing and self-quarantining as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, they’ve helped to fill the void … both from a boredom and sports withdrawal standpoint.
Think you could match the Major League Baseball Hall of Famer with the nickname that appears on his plaque? You have 11 minutes to guess all 67. Think you could name the top 10 in Buffalo Bills history in regular season games played? You have five minutes to try to ace that test.
The ones that pertain closest to home, however, are the Bona basketball-related quizzes.
Currently, a “St. Bonaventure” Sporcle search yields 11 such quizzes, including one on the Bonnies’ year-by-year leading scorers, another on their all-conference honorees and one entitled, “2013 Inaugural Atlantic 10 Men’s Basketball Legends.”
Give one a try, and my guess is you might become hooked.
In the meantime, here’s a Bona basketball trivia quiz to help prime you for anything you might choose to tackle at Sporcle. It was originally created by my dad, John, to give to the myriad of Bona diehards at the family Christmas gathering, and is now presented to you in the sports pages (answers can be found on B-4):
Think you’re on a Bob Lanier-level when it comes to Bona basketball history? Here’s your chance to prove it:
1. What team broke the Bonnies’ 99-game winning streak in 1961?
2. What was the Bonnies’ only other loss in the 1960-61 regular season?
3. Name three of the stars on the team Bona lost to in Question 2.
4. Which five players made up the celebrated “Iron Man 5” team of 1967-68?
5. Who did the “Iron Man 5” team lose to in the second round of the 1968 NCAA Tournament?
6. What big man was Bona recruiting when it had recruiting violations imposed for the 1968-69 season?
7. Who were the 6-foot-10 twins on the Duquesne team that Bona beat in 1969?
8. Who was the star guard on the Purdue team that Bona thrashed at the Holiday Festival in 1969?
9. Who was the 7-foot-2 Jacksonville center Bona faced in the Final Four of the 1970 NCAA Tournament?
10. Who holds the record for most points in a game inside the Reilly Center, and who did that performance come against?
11. Who missed the two free throws at the end of the game that cost Bona an NIT win over Georgia Tech in 1972?
12. Who did Bona beat for the NIT championship in 1977?
13. Who was the star guard on the team Bona beat in Question No. 12?
14. Who was named Most Valuable Player of the Bonnies’ NIT championship win in 1977?
15. Who did Bona lose to in the first round of the 1978 NCAA Tournament?
16. In the Bonnies’ 1994-95 NIT season, who did Bona beat in the first round of that tournament?
17. Who did Bona lose to in the second round of the 1995 NIT?
18. In the Bona-Kentucky NCAA Tournament game in 2000, who made three free throws in the waning seconds to send the game into a second overtime?
19. Who was the Bonnies’ leading scorer in that double overtime loss to Kentucky with 20 points?
20. Which player was at the center of the academic scandal of 2002-03?
21. Who did Bona lose to in the first round of the 2001 NIT?
22. Who did the Bonnies defeat in the first ESPN-televised game at the Reilly Center in 1982?
23. Which UMass player collapsed in the hallway leading to the locker room at the RC and needed to be taken to the hospital in 1996?
24. What caused a one-and-a-half hour delay at the Bona-Fordham game at Rose Hill Gym in 2012?
25. Who was the freshman point guard from New York City that started for the Bonnies in 1972?
26. Who holds the program record for career games played at 127?
27. Who holds the Bona mark for most points in an NCAA Tournament game?
28. Who are the only three players in program history to record at least 1,000 points, 500 rebounds and 200 assists?
29. Before Marcus Posley broke it in 2016, who held the Bona record for most points in an Atlantic 10 game?
30. Which three teams did Bona beat to win the Atlantic 10 Tournament championship in 2012?
———————————–ANSWERS ———————————–
1. Niagara, which beat Bona 88-77 on Feb. 5, 1961
2. Ohio State
3. Jerry Lucas, Larry Siegfried, John Havlicek, Bob Knight
4. Bob Lanier, Bill Kalbaugh, Bill Butler, Jim Satalin, Jon Hayes
5. North Carolina
6. Tom Riker
7. Barry and Gary Nelson
8. Rick Mount
9. Artis Gilmore
10. Bob Lanier, with 51 against Seton Hall on Feb. 24, 1969
11. Paul Hoffman
12. Houston
13. Otis Birdsong
14. Greg Sanders
15. Penn, 92-83, on March 12, 1978
16. Southern Mississippi
17. Marquette
18. David Capers
19. Patricio Prato
20. Jamil Terrell
21. Pittsburgh
22. Rutgers, 30-29
23. Marcus Camby
24. A broken rim/backboard
25. Tim Flanigan
26. Michael Davenport
27. Bill Butler, with 34 against Boston College on March 10, 1968
28. Demitrius Conger, Ahmad Smith, David Vanterpool
29. Eric Mosley, with 39 against UMass in February of 2013
30. Saint Joseph’s, UMass and Xavier
