By PAUL GOTHAM
ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — The Davidson Wildcats hadn’t lost a game this season when scoring 80 or more points. That is until Saturday night.
Marcus Posley keyed a 15-4 second-half run, and Jaylen Adams finished with a career night as the St. Bonaventure Bonnies defeated Davidson, 97-85 in Atlantic 10 action.
Posley scored eight of his 19 points as the Bonnies turned a two-point second-half deficit into a nine-point advantage. The senior guard knotted the game at 73 with with an end-to-end rush for a layup. After Davidson’s Andrew McAuliffe converted a pick and roll with Jordan Watkins, Posley split the defense with a drive from the top of the key for another basket.
Denzel Gregg gave the Bonnies a lead they never surrendered with a triple from the left corner as the shot clock expired.
Posley followed with another drive for a deuce. Idris Taqqee made it a ten-point game when he grabbed a loose ball in the lane and finished. Bona led 86-76 with 2:09 remaining.
“The game of basketball is a game of runs,” Bona head coach Mark Schmidt said. “We had a big run there, and we finished them off.
“We handled some adversity. We made big plays when we needed to make the plays. We did a good job. We took care of the ball.”
Despite playing just 20 minutes because of foul trouble, Dion Wright scored 12 points and recorded the 500th rebound of his career.
Schmidt is now tied with Mike Reilly for fourth on the all-time wins list with 133.
Davidson (8-4/0-1) led by as many as six in the second half. The Wildcats three previous losses came to then No. 9 North Carolina (98-65), Pittsburgh (94-69) and California (86-60). All three setbacks came on the road. Davidson has averaged 88 points in their eight wins.
“‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky”
Adams connected on seven of 13 from the floor including five of eight from behind the arc to finish with a game-high 30 points. The sophomore point guard is a combined 24-for-37 from behind the arc (65 percent) over the last five games. He added four assists, six rebounds and a steal to bring his five-game totals to 30 assists, 21 rebounds, and seven steals.
“It goes back to preparation,” Adams said. “I got open looks. Open looks got me going. After that, the contested ones started falling too.”
“Everybody better move over that’s all. ‘Cause I’m riding on the bad side. I got my back to the wall.”
At halftime, the score was knotted at 43. Posley accounted for exactly two points. That’s right. The Bonnies leading scorer from a year ago, a pre-season all-conference selection managed to hit one of two field goals. This coming after a six-point performance in SBU’s most recent win over Niagara. Posley’s only three-pointer of the night came early in the second half. It was fitting. After going 0-for-5 against the Purple Eagles, Posley missed one triple attempt in the first half of Saturday’s game. His make? It caught iron, glanced off the board, came down and rattled around before falling. The senior guard went off the dribble for the rest of the night finishing 7-of-12.
“I was just lucky to get the rhythm in the second half,” Posley said. Had a slow start, but I was able to gain things back in the second half.
“It’s just a hooper’s mentality. When you’re feeling it, you’re feeling it. You see red and you just keep attacking, attacking until they stop you. That was just the case in the second.”
“When he’s attacking the basket, he’s effective,” Schmidt said. “It’s a little bit easier against Davidson because they don’t have a shot blocker per se. You’re going in there and you don’t have a big hand trying to come and swat it. That was the game plan to try and attack the paint, own the paint. I thought Marcus was a big part of that.”
Bona outscored Davidson 42-26 in the paint.
Band of brothers
Davidson’s Jack Gibbs came into the game leading the A-10 with 24.6 points per game. The junior guard had scored 35 or more on four occasions this season reaching 40 twice. He looked ready to add to that number when he tallied his 15th point of the game with 8:11 to go in the first half. From there, he hit just one field goal and scored three points for the rest of the game.
“We couldn’t allow him to get 30 against us,” Schmidt said. “I thought our guys really responded. It was a team effort. It was four guys out there making sure that he didn’t get open looks. He missed some, but at the same time I thought we did a great job and had a great effort.
“We switched one through four just so we could get out on the screens. There wasn’t one guy that was getting scored on and one guy that was defending. The way they run their offense it’s so effective and efficient that if you don’t switch it, you’re going to give (up) wide open shots. The goal was to try and knock them off the line, have ‘em try to shoot a low percentage of threes. You can’t let them shoot a high percentage of threes. They’ll kill you.”
Turning point
Wright fouled out of the game with 3:48 to go and Bona clinging to a slight four-point edge. With their leading scorer going to the bench, it looked like desperate times for the Brown and White. Sensing an advantage, Davidson’s Bob McKillop had his Wildcats go with a 1-3-1 on defense the next trip down the floor, It was the only possession of the odd-front zone played by Davidson during the second stanza. Rather than giving into the different look, Denzel Gregg found redshirt freshman Jordan Tyson underneath for a layup.
“Oooh, Ooooh growing up…”
Tyson logged a career high 18 minutes and responded with five rebounds and a block. He wasn’t the only young ‘un to contribute. Freshman Derrick Woods registered a career-high 11 points and matched a career-best with five rebounds. The 6-8 forward also added a block.
Is there a Wally Pipp out there?
With Davidson’s second leading scorer, Brian Sullivan (14.8 ppg), sidelined, Watkins stepped into the starting lineup. The sophomore guard was 5-of-28 from behind the arc going into the game. He finished 6-of-8 from long range and a team-high 23 point to go with three assists and two steals.
“I told the guys ‘don’t sleep on this kid,”‘ Schmidt said of Watkins. “I could tell when we played them last year. He’s got a great first step. You always have on good teams you always have someone come in and step it up, and he did. We saw that last year. We saw it on tape. He comes off the bench when Sullivan starts and really does a great job scoring the basketball. When he got it going, confidence goes up. If you’re shooter, that basket gets bigger and bigger.”
Looking ahead
Bona plays at George Mason on Wednesday.
Video courtesy of St. Bonaventure Athletics.
Other games in the Atlantic 10
Saint Joseph’s 77 Richmond 73
DeAndre’ Bembry’s fadeaway jumper with 26.9 seconds to go proved to be the gamewinner as Saint Joseph’s won its seventh in a row, defeating Richmond, 77-73, at the Robins Center in the Atlantic 10 opener for both teams. SJU is now 11-2 (1-0 A-10) while Richmond drops to 8-5 (0-1 A-10). READ MORE.
Video
Video courtesy of the Atlantic 10.
Dayton 66 Duquesne 58
PITTSBURGH – Charles Cooke scored 21 points to lead the Dayton Flyers to a 66-58 road victory over the Duquesne Dukes. READ MORE.
Video courtesy of the University of Dayton Athletics.
VCU 71 George Mason 47
Melvin Johnson scored a game-high 22 points and Ahmed Hamdy-Mohamed added a career-high 16 and eight rebounds in 17 minutes of play as VCU pulled away from George Mason in the second half for a 71-47 victory at the Siegel Center in the Atlantic 10 Conference opener for both teams. READ MORE.
Video courtesy of VCU athletics.
Rhode Island 85 Saint Louis 57
The Rams never trailed in the ballgame and jumped out to an 18-3 lead just six minutes into the ballgame. Nicola Akele knocked down two 3-pointers as URI connected on its first four attempts from beyond the arc during the stretch. READ MORE.
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