By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
The basketball careens out of play, the official’s whistle sounds and those in the bench area demonstrably point their fingers, awaiting the signal. The question of who touched it last on the baseline can cause a momentary uproar, a valuable possession hanging in the balance.
Few want to hear the “stays here” announcement on offense more than St. Bonaventure head coach Mark Schmidt. Schmidt has, his contemporaries note, as many baseline out of bounds sets, or “BLOBs” for short, in his thick playbook as anyone in Division I.
“I coached against him quite a few times at both Robert Morris and St. Bonaventure,” an anonymous coach told CBS Sports’s Matt Norlander in a 2019 “Candid Coaches” feature about the toughest coaches to prepare for. “He gets the most out of his guys and has a million plays that they execute so well.”
Bonaventure’s latest BLOB boon unfolded in a five-point game at the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse this past Friday. Kyle Lofton tossed the inbound pass to Jaren Holmes at the top of the key, then screened Jalen Adaway’s defender long enough for Adaway to run a flex cut and complete a layup to extend SBU’s lead to seven points with under four minutes remaining.
Schmidt walked calmly back to half court. After absorbing late mentor and boss Skip Prosser’s strategies for eight years, first at Loyola Maryland and then Xavier, the 15th-year Bona head coach has mastered the special X-and-O situations. Whether it’s the result of a ball out of play or a foul on the floor, Schmidt has his players prepared to score from a play that begins under the basket.
“(Prosser) always used to talk about, that’s a part of the kicking game in football; it’s that important,” Schmidt explained. “There’s a stat: if you start at the 40-yard line in football, you have like an 80 percent chance of scoring, so you want to win the kicking game. We consider the BOB, the (sideline out of bounds) game like the kicking game in football, so we really work on it. We take it really seriously and we have good players who execute it.”
The Bonnies may take the situations seriously, but that doesn’t mean Schmidt misses an opportunity to have some fun with them in practice.
“Coach Schmidt loved to catch people slipping on baseline out of bounds plays,” 2014 Bona alum Matthew Wright told me in 2019. “I remember he drew up a play to run when I was on defense. He drew a trick play, almost to fool me, and it worked. And he walked by and slyly muttered, ‘Sucker.’ He loved doing that.”
BLOB plays helped sustain SBU’s offense in a conditioning struggle against La Salle after its COVID-19 pause. Three of the team’s 10 successful field goal attempts in the first half of that Jan. 11 contest came off baseline inbounds: a Dominick Welch 3-pointer, Adaway dunk and Holmes and-one layup, the latter two directly assisted by an inbounding Lofton. Lofton and Holmes connected on another in the second half, as well.
From Charlon Kloof, to Jaylen Adams, to Lofton, these sets have most often been initiated by the talented point guard inbounding the ball. Lofton has the top career assist-to-turnover ratio of those three.
“It starts with Kyle making those decisions on the baseline,” Schmidt commented.
Those decisions will continue to have an impact on St. Bonaventure’s offense.
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