By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
Considering the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team’s starters have two to four years of experience in the system and the nine newcomers are learning the playbook for the first time, the coaching staff has been finding ways to keep everyone engaged.
“The veteran guys know exactly what we’re putting in,” Bonnies head coach Mark Schmidt acknowledged on Tuesday. “We put a few different things in just to keep their brains alive.”
Their brains will need to be lively next Saturday, when Kent State enters the Reilly Center for a closed scrimmage to break the monotony of daily practice. The scrimmage will be telling, not as much for the score (the Golden Flashes finished fourth in a one-bid Mid-American Conference last season) but for the clarity it will provide Schmidt regarding his rotation. Beyond the first five, that depth chart has yet to crystallize.
“We haven’t got our top eight or nine guys yet,” Schmidt said. “That will take place in a week or so.”
Point guards Quadry Adams and Joryam Saizonou will not only factor for reserve minutes this season, but for a starting job when Kyle Lofton graduates. Abdoul Karim Coulibaly and Oluwasegun Durosinmi have an opportunity to both spell Osun Osunniyi at center and substitute for Jalen Adaway at the ‘four’ position, if Schmidt fancies a large lineup at any point. Sharp-shooting junior college transfer Linton Brown, high-rising Dutch import Anouar Mellouk and lanky freshman Justin Ndjock-Tadjore are candidates to play in the backcourt or on the wings.
Schmidt has alluded to multiple players being capable of ingratiating themselves into his famously thin substitution pattern. Like most preseasons, he said the Bonnies have their good practices as well as their subpar showings. The team conducted an intrasquad scrimmage on Oct. 16, with the teams evenly comprised of veterans and first-year players.
“Like anything, the experienced guys are ahead of the young guys. The young guys are still trying to learn their way and learn the system,” Schmidt noted. “From a basketball perspective, when you really don’t know what you’re doing, it’s really hard to play. The first two and a half weeks we’ve been trying to put things in. …
“Some guys step up and play well one day and they play bad the next day. It’s typical early-season practices, a lot of fundamentals and so forth. The guys are really excited. I’ve gotten great leadership from our five seniors.”
That leadership, Schmidt explained, made it impossible to bestow the “captain” label on only a fraction of his senior class. Dominick Welch was named a captain for the first time, joining prior captains Adaway, Holmes, Lofton and Osunniyi.
“That was a team decision. I thought all those five seniors deserve to be captains,” Schmidt commented. “They’ve put a lot into this program, they had a lot to do with our success last year and to leave one of those kids out wouldn’t have been right. All five of those guys have really worked hard and they deserve to be captains of the team.”
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