Pollock: St. Bonaventure overcomes errors as Bonnies open basketball season with solid win

A column by CHUCK POLLOCK, Senior Sports Columnist, Wellsville Sun, Olean Star

As they stood for the national anthem, Monday night at the Reilly Center, Mark Schmidt’s and Andy Newman’s faces wore similar expressions.

After all, the college basketball opener always provides its own adrenaline rush.

But it’s different in this era of a wide-open transfer portal and NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) money flowing to players producing a constant state of uncertainty.

THAT’S WHY Schmidt, starting his 18th year coaching St. Bonaventure, and Newman, beginning his second campaign at Cal-State Northridge, shared that look.

Both, besides each having three returnees, have entirely rebuilt rosters with seven transfers, as has become the norm at the Division I level.

And with the scrimmages and exhibition games over, each was surely wondering, before tip-off, “Exactly what do I have here on my roster this season?”

The first real hint came over the next 40 minutes of playing time.

When it was over, before 3,859 observers at the RC, the Bonnies owned a 70-56 win as newcomers Chance Moore (9 rebounds, 3 assists), Lajae Jones (5 boards) and Dasonte Bowen contributed 18, 16 and 11 points, respectively.

But, as with most season openers, there were myriad errors.

St. Bonaventure committed 18 turnovers, more than double what Schmidt expects, and he found SBU’s 7-of-32 on three-pointers unacceptable.

CS-Northridge turned the ball over 21 times and hit only 6-of-19 on treys.

“OUR GOAL was to be 1-0 at 9 o’clock on Nov. 4 and we accomplished that,” Schmidt said. “But we’re a work-in-progress as I said after the Alfred (exhibition) game. Defensively we played relatively well, we forced 21 turnovers and held them to 31% from threes and we did a good job of not fouling, so those are some positives.

“But we didn’t shoot the ball as well as we needed to (36% for the game, 22% on treys) and 32 three (attempts) are way too much … we’ve got to get the ball inside more.We were disjointed at times, we were not smooth and that’s just experience within the system.”

He added, “It’s a win, that team had won 19 games last year … so it was a good victory. We accomplished our goal but we’ve got to continue to improve and the longer we get in our system and the more repetition we have, the better we’ll get.”

THERE WERE other factors that impressed him

“We have more athletic guys, more length and it’s good we had 21 points off turnovers … 18 points off fast breaks. (But) we’re not a great half-court offensive team right now,” he said. “We have decent shooters (but) we don’t have a guy that’s going to hit eight or nine threes. Hopefully, we have enough guys to keep the defense honest.”

And Schmidt admitted, “We’re still learning, we don’t have an identity. Coaches are still trying to figure out who’s playing, who’s not playing, who’s playing well with certain groups … that’s something we’re going to work on for the next two, three weeks before we get a line-up that we’re really comfortable with. The guys are still learning to play with each other and what to do in certain situations. But it’s always good to work on things after a win.”

Meanwhile, CS-Northridge, despite its own errors, had its own solace.

With just over seven minutes to play, Bona led the Matadors by 21 and barely four minutes later the margin was 12.

“We didn’t handle the pressure right and that’s probably on me because we haven’t really worked on that … here are so many things you have to put in,” Schmidt admitted. “But when you get up by 21, you want to stretch the lead, you don’t want them to come back … we made some errors offensively, we missed some foul shots.

“There’s positives coming out of this game but there are negatives as well and those are the things we need to work on.”

(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun and Olean Star senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)

Read more from Chuck on the Bonnies and Bills:

• Bass vindicated by 61-yard field goal to beat the Dolphins

• Bills don’t own the Dolphins but have an option to buy; prediction 27-20 (final was 30-27)

• The season is here for St. Bonaventure basketball

• St. Bonaventure speaks out, “We got Woj”

• Mark Schmidt on the NIL deals and the Bona NIT mess

• Pollock on the passing of St. Bonaventure legend Paul Hoffman

• Pollock on listening to the radio and the days of Willie Mays

• Houghton’s Phil Stockin gets Cazzie Russell to the Castle in Olean and then a title for the Knicks?

• The right hire for St. Bonaventure to lead the athletic department