By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
BUFFALO — Malik Johnson knew a charge opportunity was coming by reading the St. Bonaventure defense.
“They were kind of running that little rub action play, where (Justin) Winston, he wouldn’t really set the screen,” Johnson recalled of the contentious play with 34 seconds left on Saturday. “So I knew he was trying to get downhill, and I knew if I beat him to the spot (and) took it in my chest, then most likely it was gonna be a charge.”
Johnson, who led Canisius with 15 points, got the call to stay up by two. The Golden Griffins went on to defeat the Bonnies 61-57 in front of 3,821 fans at KeyBank Center.
The pivotal moment represented peak frustration for a Bona squad that did not roll over the momentum from last Saturday’s victory over Rutgers into a winning streak. The Bonnies fell to 1-4, matching last season’s five-game start.
SBU jumped to a 9-3 lead over the first three minutes but was outscored 19-9 over the next eight. Rebounding was Canisius’s glaring weakness before the game but played a major role in its 35-27 halftime lead as the Griffins had almost as many offensive rebounds (eight) as Bonaventure had total boards (10) in the opening period.
“I thought going into the game, (rebounding) was one of their weaknesses that they had. They were getting outrebounded by nine,” Bonnies coach Mark Schmidt noted. “But they just did a terrific job. Every time we got a stop, it seemed like one of those guys got an offensive rebound and had a putback. Physically, we got manhandled in the paint.”
The Bonnies worked their way back into the game, holding Canisius to just 7-of-24 field goal shooting (29.2 percent) in the second half and weathering Canisius’s continued advantage on the glass. Lofton scored 13 points on 4-of-8 shooting from the floor, while Johnson made just one of his seven field goal tries and the Griffins committed nine turnovers.
Despite an inefficient offense that received just two bench points and saw players not named Lofton and Winston combine to convert just seven of their 23 attempts, a pair of Amadi Ikpeze free throws signaled just a one-basket game with 1:22 remaining.
The charge on Lofton, right or wrong, swung momentum back into the Griffins’ favor. Johnson drew a foul on Welch at the other end and drained both free throws to make it a two-possession game again. Alejandro Vasquez gave the brown and white life when he was fouled from behind the three-point arc by Corey Brown and had a chance to bring the deficit to one point with 15 seconds left, but he missed two of three at the stripe.
Though it wasn’t Johnson’s “A” game, he only missed one freebie down the stretch. Canisius got a boost from Jacco Fritz, who posted a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds, and held on despite 61 points representing its lowest offensive output in a win in coach Reggie Witherspoon’s tenure.
Winston has scored 53 points and grabbed 17 rebounds over the last four games. His 37 minutes played on Saturday were an early career high. But Vasquez couldn’t compound on his strong performance in Toronto, scoring just five points as a follow-up. Matt Johnson missed all three of his shot attempts, while Bobby Planutis made one of five in limited minutes.
If the metaphorical “light” turned on for the newcomers in Canada, as Schmidt termed their surge against Rutgers, it flickered off again in Buffalo.
“Defensively, we did a decent job; we just couldn’t rebound the ball… and then offensively, we were really bad,” Schmidt assessed. “We got to the foul line, which was good, but we just couldn’t get anything going offensively. Nothing inside, we weren’t pushing the ball and we never got any easy baskets…
“You can coach the zone and you can coach how to guard their stuff, but when the ball goes up, not much coaching going on. There’s no name on (the ball), you’ve gotta go get it. They did a good job and got it.”
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