By PAUL GOTHAM
OLEAN, N.Y. — Dion Wright didn’t get the start. Marcus Posley‘s hip is still less than a hundred percent. Jaylen Adams picked up his second foul less than three minutes into the game, but the St. Bonaventure Bonnies outlasted the George Washington Colonials for a 64-57 victory in Atlantic 10 action at the Reilly Center Saturday.
Adams scored six of his team-high 19 during an 11-4 run to start the second half as St. Bonaventure took a commanding lead and held on from there.
Clinging to a five-point lead at the half, Adams came out and drilled back-to-back 3-pointers to jump start the Bonnies to their fifth straight win.
The sophomore guard missed all three of his attempts during 11 minutes played in the first half.
“I was a little frustrated in the first half with fouls,” Adams said. “I just came out and wanted to make plays. They put the ball in my hands and gave me the opportunity to do so.”
Adams nailed a triple from the top of the key to start the stanza. On the next trip down the floor, the 6-2 point guard stepped back from a ball screen and connected over GW’s 6-10 forward Kevin Larsen.
“The whole game I think they were switching the five man on to me,” Adams explained. “Early in the game I didn’t think I did a good job taking advantage of the switch. When I got in there in the second half, I made it a priority to take advantage of that switch.”
The Bonnies, who scored on just 13 of 33 first-half possessions, converted on 11 of 18 trips to start the second half.
Coming out of a timeout, Bona’s defense forced a five-second violation on an inbound pass. Adams followed with a catch-and-shoot trey for a 51-38 SBU advantage with 7:44 left in the game. He connected on all seven of his attempts in the second half including three from long range.
“I chalk that up to the work,” Adams stated. “When you work hard, you’re confident coming into the game. I was confident in myself. Once I saw one go down, kinda just kept taking them.”
The Bonnies limited GW, coming into the game shooting 42.5 percent from the floor, to 21-of-59 (35.6 percent). Bona forced 16 Colonial turnovers.
“It wasn’t a pretty game, offensively,” St. Bonaventure head coach Mark Schmidt said. “Our guys couldn’t have played harder. The effort was incredible.
“The way we defended. I’ve been saying it all year, everybody talks about how good an offense we have and so forth. I said it from day one you win in this league by playing defense and being tough, physically and mentally. We didn’t play offense well at all. Jay hit some shots. Thankfully so. We made plays when we needed to make plays offensively, but we won this game because we defended the best we’ve defended all year.”
Sorting out the numbers
Bona outscored the Colonials in points off turnovers (20-10), second-chance points (12-10) and bench points (15-4). The Bonnies also outscored GW at the free throw line 12-10.
“Guys stepped up,” Schmidt said. “It’s not always how big you are. It’s how big you play. It’s toughness. It’s being scrappy. We talked about before the game being a junk yard dog mentality, being a blue-collar team. That’s what we were. We didn’t play perfect, but we played hard. When you play that hard, it makes up for a lot of deficiencies. We tried to dig out, double team them, and we tried to have good ball pressure.”
The Colonials had a 42-35 advantage in rebounds.
The Price You Pay
Tyler Cavanaugh entered the game netting double figures in all 24 of George Washington’s games. The junior forward finished with 17, but it came at a price. Cavanaugh, who came in shooting 50 percent from the floor, hit just 3-of-13 shots on the day including just 1-of-5 from long range. He finished with zero assists and six turnovers. Wright and redshirt freshman Jordan Tyson shouldered the assignment to slow GW’s leading scorer.
At the same time, the duo limited Larsen to seven points on 3-of-8 shooting.
“We switched a ton,” Schmidt explained. “We were switching one through four. We switched a lot of cross screens – four and five, so it wasn’t just Dion covering Cavanaugh and Jordan covering Larsen. I thought both those guys did a great job physically. Jordan is a young kid. Larsen’s a man. I thought Jordan really, physically matched up with him. He blocked some shots. He defended the block. We didn’t have to double down as much.”
Figuring out the Colonials
SBU’s win snapped a three-game losing streak to GW. The Colonials have taken eight of the last 11 in the series.
“In the past I think we played George Washington on our heels a little bit,” Schmidt said. “I thought we did a better job of attacking them both offensively and defensively. That helped us.”
Punching the clock
Wright came off the bench for the first time this season after being late for a team meeting.
“We try to teach some life lessons here,” Schmidt stated. “It’s not all about winning games. He was late. He didn’t start, but I thought he was terrific. He didn’t sulk… We wouldn’t have won the game without Dion’s efforts.”
Wright finished with 12 points and six rebounds. The senior forward leads the A-10 with 11 double-doubles.
Looking ahead
Bona (17-6/9-3) plays at La Salle on Wednesday. The Bonnies now sit in fourth with a two-game lead over George Washington.
GW (18-7/7-5) travels to Duquesne on Wednesday.
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