By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
St. Bonaventure, save for a haphazard first half against Canisius and 11 tumultuous seconds against Buffalo, has taken fine care of the basketball this season. The Bonnies are tied for 20th nationally in fewest turnovers per possession, turning the ball over on just 14.4 percent of their trips. They are also 32nd in the country in assist-to-turnover ratio, with 111 assists to just 80 turnovers.
SBU aims to continue that mistake-resistant play on Wednesday night, when it hosts Cam Spencer and the Loyola Maryland Greyhounds. Spencer, a 6-foot-4 junior, stands eighth in Division I in assist-to-turnover ratio.
Spencer has averaged 18 points and 4.5 assists over Loyola’s four-game win streak. He has committed just two turnovers in that span, one of which came on a charge call.
“He’s got an old man’s game,” Schmidt remarked of Spencer. “He’ll be scoring 50 points when he’s 50 years old, playing at the ‘Y.’ That’s the type of game he has. Really talented, high IQ. He’s one of the knowns; he can’t have a good game against us.”
Loyola is 5-4 through nine games, and while the Greyhounds only have one victory over a team with a winning record, they have a duo that has played together as long as Kyle Lofton and Osun Osunniyi. Spencer and senior guard Jaylin Andrews played two seasons together at Boys’ Latin School of Maryland, winning 44 games over two years, before reuniting in college.
Spencer and Andrews are two of the Patriot League’s top seven scorers after combining for 45 of the Greyhounds’ 61 points in last Saturday’s win over Mount St. Mary’s.
“We’ve got a great chemistry that we can’t even talk about,” Andrews told the Baltimore Sun after that game. “If you see after every play, I’m going to him, and he’s going to me, and it’s great to have him with me.”
The Greyhounds run the Princeton offense, a system the Bonnies have yet to see this season. Atlantic 10 opponent Richmond also runs the Princeton scheme, which utilizes a series of backdoor cuts, screens and ball movement to create easy layups and open jump shots. Loyola has scored more points in the paint than its opponent for the entirety of its win streak.
Schmidt explained that the Bonnies have surface knowledge with the Princeton offense from preseason, when the staff incorporated different concepts the team will face during the season into practice drills. He acknowledged the test, however, for the first-year players who haven’t yet experienced it during game action.
“There’s a lot of reading to it. The five-man has to be really good with the ball, and they do have a couple five-men who are really good with the basketball,” Schmidt explained. “For us it’s all fundamentals. In order for them to run backdoor, they have to run through you. If you get above them, now they have an open lane to make a backdoor layup. …
“In layman’s terms, it’s just a 2-3 high and they try to get you to overplay so they can go backdoor and get easy layups.”
Loyola nearly outscored a then-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels squad in the second half on opening night at the Smith Center and lost by just five at Lipscomb after a 17-point halftime deficit. The Greyhounds trailed Fairfield 41-33 at the break before a 42-29 second half started their win streak. Though not as extreme of a second half performer as Bonaventure has been, Loyola can relate to improving its play as the contest develops.
The Bonnies understand the importance of closing their non-conference home schedule with a well-played win before traveling to Newark, N.J. to play UConn on Saturday; Charlotte to play Virginia Tech a week from Friday; and Boston to meet Northeastern three days before Christmas. Now that the NCAA has released its NET rankings metric, rating SBU No. 87, a home win against a Loyola team rated 210th in NET becomes even more essential.
“In order to have a good year you have to protect your home court, and we let one slip,” Schmidt said, referencing the Bonnies’ loss to Northern Iowa on Nov. 27. “We’ve done a good job on the road, or neutral sites, but we let one slip. We’ve gotta make sure that it doesn’t happen again, and our guys understand that.”
The Bonnies and Greyhounds are scheduled to tip at 7, with the game broadcast on ESPN+.
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