Three things Bona needs to get back on track
Mark Schmidt sat in the seat that almost always goes unoccupied, crossed one leg over the other and sighed.
Eight seconds still remained, but the game was effectively over, and he and everyone knew it. It was a rare moment of resignation from the 11th year St. Bonaventure men?s basketball coach.
One week after reaching a regular season apex under Schmidt, the Bonnies have hit a state of turmoil, losing two straight road games they were expected to win and suffering a major blow to their NCAA Tournament chances.
Of course, there are two ways to assess what happened to Bona over the last seven days: The first is that it lost to a pair of teams more talented than we initially knew in two of the more hostile environments in the Atlantic 10.
The other is that this was unpardonable: Dayton responded with a home loss to a UMass team that Bona had previously blown out and was missing two starters while Saint Joseph?s was without two of its three best players.
And since this was the year that Bona was embracing such high expectations, we have almost no choice but to view it as the latter.
Look, even with those two glaring setbacks, the season isn?t over by a long stretch. Remember two years ago? That team lost three in a row early in the conference campaign and still finished 22-7. Though the 2015-16 Bonnies were ultimately left out of the field of 68, they gave themselves a chance at the end.
It wouldn?t be surprising to see the current Bonnies do the same. There?s no doubt, however, that from an at-large perspective, their margin for error has become razor thin.
From the start, Bona was likely going to have go either 14-4 or 13-5 in league play to be in the conversation come Selection Sunday. It?s already used up two of those losses with the following contests still remaining: league favorite Rhode Island twice, Davidson twice, a Saint Joseph?s team that may have a healthy Charlie Brown for the rematch and VCU on the road.
Of course, very few ? if any ? of the rest of its Atlantic 10 games will be easy. Take note of Duquesne, which was supposed to be rebuilding under new coach Keith Dambrot, but is instead trying to crash the top-half party at 12-4 and 3-0 in league play.
Can Bona go 12-3 in the second half of the season? The Bonnies of November and December certainly could. And now? It remains to be seen.
One of the narratives to come from the last week is that Bona, carrying the heaviest expectations of the Schmidt era, isn?t quite ready for the big time, isn?t as good as we thought it was in the non-conference.
That?s hard to believe.
This is a team that beat a top 50 Maryland squad away from the Reilly Center without its best player, found a way to beat Syracuse in the Carrier Dome and whose only real loss for nearly the first two months of the year was to the No. 16 team in the country (TCU).
What Bona needs to do now, as redshirt junior Courtney Stockard said after the Saint Joseph?s game Saturday, is ?find itself.? What it has to do is rediscover what it took to get to 11-2 and No. 32 nationally in the first place.
What it must do is take care of lowly Fordham on Wednesday in the RC. And here are three things that need to happen from there:
The star-studded backcourt has to be in sync
From their first game together, Jaylen Adams and Matt Mobley not only co-existed, but thrived in each other?s company, allowing each to average nearly 20 points per game over two seasons. Lately, though, it seems it?s been one or the other ? or neither.
Against Dayton, Mobley was held scoreless at halftime, but exploded for 24 in the second half. In that same period, Adams scored seven points on 1-for-7 shooting. Against Joe?s, Adams had 19 but Mobley was somehow limited to only two points in 36 minutes.
In the nine games since Adams returned from an ankle injury, there has been only one instance in which both players have scored 16 points or more ? and that, of course, was the 20-point blowout win over UMass, when Adams went for 32 and Mobley 28.
It?s an obvious observation, but one that needs to be rehashed given how little it?s happened so far this year: When both of their lead guards are on, the Bonnies are virtually unstoppable.
Bona needs to start defending again
In the nonconference, the Bonnies had appeared to fix the defensive woes that kept them from being a great team last season.
They held nine of their first 12 opponents to 67 points or fewer, including power conference foes Maryland (61) and Syracuse (57). They were turning teams over, they were taking them out of their comfort zones.
Defense was their identity.
And suddenly, that went by the wayside.
In these last two games, Bona has allowed an average of 84 points, 50 percent shooting (50-for-100 exactly) and eight 3-pointers. It allowed the Flyers and Hawks to shoot a combined 68 percent from inside the arc, which ranked last in the league in that stretch.
No matter how good the offense might be ? and it?ll continue to be good if these are the contributions it?s going to get from Stockard and freshman Izaiah Brockington ? it won?t win enough A-10 games with those kinds of defensive numbers.
The Bonnies need to rediscover their ?swagger?
By the end of the Syracuse game, there was an air about this team similar to the one that existed in 2015-16: That Bona refused to be beaten, that it would ultimately find a way, that something magical would happen in crunch time.
The Bonnies demonstrated that ?it? factor in their three biggest wins of the season: With that late bucket against Maryland, with Mobley?s buzzer-beating 3-pointer against Vermont and with the way they held off the Orange in the Dome.
Beginning with that first half against Dayton, however, when Bona found itself down 18, something changed. It was like the end of Rocky IV when Rocky proved Drago was human and the announcer proclaimed, ?He?s cut! The Russian?s cut! And it?s a bad cut!?
In these last two games, the Bonnies have been exposed as beatable. And in that time, they?ve looked vulnerable, unlike the team from before that would have found a way to pull out both.
If Bona is going to continue to make a run at an at-large spot, behind Adams and Mobley and maybe even the freshman Brockington, it needs to rediscover the attitude that made it great.
Mark Schmidt sat in the seat that almost always goes unoccupied, crossed one leg over the other and sighed.
Eight seconds still remained, but the game was effectively over, and he and everyone knew it. It was a rare moment of resignation from the 11th year St. Bonaventure men?s basketball coach.
One week after reaching a regular season apex under Schmidt, the Bonnies have hit a state of turmoil, losing two straight road games they were expected to win and suffering a major blow to their NCAA Tournament chances.
Of course, there are two ways to assess what happened to Bona over the last seven days: The first is that it lost to a pair of teams more talented than we initially knew in two of the more hostile environments in the Atlantic 10.
The other is that this was unpardonable: Dayton responded with a home loss to a UMass team that Bona had previously blown out and was missing two starters while Saint Joseph?s was without two of its three best players.
And since this was the year that Bona was embracing such high expectations, we have almost no choice but to view it as the latter.
Look, even with those two glaring setbacks, the season isn?t over by a long stretch. Remember two years ago? That team lost three in a row early in the conference campaign and still finished 22-7. Though the 2015-16 Bonnies were ultimately left out of the field of 68, they gave themselves a chance at the end.
It wouldn?t be surprising to see the current Bonnies do the same. There?s no doubt, however, that from an at-large perspective, their margin for error has become razor thin.
From the start, Bona was likely going to have go either 14-4 or 13-5 in league play to be in the conversation come Selection Sunday. It?s already used up two of those losses with the following contests still remaining: league favorite Rhode Island twice, Davidson twice, a Saint Joseph?s team that may have a healthy Charlie Brown for the rematch and VCU on the road.
Of course, very few ? if any ? of the rest of its Atlantic 10 games will be easy. Take note of Duquesne, which was supposed to be rebuilding under new coach Keith Dambrot, but is instead trying to crash the top-half party at 12-4 and 3-0 in league play.
Can Bona go 12-3 in the second half of the season? The Bonnies of November and December certainly could. And now? It remains to be seen.
One of the narratives to come from the last week is that Bona, carrying the heaviest expectations of the Schmidt era, isn?t quite ready for the big time, isn?t as good as we thought it was in the non-conference.
That?s hard to believe.
This is a team that beat a top 50 Maryland squad away from the Reilly Center without its best player, found a way to beat Syracuse in the Carrier Dome and whose only real loss for nearly the first two months of the year was to the No. 16 team in the country (TCU).
What Bona needs to do now, as redshirt junior Courtney Stockard said after the Saint Joseph?s game Saturday, is ?find itself.? What it has to do is rediscover what it took to get to 11-2 and No. 32 nationally in the first place.
What it must do is take care of lowly Fordham on Wednesday in the RC. And here are three things that need to happen from there:
The star-studded backcourt has to be in sync
From their first game together, Jaylen Adams and Matt Mobley not only co-existed, but thrived in each other?s company, allowing each to average nearly 20 points per game over two seasons. Lately, though, it seems it?s been one or the other ? or neither.
Against Dayton, Mobley was held scoreless at halftime, but exploded for 24 in the second half. In that same period, Adams scored seven points on 1-for-7 shooting. Against Joe?s, Adams had 19 but Mobley was somehow limited to only two points in 36 minutes.
In the nine games since Adams returned from an ankle injury, there has been only one instance in which both players have scored 16 points or more ? and that, of course, was the 20-point blowout win over UMass, when Adams went for 32 and Mobley 28.
It?s an obvious observation, but one that needs to be rehashed given how little it?s happened so far this year: When both of their lead guards are on, the Bonnies are virtually unstoppable.
Bona needs to start defending again
In the nonconference, the Bonnies had appeared to fix the defensive woes that kept them from being a great team last season.
They held nine of their first 12 opponents to 67 points or fewer, including power conference foes Maryland (61) and Syracuse (57). They were turning teams over, they were taking them out of their comfort zones.
Defense was their identity.
And suddenly, that went by the wayside.
In these last two games, Bona has allowed an average of 84 points, 50 percent shooting (50-for-100 exactly) and eight 3-pointers. It allowed the Flyers and Hawks to shoot a combined 68 percent from inside the arc, which ranked last in the league in that stretch.
No matter how good the offense might be ? and it?ll continue to be good if these are the contributions it?s going to get from Stockard and freshman Izaiah Brockington ? it won?t win enough A-10 games with those kinds of defensive numbers.
The Bonnies need to rediscover their ?swagger?
By the end of the Syracuse game, there was an air about this team similar to the one that existed in 2015-16: That Bona refused to be beaten, that it would ultimately find a way, that something magical would happen in crunch time.
The Bonnies demonstrated that ?it? factor in their three biggest wins of the season: With that late bucket against Maryland, with Mobley?s buzzer-beating 3-pointer against Vermont and with the way they held off the Orange in the Dome.
Beginning with that first half against Dayton, however, when Bona found itself down 18, something changed. It was like the end of Rocky IV when Rocky proved Drago was human and the announcer proclaimed, ?He?s cut! The Russian?s cut! And it?s a bad cut!?
In these last two games, the Bonnies have been exposed as beatable. And in that time, they?ve looked vulnerable, unlike the team from before that would have found a way to pull out both.
If Bona is going to continue to make a run at an at-large spot, behind Adams and Mobley and maybe even the freshman Brockington, it needs to rediscover the attitude that made it great.
