By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
When St. Bonaventure leaves Richmond, Va. on Friday night, things will not be the same as when the team departed from Bradford, Pa. on Thursday.
The Bonnies would not only retain sole possession of first place with a win over VCU, they would sweep the first home-and-home series between the programs. They would also add a second Quadrant 1 victory to their resume, bolstering an already formidable NCAA Tournament case.
If VCU wins, however, Bona relinquishes the league lead for the first time since Jan. 14. A team that dropped 10 spots in the NCAA NET rankings after last Saturday’s loss at Saint Louis would likely slide further, destabilizing its position on the right side of the bubble to an extent.
This will all take place on ESPN2 at 7, the only national TV game the NCAA selection committee will have eyes on at the time. The ambiguous “eye test” and concrete numbers meet for the rematch of Bona’s 70-54 victory at the Reilly Center on Jan. 20.
“Where some teams are starting to pack up their uniforms, our guys at VCU are saying, ‘Hey, the next game’s even bigger. This is great,'” Rams coach Mike Rhoades told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “And that’s why you come to VCU, that’s the fun of it.”
The surging Rams are 4-0 since they watched a 15-point halftime lead evaporate in a little over five minutes in the Southern Tier. Three days after the Bonnies held them to 14 second-half points, they outscored Dayton 33-13 in the first half at Siegel Center.
Mike Rhodes’s team swept Dayton, fended off La Salle on Jan. 30 and downed Rhode Island on Bones Hyland’s 3-pointer with five seconds left on Feb. 3 in Kingston. VCU is included in 62 of 101 bracket prognostications on BracketMatrix.com, with ESPN’s Joe Lunardi placing them in the First Four.
“In order for us to win,” Mark Schmidt said, “we’ve gotta play like we played in the second half of the first game. Everybody’s better at home, and VCU certainly is. They’ll shoot it better. It’s gonna be another challenge. We beat them and they won four straight games since then, so they’ve got a lot of momentum… We’ve got our hands full.”
Schmidt has long called gameplanning for VCU a unique challenge because the Bonnies can’t simulate the “Havoc” defense in practice. Twenty minutes of spellbinding offense, while a source of confidence, doesn’t change that.
“I would assume that just like we make adjustments, they’ll make adjustments off of our first game,” Schmidt commented. “It gives our guys confidence that they can play with them; the last two times, they beat us pretty convincingly. So it gives our guys some confidence but at the same time, it’s a whole different game.
“We’ve gotta get off to a better start. We’ve gotta play better than we did in game one if we expect to win. I know they’re gonna play much better.”
Hyland has averaged 23.5 points on 50.9 percent shooting over the win streak, swishing 16 total 3-pointers. He recorded an impressive 13-point first half against Bona but has found another gear since, achieving three 20-point games including a conference career-high 28 against Dayton.
If Hyland and his teammates have any flaw, it’s that while they benefit from many takeaways, they also commit more turnovers than 11 of their 13 league counterparts.
Bona had a relatively clean five-turnover second half in the first meeting. VCU committed 19 total turnovers, Hyland responsible for five of them at the point, and the Bonnies scored 26 of their 70 points off those miscues.
“I think it’s just a pace thing,” Schmidt assessed. “We did a good job of turning them over. They made some mistakes, some of it was unforced. But they play really fast. When you play fast, you’re gonna turn the ball over. But they play fast on defense, too, and they create turnovers.
“One of the keys is not turning the ball over, not giving them live-ball turnovers where they can go off. And we did a good job in game one and hopefully we can duplicate that in game two.”
The Rams continue to dominate at home, carrying a 7-1 mark at Siegel Center with Rhode Island the lone blemish. Schmidt, whose Bona teams are 1-3 at VCU, knows every seat in the arena would be filled under normal circumstances. Home court advantage, he acknowledged, is different this year.
“It still matters but it doesn’t matter nearly as much,” Schmidt said. “Just like when teams come to the Reilly Center, our home court advantage is not nearly what it is when we have a full house. That’s just like anywhere. Some programs don’t have the fan base that some other programs have, so they’re not hurt as bad, but for us it’s a big disadvantage.
“I would assume for VCU it’s a big disadvantage because that place is electric when it’s sold out; it’s that much more difficult to play. It still is an advantage… the travel, and the familiarity with the surroundings, and they’re used to the rims and all that stuff. But it’s not as big as if it was packed like it usually is.”
Bona is 3-6 against VCU since the Rams joined the league in 2012-13, though the people of Western New York will quickly claim the Feb. 4, 2017 spectacle. Only three A-10 programs can say they’ve swept the Rams in a regular season series. Schmidt believes the Bonnies have it in them to become the fourth.
“I think our guys know how to beat them,” Schmidt said, “but it’s one thing to say it and one thing to do it, you know? It’s hard to simulate their pressure. We know how to break it in practice but it’s harder when they’re going at you full speed and so forth.
“We’re looking forward to the challenge but it’s gonna be a great challenge.”
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