By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
Two teams, Mark Schmidt reminds us every year, end the season happy with its conclusion: the NCAA Tournament and NIT champions. Sometimes the CBI and CIT title winners also fall into this group, but that’s still about one percent of the 350 Division I teams who leave satisfied.
As a result, many of these Brown & White TBT’ers have ended their last seasons, wrapped their collegiate careers, with puffy eyes and choked-up interviews.
Marcus Posley and Dion Wright lost a shocking final contest to Wagner in the first round of the 2016 NIT after an equally stunning NCAA Tournament omission. Denzel Gregg’s goodbye came not in a traditional basketball venue but the home of the Pittsburgh Penguins. LaDarien Griffin, Idris Taqqee and the 2017-18 squad ran out of gas in forgettable fashion in Dallas.
Their places in Bona lore warranted more fitting sendoffs. The Basketball Tournament, which the Bonnies will finally be part of in July, is a chance for the fans to watch and appreciate their favorite alumni again.
The 64-team TBT bracket is revealed Monday afternoon. After months of planning and a year removed from being omitted from the field, Derek Howard, Dave Moore and the confirmed participants are awash with excitement.
Howard, known best to the Bonaventure fan base as SBUnfurled on Twitter and co-host of the SBUnfurled and Friends podcast, took the general manager role to organize the team after years of watching the tournament on television. After securing commitments from Gregg, Griffin, Posley, Wright, Demitrius Conger, Da’Quan Cook and Chris Johnson, he believes they can compete for the $1 million prize.
Howard also made former Big Sky Player of the Year Davion Berry and Cincinnati alum Cane Broome honorary Bonnies for next month’s action. Former Bona assistant Dave Moore and Bona alum Steve Marcus, who now coaches the St. John’s Edge in the National Basketball League of Canada, will helm the bench along with Taqqee.
“We have, and will continue to have, so many guys playing at a high level professionally, on top of a rabid, basketball-crazed fan base,” Howard explained. “We think we can eventually consistently be one of the best teams in TBT. We’ve been trying to get it off the ground for a couple years now, and we had a team ready to compete last summer before COVID caused them to drastically cut the field.”
For Moore, who was an assistant at Bonaventure for 11 years before accepting a head coaching position at Division II West Georgia, the opportunity to coach many of his former players again was too good to pass up.
“It’s a great opportunity to see our guys again, get to coach them as professional basketball players,” Moore assessed. “I was watching the TBT on ESPN a few years ago and started thinking about the team of SBU guys we could put together for this thing and have a great chance to win it. Derek Howard reached out to me about being a part of the Brown & White and I jumped at the chance.”
The Brown & White will face stark competition no matter the draw, which will likely place them in the Columbus, Ohio region. Ohio State’s Carmen’s Crew will play on its own campus, for instance, while Dayton University’s Red Scare squad is a perennial contender. The Syracuse Orange of the past comprise Boeheim’s Army, while Marquette’s Golden Eagles are the defending champions.
Winning games in The Tournament can bring added exposure to the entire program. Not only is the tournament nationally broadcast on ESPN networks, its untimed “Elam Ending” format provides some of the most thrilling finishes in basketball. Players like Ot Elmore who weren’t college stars but get hot in July become cult legends of sorts.
“I think it’ll give our program more exposure during what were previously quiet summer months, and allow us to show off how many really good alums there are,” Howard acknowledged. “The players and coaches also just want to get back together to catch up, because they’ve been all over the globe playing and probably haven’t been able to see each other much since graduation, if at all.”
The Brown & White expect to create a new summer tradition in conjunction with TBT, envisioning a future week-long minicamp in the Reilly Center before leaving for the tournament. Events would include a Brown vs. White scrimmage and skills competition. Renovations to the Reilly Center precluded such a homecoming this year.
With Bona’s 2021-22 roster all but set, and over four months still remaining until the Bonnies’ first game of their much-anticipated campaign, TBT will whet the fanbase’s hoops appetite.
“What Coach Schmidt has done with the St. Bonaventure program is a special thing,” Moore commented. “TBT gives us a chance to celebrate that by seeing all these guys again as pros.
“I can’t wait.”
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