ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — The audience had just started to fully awaken when Kyle Lofton raised both arms and implored it to grow louder.
Much earlier, the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team, perhaps predictably given the emotions that had come with a pregame ring and banner ceremony, had gotten off to a predictably slow start.
It was stagnant offensively. It had allowed too much defensively. And, eight minutes in, the No. 23 team in the nation, before a buzzing crowd of over 4,600, was actually trailing by double digits (18-8).
In this moment, however, with 8:40 remaining, it was exactly where both the Bonnies and their fans had hoped it would be. Bona, as Lofton engaged the faithful, was amid a scorching 31-8 run, which turned a one-possession game into a joyous jaunt over the last several minutes. That was part of a dominant second half in which coach Mark Schmidt’s team outscored its opponent 39-15. And for whatever jitters may have existed before, this was the note it ultimately wanted to, and did, end on its first game of the most anticipated season in a half century.
Kyle Lofton totaled 17 points, six rebounds and six assists and Jaren Holmes also hit 17 as Bona pulled away for a convincing 75-47 triumph over Siena in its season-opener on Tuesday night inside the Reilly Center. The Bonnies also retained the series’ Franciscan Cup following a two-year stretch in the Saints’ possession.
“I feel like (it’s) the maturity of our team,” Lofton said of his team’s response to the early deficit. “We don’t let stuff like that take us down. We know it’s basketball, it’s a game of runs. They happened to get off to a hot start, we started off slow and we eventually picked it up.”
Bona, with the help of its bench — most notably 6-foot-9 Pittsburgh transfer Karim Coulibaly, who had 12 points and four rebounds — pulled even late in the first half and took a four-point lead into the break.
With 15:45 remaining, Kyle Lofton finished a twisting layup to give his team a two-score lead. And from that point on, it was all Bonnies.
A day earlier, Schmidt had noted how the opener would be more about Bona taking care of itself than anything the Saints might be doing. And in that time, the Bonnies were very much themselves.
Bona owned the paint at both ends, limiting Siena to just 24 percent shooting over the final 20 minutes. Osun Osunniyi, despite leaving for a brief stretch with a back spasm, was dominant inside, finishing with nine points and six rebounds and tying a career-high with seven blocks. At the other end, Schmidt’s group shot 59 percent for the half as it became much more aggressive to the basket and wound up outscoring the Saints in the paint, 44-14.
To the 15th-year coach, the initial was clear.
“Being able to have the ring ceremony and the unveiling of (an Atlantic 10 championship and NCAA banner), that’s emotional,” he said. “We needed to come back and refocus, and I don’t think we did a great job at the beginning of the game. But … once we got down, we didn’t rush things, we stayed composed.”
And in the end, it played like the whopping 20-point favorite and
unanimous preseason A-10 No. 1 that it was.
“The second half, we kept the ball in front of us,” said Schmidt, whose teams now hold a 7-4 in the Franciscan Cup series that began in 2019. “The big emphasis is you gotta control the paint. You look at it, we outscored them by 30 points in the paint, and some of that had to do with Karim and Shoon, but a lot of it had to do with keeping the ball above the foul line and us offensively attacking and getting the ball into the paint.
“That’s what we’ve got to do, and that’s how we’re successful.”
Dominick Welch, after a rough start, finished with 11 points and seven rebounds, knocking down two 3s at the end of that big run. Bona responded with a nearly flawless second frame despite being without starter Jalen Adaway, who’s still nursing an injured ankle and was also serving a one-game suspension for a minor NCAA infraction.
“I think that’s just a testament to having a veteran team,” Holmes said. “We know we can’t have those types of slow starts if we’re gonna beat good teams, and we want to be the best team. In the locker room (at halftime), Coach got us, we got on ourselves, we had a talk between the veteran guys and the team as a whole and we just came out and played the right way.”
