By Budd Bailey
In the midst of a crowded sports calendar, it sure felt like the local college basketball season began on Saturday afternoon.
Yes, our four Division I teams technically began play on Monday, and their results had been mixed in the previous four days. But on Saturday, Canisius hosted St. Bonaventure at the Koessler Center, and a nearly full house greeted the game between the two ancient rivals.
“Coach told us it was going to be a Super Bowl,” Melvin Council Jr. of the Bonnies said. “It was going to be a lot of fans for us. … I didn’t believe him at first. Then we went on the court and it was ‘Let’s go Bonnies!’ and I said ‘Ah.’”
“I loved it out there,” newcomer Paul McMillan IV of Canisius said. “Thanks to everyone who came out. I have a couple of friends back home with ties to the Bonnies, and they told me this meant a lot to them.”
Such games shouldn’t be taken for granted. The college landscape has changed greatly over the past few years. In a world where Oregon and Rutgers (in New Jersey) are in the same conference, it’s nice to see the Golden Griffins and the Bonnies play each other – as they have been doing more or less since 1920.
“I give (coach) Mark Schmidt a lot of credit for keeping these rivalries alive,” said Canisius coach Jim Christian, who was part of the matchup for the first time as head coach of the Griffs. “With all the craziness in college basketball in 2024, these rivalries are what go away, and these rivalries are so important to the teams. I give Mark so much credit. … It’s unbelievably important.”
Christian wasn’t too happy about the way his debut turned out, an 87-78 loss. But all things considered, he couldn’t complain too much. This is a difficult time of the year for college basketball coaches. In an era where players come and go as they please, more or less, continuity from season to season is gone. The head coach doesn’t know much about his own team, let alone an opponent. So it’s a case of doing the best you can on a given day and seeing what happens.
Canisius has the bigger task at the start of the season, mostly because of its change in head coaches. Everyone has more of a learning curve that way as they learn what might lie ahead. Losses to teams such as Arizona (No. 10) and St. Bonaventure have to be learning experiences.
“What those two programs have, and what we don’t have, is a belief and understanding on what it takes to win,” Christian said. “That’s the next step for us – a collective belief that we can go down six and then come back and win this game. It’s tougher for us to do with 12 new guys.”
While Schmidt has been on the job for a long time, it’s never easy when you’re almost starting over. In terms of the roster.
“We’ve been trying to get together since summertime,” Chance Moore of the Bonnies said. “We practice every day, and bond on and off the court. If we keep working, it’s going to keep getting better.”
“Forget about the NIL and the portal stuff,” Schmidt said. “Now we have our team. All that stuff is from July and August in trying to put it together. The best part of our job as coaches is these seven months we have with the kids, and we try to develop them as best we can. The execution isn’t as good as when we had veteran guys, but the goal for us is to get these guys to play together. And we got better today. We’re not nearly where we need to be, but we got better today.”
This was an entertaining matchup, with a good tempo and not too many mistakes (both teams were in single digits in turnovers). The teams essentially traded runs in the first half, and Canisius had six threes in the first 17 or so minutes in taking a 32-29 lead. But Bona finished with an 11-2 run, with six of the points coming around the basket and two more at the line, to be ahead 40-34 at the half.
The contest was more or less decided in the first part of the second half. With the Bonnies up by 45-42 with 16:21 left, they ran off a 13-2 run to go ahead by 58-44. Again, most of those points were scored on layups and drives in the paint. When a team can get easy baskets that consistently, winning usually follows. Bona’s 46-20 edge in points in the paint and a 37-23 margin in rebounds were huge factors.
“You win basketball games in the paint,” Schmidt said. “You keep the ball out of the paint; you get the ball into the paint. It’s physical things. That’s how you win. You look at today – we got outscored by 27 points on threes. But we dominated the paint.”
Moore was the scoring leading for St. Bonaventure, coming up with 27 points on 9 for 13 shooting from the field.
“It felt good out there,” he said. “Canisius got us the last two years, so we were hyped for this game. We were trying to punch them back. Following the coaches’ game play, we had a couple of lapses but we made up for it.”
Four other players were in double figures for Bona.
“We can be happy we won, but we’re nowhere near where we need to be to play the teams we’re going to play,” Schmidt said.
Meanwhile, it seems that Canisius has identified its go-to offensive threat. McMillan, a transfer from Central Michigan, was 11 for 15 from the field. He had three three-pointers in putting up 31 points.
“McMillan, we didn’t have an answer for him,” Schmidt said. “He’s a heck of a player.”
Tana Kopa helped with 19 points, with 13 coming in the second half. The Golden Griffins did go 14 for 32 from three-point land, and that could be a recipe for success down the road.
There’s no easing into the schedule from this point. Canisius will play five games in the next two weeks, starting with a contest at Mercyhurst (Erie, Pa.) on Wednesday. St. Bonaventure has six games ahead before the end of the month, including a Wednesday trip to Fort Myers, Florida, for a matchup with Florida Gulf Coast.
Maybe by December 1, we’ll have a better idea where the season is headed. As for now, we only have a few more clues.
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