By Paul Casey Gotham
ST. BONAVENTURE, NY — A screen, a slip, a switch missed, a shot and the thunder that resulted.
Maybe, it’s that easy.
Matthew Wright elevated from the left corner and released a shot that floated in the air. Din became clamor as globe reached apex descending until leather met twine touching off jubilation.
For a moment, the St. Bonaventure Bonnies grasped victory. After more than 39 minutes of back-and-forth, Bona led the St. Joseph’s Hawks, 69-67.
On the surface, the play looked so simple. Wright found himself with nary a defender to be found. Andrew Nicholson recognized the opportunity and fed his teammate.
“I was wide open,” Wright recalled. “It’s a little startlingly how open you are sometimes. A lot of times when you are wide open, you take an extra second, and that ruins your momentum. You just got to go through the routine you normally do.”
It was just the second shot of the night on which Wright connected. His first jumper hit nothing. Still, he set, caught, lifted and released.
“That’s when all those reps, all those six a.m. practices, all those 100 threes a day, that’s when you have to just zone in and focus on your form,” Wright explained.
But it was more than that.
The play started 94 feet away with 13.2 on the Reilly Center clock, Charlon Kloof brought the ball to the right side of the floor. Wright vacated the ball-side block and set a cross screen. Nicholson’s man, Halil Kanacevic, went under the screen, and Nicholson faded to the perimeter forcing Langston Galloway into a switch. When Galloway attempted to jump into the passing lane, Nicholson took advantage, caught the ball and used a dribble to put the defender behind him.
“We had a couple of switches that we didn’t execute,” St. Joseph’s coach Phil Martelli said of the play on which Wright scored. “We just didn’t believe all the way for 40 minutes or 45 minutes or 50 minutes. Just a couple of switches that we missed.”
At the same time Wright cut to the corner creating space and forcing the Hawk defense into a decision: take away the drive from Nicholson and leave him open. Or defend the corner and leave Nicholson with a clear lane to the basket.
Kanacevic chose to defend Nicholson.
“It wasn’t designed for me,” Wright said of the shot. “We run this in practice and a lot of times my man will double-team Drew because they see that he is getting the ball. I don’t know if he heard me, but I told Drew I’ll slip to the corner if you need me.”
As soon as Kanacevic committed to him, Nicholson feathered a pass to Wright in the corner.
“Give credit for big shots and all those various combinations that they ran to get those shots,” Martelli said of the Bona’s performance.
The combination was something no diagram on a dry-erase board could show. This was not two guys connecting the dots of a pre-designed play. This was two basketball players making a play. Like moves on a chess board, Nicholson and Wright forced the Hawks into a decision and then check-mate.
Bona needed ten minutes of overtime to make good on Wright’s shot. Where most teams might have succumbed after the letdown, the Bonnies found their resolve.
“One of these reasons we’ve had success is that we’ve been in this situation, especially last year,” Bona coach Mark Schmidt explained. “A four-overtime game, a three-overtime, you only learn through experience. We’ve been there before. It wasn’t uncharted waters. Guys were relaxed.”
The game proved a fitting Reilly Center send off for Nicholson who seems destined to earn Atlantic 10 Player-of-the-Year.
Beyond that, the victory, SBU’s tenth of the season, marks the first time in more than a decade the Brown and White can boast a double-digit win total in conference play, a top-four standing and first-round bye in next weekend’s conference tournament.
Long after the final horn sounded and the applause quieted, lightning cut across the sky outside the Reilly Center. Thunder and lightning in February – anything can happen in New York’s Southern Tier. Even the St. Bonaventure Bonnies finding their way back to national prominence.
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