By Paul Gotham
Youssou Ndoye didn’t break twitter, but the St. Bonaventure center created a surge in social media activity, Sunday afternoon.
Nodye’s basket with 15:22 remaining in the second half gave the Bonnies a 37-35 edge in their Atlantic 10 matchup with the Saint Joseph’s Hawks. As easily as the guards he dwarfs in size, Nodye batted down a pass above the foul line, gathered the orange and went the length of the floor.
He put an exclamation point on the moment with a two-handed slam which touched off an eruption among the Bona faithful and none too few messages of 140 characters or less.
“I was just trying to get our guys going,” Ndoye said with a smile. “I came out flat turning the ball over in the first half and missing a couple of defensive assignments. I was just trying to make a play.”
It was SBU’s first lead of the afternoon. They wouldn’t surrender the advantage on their way to a 70-61 victory.
“He’s athletic and at times you don’t know that,” said Bonnies head coach Mark Schmidt. “He shows flashes and to play like that at 7’ and be able to get out in a passing lane, using the correct hand to deflect the ball, put it down and take it the length of the floor shows his athleticism. It shows how far he has come as a basketball player.”
One week after dropping their second straight (part of four setbacks in five contests) and falling to 1-2 in A-10 play, Ndoye and Bona joined a log jam of four teams at 3-2 with their second consecutive win.
The senior captain finished with 15 points for the afternoon on 4-of-4 shooting from the floor and 7-of-10 from the free throw line. He grabbed six rebounds, handed out five assists and blocked three shots.
Mark the date on the timeline of a player who as a sophomore blocked 41 shots and committed 92 personal fouls. Who converted 49 of 76 free throws that same year while making 75 field goals.
“Last year or two years ago there was no way he would have been able to do that,” Schmidt added. “His coordination is getting much better. His feel for the game, his understanding has improved drastically. It’s fun to watch when he’s doing stuff like that. His eyes light up when he knows he made a good play. It’s a lot of fun. He gets the crowd involved.”
The senior currently is the A-10 co-leader with 43 blocks. He has been whistled for 42 infractions. He is 54 of 76 from the free throw line and 53 of 112 from the field.
His career beyond Olean is taking shape.
“He’s going to be playing for money,” Saint Joseph’s Phil Martelli said. “It’s not going to surprise me if somebody says to me, he has a long run in an NBA camp next year.”
“It’s the beauty with which he has worked in their system,” Martelli added. “Their coaching staff deserves a lot of credit. When he was young, he was big. Now he’s big and skilled. They run as many plays as there are pages in the phone book and a lot of it is just getting him the ball.”
That coaching staff included NBA first-round draft pick and current Orlando Magic forward Andrew Nicholson who mentored Ndoye during his freshman season.
“Andrew Nicholson had a big impact on him,” Schmidt noted. “Where ever Andrew was his first year, Youssou was right on his tail. He learned a great deal from Andrew with work ethic and so forth.”
That Ndoye saw game action that first year was by chance. If not for an injury to Marquise Simmons during the Bonnies opener, Ndoye might have spent the season as a redshirt. But he showed glimpses netting four points and corralling two rebounds in 13 minutes of action as Bona upended Xavier, 67-56 in the A-10 title game.
Since then Ndoye has turned potential into performance.
“He’s worked so hard,” Schmidt stated. “When he came in, he was so raw. He hadn’t played a lot of basketball…He’s our hardest worker. He cares the most. You always want to see a kid who puts in the time have success, and he’s had that.”
The Bonnies (10-6/3-2) travel to Pittsburgh, Thursday to take on Duquesne (6-10/1-4). The Dukes, with their 2-3 zone, present a challenge for Ndoye.
“He is such a focal point of their offense,” Duquesne’s Jim Ferry said. “What amazes me is how they play with such offensive confidence just as a team in general, and Nodye is doing that as well. He’s an absolute matchup problem because of his size, his length and athletic ability. We’re going to have to slow him down a little bit.”
Ndoye’s performance earned him conference player of the week – an award he shared with Dayton’s Dyshawn Pierre. Last Wednesday, he netted a career-high 28 and grabbed 13 rebounds as Bona defeated George Mason, 75-55.
“He works really hard,” George Mason’s Paul Hewitt said. “He does the simple things. He runs the floor really hard. The young man’s work ethic has propelled him into a very nice senior season for Bonaventure.”
Ndoye connected on 9 of 11 shots from the field against Mason. He hit 10 of 11 free throws, blocked three shots, had two steals and dished one dime.
In the previous week when Bona dropped a pair, Ndoye scored 12 and grabbed 15 boards in the contests combined.
“When he plays well, like he did against George Mason, we’re a much better team both offensively and defensively,” Schmidt said. “He’s a kid who really cares. He’s a great teammate. He epitomizes what we try to do from an academic standpoint at Bonaventure. From a social standpoint, he’s a terrific kid. Whatever he does well, you feel good for him.”
With any luck, Ndoye will have a few more twitter moments before his time at Bona ends. And the only thing he will need to expose is his game.
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