ST. BONAVENTURE — While they may have eventually played Alfred University out of the gym on Wednesday, there are still plenty of wrinkles that need to be ironed out ahead of the fast-approaching regular season for the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team.
Luckily for coach Mark Schmidt, the positives that his team of fresh faces were able to come up with masked some of the more “ugly” mistakes, as he called them,after a 63-39 exhibition win at the Reilly Center.
To start, Bona came out of the gates with a fire lit underneath them, scoring 13 straight points for the first seven minutes of the contest.
Fittingly, it was the most significant returner, Noel Brown, who scored the first points for the Bonnies with fans present. And once the seal was broken, then came the cavalry in the form of Dasonte Bowen, Jaxon Edwards and Melvin Council Jr., all three transfers who wasted no time opening their Bona accounts.
However, the efficiency dried up in the latter minutes of the opening half as the Bonnies, who scored 13 points in the first seven minutes of the game, scored just 12 in the remaining 13 minutes of game-time in the first half. But ultimately, what kept them in the game was their ability to get stops on the defensive end and turn those stops into offense.
St. Bonaventure finished out the contest with 12 steals, 17 points off of 18 forced turnovers.
“I think our nerves got out of our system, and we got some offense off of our defense,” Schmidt said. “We had 12 steals. We had some breakdowns. … But I thought our defense, ball pressure was good. We got to do a better job in the post. But I thought the second half, we played much better, both on the offensive and defensive ends, and we got points off the turnovers, and that’s what we have to do.”
Despite some offensive struggles, Bona had eight turnovers, a total Schmidt said he would be happy with averaging over the course of the season. But the ball was often not finding the bottom of the net.
The scoring struggles partially came as a result of the pace of play. While trying to get an all-but brand new bunch of players on the same page, Schmidt acknowledged the reality of growing pains.
“We’re trying to play faster and when you play fast, you’re going to have some mistakes,” Schmidt said. “But I thought, only having eight turnovers, if we … average eight turnovers for the year, then I’ll be really, really happy with that, because we’re playing faster. … But at the same time, guys have to understand, we want pace, but we don’t want guys being out of control.”
In the second half, Bona managed to find a groove again, including Lajae Jones’ 3-pointer four minutes in, the team’s first after having gone 0-8 in the first.
Bowen and Council both continued their strong form into the second period as well. The former missed just one shot from the floor all night and finished with eight points, five rebounds and five assists. The latter was a galvanizing force for the team from the first whistle and led the team in scoring with 10 points and five steals. According to Schmidt, this is exactly the role he expects each of them carrying this season.
“(Dasonte) needs to be a guy that is a pass-first point guard that pushes the ball, gets into the paint and distributes it,” Schmidt said. “Now, if the paint opens up, then he can lay it in, … he’s really quick. … But he’s got to get people involved. If he can be a guy that averages eight to 10 points and five or six assists, then he’s doing his job. He’s not going to be a guy that we need to score 20 points a game. He’s got to get everybody involved and I think he’s capable of doing that.
“The guy on the ball, if he’s aggressive, it brings everybody with him. If the guy on the ball is soft, everybody sees it behind them, and they become soft. Melvin has great energy every day in practice and it’s contagious, and that’s what we continually need from everybody. It just can’t be Melvin, it needs to be the entire team.”
Overall, it was not the cleanest unofficial debut. But Schmidt offered a patient tone ahead of the official start of the campaign.
“(I have) all the faith in the world,” Schmidt said. “We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t have faith. We have 10 new guys and we’re just trying to get them all together and on the same page. It’s good to play the first game under the lights with the uniforms on. That’s what an exhibition game is about. We played everybody, we won, and I think the guys will learn from what they did today.”
