St. Bonaventure basketball: In battle of unbeatens, Bonnies face their tough test on Thanksgiving

By CHUCK POLLOCK, Wellsville Sun Senior Sports Columnist

It’s hard to get better than perfect and that’s where the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team finds itself heading into its toughest test of the early season come Thanksgiving afternoon.

The Bonnies, 6-0, are on SBU’s longest unbeaten streak to start the campaign since rookie head coach Jim Satalin opened the 1973-74 schedule with the same mark.

Mark Schmidt’s virtually all-new squad has strung a half-dozen victories against California State-Northridge, Canisius, Florida Gulf Coast, LeMoyne, Mansfield and Bryant.

Critics will say that Mansfield is a Div. II school and that LeMoyne is in its second season as a D-I and that only one of those victims has a winning record, though it’s worth noting that Cal-St. has won five straight since losing the opener to Bona.

NOW SCHMIDT’S crew, ranked 106 of 352, steps up in class as it faces Utah State (5-0) in the opening round of the ESPN NIT Tip-off Tournament at the State Farm Fieldhouse in Kissimmee, Fla. Thursday at 5:30 in the first game (ESPN2-TV, Bonnies Online Network, 100.1 FM). 

Then, at 8 o’clock, North Texas (5-1) faces Northern Iowa (3-2) in Game 2.

On Friday, the first-game losers will meet at 6:30 (ESPNU) in the third-place game while the championship is set for 9 o’clock (ESPN).

The last time the Bonnies eclipsed a 6-0 start was Larry Weise’s 1970-71 NIT team that opened with eight straight victories.

“THIS IS an honor,” Schmidt said of playing in the ESPN event. “They called us and I guarantee you 18 years ago we wouldn’t be playing in this.

“You have a chance to play good teams on a neutral court, and those neutral courts, that’s like playing in the Atlantic 10 tournament. It gets our guys more comfortable playing away from home, against a really good team. You don’t want to play those teams at their place.”

He added, “We can’t be satisfied being 6-0. We’ve got to improve. We can’t listen to the noise and everybody talking about how we’re 6-0, and this and that. It’s the next game. We’ve got to prepare for the next game.”

AND THE “next game” will be a handful.

Utah State has beaten Alcorn State, Charlotte, Westminster (Utah) and Montana, but it’s biggest victory was a 77-69 decision on the road against Iowa.

But as Schmidt pointed out, the victory by the No. 45-ranked Aggies “wasn’t an upset.” And what gets pollsters attention is that Utah State is averaging 98 points a game.

He added, “They’re holding teams to 41% (from the field), 31% on threes, they’re outrebounding teams by 11. They’re a complete team. They’ve got good guards, good size, they hit 10 threes a game. They’re very well-coached and they run good stuff. They’re not just good offensively, they do a good job on defense and average 12 steals a game. They get a lot of their offense off their defense.”

ONE THING Schmidt has been able to do in his season-opening unbeaten run is make some decisions on his personnel.

Indeed, he has a firm starting five, a four-guard attack built around returning 6-foot-11 center Noel Brown (13 points per game; George Washington).

The guards are Chance Moore (16 ppg, 8 rebounds; Missouri State), Melvin Council Jr. (13 ppg; Wagner), Dasonte Bowen (10 ppg, 4 assists; Iowa), Lajae Jones (10 ppg; Barton).

All have started every game other than Jones who has missed one. 

The two key subs are Jonas Hinton (8 ppg; Northwest Missouri St.) and returning redshirt freshman Duane Thompson (4 ppg.).

Of the Utah State game, Schmidt concluded, “It’s a big test, it’s the best team, by far, that we’ve played all year … so we’ll find out where we’re at.”

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