Bonnies basketball August notebook

By CHUCKIE MAGGIO

As an eventful St. Bonaventure basketball summer winds down, incoming freshman Dominick Welch took to Twitter on Monday to express his thoughts about August.

“Basketball season needs to hurry back up!!” the Buffalo native tweeted. “This is the most boring time of year frfr. (sic)”

The tweet was consistent with the offseason vibe Welch and the rest of the Bona newcomers present on their social media platforms: they just want to play ball.

The dog days of summer will keep the Bonnies waiting, but the NCAA did shorten the lull by approving an earlier start to the college season. SBU’s current season countdowns stand as follows: 46 days until the first day of practice (Sept. 24), 84 days until the exhibition game against Alfred (Nov. 2) and 89 days until opening night against Bucknell (Nov. 7).

Bonaventure hoops-related headlines will likely be few and far between until the Atlantic 10 releases its 2019 conference schedule in September. Until then, there have been a few recent noteworthy topics:

The non-conference schedule is complete. Dates at Niagara and Northeastern were the final two pieces to finalize. The Bonnies will play 13 games before A-10 play, the most since they played 14 in the 2013-14 season. A Dec. 29 date at Syracuse means the A-10 season will start after New Year’s for the first time since 2015-16.

Syracuse, Buffalo and Vermont are arguably Bona’s three most important standalone (non-Cayman Classic) non-league games, as all three are projected NCAA Tournament teams according to ESPN bracketology expert Joe Lunardi. The Vermont and Northeastern contests are three days apart, making for a fun road trip for head coach Mark Schmidt and associate head coach Steve Curran, both New England natives.

For Schmidt and the SBU program, December could be a milestone month. The 12th-year coach is 10 wins away from tying Larry Weise‘s program record of 202 coaching victories. If Bona can reach win No. 10 in the non-conference, Schmidt will tie the mark in one of four places: the Reilly Center; the state of Vermont, where he started his assistant coaching career at St. Michael’s College; his home state of Massachusetts; or the Carrier Dome. Another successful pre-A-10 record (the Bonnies are 43-17 in non-conference games since 2013) could lead to a nice personal moment for Schmidt and his family.

Poyser, “King of the City.” While Los Angeles’s Drew League pro-am basketball tournament makes most of the headlines in the States, Bonaventure junior Jalen Poyser won a championship in a pro-am north of the border. The UNLV transfer was on the “1 Love T.O.” team that won Toronto’s Crown League on July 27. Poyser scored nine second-half points to help secure the title along with NBA teammates Dillon Brooks and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson.

Poyser’s biggest game of the tournament came in the quarterfinal round, when he scored 24 points off what On Point Basketball called “numerous difficult shots and a dunk that sparked the blowout.”

The 6-foot-4 Poyser averaged 10.4 points a game in his sophomore season at UNLV, good for third on the team. Winning Canada’s premier summer basketball tournament and getting to work with NBA players after a sit-out year where he learned the game from the bench will only aid his development as he is called on to fill part of the scoring void from Jaylen Adams‘ and Matt Mobley‘s departures.

“(Brooks and Hollis-Jefferson) just tell me to keep being aggressive and not take your foot off the acceleration,” Poyser told On Point Basketball. “They tell me to play my regular game at all times.”

How will they line up? Bonaventure brought so much highly-rated talent into the fold this year that many expect the 2018-19 roster to be the deepest Schmidt has ever had. The most-asked questions of the summer have surrounded the starting lineup and rotation: Who starts on opening night? Who will be the first off the bench? What position will each player play? Here’s my current guess at the starting five:

Nelson Kaputo: The senior will finally get his shot at running the offense. Kaputo has run point in the system for three years, doesn’t turn the ball over (35 assists to 15 turnovers last year, 55 assists to 31 turnovers his freshman year) and can score when he has the hot hand, evidenced by his 20-point game against George Mason last season.

Jalen Poyser: In addition to already being a proven high-level Division I scorer, Poyser will also assume some point guard duties; he entered college as a point guard before being switched to shooting guard in the middle of his sophomore season. The biggest question mark surrounding the former four-star prospect will be which player the Bonnies get: the scorer who dropped 24 in an elimination game in the Crown League or the one who shot just 19 percent from three in Mountain West play his sophomore year? Bona wouldn’t have signed him if it didn’t believe it could get the former.

Courtney Stockard: The only question pertaining to Stockard’s spot in the lineup is if he will start at the “three” or the “four,” but the senior should excel in either spot. Many said my prediction that he will lead the A-10 in scoring this season was “bold,” but it’s more realistic than they think.

If Stockard can make up just 10 percent of the 52 points per game the team lost this season from Adams, Mobley, Idris Taqqee, Josh Ayeni and Izaiah Brockington, he will be averaging 18.5 points a game, which would have been good for the scoring lead in three of the last seven seasons. That mark would be on par with Andrew Nicholson‘s 2011-12 scoring average. All Stockard has to do is hit an extra two-pointer and three-pointer each game, which is entirely possible and frankly necessary as he becomes the squad’s No. 1 or No. 2 scoring option.

The 18.5 number was just an example and may not be enough in an era of college hoops where players are regularly averaging 20 points per contest. Stockard may have to make up 15 percent of the lost scoring instead of 10. Either way, bet on him being among the scoring leaders this year.

LaDarien Griffin: Griffin was voted co-most improved player by the league’s coaches last season. This go-around, expect the senior to be in the all-league conversation for his contributions on both sides of the court.

Amadi Ikpeze: Ikpeze reshaped his body last offseason and started the last nine games of last season, thriving in the new role. The Buffalo native grabbed five or more rebounds seven times and scored eight or more points on eight occasions. As the incumbent center, the job is his unless freshman Osun Osunniyi can unseat him.