Melvin Council Jr. chose the St. Bonaventure basketball team after one successful season at Wagner because he thought the Bonnies had the potential to play meaningful games in March.
“When I came to visit (the Bona campus), a couple guys was here, and I asked them, what’s their goal? And all of them said March Madness,” Council said during an interview Thursday with Jeff Goodman and Rob Dauster of The Field of 68 college basketball media network. “That’s when I knew St. Bonnie was for me, because I wanted to go to March Madness. And it started in the summertime with 10 new guys. It felt like we’d all been playing with each other all year. And then when the first game happened, we talked about it, and we knew what we could do.”
With Council leading the way, Bona is off to a solid start on its mission to reach the NCAA tournament. They are 13-1 overall and 1-0 in the Atlantic 10 heading into today’s 2 p.m. conference tip against Fordhman at Rose Hill Gym in the Bronx (ESPN+, Bonnies Online Network, 100.1 FM).
The latest victory, over a strong VCU team at the Reilly Center, came courtesy a Council driving layup with three seconds remaining. The Rochester native netted 20 points over 40 minutes in the win and has been the Bonnies’ most important player since regular point guard Dasonte Bowen went down with a foot injury.
In four games without Bowen, Council has averaged 18 points, 6.3 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 3.3 steals with a 3.6 assist-to-turnover ratio.
“He’s running the team. He’s getting guys involved. At the same time he’s scoring the basketball. He’s defending his position,” Schmidt said of Council. “He’s the leader of the team, and usually when your point guard is the leader, that’s a positive. Both him and Dasonte. Before Dasonte got hurt, he was doing a really good job as well.
“I think the more (Council) practices (at point guard), the better he’ll become and hopefully it’s not too long where he can get him back to his natural position.”
Schmidt said Bowen wouldn’t play against Fordham (8-6, 0-1). The Iowa transfer also missed a large chunk of games with a knee injury last season with the Hawkeyes.
Schmidt used Council as his lead guard for a handful of minutes per game before Bowen’s injury. Council said he also played that position in high school, AAU, two years of junior college, and “sometimes at Wagner.”
“I always have the ball in my hands,” he added. “So it was not new. It was just that I had to learn the way how to pass the ball to my big man. Learn how to find people in the right spots.”
After helping lead Wagner to the 2024 NCAAs and a victory in the March tournament, this was supposed to be Council’s last college season. However, the NCAA recently ruled that junior college years would not count against a student-athlete’s eligibility, meaning Council can play two more NCAA seasons if he chooses.
“A lot of people have been asking me, and I tell them, I’m just worried about this season and see what happens next year,” Council told The Field of 68. “I got a good team this year to worry about what we can do, and we can shock everybody and stuff like that. So my main focus is about this year. And I’m glad that rule happened because I didn’t want to leave college. I didn’t want to leave college at all.”
Although Bona is off to one of its best starts in program history, receiving votes in the Associated Press top 25 poll, and is included in many bracketologists early NCAA tourney projections, Schmidt continues to maintain the team hasn’t yet hit its ceiling.
“We didn’t defend very well against VCU,” he said. “We didn’t rebound the ball very well against VCU. We didn’t shoot the three well against VCU,” he said. “Those are areas that we’ve got to improve on. We only had nine assists. There’s a lot of room for improvement in all those areas. We’ve got to become a better defensive team, a rebounding team, an assist team. All those areas.
“Can we get there? I don’t know.”
Next up is a Fordham side that likes to fast break, shoot a lot of 3-pointers and play games in the 80s – a stark contrast to the defense-first Bonnies. Although Saint Louis throttled Fordham 88-63 at Rose Hill on Wednesday, the Rams are 6-2 at home.
“They’re downhill guys. They get into the paint,” Schmidt said. “They kick it out. That’s when they make their threes. They’re formidable. That’s going to be a really difficult game. They’ve had success against us in the last couple of years. I would assume that they have a lot of confidence.”
