Can Bonnies get back on track at vaunted Siegel Center? | Sports

Coming off back-to-back losses, the challenge doesn’t let up Friday night for a shorthanded St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team.

The Bonnies will make another trip to the Siegel Center in Richmond, Va., to take on VCU, playing on national television for a late tipoff (9 p.m., ESPNU). Chance Moore, the team’s leading scorer at the time of his injury, missed Tuesday’s home game against George Mason after exiting in the first half Saturday at Duquesne with a foot injury, joining starting point guard Dasonte Bowen and bench wing Jaxon Edwards on the sidelines.

Bona coach Mark Schmidt called Moore a “game-time decision” for Friday night, perhaps an encouraging update after none had been given following the Mason game.

“We’ll see how his foot’s feeling in warm-ups, I guess, and then we’ll go from there,” Schmidt said.

Bowen, out since playing Dec. 7 against Buffalo, is still “further behind” Moore in returning, Schmidt noted.

Whoever is on the court, Bona needs to avoid another slow start. The Bonnies trailed Duquesne by as many as 14 points in the first half and Mason by as many as 18 in the first. The start on Tuesday was compounded by foul trouble for Noel Brown and Lajae Jones needing medical attention after taking an elbow to the mouth.

“It’s experience,” Schmidt said of the slow starts. “When Noel got in foul trouble and Lajae got hurt and we didn’t have Chance, we’ve got three first-year guys out there and sometimes it’s a learning experience and you’ve got to be put through the fire to figure it out and the only way you learn is to experience it, and hopefully those guys have learned. Duquesne played well, George Mason is a really good team. It’s not like we’ve lost or got behind against bad teams. They’re very good teams and some way, somehow we’ve got to get off to a good start. Especially on the road and especially against a team like VCU.”

Schmidt’s teams have enjoyed a rare run of success against VCU, one of the A-10’s premier programs, winning four straight, including their last two at the Siegel Center, dating back to before coach Ryan Odom took over the Rams in 2023. Of course, many of those wins featured vastly different rosters, especially for Bona.

For Bona, beating VCU, especially on the road, needs to start with good offensive possessions.

“You’ve just got to go down there and you play basketball,” said Schmidt, whose next win will mark his 400th (317 at Bona, 82 at Robert Morris). “You know what you have to do to beat a VCU team. It’s hard to do it, but if you turn the ball over, you’ve got no chance. They’ll dunk it and the crowd goes crazy and it gets louder and louder and louder. You can’t take quick shots. You’ve got to run good offense. When the crowd goes crazy, you’ve got to slow down and you’ve got to execute. That takes good players and it takes discipline and it’s hard to do.”

Schmidt often says in the A-10, you have to win your home games and steal some on the road. This remains one of the hardest places to do that.

“We’ve had really good teams, veteran teams that have gone down there and haven’t been successful,” Schmidt said. “You just get caught up in the environment.

“And every team plays better at home for the most part, but they’ll have 7,800 people there and it’ll be wild, they’ll have their big band. It’s a great environment. As I told the team, it’s exciting. That’s what you work all your life for, to play in types of environments like this and at Dayton. So we’re going to have that chance at 9 o’clock tomorrow night.”

The Rams (15-4, 5-1) have won five straight since a conference-opening loss at Bona on New Year’s Eve, when Melvin Council Jr.’s shot in the dying seconds lifted the Bonnies 77-75.

VCU has four players averaging double-figure scoring in A-10 play, led by Joe Bamisile, at 16.0 points per game and 46.7% 3-point shooting. Phillip Russell, a UT-Arlington transfer who scored 26 points at Bona, averages 13.8 in the A-10; returning A-10 first-team selection Max Shulga is at 12.7 and Clemson transfer Jack Clark is at 10.7.

If Moore can’t go for Bona, it should mean more playing time for freshmen Noah Bolanga and Duane Thompson. Thompson scored a career-high 16 points with a career-high seven rebounds off the bench on Tuesday.

Bolanga started as the small forward, next to Jones, scoring eight points before fouling out after 20:40 on the court.

“Be productive,” Schmidt said of what he needs to see from the Frenchman. “Make some shots. Make that open shot, defend. I thought he was defending a little bit better. He made a shot the other day and hopefully that opens up the rim for him. Just being productive. You don’t have to score all the time. You’ve got to hit that open shot, you’ve got to defend, you’ve got to rebound. He didn’t have a rebound in the game in 20 minutes. That physicality, and being able to guard your position and rebound your position and when you have an open shot, knock it down.”