ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — First, let’s address the good news, those little tidbits of information that help bridge one St. Bonaventure basketball season to the next, but have been made even more significant during this (mostly) sports-less summer.
And with how strong the Bona program has been of late, there always seems to be some.
On the playing front, Dion Wright is one win away from The Basketball Tournament title and the accompanying $1 million grand prize.
The former standout forward, who was set to represent the Bonnies’ inaugural alumni team, Brown and White, managed to catch on with the established Sideline Cancer squad after the field was limited to 24 teams due to the COVID-19 pandemic. His team has since gone on a Cinderella-like run to reach the TBT final, winning four-straight contests, including an upset of annual favorite Boeheim’s Army, despite being seeded 22nd of the 24 squads going in.
Wright has been a key component in Sideline’s eight-man rotation, contributing in much the same style he did with Bona: through rebounding, hustle plays and his trademark unorthodox buckets around the rim. His best game came against the Syracuse team with six points and six rebounds.
On Sunday, Sideline advanced to the title game in dramatic fashion, with former George Washington star Maurice Creek drilling a stepback 3-pointer with a hand in his face to lift Sideline from a 65-64 deficit to a 67-65 victory in the Elam-style ending (at the 4-minute mark of the fourth quarter, whichever team reaches the winning team’s point total, plus eight, wins). Wright’s group will meet the fourth-seeed Golden Eagles (Marquette alumni) for the TBT championship on Tuesday night in Columbus, Ohio, in a contest that will air live at 7 p.m. on ESPN.
Wright’s cut if Sideline Cancer can pull out a win: a pleasant $75,000.
A MONTH ago, Bona aide Steve Curran was the subject of a two-part OTH feature after he was named one the “50 most impactful mid-major assistants” by Silver Waves Media. In it, his reputation as a grinder on the recruiting trail came to the forefront, and that recognition was underscored with another honor.
Curran last week was named the No. 1 assistant in the Atlantic 10 by Stadium’s Jeff Goodman, who polled 20 coaches in each conference to determine the top aides. Said one A-10 coach of Curran: “Works his (expletive) off, to start. Is always on the road. He really complements Coach (Mark) Schmidt well. They know exactly what they are looking for at St. Bonaventure and he does a great job of identifying under-the-radar talent that fits them. Secondly, I think they do the best job in the league of developing players.”
That, and the announcement that Youssou Ndoye and LaDarien Griffin recently signed new pro deals overseas, and that Jaylen Adams will be joining the Portland Trail Blazers for the NBA’s restart, is the good news.
THE BAD news?
Although it remains relatively clear today, July 13, the skies are beginning to look a little ominous in the distance as it relates to the Bonnies’ 2020-21 campaign, at least in terms of the scheduled start.
The thing we can continue to tell ourselves, now four months into this global health crisis, is that we’re still another four months away from college basketball season. Hence, there’s still time for a minor miracle — a vaccine, a drastic drop in cases, something — to unfold so that the season might still play out unscathed.
However, with each passing day, it seems, there’s another Jurassic Park-like rumble to indicate that trouble may be closing in.
Chief among those was the Ivy League’s decision last week to push back the start of its season until at least Jan. 1, thereby effectively canceling its non-league contests, including Yale’s reported visit to the Reilly Center.
At this point, it’s unclear how Bona might respond, whether it will look to replace that game (perhaps with another team that Yale was supposed to play this year) or lose it entirely. But what’s certain, and worrisome, is that still four months out, the coming season has already been impacted by COVID-19, the first ripple of a worst-case scenario that seemed unlikely even a month ago.
And those individual ripples are beginning to create the first minor wave of real uncertainty.
Multiple major conferences have gone to a league-only schedule for football and smaller conferences have canceled their fall seasons entirely. College basketball has begun to face the real potential of starting its campaign in January and playing a league-only slate; there’s even been talk of adopting a geographical pod-like non-conference (for Bona, that could mean venturing no further than the likes of Niagara, UB, Canisius and Syracuse).
One mid-major team, Goodman was informed, has already been told by its athletic department that it wouldn’t be allowed to travel via plane this season. One coach, in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, acknowledged that “if we play only league games, it will be a win. I think we are in for a bumpy unorthodox season with no fans.”
And while it remains to be seen how, exactly, the fall plays out, and how far behind the winter season is to making similar decisions, there’s no denying it: the clouds are starting to gather.
(J.P. Butler, Bradford Publishing Company group sports editor, can be reached at jbutler@oleantimesherald.com)
