ST. BONAVENTURE — St. Bonaventure will look to extend its perfect start to the men’s basketball season tonight as the Bonnies tip off against Division II Mansfield.
Out of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC), Mansfield is off to a 1-3 start, most recently getting its first win Saturday against D’Youville. The Mountaineers may be a familiar foe to fans in the Reilly Center after the Bonnies played an annual exhibition game against them from 2009-2015, but they haven’t played Bona in a true regular season game since 1947.
Mansfield has two former Division I players, Butler transfer guard Artemios Gavalas and Delaware State transfer guard LJ Stansbury. Stansbury leads the Mountaineers in points (13 per game) and assists (3.75) through four games.
Coudersport native Owen Chambers is a graduate student and starting guard for the Mountaineers. The former Big 30 Player of the Year, Chambers played three seasons at Mercyhurst before transferring in 2023. He’s averaging 8.5 points per game this year with 37.5% 3-point shooting. Chambers is District 9’s all-time leading scorer.
In scheduling Mansfield, Bona is part of a conference-wide trend as 13 Atlantic 10 teams will play at least one non-Division I opponent this winter.
In Bona’s 4-0 start, Missouri State transfer Chance Moore leads the Bonnies in scoring at 17.3 points per game and rebounding at 7.8 per game. Moore paced the offense in each of the first three games but was held to six points Saturday against Le Moyne. But Bona withstood the off-game thanks to five teammates breaking double-figure scoring, led by Noel Brown’s 15 against Le Moyne.
Coach Mark Schmidt saw the scoring depth as an encouraging sign.
“It’s just not one guy that’s averaging 20 points a game,” Schmidt said of his offense. “So that’s a positive. We’ve just, not just Chance, but everybody, we’ve gotta just get better in all areas.”
Among those five double-digit scorers was Panola College (JUCO) transfer Jonah Hinton off the bench with 10 points on two 3-pointers in 16 minutes. Hinton had just two points in the season opener but has posted lines of 10, 11 and 10 in the last three. He’s 7-for-18 on 3-pointers (38.9%) so far.
“He’s a guy that can shoot the ball from 3, gets guys involved and he’s offense off the bench and that’s something that we need,” Schmidt said Hinton, a native of the Naperville suburb of Chicago.
Another JUCO transfer, Lajae Jones, had 12 points, eight rebounds, two blocks and two steals against Le Moyne, shooting 2-for-2 on treys.
“He played well,” Schmidt said of Jones. “He hit two threes. He rebounded the ball and that’s the thing I liked about it. He had three offensive rebounds, eight total rebounds. And that’s what we need him to do.
“You can’t always be just one end, if my offense isn’t going, then I don’t do anything else. We’ve gotta have guys that when … just like Chance today, the offense wasn’t going, but he brought something on the defensive end. Dasante had six rebounds and Melvin had seven rebounds. That’s what we need from everybody, that blue-collar type of stuff, not the skill stuff, but the toughness stuff. I thought we had that today.”
One Bonnie making a surprise attempt to join the 3-point party is Noel Brown. The 6-foot-11 center had not attempted a trey in his first four years of college hoops, but tried one in last week’s road trip to Florida Gulf Coast and another against Le Moyne, starting 0-for-2.
In Saturday’s post-game press conference, as Brown fielded a question about his attempt at 3-point range — after going four years without one — Schmidt interjected, “He’s not gonna be taking any more 3’s either.”
But Brown, who improved his free-throw percentage from 53.1% as a junior at George Washington to 76.9% last year at Bona, thinks his shot is on the right track.
“Coach might say you might not see one. Unfortunately there might be a couple more more coming out,” Brown said with a sheepish grin. “I do get a lot of reps with them, I do practice them a lot and I think based off my free throw and how much I’ll be in the gym, I really believe I can knock it down 100%, just the right shot, right time.”
On that, Schmidt agreed, repeating “right shot, right time.”
“So maybe not off the first swing, but if it comes back around, I’m very confident I’ll knock it down,” Brown continued.
