ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. – The seeds for this were sewn on Jan. 18, 2020, inside the same building where the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team just laid waste to a pair of Atlantic 10 Tournament opponents:
The Siegel Center.
On that day, Nah’Shon Hyland, affectionately known as “Bones” due to his slender (6-foot-3, 165) stature, then just a freshman, went for a career-high 21 points and VCU rode an early 18-0 run to an eventual 91-63 embarrassment of the Bonnies.
That seemed to kickstart a budding rivalry, one based on revenge and perhaps a little bit of resentment, between teams that, just one year later, have worked their way to the top of the conference. At the heart of that conflict are the two star guards: VCU’s Hyland and Bona’s Kyle Lofton.
Behind Lofton, Bona avenged last year’s blowout loss in the first of two meetings this season, outscoring the Rams a bewildering 45-14 in the second half en route to a 70-54 victory in the Reilly Center. Three weeks later, Hyland helped VCU earn payback, tallying a game-high 22 in the Rams’ 67-64 victory in the rematch.
And so it’s gone for two of the Atlantic 10’s most notable players, all the way through their teams’ convincing semifinal victories last Saturday.
FOR HYLAND and Lofton, the parallels are rather stark.
Each has played with a chip on his shoulder this season, Lofton after being left off the Preseason All-Conference First Team (and the Cousy Award watch list, on which three other A-10 point guards appeared) and Hyland as the undervalued best player on a team picked to finish ninth in the preseason poll.
Each was in the Player of the Year conversation, with Hyland winning it and Lofton earning his second-straight First Team All-League nod. Both were at their best on Hyland’s home court in the A-10 Tournament, with Lofton going for 12 points, 10 rebounds and six assists in the Bonnies’ 71-53 semifinal victory over Saint Louis and Bones going for 30 points and 10 boards in the Rams’ quarterfinal win over Dayton.
Both are highly competitive, sometimes to a fault – the two briefly shared words with one another as they walked off the Siegel Center floor in February before being steered to their respective locker rooms.
There’s an undeniable respect between the two, and their squads, however.
And all of it has made for an intriguing subplot to Sunday’s A-10 championship game rubber match.
“BONES is a great player,” Bona junior Osun Osunniyi said flatly. “He’s the engine for their offense; they go as he goes.”
“(He’s) … a tremendous shooter with limitless range,” classmate Jaren Holmes added. “We’re just going to try to limit some of his touches, get him out of rhythm a little bit.”
Hyland has been particularly strong of late, scoring at least 17 points in 10 of his last 13 games while averaging 21 points over that stretch. He finished the year as the A-10’s leading scorer at 19.4 points.
The Bonnies, though, feel comfortable in that the one having to formulate the plan for slowing the sophomore guard is their coach, Mark Schmidt, whose team has made a habit of shutting down the A-10’s best players this winter.
“Schmidt, he’s a basketball genius,” Osunniyi said. “He’s gonna look at film and find ways to see where we struggled (in February) and try to use that to our advantage, so we’re gonna do whatever it takes to get him out of the game and slow him down, because if he gets going, he’s one of the toughest players to stop in this conference.”
Added Holmes with a laugh, “… We’ll just have Schmidt deal with that. We’re just going to go out there and play. Schmidt’s gonna have us ready and (we’re) going to have a gameplan. We’re gonna be ready for VCU.”
For his part, Hyland, who had 16 points and four 3-pointers in the Rams’ losing effort in the RC, was complimentary, though (tellingly?) brief, in his assessment of his counterpart.
“Definitely the way he runs his team,” he said, when asked what makes Lofton so special. “(He’s) a good player. He gets his guys involved, he’s tough … he’s definitely a good player to play against for sure.”
LOFTON and Hyland are the top players on the teams that finished Nos. 1 and 2 in both the league standings and in every major metric by which the NCAA Tournament field is selected. Their presence is one of the primary reasons why Sunday’s championship figures to be so compelling … and on a national stage.
With last year’s Atlantic 10 Tournament cut short, both have already begun the process of becoming breakout March stars this time around. And if both teams aren’t already considered comfortably “in” the Big Dance before meeting in Dayton on Sunday, they should be, Schmidt said.
“We’re confident,” he responded, when asked to evaluate the Bonnies’ standing between the semifinals and title game. “We feel we deserve to be there, winning the Atlantic 10 outright, winning 15 games, having an NET (ranking) of 27. I don’t think we could do better … and both us and VCU, no matter who wins and who loses, we’re both programs that should be in the NCAA Tournament.
“Just look at both programs and what we’ve done over the course of the year. Both programs are deserving of playing in the NCAA Tournament and hopefully advancing.”
(J.P. Butler, Bradford Publishing Company group sports editor, can be reached at jbutler@oleantimesherald.com)
