By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
The St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team is encountering a scheduling oddity over the next week.
A string of three consecutive road games wasn’t in the offing when the Atlantic 10 released its conference schedule in September, but COVID-19 issues prompted the Bonnies’ game at Dayton to be rescheduled from Jan. 3 to Jan. 15. Bona meets the Flyers Tuesday, plays Duquesne in Pittsburgh on Friday and visits George Mason in Fairfax, Va. next Wednesday.
A Bonnies team has not played three straight A-10 road games since Jan. 27-Feb. 3, 2001. The triumvirate of Kyle Lofton, Osun Osunniyi and Dominick Welch will look to boost an already stellar .615 career conference road win percentage (16-10), starting in the arena where SBU won the Atlantic 10 Tournament 10 months ago.
“Those guys have experienced it; they’ve seen most everything, so they’re not gonna be surprised by it,” Bonnies coach Mark Schmidt remarked of the road trip. “They’re not gonna be intimidated by it, but we’ve still gotta play well. Experience only goes so far. You’ve gotta play well, and that’s gonna be the key against Dayton (Tuesday) night.”
The Bonnies and Flyers are slated for a 7 p.m. tip at University of Dayton Arena, the Bonnies seeking a three-game win streak and Dayton a fourth straight triumph.
Dayton has been one of the league’s biggest surprises, a basket away from starting the league slate 4-0 with two true freshmen accounting for 30 percent of the scoring. Head coach Anthony Grant challenged the team’s effort after a 53-52 conference-opening defeat to VCU on Jan. 5 and the Flyers responded with three wins: a victory over Saint Louis sandwiched by 20-plus-point drubbings of George Washington and Duquesne.
Grant’s squad also authored the A-10’s best win of the non-conference season, a 74-73 upset over then-Associated Press No. 4 Kansas in Orlando on Nov. 26. That stunner erased a string of stunning home defeats against UMass-Lowell, Lipscomb and Austin Peay; Dayton is 10-3 since the Austin Peay loss.
One of the Flyers’ star freshmen may conjure up déjà vu among the Bona faithful: Malachi Smith, the younger brother of 2017 Dayton alumnus Scoochie, also plays point guard and wears No. 11. Malachi has seen significantly more playing time than Scoochie did as a freshman and has parlayed that opportunity into 10.2 points, 4.8 assists and 4.2 rebounds a game, assuming the starting role four games into the year.
The 6-foot Bronx native was up for the challenge against Saint Louis star Yuri Collins, recording 14 points, eight rebounds and five assists. Dayton is 7-3 when he dishes five or more assists, 4-3 otherwise.
Smith and 6-foot-10 forward DaRon Holmes II, the highest-ranked high school recruit to ever sign at Dayton, have combined to earn six of the A-10’s 10 Rookie of the Week honors and comprise one of the most talented first-year duos in the country. Holmes II, a four-star recruit from Goodyear, Ariz., leads the team with 11.1 points per game on 65 percent shooting and is 14 blocked shots away from tying the late Steve McElvene for the program’s single-season record.
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The Flyers carry traits of the 2018-19 St. Bonaventure team that made the A-10 Championship Game with a mix of well-adjusted freshmen alongside proven veterans. Georgia transfer Toumani Camara is averaging 12 points on 58.3 percent shooting over the last six games, while redshirt junior Elijah Weaver is shooting nearly 50 percent and compiling his best collegiate season.
The Bonnies rank 20th in the country in experience on KenPom.com. Dayton is dead-last in Division I in the experience metric, which factors in minutes played and class year.
“You watch them play, they really execute. They play like a veteran team,” Schmidt assessed. “They’re not sped up; they’re really fundamental; they’re really well-coached. They have a really good mix of mostly young guys, but young guys who are really, really talented.”
The Bonnies did not visit UD Arena until the A-10 title game last year, losing their lone matchup against Dayton in the regular season finale. Bona hasn’t defeated Dayton since Jaylen Adams’s 31-point performance on Feb. 20, 2016. SBU’s six-game losing streak against the Flyers is its longest active skid against any opponent.
It’s not just Bonaventure: Dayton has 81 wins in its last 100 home contests.
Snapping that streak Tuesday night would currently reward the Bonnies with another Quadrant 2 win according to the NCAA’s NET metric. They are a league-best 4-2 against Quadrant 1 and 2 opponents, including VCU this past Friday.
“At Dayton, it’s always going to be a difficult game,” Schmidt commented, “and we expect it to be a really difficult game (Tuesday) night.”
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