If you are a Buffalo sports fan or simply follow Buffalo sports closely in 2016, there’s not a lot to feel good about. Frankly, there hasn’t been much to feel good about for more than half a decade. It’s been five years now since one of Buffalo’s two major professional sports teams appeared in the postseason, and with the Sabres a near lock to miss again this spring, that drought will continue. You have to go back even further to find the last time a Buffalo sports team won in the postseason – all the way back to 2007, when George W. Bush was President, Barack Obama was just announcing his candidacy for President, Bob Barker was still hosting the Price is Right and Hank Aaron was still the all-time home run leader.
This is easily the Dark Ages of Buffalo sports, a long decade of futility that has seen two Sabres runs to the Eastern Conference Finals and nothing more in terms of postseason success. The Sabres are in the midst of the longest postseason drought in their history, while the Bills have earned their Ph.D. in playoff misses. No professional sports team in America has gone longer without a postseason appearance – 16 years.
I turn 30 next month, meaning my 20s came and went with the Bills and Sabres being bad pretty much the entire time. This is the age I should have been able to enjoy following these teams the most (ie: party the most after wins). No such luck.
As Buffalo sports fans, we often have to cling to glimmers of hope. The Bills have been selling fans on hope going all the way back to the Drew Bledsoe trade. The Sabres have legit hope in place in the form of Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhart, and Rasmus Ristolainen. As Mike Harrington said, Sabres fans are getting exactly what they deserve – a young team loaded with high-end talent that is going to be very good very soon.
Still, the waiting is the hardest part and Buffalo sports fans are looking for something to feel good about. Luckily for me, there’s a real feel-good sports story unfolding at my alma mater, just a 90 minute drive from downtown Buffalo.
The St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team is enjoying one of the best seasons in the recent history of the program. The Bonnies were picked to finish in the middle of the pack in the Atlantic 10 conference standings at the start of the season, but find themselves currently holding down fourth place with an 8-3 conference record and 16-6 overall record. Bonaventure rolled out to a 4-0 record to begin conference play, propelling themselves into first place in the conference. After three-straight losses sent Bona back to reality, they have righted the ship with another four-game winning streak.
For the first time in my adult life, the Bonnies have a legitimate case for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. You may remember Bonaventure going to the tournament just four years ago, but they did so by earning the automatic bid as A-10 tournament champions. This season, Bonaventure has the kind of resume that may justify a bid without the need for an incredible run in the conference tournament.
St. Bonaventure’s Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) is 34, ranking them ahead of teams like Pittsburgh, Florida State, Wichita State, Connecticut, and our friends from Syracuse. This strong rating should get the attention of the selection committee come March. Bonaventure’s conference RPI is 24, meaning that the ratings system sees the Bonnies as one of the top 25 teams in the country based on conference play. I’m no bracketologist, but I think Bona needs 22 wins to make a case for an at-large bid. They currently sit at 16 with seven regular season games and the conference tournament to go.
Bonaventure’s story is like so many Buffalo sports stories told over and over again – stories of oh so close and what could have been. Bonaventure’s glory years are well in the past, the most famous being the run to the Final Four in 1970 with Bob Lanier. Of course, that couldn’t end in happy fashion, it had to end with Lanier’s knee getting rolled up by Villanova’s Chris Ford (this happened 16 years before I was born, but I hate Chris Ford) and the Bonnies losing in the National Semifinal to Artis Gilmore and Jacksonville University with Lanier on the sidelines.
The program enjoyed varying degrees of success after Lanier left, including winning the NIT Championship in 1977, but they only returned to the NCAA tournament twice before the new millennium (1978 and 2000), losing in the opening round each time. And then, the scandal hit.
The 2003 Bonnies, led by coach Jan van Breda Kolff, admitted juco transfer Jamil Terrell to the team. The problem was, Terrell had not earned the associates degree he needed to be eligible, but rather a welding certificate. When the NCAA figured this out, Terrell was ruled ineligible right as the Bonnies were entering the stretch run of their season. The Atlantic 10 responded by banning the Bonnies from the conference tournament. The players responded by boycotting their final two regular season games. And that’s when the shit really hit the fan.
The scandal sent a wrecking ball through the program, a national embarrassment for the university. This resulted in heavy NCAA sanctions, as well as the firing of athletic director Gothard Lane, van Breda Kolff and his staff and the resignation of school president Dr. Robert Wickenheiser. Tragically, the scandal also played a major role in the suicide of Bill Swan, St. Bonaventure’s chairman of the board of trustees at the time, who felt he let the university down by helping to make Terrell eligible.
The program hit rock bottom like you wouldn’t believe. I arrived on campus as a freshman in 2004. I attended as many Bonaventure basketball games at the Reilly Center as I could that year. Their final record? 2-26. The team became a joke. Their home games became a reason for students to pregame heavily on a winter’s afternoon and nothing more (and pregame we did). The Bonnies never won more than eight games in a season during my four years on campus.
The sad story of the Bonaventure basketball program began to change when a six-foot-nine freshman forward from Canada showed up on campus just after I graduated. Andrew Nicholson would help to resurrect the program with four dominant seasons in the Brown and White. He was the A-10 Player of the Year in 2011-12 and finished as the A-10’s all-time career leader in field goals with 809. He saved his best for last with a dominant performance in the A-10 tournament in 2012, carrying a plucky, but not especially talented Bonaventure team to the title and a berth in the NCAA tournament.
The week between the start of the 2012 A-10 tournament and Bonaventure’s three-point opening-round NCCA tournament loss to Florida State is probably my favorite week as a Buffalo sports fan in my adult life. That week also included the Bills signing Mario Williams and 70 degree temperatures in Western New York for St. Patrick’s Day festivities. It was a good week.
Four years later, the Bonnies have a chance to do something special again.
This time around, the Bonnies don’t have a star player of Nicholson’s talent, but they appear to have a better all-around team. The 2012 squad often times resembled Michael Jordan carrying the Toon Squad against the Monstars. In 2016, the Bonnies have a deep, talented roster that might have the perfect combination for winning in March.
What do you always hear the pundits say is the key to a run in the NCAA tournament? Guard play and senior leaders stepping up in crunch time. The Bonnies have both in spades.
The key to Bonaventure’s success has been its deadly backcourt. I’ve been waiting more than a decade for the Bonnies to have a duo at guard like the one they enjoy now. Sophomore Jaylen Adams has been named the A-10 Player of the Week twice already this season, averaging 18 points and a team-high 5 assists per game. He’s the best point guard I’ve seen play for Bonaventure since I’ve started following the team. He’s joined in the backcourt by senior Marcus Posley, the team’s leading scorer at 19 points per game. Posley has given the Bonnies the reliable, steady presence they need as a go-to scorer. He has a knack for driving on defenders and getting to the rim.
The Bonnies aren’t just about their backcourt, though. Their most indispensable player, probably, has been senior forward Dion Wright. He has done it all on both ends for the Bonnies and never seems to ever come off the court. He leads the team in field goals per 40 minutes and total rebounds while contributing 16 points per game. This gives the Bonnies a three-headed monster of talent and experience in the backcourt and on the wing, a little bit different from the 2012 team.
This is definitely not a boring team to watch. Head coach Mark Schmidt likes his team to push the tempo and score the basketball as quickly as possible every time. The Bonnies have scored 80 points or more in 10 games thus far this season. Bonaventure currently sits at no. 29 in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency, or points scored by 100 possessions based on opponent. They are also the best free throw shooting team in the entire country at 78 percent, something I definitely thought I’d never see from a Bonaventure team.
As we enter the stretch run of the season, now is the perfect time for another memorable March from the Bonnies. I know it’s one of my favorite teams, so something could go horribly wrong, but I am so excited to see what this team can do in the Atlantic 10 tournament and possibly get that bid for the Big Dance. It sets up perfectly. The first day of the NCAA tournament is on St. Patrick’s Day this year, by the way, and I think this should be a national holiday with schools and businesses closed (not bars, obviously).
At a time when I, like almost all Buffalo sports fans, have been waiting for something to feel happy about besides Jack Eichel dangling on fools, this Bonaventure basketball team has kind of stepped up out of nowhere to steal my heart. The number one sports thing on my mind has not been what the Sabres should do at the trade deadline, or the Super Bowl, or LeSean McCoy possibly going to jail; it’s been this team and their rise up the Atlantic 10 standings.
If you’re looking for something to feel good about, this Bonaventure team might be it. Since I graduated from the school in 2008, the basketball program has gone from an afterthought, a perennial loser, to a point of pride for the university. They had their great moment four years ago, but it might be time again to have that winning feeling. My dream this year is that they can finally win that elusive game in the NCAA tournament.
At the very least, the Bonnies are giving me something to be happy about at a time when success has been eluding my hometown teams. I don’t want this ride to end any time soon. I want to enjoy March in crowded bars with other Bonaventure alums, just like 2012. Maybe the rest of Western New York can share in our excitement (or you could be a Canisius or Niagara alum and hate everything about the Bonnies. Which is fine).
No matter what happens, the Bonnies have traveled quite a long way from the welding scandal and a two-win 2004-05 season. They might be set up to contend in the A-10 for a while. Meanwhile, the excitement is back in Olean. Saturday’s upcoming game against George Washington, the team right behind Bonaventure in the conference standings, is sold out. It’s the first sellout at the Reilly Center since before I attended school there. The pride and enthusiasm for the program is back in a way I wasn’t sure was possible back about a decade ago. I just want to bottle it up and drink it all in for the next month or so.
At the very least, this Bona team has given me something to talk about besides the NHL draft lottery or what the Ryan brothers are doing tonight. And for that, I am grateful.
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