By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
St. Bonaventure’s path to the NCAA Tournament often includes a maroon-and-orange obstacle along the way.
Three of SBU’s last five March Madness squads have faced the Virginia Tech Hokies in the regular season, including 2011, when the programs last met. Seth Greenberg’s squad held Andrew Nicholson to 4-of-14 shooting that evening, taking a nine-point home win.
Virginia Tech was an Atlantic 10 basketball member from the 1995-96 season to 1999-2000, so Ricky Stokes brought his team to the Reilly Center on Feb. 10, 2000. Bonnies center Caswell Cyrus scored 17 points and helped anchor one of Bona’s best defensive efforts of the season, pacing a 61-54 victory. Bonaventure was not as fortunate on Jan. 8, 1978, coming up short on the road in a 94-89 shootout.
The Bonnies have long found the VT program to represent formidable, quality competition, also facing the Hokies during their 1977 NIT championship season. The 17th meeting in series history is scheduled to take place at 4 p.m. on Friday in Charlotte’s Spectrum Center as part of the Hall of Fame Shootout quadrupleheader.
“It’s a really good opponent, really well coached,” Bonnies coach Mark Schmidt remarked of head coach Mike Young’s team on Thursday. “ACC players, it’s a challenge. They’re a good team and we’ve gotta play well for us to win. That’s our focus, is making sure that we’re ready and that we try to play our best tomorrow afternoon.”
Virginia Tech enters its non-conference finale with a 7-4 record, smarting from its fourth defeat in six games last Sunday at Dayton. The Hokies fell into an 18-point deficit with 13:37 remaining against the Flyers and, despite outscoring Dayton 28-15 the rest of the way, could not complete a comeback. They shot just 9-of-27 from the field in the first half, with second-leading scorer Naheim Alleyne missing all but one of his 10 shots in the game.
When asked if he called Dayton coach Anthony Grant during the week to gather intel, Schmidt coyly replied, “I did not. I did not.”
Young took the Virginia Tech job after 17 seasons leading the Wofford Terriers, a tenure that included each of the Southern Conference program’s five NCAA Tournament trips. Keve Aluma followed Young to Blacksburg and has developed into an NBA-caliber talent, participating in this past June’s draft process before opting to return to school this season.
Aluma, a 6-foot-9 forward from Berlin, Md., earned a place on last year’s All-Atlantic Coast Conference First Team after ranking ninth in the league in scoring (15.2 points per game) and fifth in rebounding (7.9 rpg). He is top 15 in both of those categories through a third of this season due in part to his athleticism and ability to score from all three levels.
“He’s a first team all-league, ACC player for a reason,” Schmidt noted of Aluma. “He can shoot the ball from the perimeter; he can take you off the bounce; he has a back-to-basket game. He can do it all, so he’ll be really hard to guard both inside and outside.”
Opposing teams shoot just 25.4 percent against the Hokies from 3-point range, tied for the ninth-best 3-point defense in the country. The Hokies also happen to shoot 39.3 percent from beyond the arc themselves, the 18th-best mark in Division I.
Virginia Tech has won and lost by the 3-point shot quite frequently this year, even with a star big like Aluma; the Hokies are 6-0 when they shoot 40 percent or better from 3, 1-4 when they don’t.
“Coach Young is a great basketball mind,” Schmidt acknowledged. “They run really good offense and they’re a really good halfcourt defensive team. They try to keep the ball above the foul line; they’re in their pack line [defense]…
“They’re a really good opponent and they’re gonna be a tough team to beat tomorrow.”
Schmidt remained indeterminate about whether or not star point guard Kyle Lofton will return from his three-game absence. He did, however, call Lofton a “game-time decision” and said SBU will monitor how the senior’s ankle is responding in Friday’s shootaround.
Lofton is one of six Division I players averaging at least 17 points and five assists per game with a true shooting percentage over 55 percent. His status could make the difference for the Bonnies, who shot below 40 percent for the first time this season last Saturday against UConn and have not faced a current top 50 scoring defense since Boise State.
The Hokies are looking for more consistent play from their point guard, as Storm Murphy has shot just 33 percent over the last five games. Murphy, who averaged 17.8 points for Wofford last season, has not reached double figures since Nov. 21 against Merrimack and went scoreless in consecutive games against Xavier and Maryland.
Murphy, The Roanoke Times’s Mark Berman wrote Thursday, has been “a focal point of opponents’ defensive game plans.” The 6-foot guard has attempted the fewest shots among Tech’s starting lineup, which remains unchanged through 11 games.
A win would mark a first for the SBU program, its first multi-win season against the ACC. The game will be broadcast nationally on ESPN2.
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