(Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series centering on St. Bonaventure’s 2000 NCAA Tournament team through the eyes of then-freshman guard Patricio Prato. Today: Memories of the NCAA Tournament loss to Kentucky.)
The question was posed with a tinge of sensitivity.
After all, the subject was just asked about what almost certainly was the most heartbreaking defeat of his basketball career, at least at the collegiate level: St. Bonaventure’s 85-80 double-overtime loss to Kentucky in the 2000 NCAA Tournament.
And sure, to this moment — 20 years, five months and seven days since the final buzzer sounded in the Cleveland Convocation Center — the pain still lingers.
“Of course, as the game ended,” Patricio Prato, a starting freshman guard on that team, recently remembered, “it was a big disappointment thinking that we could have beaten Kentucky …”
In the two decades since, however, the anguish from what it fell just short of doing has mostly been replaced by the satisfaction in what it did.
Jim Baron’s 1999-00 Bonnies ended the school’s 22-year NCAA Tournament drought, the longest, to this day, since it made its first in 1961. They returned the shine to a program that had become tarnished in the late 1980s and early 90s. And they proved, almost possession for possession, that they were every bit the equal of a team that featured future NBA players Tayshaun Prince, Keith Bogans and Jamaal Magliore.
“Especially as time went by, you think of the good things,” Prato said, “and, you know, that game kind of captured the whole season. As normally happens with basketball teams, we had some ups and downs, but it was a great season, a great game and a great Atlantic 10 Tournament run (to the championship game, the first such appearance for Bona since 1983 and one of only four all-time).
“It was a great team, well-coached, everybody just worked hard.”
TWENTY YEARS later, several plays, many key moments — both good and bad — continue to resonate from this, one of the more memorable games in Bona history:
The controversial, momentum-changing technical foul on Caswell Cyrus for hanging on the rim (there’s no way this is called in 2020). Prince’s season-saving 3-pointer with seven seconds remaining in regulation. The individual effort of Prato, who finished an impressive 8-for-12 from the field, including 4-of-7 from 3-point range, for a team-high 20 points.
But the most enduring recollection, owning to a permanent place in Bona folklore, is that of David “Messiah” Capers’ three free throws with four-tenths of a second remaining to force the second OT.
In retrospect, it’s almost impossible to believe.
Capers was a 55.6 percent free throw shooter that year and had attempted just four since Feb. 19, making two. And with the season on the line, he stepped up and made all three, with, incredibly, a long TV timeout between each.
“He was ice cold,” Prato emphasized. “No worries, no problems. It’s hard with the game on the line, making those free throws. That takes … I can’t say what it takes, but you know what I mean.
“He was a senior, he was one of our leaders and he came through (for us). But everybody did; seriously, during the whole year, during that game, everybody put a little brick on the wall. Of course, the memory of him coming back to the line and shooting those free throws … it was absolutely crazy.”
It was historic, though for Capers, who netted 16 points that March 16 afternoon — the same day Bona would meet Florida State in the 2012 Dance under Mark Schmidt — that was the last thing on his mind.
“I wasn’t thinking about history,” he said afterward. “Percentages and everything, that really goes out the window when you’re standing on the line.” Helping to ease whatever nerves might have existed were his teammates.
“Before I took the shots, the guys came over and said, ‘Whether you make them or miss them, we still love you,’” Capers said.
MAKING SUCH an impact was nothing new for Prato.
The Cordoba, Argentina, native — surprisingly, then expectedly — had been doing it all season, notching a career-high (for the first time) 20 in a blowout win over Canisius, going for 14 points, eight rebounds and eight assists against Florida International and scoring 19 in a huge road win at Saint Joe’s.
Not until Andrew Nicholson in 2009 would a Bona freshman average more than his 8.7 points for a season. It was after his 20-point outburst against the Wildcats, though, that it became clear: This is a guy Bona fans will long remember.
“The game kind of came to me,” remembered Prato, now 40 and living with his wife, Annalisa, and two children in Bologna, Italy. “A couple of shots fell in … I had a couple of fast breaks to the basket, hard layups that went in, that gave me confidence to the end of the game. I was in such a flow and enjoying the moment that it actually came naturally.”
The 6-foot-5 guard was so wrapped up in what was happening, he didn’t realize he’d fouled out when he was subbed for in the second OT.
“I was so feeling the game, I didn’t even see the fifth foul called on me,” he admitted. “That kind of insults my basketball IQ because that never happened in my life again. For me, I was trying to enjoy the moment, enjoy the tournament.”
FOLLOWING a 16-year pro career (played exclusively in Italy and Argentina), Prato, in 2018, transitioned to a director position with INVICTUS Academy, an AAU organization in Bologna.
His playing career and current responsibilities have precluded him from a return to campus, but he hopes to make it back soon.
He’s kept close tabs on the great Bona teams of late, however, rooting them on from afar. He’s happy that Tim Winn and J.R. Bremer, as selections to the All-Time Team, got the “recognition they deserved.”
And Bona — much like that magical 1999-00 season itself — still holds a special place in his heart.
“I’m happy for what (coach Schmidt) has been doing for the school and for the community,” he said. “Every time March comes, all the Bonaventure alumni around the world … we get hyped because we follow our Bonnies.
“I’m really happy to be part of the family. Like they say, ‘Once a Bonnie always a Bonnie,’ and that’s true.”
