(EDITOR’S NOTE: Following is the third in a six-part series centering on the coming St. Bonaventure men’s basketball season from the five writers from the Times Herald and Bradford Era who will be contributing to the Bona coverage this year. Today: A profile on newcomer Kyrell Luc. Tomorrow: A feature on Luc’s backcourt mate Daryl Banks III).
For the past eight years, Mark Schmidt hasn’t had to worry much about who would start as his Tom Brady on the court.
Schmidt expects a lot from his point guards — the quarterback of the basketball team, he’s fond of saying — and he certainly got a lot from his last two starters at St. Bonaventure, both four-year starters, Jaylen Adams and Kyle Lofton. Barring injury or foul trouble, they would consistently play close to 40 minutes most nights.
“The point guard position is the most difficult position to play in our system,” Schmidt said in a preseason media day Zoom session last week. “He’s the quarterback. He needs to know where everybody is.”
The Bonnies hope to have found their answer at that crucial position in Kyrell Luc, a sophomore transfer from Holy Cross. A Dorchester, Mass., native, Luc won the Patriot League’s Rookie of the Year as a freshman with 13 points, 3.6 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.5 steals on 39% field goal and 35% 3-point shooting over 32 minutes per game.
With SBU undergoing unprecedented roster turnover, Bona hopes Luc can provide some stability at the point.
“He’s a really smart kid,” Schmidt said. “He had a lot of success at Holy Cross and that’s what we’ve tried to do is try to get … we don’t have a lot of NIL money, so we try to get kids that aren’t looking for the money but are looking for an opportunity to play at a higher level. And Kyrell had a lot of success at Holy Cross, and so far in the first two weeks of practice he’s been really good.”
AT JUST 5-foot-11 and 165 pounds, he’s the smallest player on the team, but doesn’t lack athleticism.
“He’s explosive, he shoots it decently, has a really good feel, he’s quick and he’s still trying to learn the system,” Schmidt said. “So it’s not like he’s just going to go and not have to think, but he’s going to be a really good player for us and he’s one of those guys that we need him to be a really good player. He’s got one year under his belt, even though the Patriot League is not the Atlantic 10, but if you can be the Rookie of the Year in the Patriot League, you can be a really good player in our league, and we think he will be.”
DURING THE team’s media day session, Luc identified “culture” as the defining aspect that drew him to Bona.
“Hearing from other people how it’s like a family and it’s small so everyone knows each other,” Luc said. “And just feeling welcomed on my visit, everything felt genuine my first time coming up to campus. So that’s really what helped me, told me this was a good spot for me really.”
He arrives with a year of experience, albeit at a lower-level mid-major conference. But that time at Holy Cross helped Luc learn the point guard position, he said.
“Really just understanding the game as a point guard, knowing when to go, when to slow it down,” Luc said of what he learned as a freshman. “One thing I took was as a point guard being able to talk to your coaches, your mentor to see how to really go about a game, really understand how to play as a point guard because there’s so many things that come with it as a point guard. Not just only scoring, you have to get your teammates involved. So picking up little things on my journey as a freshman last year.”
PLAYING WITH a brand new group of teammates and learning Schmidt’s system, of course, takes some time to adjust. His likely starting backcourt partner, junior Saint Peter’s transfer Daryl Banks III, said he quickly built chemistry with Luc.
“Kyrell is an amazing player,” Banks said. “I love playing with him. He’s a great person on the court, off the court, we’re really close.
“He’s small, but he definitely jumps the highest on the team. He’s lightning quick, he can knock down an open shot and he finds people, he’s really good at it. So I love to play with him and I can’t wait until we play these games to be on the court with him. He’s going to be great for this league and he’s going to shock a lot of people.”
Banks credited the team’s summer session with helping the brand-new Bonnies learn each other’s games and personalities.
“Naturally, with everybody being new you would think that it was going to be hard for people to jell fast but naturally everybody kind of just got along and we’ve just been building,” Banks said. “We hang out all the time out of practice when we’re back in the dorms and everything like that. So that helps of course.”
Luc agreed that “it started in the summer,” noting the team jelled right away.
“That helped us on and off the court,” he said. “So right now we’re putting it all together and we can see improvement in practice. We have big spurts where we look really good and we’re still trying to figure it out, but I feel really good about our group right now.”
Luc noted he feels “no real pressure” to live up to the standards of previous Bona point guards, expressing confidence in his ability to study film and work with his coaches. That includes learning his teammates’ roles along with his own.
“Making sure you know the plays, making sure you know the plays from other positions, helping your teammates,” Luc said of learning Schmidt’s system. “Like Coach would say, I’m the quarterback on the court. So I have to let everybody know what they have to do.”
(Sam Wilson, Times Herald sports writer and Salamanca Press sports editor, may be contacted at swilson@oleantimesherald.com)
