By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
Dominick Welch found a clear lane to the basket and took it, powering through untouched for a layup. The next possession, Kyle Lofton posted up his defender, found a cutting Osun Osunniyi and celebrated as Osunniyi dunked it and drew a foul.
A new half had started but the Bonnies picked up where they left off entering the locker room. Their paint dominance and snappy ball movement led to as much as a 17-point lead with 14:56 to play, a lead they held throughout in their first game action in 283 calendar days.
The Bonnies managed a late Akron push to take the season opener 81-74 at Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage Arena, outdueling the Zips behind Osunniyi’s 25-point career-high.
Osunniyi, Welch and Lofton combined for 60 points, with the latter two scoring 18 and 17, respectively. The junior trio combined to sit just eight combined minutes despite Osunniyi and coach Mark Schmidt each judging the team as unconditioned after recently quarantining due to positive COVID-19 test results.
“We’re not nearly where we need to be conditioning-wise,” Schmidt remarked. “The players… we’re not where we need to be. We’re sluggish; we didn’t play fast enough; we’re not active all the time. But like I said, it was a good win.”
Any concerns about rust from the layoff were assuaged, at least for now, early, when the Bonnies opened the game on a 14-5 run from four scorers over the first six minutes. A 20-11 run from the 12:30 mark to 3:57 extended their lead to 13, the largest lead of the first 20 minutes.
Akron didn’t cut the margin to single-digits again until there were four minutes left in the contest. Each time the advantage snuck under 10 points, Bona seemed to have an answer: a Jalen Adaway layup with 3:53 to play, two of his six points in his SBU debut; Lofton free throws, part of a 7-for-8 performance at the stripe; one of Welch’s three steals, which tied a career high.
Bona wasn’t perfect, making just one of its 14 3-point attempts, missing eight free throws and committing seven second-half turnovers after a clean three-turnover first. But the team shot over 46 percent from the field, held Zips not named Loren Cristian Jackson to 52 points and were rewarded for their active hands with 18 fastbreak points in the open floor.
“When you play in an arena as big as this,” Schmidt said, “it’s hard to shoot from the perimeter. That’s just the way it goes. We’ve never been in here; the backdrop is much different. So I thought our guys were smart and attacked the basket and got the ball into ‘Shoon. We attacked, we got a lot of layups against their 1-3-1 (zone defense), even against their man-to-man.
“We were aggressive. We’ve gotta get better, but to have 56 out of 81 points in the paint tells you that our guys were aggressive, and we’ve gotta continue to be like that. It’s good to score 81 points shooting 1-for-14. That’s good. That’s a positive… scoring 81 points when only three of them came from behind the arc.”
Osunniyi made 10 field goals for the first time since a Feb. 26 loss to Duquesne; he was also 10-of-15 from the field in that game. Despite the gaudy numbers, he still mused over missing four of nine free throws and a hook shot or two that didn’t catch bottom.
“It was disappointing when he shot three bricks from the foul line the first three shots,” Schmidt said of Osunniyi with a smirk, turning to look at Osunniyi in the makeshift interview room in the basement of the arena, “but I thought he played really well. Gave us that inside scoring, even hit a 13-footer that he’s been working on. He’s been putting in the time, and I know he was disappointed going 0-for-3 but he came back and made them at the end. We need him to do that.”
Like Schmidt, Osunniyi also expressed conditioning concerns.
“I guess you could say we did a good job of hiding it,” Osunniyi said, “but as Coach touched on… we’re not in the shape we need to be in to play at the level that we should be playing in. Me personally, during the middle to the first half I was like, lacking behind a little bit because I was so out of shape. And at points in the second half I was just walking around.
“But we know that we have to get in shape; we have to get better conditioning-wise if we want to play at the level we want to play at and be the team we know we can be. As far as conditioning, we’ve just gotta keep working at practice every day and getting extra hours in.”
Three Bonnies made their team debuts, with Jalen Adaway earning a spot in the starting lineup. Adaway made three of his five shot attempts and grabbed two rebounds in 27 minutes. Eddie Creal played 14 minutes and scored his first two baskets but mainly impressed Schmidt with his work on the offensive glass, grabbing four rebounds. Jalen Shaw appeared in two minutes during a breather for Osunniyi, missing his only shot but grabbing a rebound and establishing toughness in a jump ball tie-up, pulling the ball away with a smile.
The victory marks Bonaventure’s first season-opening win since the 2016-17 opener. The positives were plenty, but Bona also left some to the imagination: if SBU was out of shape today, what’s the team going to look like when its conditioning is up to standard?
“There’s been so many challenges,” Schmidt said, “but I know our guys, they were so excited to play. They were sick of practicing and me yelling all the time. It was just, from a mental standpoint, they needed to play a game. I didn’t know how it was gonna go, but I knew the kids were excited to play.
“The hope was that it went well. Like I said, we’ve got a lot of things that we’ve gotta get better at. But our goal as players and as coaches is to get better and better as the season goes along and try to peak at the end of the year. That’s the goal, but it’s good to be 1-0. It’s good to win.”
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