By Paul Gotham
BROOKLYN — Like an old friend showing up at the right time, St. Bonaventure’s defense held serve long enough for their offense to find its rhythm.
Youssou Ndoye netted 18 and Marcus Posley added 13 as the No. 7-seed St. Bonaventure Bonnies downed the No. 10-seed Saint Joseph’s Hawks, 60-49 at the Barclays Center, Thursday. With the win SBU advanced to the quarter-finals of the Atlantic 10 championship.
Posley sparked a 10-0 run early in the second half as the Bonnies grabbed the lead and did not surrender it.
Trailing by seven, Dion Wright started the decisive run with an offensive rebound and jump hook in the lane. Posley followed with a deep three-pointer in transition. The junior guard threaded the needle with a diagonal bounce pass past a pair of opposing defenders to Wright for a layup on the break. Andell Cumberbatch converted a steal, layup and one to give Bona the lead at 37-34.
“We weren’t executing well,” St. Bonaventure’s head coach Mark Schmidt said. “We weren’t playing good halfcourt offense, and you want to try to get easy baskets and the best way to get easy baskets is to get it off your defense. We got some steals and some dunks, and it got us going.”
The Bonnies recovered from a first half where they hit 9 of 27 from the floor and trailed by as many as 10 points.
“Just to keep attacking,” Posley said of the second half mindset on offense. “We were getting, you know, decent shots and good looks. We just had to knock the shots down. But unfortunately they didn’t fall like the way we wanted to the first half. But the second half we sparked it up defensively a little bit. Just found our rhythm.”
“They played downhill, and we played sideways early in the second half,” Saint Joseph’s Phil Martelli noted.
The Bonnies limited Saint Joseph’s to 5 of 29 shooting for the second half and 14 of 55 for the game.
“I thought our defense was critical in the first half,” Schmidt said. “We could have been down by 15, 20 points if we didn’t defend, that’s how bad our offense was.”
Most notably, Bona held DeAndre’ Bembry to 12 points on 3 of 14 shooting. The first-team All-Atlantic 10 performer came in averaging 17.9 points per game including a 27-point outing earlier in the season at St. Bonaventure.
“You know, he didn’t shoot the ball (well),” Schmidt explained. “He had some open looks and he missed. But look, like I said it was an emphasis of switching out on him and not giving him too many open looks and any time he had the ball, take an extra step to him. Treat him like he’s the best player on the court and that’s what we tried to do. Our guys were really successful and, like I said, he missed some open shots, but I think our defense had something to do with it.”
The Hawks connected just twice from the floor in the game’s final ten minutes. Bembry opened the second half going the length of the floor for a layup after stealing an inbound pass. Isaiah Miles hit a three-pointer from the top. Then came a pair of missed layups and missed free throw.
“I just think that the basket got smaller,” Martelli said. “To begin the second half, we got, we had a nice flow and we missed two layups and missed a foul shot before the first media time‑out. And there was a little angst. There was certainly angst.
“It was that stretch right away in the start of the second half. And the looks, some of the looks were hurried. I thought DeAndre’ hurried tonight. And some of the looks were good. But if you shoot a ball in this game and don’t think it’s going in, it’s not going in. And I think that you could tell by body language and facial expressions, that we were shooting hoping to make it, not thinking it was going in.”
Bona pushed the lead to double digits when Posley led Youssou Ndoye with a diagonal pass for a dunk. Posley followed with a pair of free throws on the next trip, and Bona led 55-45 with 1:09 remaining.
SBU’s Denzel Gregg grabbed a career and game-high 15 rebounds as the Bonnies won the battle of the boards 48-33.
“Tremendous,” Schmidt said of the sophomore forward. “Really active. It’s funny, everybody gets caught up in points, and here is a kid, he has two points but has a huge impact in the game, both defensively and offensively on the backboard, and for our three man to play 34 minutes and get 15 rebounds, that’s a heck of a performance and that’s one of the reasons why we had the success we had.”
The Bonnies outscored Saint Joseph’s in the paint (30-20), second-chance points (9-6) and on the fast break (10-4).
The Hawks had a 17-12 advantage on points off turnovers and bench production 8-0.
Isaiah Miles finished with 19 points for Saint Joseph’s.
Wright chipped in 15 points for Bona. Cumberbatch had 12. Ndoye had 18.
St. Bonaventure plays No.2-seed Dayton in the quarter-finals.
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