Photo: The St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team celebrates winning (and retaining) the Franciscan Cup. Photo by STEVE HARRISON/Sun, see Steve’s slideshow of photos after Chuck Pollock’s column)
By CHUCK POLLOCK, Sun Senior Sports Columnist
ST. BONAVENTURE — It’s probably not going to be the 14-1 season start that the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team fashioned last year.
But, you have to love the 3-0 beginning that this season’s Bonnies are off to with a 13-player roster featuring 11 new faces.
After beating Bradley 69-63 in Rock Hill, South Carolina and Canisius 89-70 at the Reilly Center, Wednesday night’s victim No. 3 was Siena in the RC, a 75-66 loser before 3,451 fans.
AFTER collecting his school-record 327th victory at Bona, Schmidt noted, “We did a great job on those guys (Siena is 2-1) … that was a test. They were physical, they were big, they got to loose balls, and I thought our guys responded.
“Our guys scored 46 points in the paint (Siena scored only 20), and you can talk about three-point shooting but it’s fickle and you never know what’s going to happen … we only made three … we won the game in the paint.”
Schmidt added, “We played hard … and we didn’t play perfect but we beat a really good Siena team (coached by former Syracuse star guard Gerry McNamara).”
And after three games he admitted, “We have a lot to work on. It’s the third game, guys are still learning their names and guys are learning how they play … they’re still learning the defense and the system. Hopefully we’ll be a better team in January and February, that’s the goal. Having 11 new guys and trying to get them involved in what we’re trying to do is just difficult.”
He added, “I think our work ethic has been really good, playing hard without playing well all the time and making errors, but to me that makes up for a lot of sins.”
Off to that 3-0 start, the Bonnies have three players averaging double figures as 5-11 guard Darryl Simmons II (Gardner-We, Bona’s shortest player, had a team-high 24 points and is averaging 20 per game.
Cayden Charles, a 6-foot-3 senior guard, scored 15, reached the 1,000-point career point mark, and upped his average to 14 per games.
And Frank Mitchell, the former Golden Griffin at Canisius who also played at Humber and Minnesota, had a double-double of 13 points and 10 rebounds and is averaging 15 points.
Next up for coach Mark Schmidt’s team is a home game against Youngstown State Saturday afternoon (4 o’clock). The four-game RC streak ends next Thursday (6 p.m.) against Robert Morris, a team for which Schmidt began his coaching career.
(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
Steve Harrison slide show, swipe to see the 33 photos!
