By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
Kyle Lofton felt the underlying cause of St. Bonaventure’s alarming loss to Virginia Tech on Friday was poor practice performance.
“We’ve been having bad practices, low energy, so I think it starts there,” Lofton assessed.
Such an admission is uncommon, though not unprecedented, for a team as veteran and decorated as SBU’s. The Bonnies are less than a month removed from a 5-0 start to the season, from winning the Charleston Classic in dominant fashion over Marquette. They are 3-3 since and just suffered the most lopsided loss of their collective collegiate playing careers, leading stunned observers to wonder how they got here.
Bonaventure’s defense has largely fallen short of the standards it established during last season’s Atlantic 10 championship run. Since AJ Green’s first-half flurry during Northern Iowa’s win at the Reilly Center on Nov. 27, Bona opponents are shooting 37 percent (57-of-153) from 3-point range.
The Bonnies held teams under 60 points on 10 occasions last season, with LSU’s 76 in the NCAA Tournament the most an opponent mustered. Bona has already let up at least 80 points three times through its first 11 games of this campaign.
Bonnies coach Mark Schmidt, who has been pointed about the need to rectify SBU’s defensive struggles, noted that allowing teams to get hot from 3-point range has led to indecisiveness and, in turn, slow rotations. Lofton sees a disconnected group that needs to find its bearings.
“Having five guys together again, we kind of lost that mentality, especially on defense,” Lofton remarked. “We gave up way too many points, I feel like.”
Count Virginia Tech coach Mike Young as a believer in the team his players just bullied. The Hokies responded emphatically to their loss at Dayton and a complimentary Young believes Bona can do the same in its next contest.
“This is a long haul,” Young acknowledged, “and everybody’s gonna have a little dip. That St. Bonaventure team? They’re terrific. They are really, really good. They had a bad day (Friday). We’ve had a couple of bad days. They’ll bounce back as we bounced back in here this afternoon.”
Bona has seen NCAA Tournament teams experience rougher patches. The 2000 team had just upset Temple before it dropped four of five as the calendar turned from late January to February, bookmarked by losses to a mediocre Fordham team. The 2018 outfit stumbled to a 2-4 start to A-10 play, necessitating a “Game 7” mentality for a month and a half.
“We’ve got things that we need to fix, and I think they’re fixable,” Schmidt assessed. “We are a good team; we just had a bad game. But we have to understand why we had the bad game and correct those things.”
A healthy Lofton is skillful enough with and without the basketball to lead the current Bonnies on a winning run with his play. His intangible leadership qualities will be as important as he and his teammates attempt to solve the issues he has personally identified.
It all starts in practice.
“After a loss like this, I feel like there’s nothing else to do but respond,” Lofton commented. “We’ll soak in this one. There’s definitely a bad taste in my mouth, but there’s nothing we can do about it now. We just need to get back to it on Sunday and have a good practice.”
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