By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
Most of the 3,634 fans clad in brown and white left the Reilly Center with the results they wanted on Tuesday evening.
The St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team ran away with the second half against Fordham, outscoring the Rams 42-22 and eventually securing a 76-51 victory at the Reilly Center. The victory snapped a two-game losing streak, improving Bona’s record to 13-7 and 5-4 in the Atlantic 10 while extending its dominant run over Fordham to 11 consecutive victories.
And the fans, who have become increasingly more vocal about the SBU bench seeing more of the floor, applauded when seldom-used reserves Oluwasegun Durosinmi, Justin Ndjock-Tadjore and Joryam Saizonou each checked in with 1:07 remaining. Quadry Adams and Abdoul Karim Coulibaly scored four points apiece, too, satisfying the calls for players outside the “Ironman Five.”
“I thought we got some mojo back tonight,” Bonnies coach Mark Schmidt remarked. “I thought we defended; we held them to 51 points and holding teams under 60, that’s the goal. Holding them under 40 percent from the field and 30 percent from threes, we reached all our goals…
“I thought we played better. We didn’t play perfect.”
The Bonnies never trailed, carving out a 14-7 lead over the first 6:48 including two 3-pointers from Welch, who finished with five 3-point baskets. Welch scored 10 of Bona’s first 18 points en route to a 21-point night, a point shy of his career high, and also recorded his seventh career double-double by grabbing 10 rebounds.
On the night he was honored for tallying his 1,000th career point last Friday, Welch missed just two of his seven 3-point attempts while also swiping two steals and blocking two shots defensively.
“Dom shot the ball really well,” Schmidt noted. “We’ve had some spacing problems, and shooting the ball creates a little better spacing.”
The Bonnies, guided by Welch, looked the part of a capable shooting team. They made seven of their 14 3-point attempts, with Jalen Adaway sinking one to extend Bona’s lead to 16 with 14:32 remaining and Jaren Holmes, battling through an unrelenting offensive slump that saw him go 2-for-14 from the field, getting one to go four minutes later.
Bonaventure seized the game, one it led by just five points at halftime, with a 13-2 run over the first five minutes of the second half. While Fordham stumbled out of the break and made just one of its first six field goal attempts, the Bonnies made six of eight, spread evenly among Welch, Adaway, Kyle Lofton and Osun Osunniyi. Bona led by at least 13 points the rest of the way, pushing the advantage to as much as 28 with 5:34 to play.
“The first five minutes of the second half, that’s critical,” Schmidt acknowledged. “And I thought we, 11-0 run, we did a good job and that’s what we’ve gotta do. Getting stops, and getting some scores but getting stops, that’s critical to any team’s success.”
A handful of the Bonnies’ stops came directly against the Rams’ leading scorers, Chuba Ohams and Darius Quisenberry. Ohams, a physical post player who drew two fouls but missed all three of his free throw attempts, made just three of his 10 shots from the field. Quisenberry, who exited the game with an apparent knee injury with 13:13 remaining, was held to single-digits for the second time this season after sinking just three of his 11 field goal attempts and finishing with nine points.
Fordham made just seven of its 32 3-point tries (21.9 percent) and missed over half of its 15 free throw opportunities (6-of-15). Bona outscored Ohams and the Rams 38-22 in the paint.
“Those two guys were the knowns, and we had to do a good job on both those guys,” Schmidt explained. “And we did. … 5-for-22, that’s a great job by our guys, and that’s the key. Those two guys are really good players, and when they win games, those two guys really score for them. So that was a big emphasis and our guys did a really good job.”
The Bonnies also scored 12 fast break points, an added benefit of securing stops that kickstarted their offense.
“I feel like our defense really sparks our offense,” Welch commented. “We really don’t want to have to set up plays, have Schmidt yelling plays out. We really just wanna get rebounds and just go, and try to score in the first 12 seconds of the shot clock. That’s what we always preach in practice, scoring in the first 12 seconds. We just try to get it off our defense.”
A wire-to-wire, straightforward win over a rebuilding Fordham program won’t generate many headlines. But Lofton, who scored 19 points on 8-of-15 shooting and even picked up just his second technical this season, said SBU started having fun again on the court.
“It’s really about having fun,” Lofton said. “We all told each other, we weren’t really having fun with it anymore. So we just came out and we wanted to play with energy, most importantly, like I said, have fun. That’s really what it was.
“Having fun means playing with energy; playing together; playing hard.”
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