By CHUCK POLLOCK, Wellsville Sun Senior Sports Columnist
The hammer came Saturday morning when the Olean Star announced that St. Bonaventure men’s basketball coach Mark Schmidt would be coaching his final game at the Reilly Center that afternoon against Davidson.
It wasn’t a total shock as, for weeks, there was a rumored rift between Schmidt and Bona’s basketball general manager Adrian Wojnarowski, the former ESPN NBA guru.
Supposedly, “Woj” declined to recruit players that Schmidt wanted and he brought in players that did not fit the current coach’s system.
Before the Davidson game, Schmidt received a standing ovation from the few students — they’re on break — in attendance, many of them wearing t-shirts that read “irreplaceable” and “unacceptable.”
Some were the very undergrads who chanted “Fire Schmidt” as the Bonnies struggled through a 4-13 Atlantic 10 regular season.
AFTER Bona lost Saturday’s A-10 finale, 68-63 to Davidson at the RC, what figured to be an awkward press conference wasn’t.
With few media people there, I knew it was up to me to ask the “elephant in the room” question.
“Mark,” I said, “there have been a lot of rumors about your job future here.” He looked at me, laughed, and allowed ‘Ya think?’
I knew he’d be fine, especially after admitting he was retiring.
“Critics could argue ‘Did he jump or was he pushed?” But the reality is, he took a potentially tense situation to an exchange that was totally benign.
“When I first got the job, I remember people telling me that it was a suicide job and that I was going to be here for three or four years, and then I was going to be selling insurance,” Schmidt said. “I give Steve Watson and Sister Margaret all the credit in the world. They took a chance on me 19 years ago. They allowed me to coach, and they allowed us to build this program. And, you know, I think what we’ve done is pretty good, and it’s pretty cool.”
“It’s different with the whole portal thing and NIL,” Schmidt said of Senior Day. “But you still have to celebrate them. That’s the right thing to do. For seven months, they become a Bonnie, and once a Bonnie, always a Bonnie. So, it’s not the same, but they’re seniors, they’ve had good careers, even though it’s only been here for a year. They’ve given everything that we’ve asked of them.”
Schmidt continued, “People are like, ‘Why do you stay?’ and I always told them, ‘You can’t put it into words. You gotta see it. Once you see it, you’ll believe it. “That’s what Bonaventure is, and that’s what Bonaventure has been to me. The basketball program here in Olean and Allegany, it’s the heartbeat.
“(The late) Skip Prosser (Schmidt’s mentor from Xavier), my guy, once told me, ‘You’ve got to be at a school for six or seven years, and then you’ve got to get the hell out, because either they get tired of you or you get tired of them.’ But I never got tired.”
Story continues after video of Mark Schmidt telling our Chuck Pollock he is indeed leaving St. Bonaventure as the head coach after the Atlantic 10 playoffs.
SCHMIDT is now looking to a future away from the game. He plans on spending more time with his family, seeing the places he’s never been able to see.
“I don’t want to be in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank going around and seeing these beautiful places,” he said. “I want to travel the world. I told the team, if I’m just known as Coach Schmidt, I haven’t lived the life I should have lived. I have brothers and sisters. I have nieces and nephews. I have a wife, kids. In basketball, when you go to sleep, the last thing you do is you think about the team. And when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you do is think about the team. It’s consuming, and I’m tired of that. I want to travel, I want to spend time with my family, I want to play golf, I want to drink beer without any consequences.”
He thanked St. Bonaventure for the years it has shared and noted that the decision to retire did not come based on any one matter.
“The university has been terrific, the alumni, I couldn’t ask for a better 19 years,” Schmidt added. “I’m not leaving because of anything that has happened. It’s just time, 19 years is a long time. From a financial standpoint, I don’t need it (he earned $1.4 million last season). So, it’s time to give somebody else a voice. I’m appreciative of everything. I’m a lucky guy to be able to be the head coach at St. Bonaventure, such a storied program, for 19 years. It’s an honor.”
“I just want to be remembered as someone that did it the right way,” Schmidt said. “It wasn’t about me. It’s about us. It’s about the community. I didn’t win any game. I haven’t made a basket that counted since 1985. It’s the players, that did it. We did it together. It wasn’t I and me, it was we and us. It’s not about victories. It’s about people, relationships.”
Schmidt will coach St. Bonaventure through the Atlantic 10 postseason. His team earned the No. 13 seed and will face No. 12 seed La Salle at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh (USA Network).
In 25 years at Pittsburgh’s Robert Morris and Bona, Schmidt won 420 games, took the Bonnies to three NITs, two NCAAs, had seven 20-win seasons and was twice A-10 Coach of the Year. He won 339 games at SBU easily passing former leader and legendary coach Larry Weise (202).
Now Bona is conducting the obligatory “national search” for Schmidt’s replacement, and among the names that have already come up are Mike MacDonald who has had great success at Buffalo’s Daemen College in Div. II and another former Bonnie, David Vanterpool, one of the school’s all-time defenders, who played 22 games with the Washington Wizards and had an 11-year career in Europe before his current stint as an NBA assistant (Nets anand Wizards).
When asked how he wanted to be remembered Schmidt was pointed.
“I just want to be remembered as someone that did it the right way,” he said.
(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
