Category: Posting up: Memories of St. Bonaventure basketball

Coach Jim Baron on the sidelines during the Kentucky game [Photo credit: St. Bonaventure University Archives]

Both St. Bonaventure (SBU) and the University of Kentucky had storied basketball programs, but had never faced each other. 

That changed on a Thursday afternoon on March 16, 2000, in the Cleveland State University Convocation Center.  The Bonnies, decided underdogs in the first round NCAA game, brought 21 wins to the contest before losing to Kentucky in double overtime, 85-80.  In a 2020 CBS Sports article by Matt Norlander, the game was ranked (#46) as among the 101 most exciting games in modern NCAA history.

At 22-9, Kentucky Wildcats fell to Arkansas in the first round of the SEC Tournament, 86-72, but success emanated in Lexington.  While only in his third year in Lexington, head coach Orlando (“Tubby”) Smith boasted a .794 winning percentage. 

Despite the difficult draw for Baron’s squad, the game was momentous for the St. Bonaventure program: Its last NCAA visit was 22 years prior, a 92-83 loss to Pennsylvania where Greg Sanders scored 30 points.    

Kentucky’s front line of Tayshaun Prince, Jules Carnara, and Jamaal Magloire (6-9, 6-11, and 6-10) averaged 18 rebounds and 33 points.  The Wildcats—the tallest team among the 64 in the NCAA that year—presented a formidable challenge for the Bona frontcourt of Peter Van Paassen (6-11), Caswell Cyrus (6-9), and David Messiah Capers (6-3). 

Yet Jim Barron, the Bona head coach in his eighth season, was undeterred.  In a recent interview, he recalled his reaction to the NCAA pairing, thinking “this is the greatest matchup in the country.” In addition, the game was slated to be played in Cleveland, an advantage in his eyes.  “We’re closer to Cleveland than they [Kentucky] are,” he added, knowing that the Bona fan support would be “monstrous.”  

Baron and his #12 seed Bonnies never lost more than two in a row throughout the season and won the Sparkletts Invitational in California the previous November.  About six weeks later, nearly 6200 fans crammed into the Reilly Center to see the Bonnies upend Temple, a Top 25 team, 57-56.

It won five of the last six entering the NCAA, only losing to #6 Temple in the Atlantic 10 tournament.  Baron expected a tournament bid.  “I absolutely felt that we definitely deserved it by what we did in our league,” he recalled. 

Yet what about facing Kentucky, one of the winningest programs in history?  “I thought it was the best matchup in the country,” Baron said.  Part of the potential Bona edge was the Cleveland venue and its proximity to St. Bonaventure.  He knew that the Bonnie crowd would be “monstrous.”  Besides which, Baron had faith in his squad, calling them a “tremendous team.” 

Even John Chaney, the famed Temple head coach, boldly predicted a Bona win over the #5 seed Kentucky.  In his view, the trouble for Kentucky would be in containing 5-10 senior point guard Tim Winn.  Meanwhile, former SBU coach Jim Satalin was quoted as saying, “…I guarantee you the Bonnies won’t be intimidated by Kentucky.” 

While 13,500 fans were filling the arena in Cleveland, the pre-game warm-ups added to the underdog role for St. Bonaventure.  In an Olean Times Herald (OTH) story, Winn related a story where Kentucky players shot at the Bona basketball while the team stretched.  “We would never go shoot at your [Kentucky] basket while you’re stretching,” he said. “I wonder if they were playing Syracuse if they would shoot while they were stretching.”  Winn, however, didn’t confront the Kentucky players, adding that he wanted his teammates to “keep that frame of mind.” 

The Bonnies led by as much as 10 points in the first half, but a 23-5 Kentucky run at the end of the first frame ended with a 36-28 Wildcat edge.  Kentucky extended its lead to 13 points before the Bonnies rallied to tie the score at 54 behind one of first-year guard Patricio Prato’s four three-pointers.  The Bonnies took a three-point lead into the closing seconds of regulation before Prince nailed a three-point shot—his fifth of the game—for Kentucky with 7.1 seconds left.  Two overtimes ensued with a total of 39 points.  

The first overtime saw Van Paassen fouling out with 1:50 remaining and Kentucky holding a one-point lead.  Prato picked up his fifth foul with 45.9 points and left with a 20-point effort.  Down 72-68 at that point, the Bonnies turned the ball over 10 seconds later.  Kentucky extended their lead to 73-68 with a free throw and 28.4 seconds left in the initial overtime.  J.R. Bremer, a 65% free throw shooter, made two of three from the line to cut the lead to 73-70. 

Winn’s left-handed layup from under the Wildcat basket, coupled with a post-foul free throw, found the Kentucky margin cut to one point with 8.7 seconds left. 

Messiah Capers’ heroics were responsible for the second overtime.  Fouled with .4 second left and the Bonnies down by three points, the 56% foul shooter made three straight free throws despite Kentucky timeouts interspersed in the process.  In a post-game OTH story, he said, “The guys came over to me before the free throws and they told me whatever happens, if you make them or miss them, we still love you.  So I went up there, hit them and gave us another chance.”

The Bona offense stalled in the second overtime, as it failed to score in the final three minutes.  Down by a point with 11 seconds remaining in the second overtime, Kentucky grabbed a three-point lead.  Winn nearly landed a three-pointer in the closing seconds before time ran out with the scoreboard reading, “Kentucky 85, St. Bonaventure 80.”   

The loss came down in part to team shooting: St. Bonaventure was 29 of 77 (.377) from the floor, while Kentucky made 28 of 56 (.500).  The Bonnies made 13 of 22 from the free throw line, far below Kentucky’s 23 of 35 output.

“I really felt we were going to win the game.  I really felt we were the better team that day,” Baron said. 

In the end, Kentucky had only a narrow edge on the boards, 46-42.  Cyrus dominated both sides in collecting 18 rebounds, the most since Tim Waterman collected 18 boards in a win over VCU in 1979.  (The only technical foul of the game?  Cyrus was whistled for hanging on the rim with 5:25 left in regulation.)  The Wildcat’s height advantage fell short in the paint, as Bona outscored Kentucky there, 36-28. 

Bona fell to 6-7 in its NCAA tournament visits, but the narrow loss to Kentucky was massive in bolstering the program.  “I was just so proud of our players, our staff, of the administration, and the fans and the community,” Baron said. 

In only his fourth season as the Bonnies head coach, Jim Satalin found himself in the national spotlight against famed coached Guy Lewis.  Looking back 45 years later, Satalin recalled, “It was certainly a challenge for me to coach against someone of that stature, but I felt ok going into the game.  I felt comfortable that we would be very competitive in this game for sure.”

A crowd of 12,451 packed Madison Square Garden for the 1pm tip on March 20, and Houston star Otis Birdsong was ready.  The Bonnies led, 45-42, at halftime, but, by midway through the second half, he had already scored 36 points with Houston leading, 73-63.

However, Satalin wasn’t too concerned. 

“I thought there was enough time left,” he recalled.  “If it was a different team that might have been able to milk the clock more or wanted to do that, that might have been [different].  But Houston was not like that.  They weren’t built that way.  That gave us an opportunity to call timeout and say, ‘OK, we have plenty of time here.  We just have to tighten up defensively, force them into some tough shots, and then go with it.’”

In the moment, even Satalin didn’t know that the spotlight was about to shift from Birdsong to SBU forward Greg Sanders.  While Birdsong went quiet offensively, Sanders was just starting his barrage.  “Greg at that point just got ridiculous,” Satalin said with a chuckle.  “What he did was incredible down that stretch.”

One of the most famous baskets in Bona basketball history followed.  In the closing minutes and the Bonnies down 87-86, Sanders made a 22-foot jumper from directly in front of the Bona bench.  It may not have been the best shot selection on the possession, and Sanders admitted as much after the game in saying, “If I had missed, I wasn’t going to look at Coach.”

Satalin admired his confidence in shooting.  “He was that kind of guy,” he remembered.  “He just looked at it and thought, ‘I’m making this thing…it’s my time and I’m making this and that’s it.’  And he did…he had the game of his life.”

A miss by Sanders, in Satalin’s eyes, wouldn’t have meant defeat.  “Had he missed that shot, there was still time for us,” he said. 

 Sanders’ basket, likely the most critical basket in the 2238 points of his Bona career, was crushing for Houston.  “At that point, once we got ahead of them, that was going to be hard for them to come back,” Satalin said.  “Our confidence was soaring at that time.”

The Bonnies prevailed despite 17 turnovers, the last of which could have been most costly.  According to The New York Times, Houston guard Ken Williams hurried downcourt after the turnover and took a shot, “seemingly in panic, instead of slowing down the game and setting up a play.”  Bona center Tim Waterman grabbed the rebound and headed to the foul line, making one free throw. 

Another free throw by Bonnie guard Glenn Hagan extended the lead to 92-89 before Birdsong hit a basket—his last field goal in the final nine minutes—to close it to a one-point Bona lead.  Hollis’ layup at the buzzer electrified the Bona crowd in capping off its first post-season tournament championship. 

Sanders’ performance earned him tournament MVP honors.  His 40 points hid one other key statistic: He collected a game-high 12 rebounds, an area of the game that some saw tilting toward Houston and its leading rebounder Mike Schultz prior the game.  “Greg was a very, very good offensive rebounder, so my guess is, in that game, he got a significant amount of offensive rebounds.  Probably five or so at least.”

Satalin pointed to the Bona free throw shooting (32-46) that resulted from Houston’s 29 fouls. “We tried to create a lot.  Hagan was great at that, getting to the basket and getting [the ball] to the right guys.  That was a major factor in the game.  No question,” he said. 

Looking back, Satalin expressed pride in the four-game streak culminating in the championship.  “We played the best teams, which proved to me that I was right in saying that we were good enough to win this thing,” he said. 

And win they did…a first post-season tournament championship in a program dating to 1919-20.

In what was St. Bonaventure’s tenth overall trip to the NIT, Coach Jim Satalin was a realistic optimist in his first look at the list of 16 teams in 1977, something he even remembers 45 years later.  “It was a strong field, but we were really good that year,” he said in looking back to that year. “We probably should have gone to the NCAA…but I looked at the whole field and thought, ‘We’re as good as anybody in this field.’”

One team in the field was the University of Houston Cougars, coached by Guy Lewis, who ended up winning nearly 600 games in his 30 years as its head coach.  In their first-round game, a sophomore named Larry Bird nearly derailed Houston’s season.  Riding a seven-game win streak into the NIT, Indiana State relied on the high-scoring forward who averaged 33 points per game that season, but fell to Houston on the road.  Bird, the #3 scoring leader in the nation, poured in 44 points in the 83-82 loss.  Otis Birdsong, the Houston star who was #4 in scoring in the nation and a UPI first team All-American, led the Cougars with 30 points. 

Houston then survived against Illinois State (91-90) before beating Alabama, 82-76, to reach the championship game.

St. Bonaventure had its own challenge in the first round.  Satalin led a 20-6 squad to Princeton, NJ, to face Rutgers, a matchup with a team that the Bonnies had lost to 374 days prior in the previous season.  This outcome was different, however, with Glenn Hagan scoring the winning shot in the 79-77 overtime win.  Essie Hollis and Hagan led Bona scorers with 25 and 21 points, respectively. 

The following games against Oregon and Villanova featured three- and four-point wins, respectively.  In the lone game St. Bonaventure has ever played against Oregon, Sanders only missed five shots, going 11 of 16 from the field and a perfect eight-for-eight from the free throw line.  The Bonnies were badly outrebounded, 42-23, with Oregon star and second team USBWA All-American Greg Ballard nearly matching the Bona total with 15 rebounds.  Nonetheless, St. Bonaventure left the Garden with a 76-73 victory. 

The Hagan-Baron backcourt flourished against Villanova, which ultimately finished third in the tournament.  Hagan led all scorers, including the Herron brothers of Villanova, with 26 points, and Barron added 13 points in only 22 minutes of play.  The backcourt dished out 14 assists, while both Hollis and Sanders fouled out of the game. 

Birdsong’s scoring prowess hadn’t declined during the Cougars’ run.  He carried a 26 points-per-game average during the tournament, yet prior to the Bona game, Lewis remarked, “He’d be the first to tell you he hasn’t had a good tournament.”  One high point of Birdsong’s season was scoring 43 in a nationally televised loss to UCLA at Pauley Pavilion in January, proving that explosive games were possible. Since that setback, Houston went 20-4 with the most recent loss to #7 Arkansas in the championship of Southwest Conference tournament. 

Entering the game, Birdsong and the size of Houston’s roster were on Satalin’s mind, but there was a key factor that he liked.  Both teams were similar in one way.

“The good thing was that they played a style that was similar to ours in that they loved to get up and down [the court].  They weren’t a great defensive team.  Neither were we, quite frankly, but we and they were able to outscore teams most of the year.  When we looked at that game, I thought, ‘This team is really good, and we’re going to have to score a lot of points to win this thing, but it should be a great game,’” he said.

And he was right.

In Fall 1976, Jim Satalin knew his team was good.  Just how good was the story. 

The Bonnies went 14-10 in their 1975-1976 season.  They lost their last regular season game at third-ranked Rutgers, 85-80, in a heartbreaking defeat.  With a 24-0 record to that point, the Scarlet Knights hadn’t really been tested in their College Avenue Gymnasium.  The Bonnies managed the game for nearly the entire contest before a controversial foul in the closing seconds sealed the Rutgers’ victory.  With 30 seconds left, Jim Baron seemingly stole the ball from Rutgers guard Mike Dabney in open court where the Bonnies were poised to score and tie the game at 82. 

An apparent late whistle against Baron on the steal affected the outcome.  Even Eddie Jordan, a guard for Rutgers at the time, acknowledged as much on another website, “He (Baron) took two dribbles, then a whistle blew,” he said. 

Satalin remembers the call 46 years later.  “It was a tough call to have at that particular time of the game, and that saved them their undefeated season,” he said.

Nonetheless, the defeat to Rutgers may have shown something to four of the Bona starters: Essie Hollis, Greg Sanders, Glenn Hagan, and Jim Baron.  “We were good that year,” Satalin recalled.  “All of those guys were ready to take the next step, and that game showed them that they could do that.”

The team lost 6-7 forward/center Bob Rozyczko and his 17 points per game average to graduation, but the foursome of Hollis, Baron, Hagan, and Sanders brought a 55 points-per-game average into the ’76-77 season. 

Then there was 6-8 Tim Waterman, a true center that even Satalin acknowledged was missing from the previous year.  “Timmy was our only size to speak of,” Satalin said.  “We kind of almost gave him that [center] position and hoped that he could handle it.  He more than handled it for us.  He was the kind of guy who did all the dirty work.  He didn’t need the ball at all.  He didn’t need to take any shots.  He blocked out.  He rebounded.” 

“Timmy was a key factor on that team.  It took so much pressure off the other guys,” he added. 

The ’76-77 Bonnies jumped out to an 11-3 record by the end of January, losing only at Georgetown and DePaul and to Princeton at the Rochester War Memorial in the championship of the Kodak College Basketball Classic.  The 55-point output by Bona against Pete Carril’s Tigers was a season low, yet was two points more than opponents’ average against Princeton.  The Bonnies shot 36 percent from the floor, far lower than their 57 percent success rate per game to that point in the season.

Fast forward to February 12, 1977.  The Bonnies had just come off consecutive road losses to two Top 20 teams.  Providence (#15) upended St. Bonaventure, 82-75, before a Dick Vitale-coached Detroit squad (#19) defeated the Bonnies, 78-62, in the Motor City.  (This brief stretch may be the only consecutive three-game run of facing top 20 teams in Bona history.) 

At 14-4 on the season, the Bonnies were looking to rebound in facing Syracuse (#17) in the Reilly Center.  They responded.

Hollis scored 37 points—27 in the first half alone—before a capacity crowd in what was Jim Boeheim’s first year as the Orangemen head coach.  Hollis scored 27 of Bonnies’ first 50 points as they headed into halftime with a comfortable 52-33 lead.  Syracuse started the game in an uncharacteristic man-to-man defense instead of a 2-3 zone, something that surprised Satalin according to an Olean Times Herald post-game story.  Boeheim’s assessment in the same story echoed respect for the Bona offensive threat in saying, “We couldn’t play zone here, not with the shooters they have.”

The Bona backcourt of Baron and Hagan got into early foul trouble, but Satalin’s squad got 18 bench points from Dan Viglianco (8 points), Delmar Harrod (5 points), and Nick Urzetta (5 points).  The Times Herald story related that Satalin “juggled his lineup like a master magician.”

The Bonnies reeled off another four straight victories to end the regular season at 20-5. 

In a game with likely NCAA implications, Syracuse enacted revenge in the ECAC tournament game at the Manley Field House in Syracuse in early March.  Hollis got into early foul trouble in the 85-72 loss. Syracuse got the subsequent NCAA bid (32 teams at the time) and lost in the second round to Charlotte, 81-59.

The loss—what became the last setback of the ’76-77 season— may have been historic for St. Bonaventure.  A win may have vaulted the team into the 32-team NCAA tournament.  Instead a 16-team NIT opportunity awaited. 

In 1960, Ohio State (OSU) enrolled about 18,000 undergraduate students.

In the same year, 1163 students were at St. Bonaventure University.

In late December of that year, the two universities met for the championship of the highly regarded annual Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Holiday Festival in Madison Square Garden.  Both teams were undefeated.  Ohio State entered the in-season tournament ranked #1 in the country, while the Bonnies were fifth in the UPI poll.  Though receiving one first-place vote, they placed behind the Buckeyes, Bradley, St. John’s, and Indiana. 

The New Year’s Eve matchup served as the most memorable game in the Bona career of Fred Crawford, who was later named as one of the best players in the school’s longstanding basketball history.  

Raised in the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem, Crawford found the Holiday Festival experience to be a coming home of sorts, and playing at the Garden was a particularly special memory, especially in 1960.  “It was the little engine that could in St. Bonaventure going against Ohio State,” Crawford summarized.  “That whole dynamic was very interesting.”

The Bonnies entered the Holiday Festival with the third most potent offense in the country, averaging 92 points a game.  Even with the strong offense, Crawford pointed to a solid defense as pivotal to the Bonnie success in forcing opponents to “make passes and plays they didn’t want to make.”

Both Crawford, a 6-4 sophomore forward, and 6-5 senior forward Tom Stith were the leading scorers for the 6-0 Bonnies entering the OSU game, as they had defeated teams that included Utah (#18), St. Joe’s, and Xavier.  Despite the success, the Bona Director of Public Relations, Jack Ritzenthaler (Athletics Hall of Fame inductee, 1977), remarked to reporters immediately before the Holiday Festival that the Bonnies had been “playing over their heads.”

Meanwhile, Ohio State featured a powerful squad, highlighted by All-American and US Olympic star center Jerry Lucas who averaged 25 points and 18 rebounds a game.  Three other starters—John Havlicek, Larry Siegfried, and Mel Nowell—subsequently played in the NBA.  Havlicek won eight NBA championships with the Boston Celtics, and both he and Lucas were named to the 50 greatest NBA player list in 1997.  The final OSU starter that evening, forward Bobby Knight, later became one of the most winning college basketball coaches in history.

Crawford didn’t remember a unique strategy designed to stop Lucas and the other Ohio State stars.  “We had been doing pretty good, so we weren’t about to change our gameplan,” he said. 

Despite the vast difference in school sizes, the Bonnies were not intimidated by the likes of Ohio State.  “No, we didn’t think about that,” Crawford said.  “In fact, I don’t think we ever went into a game not thinking that we had the opportunity to win.”

In the championship played before 12,897 fans, Ohio State charged to a quick 5-0 lead behind a three-point play by Lucas and later led, 17-9.  It was Crawford, however, who kept St. Bonaventure in the game, as he demonized Ohio State’s zone in scoring 18 points in the first half.  Down 40-36 at halftime, the Bonnies faltered in the second half, facing an 11-point deficit with eight minutes remaining. 

St. Bonaventure rallied at the end, sparked by—in Crawford’s words—“some of Tom’s [Stith] legendary jump shots.” Crawford remembered a key goaltending call against him being a decisive factor in the final seconds.  He pinned the shot—it may have been taken by Havlicek— against the backboard in being whistled for the violation.  “I think that’s what gave them the two-point advantage,” he added.     

Did the officials get the call correct?  “Of course not,” Crawford replied without a second thought.  After the ensuing buzzer, Crawford felt “cheated.” 

“I think we could have extended the game and had an opportunity to win,” he said. 

In the end, Lucas collected 21 rebounds and missed only seven shots from the field in scoring 32 points.  He was the near-unanimous MVP of the tournament.  Stith and Crawford led the Bonnies with 35 and 24 points, respectively.  Each player added eight rebounds apiece. 

An upset loss to Wake Forest in the 1961 NCAA tournament prevented any Bona hopes for a rematch with Ohio State.  The Buckeyes lost their only game of the season in the NCAA championship game to Cincinnati.  OSU was ranked #1 in both the UPI and AP postseason polls; SBU came in third place in both rankings.

The Holiday Festival championship was the first—and only—time that St. Bonaventure faced Ohio State in the extensive basketball history of both schools.  It was an evening where David nearly beat Goliath, and, thanks in large part to Crawford’s talents, where a small school from Western New York almost beat the top-ranked team in the country.

A look at the front page of The Olean Times Herald (OTH) on Monday, February 27, 1961, revealed little about the tumultuous event that took place two days prior at the Olean Armory.  The lead story was about area flooding, though a top-page banner indicated that Niagara had used St. Bonaventure as a “stepping stone” to the NIT Tournament and pointed to more stories in the sports section. 

The consecutive home victory streak, started in 1948, had neared triple digits.  St. Bonaventure had won 99 straight games at home.  It started under Coach Ed Melvin before Coach Eddie Donovan took over the Bona program in 1953.  As a reserve on the Bona team in 1947-48, Donovan knew the history all too well.

The front page had no story of the consecutive home wins.  One of the main article in the sports section headlined, “The Fortress Falls…100 Never Came…Joy for One…Tears for Another.”

Win #100 was denied by the same team upon which the win streak started: the Purple Eagles of Niagara University. 

Coach Donovan’s team had cruised by DePaul, Providence, Boston College, and third-ranked Bradley earlier that month.  The win against Bradley, played before 15,497 in Madison Square Garden, came after it ended the Bonnies’ season in the 1960 NIT.  Coach Eddie Donovan’s squad handed DePaul their seventh straight loss, 78-69, on February 18 in the Buffalo Auditorium. 

Siena visited the Armory on February 23.  In the preview story, an OTH reporter wrote, “It’s practically unanimous that the hapless men of Siena will be the 99^th Armory victim.”  The reporter was correct: The Saints were marched out of Olean, 99-57. 

Then came February 25 with Niagara’s visit to the Armory.  St. Bonaventure won convincingly at Niagara, 88-68, about six weeks prior.  By this point in the season, the Bonnies were 21-1, losing only to the top ranked team in the country, Ohio State, in late December. 

However, the Little Three matchup was not a game to be taken lightly.  On the day of the game, a writer for The Olean Times Herald predicted, “It could be rough sledding before the century mark is recorded.”  Niagara entered as a 19.5-point underdog, but was hoping for a post-season NIT invitation.  An upset against the second-ranked Bonnies would add to its resume.

But this was the Armory…where a loss hadn’t been known since Truman was president.  Unique in its own way, the Armory offered something special for those sitting in the first row of the courtside bleachers: Their feet actually straddled the out-of-bounds lines.   

Smoking was prohibited in the Armory.  However, according to an Associated Press writer, many fans in the inevitable capacity crowds of 2000 would smoke in the outside foyer during halftime.  This would drift to the gym, and, by the start of the second half, the teams would “need radar to find the bench.”

One Bona fan, Pat (Tiger) Flynn, recalled going to Armory games from the age of six.  “It was always a great experience, especially when Niagara would come in,” he said.

National media, including Sports Illustrated, headed to the corner of Times Square and Barry Street for the February 25 spectacle.  The standing room only crowd was an estimated 2300.  On top of the streak, it was Tom Stith’s final home game in a Bona uniform. 

Ten first-half turnovers were a part of the five-point Bona deficit at halftime.  St. Bonaventure tied the score at 61 with 11:20 left, but Niagara surged ahead behind 70 percent shooting in the second half.  Though Stith scored 33 points in his home finale, Niagara had four starters in double figures, led by Al Butler with 24 points (11-19 from the floor). 

Flynn, then nine years old, sat with his neighbor at midcourt in the Armory balcony.  “Every time they [St. Bonaventure] rallied, there was Butler hitting a shot,” Flynn said. “Niagara just had control of the game.”

Final score: Niagara 87, St. Bonaventure 77.  The OTH story summarized the sentiment: “It was as final as death.”  The following morning was a somber one for Bona fans.  According to the OTH writer, they were “dazed as though in disbelief that a dear friend had departed from this life.” 

Flynn said that he “cried like a baby” after the Niagara loss. 

“I lived and died with Bonas,” he added.  “It was just so unbelievable that they lost that game.  I think everybody thought they were going to win.  As the game went on, you knew that was not going to happen.” 

However, some solace was present in the opponent that cracked the streak.  “While Bonaventure fans were devastated they lost that game,” Flynn remembered, “they probably would have been more upset if it had been someone like Canisius.  Bonas and Niagara seemed to have a good rapport with each other.” 

A part of that seemed to be the respect given to Coach Gallagher, who was carried off the floor by Niagara fans after the game.  Even before the final buzzer, Donovan walked to the Niagara bench to congratulate Gallagher, who got the game ball with Donovan’s approval.  Afterward, according to an OTH story, both Bona and Niagara fans stopped by the Niagara locker room “to say ‘nice going’ to a nice guy.”  The story added that Gallagher was as gracious in beating the Bonnies than he was in his previous nine losses or so to them.  

The OTH called it “the upset of upsets in ‘Little Three’ basketball history.”  And win #100 was never reached.

On March 16, 1995, the top pop song in the US was Madonna’s Take a Bow. 

That’s exactly what the Bonnies did that evening in the Reilly Center, and it was Francis Tommasino’s most memorable Bona game behind the microphone in his Bona tenure.  Tommasino, the “voice of the Bonnies” from 1988-1995, called 180 games over that span.  The dream had been realized fairly early in life: Tommasino said that getting the radio job for St. Bonaventure was his dream since second grade.  “Not a lot of people knew what they wanted to be at that age, but I did.  To me, it was the best job in the world,” he said.

He took over mid-season for Don McLean, whose career covered 33 seasons, and found himself at Rutgers announcing his first game at the age of 24.  “I remember it vividly,” he remembered.  “I survived…I got through it.  More than anything else, I was petrified that I wouldn’t get on the air or something would go wrong.  I think people realized, ‘Well, he’s not Don, but he’s going to do all right.’”

Fast forward 178 games to his first post-season call. 

It was the next-to-last game of his radio tenure that was recalled with fondness.  He also knew that the end of the Bona season would mark the end of the announcing role, as he would be moving to Virginia for family reasons.  Game #179 would be fresh in his mind years later: Coach Jim Baron’s squad beat the University of Southern Mississippi for a first-round NIT victory, 75-70. 

What made the victory more memorable was that it marked the Bonnies’ first return to post-season action since the 1983 NIT (a 90-76 loss to Iona).  However, the idea of the Bonnies even being picked for the NIT that season was uncertain.  They lost their last two regular season games before falling in double overtime to St. Joe’s in the Atlantic 10 tournament and finding themselves with a record of 17-12. 

“When the team went belly up in the A-10 tournment, it was like our hopes were dashed,” he said.  “The way that [St. Joe’s game] ended, I thought, ‘That’s it…we won’t even get to the NIT.”

Yet, to the surprise of many, they did get an NIT invite. 

While the Bonnies won the NIT in 1977, Southern Mississippi took that same crown in 1987 in defeating LaSalle in the championship game. The 1994-1995 team brought impressive victories to the Reilly Center that included wins over SEC foes Mississippi State and Mississippi as well as over Louisville, Virginia Tech, and VCU.

Three Bonnies averaged in double figures that same season: David Vanterpool, Nii Nelson-Richards, and Jeff Quackenbush.  St. Bonaventure started 0-3 before win streaks of four and five games boosted them in the home stretch of the season. 

The Reilly Center fans were energized for the post-season matchup with Southern Mississippi.  Tommasino described the crowd as “incredible” with an energy level “absolutely through the roof.”

The Bonnies responded in kind, surging to a 25-8 lead and ahead, 34-27, at half.  Nelson-Richards scored nearly half (16) of the Bona points in that half and eventually led all scorers with 24 points. Southern Mississippi took the lead in the second half, in part due to the Bonnies’ poor foul shooting (20-38), but the team prevailed behind Nelson-Richards.  “He really had a terrific game,” said Tommasino, “and pulled the team through it.”

Looking back, Tommasino saw the season as a pivotal one, describing it as “an uplifting year overall.”  After all, he noted, “By those standards of the time, it [an 18-13 record] was a great turnaround for Bona basketball.”

And the NIT game with Southern Mississippi was significant on a number of levels, according to Tommasino.  “Not only because it was a return to the tournament, but it was also a win, and it was a game that the Reilly Center hadn’t seen in a long time…getting to play a post-season game and come away with a win,” he said.    

It was the Bonnies’ only victory in the final five games of the season, as they lost at Marquette in the ensuing round of the NIT despite Vanterpool’s 27-point performance.  “A game that St. Bonaventure should have won,” remarked Tommasino.

After the final buzzer in the Bradley Center, Tommasino signed off for the final time, taking along the fond memories of many Bona games courtside and a most inspiring NIT win over Southern Mississippi.

Even Hall of Famers have “bad” games.

Ask Sam Stith, the legendary player who scored over 1100 points in his three varsity seasons at St. Bonaventure University (SBU) from 1957-60.  Playing at a time in college basketball when players weren’t eligible to play at the varsity level until their sophomore year, Stith also collected 620 rebounds, rather impressive for a 6-2 guard/forward.    

His #22 jersey was raised to the Reilly Center rafters upon his 1969 induction to the University’s Athletics Hall of Fame.

After all, losing wasn’t common to Stith’s career at SBU.  In his three seasons, the Bona teams coached by Eddie Donovan amassed a record of 62-13, good for a .827 winning percentage. 

The basketball success in that era was known for something else during Stith’s playing days: a prominent home-game win streak.  The Bonnies’ last loss had come to Niagara on February 11, 1948.  By the time that Stith joined the varsity squad in 1957, the streak of victories in the Olean (NY) Armory had gained national attention. 

“There’s no way in the world that someone would come into the Armory and beat us,” Stith recalled.  “That was our feeling.  It didn’t matter who it was.”

Asked about the most memorable games in his Bona career, Stith pointed to consecutive home win #73.  Though the Bonnies survived with a narrow victory over Niagara, 69-66, the streak appeared to be coming to an end in the final seconds of regulation.  Stith fouled a Niagara player, who made both free throws to put the Purple Eagles ahead by a point.  Donovan called a timeout, and Stith headed to the team huddle with his head down, thinking that he was being pulled from the game for committing the foul.  On top of that, he hadn’t made a basket the entire game.      

To this point, it wasn’t Stith’s best moment in a Bona uniform.

Donovan, however, kept Stith on the floor and instructed the Bonnies to run a set play.  “We’re moving it [the ball] around, the clock is ticking off, and [teammate] Larry Weise yelled at me when I got the ball to drive to the hoop.  The defensive guy played me for the charge, so I pulled up and banked it off the backboard,” Stith remembered.   

The Olean Times Herald story—headlined “Pipe-Dreamer Couldn’t Have Improved on Bona’s Victory”—credited that basket with 15 seconds left as deciding the game and keeping the streak alive. 

Was there pressure in the moment with such a long win streak on the line?

“Nope, nope,” he said without a second thought.  “I wanted it because I messed up by fouling [the Niagara player].

“The only thing is that I came close to charging the other player.  That would have really been disastrous.  If I went one more step, I would have run into him.  Game over.”  And 72-game home win streak over.   

Still the Purple Eagles of Niagara nearly sent SBU fans home from the Armory in shock.  The final 14 seconds were “sweat-producing,” as described by The Times Herald, and found Weise, the 5-11 senior guard and subsequent Bona head coach, sinking two foul shots in the final two seconds to seal the win. 

Stith’s recollection of what happened after the final buzzer was vivid. “The students put me on their shoulders and carried me off the court,” he recounted, adding that he almost hit his head on the overhang in exiting the Armory court. 

Win #73 was pivotal to Stith’s career.  “That Niagara game jump-started my career at St. Bonas,” he said.

He realized that the ending to the game nearly 55 years ago could have been different.  Being called for a charge on that last shot, particularly after committing the foul to allow Niagara to take the lead, may have affected his subsequent time in a Bona uniform.  “If I miss that shot, it means I’m the goat, and keep in mind that it would have broken the Bona winning streak,” Stith added. 

Instead the win over Niagara became a signature game for Stith en route to the Bona Athletics Hall of Fame honor.  The University’s webpage of Stith offers an apt description: “When the game was on the line, he became the ‘Go To Guy,’ and he seldom disappointed.”  Win #73 included.

My wife has never watched a St. Bonaventure (SBU) men’s basketball game, but she deserves an assist on leading me to learn more about the loss that effectively ended the hopes of an NCAA championship on a gloomy St. Patrick’s Day in 1961. 

Her directive to me was clear: In preparing to move, my childhood boxes collecting dust in the basement needed to be sorted out.  Combing through them uncovered an array of Bona gems.  I found the Bob Lanier autograph taken to my first grade class in 1968.  Of course I had kept the copy of The Olean Times Herald on the day after SBU beat Houston for the 1977 NIT championship.  Eastern 8 newspapers?  Yes, I had them, too, not to mention a collection of Bona game programs from my time as a sports information intern in the early 1980s. 

Then there was an unusual item, something related to a Bona defeat to Wake Forest College—its name at that time—in March 1961.  How it found its way into my assortment of memorabilia was a mystery.  After all, the game was played a month before I was born, well before I remember listening to Don McLean call games as a kid.  I knew the Bonnies had some good teams in the pre-Lanier era, but knew nothing about the 1960-1961 squad and wondered about this particular loss.      

Yes, Wake Forest upset St. Bonaventure on March 17, 1961, in the NCAA Eastern Regional semifinal game before a capacity crowd of 12,000 in Charlotte, NC, a profound disappointment to Bona fans thinking about a national championship.  After all, this first visit to the NCAA tournament featured a Bona team ranked as high as second in the country that season.  The final AP poll placed St. Bonaventure at #3 in the country, two spots behind the NCAA champion Ohio State team that featured Jerry Lucas, Larry Siegfried, Mel Nowell, John Havlicek, and Bobby Knight.  

In fact, the Bonnies accepted the NCAA bid a month before the tournament started.  According to a Sports Illustrated account from February 1961, St. Bonaventure was the first independent team chosen for the 1961 NCAA tournament.  Called the best team in the East, the story related that the “enterprising” Bonnies could get a rematch against Ohio State, the only team to beat them to that point in the season.  That Madison Square Garden tilt on New Year’s Eve 1960 found the Bonnies down by 11 points in the second half before losing, 84-82. 

Niagara and Duquesne upended St. Bonaventure toward the end of the regular season with the consecutive setbacks occurring within five days of each other.  The Niagara loss in the Olean Armory ended SBU’s 99-game home winning streak that dated to 1948, while the Dukes upset the Bonnies in overtime, 79-74, in Pittsburgh. 

The first round of the NCAA, played as part of a tripleheader before 18,000 fans in Madison Square Garden, saw the Bonnies rally over Rhode Island.  Tom Stith, the two-time All-American and runner-up national player of the year that season, scored 34 points, while Freddie Crawford added 29 points.  The New York Times account described the Bona duo as the “most dazzling practitioners” among the six teams that day in playing with “startling acrobatics.”

The 78-73 setback to Wake Forest in the NCAA East Regional semifinals at the Charlotte Coliseum was unique from the outset.  Billy Packer, the famed Wellsville (NY)-born television analyst who covered 34 consecutive Final Fours, wouldn’t have been courtside at that point.  He actually played in the game.  The 5-9 junior guard for the Demon Deacons averaged 17 points per game, but wasn’t the scoring leader for the squad.  That achievement belonged to the star 6-8 forward Len Chappell—the Tom Stith equivalent for Wake Forest—who had a 27 point per game average.  Though growing up closer to Olean than to Winston-Salem, Chappell took his high school experience from a small town near Johnstown, PA, to become a two-time ACC Player of the Year.

The game was also unique in a way likely unmatched in any NCAA game since 1961.  It highlighted two players who went on to become the second picks in the first round of a professional draft.  Stith, a subsequent Hall of Fame inductee at St. Bonaventure, was chosen as the second overall pick of the 1961 draft by the New York Knicks, while Washington selected Wake Forest player Norm Snead as its quarterback in the second spot of the NFL draft the very same year.

Ahead 37-36 at halftime, the Bonnies faced a persistent Wake Forest team that forced six lead changes in the second half.  Bob Woollard, a 6-10 center later drafted by the New York Knicks, scored 10 points and grabbed 11 rebounds off the Wake Forest bench to contribute to the Demon Deacon win.  Woollard averaged just four points per game that season, yet his performance against St. Bonaventure was pivotal in dashing NCAA championship dreams.

The referees were no doubt busy in the 40 minutes of play, though the game must have been far longer.  Each team shot 34 free throws with Wake Forest sinking five more than Coach Eddie Donovan’s squad.  Three of the seven Bona players fouled out as the team committed a season-high 24 fouls.  In addition, only five baskets were scored from the field by both teams in the final nine minutes of regulation.  The 73-point output by St. Bonaventure was the lowest of the season.

Both The Bona Venture and Olean Times Herald reports of the game referred to numerous traveling infractions called against the Bonnies.  In the latter story, Coach Donovan conceded, “We were called with an unusually large number of traveling violations, but I guess we were traveling.” 

The Bona defeat was also mentioned in a 1968 Sports Illustrated story by Curry Kirkpatrick, who described it as “a game still remembered for its odd officiating and for a Wake Forest fast break started by the coach from his bench.”  That specific second-half play, as related in an article years later in The Buffalo News, had the Wake Forest coach taking the ball from one of the Bona guards, who was about to offer an in-bounds pass, and throwing it to Packer for a basket.  A post-game commentary in The Bona Venture concluded, “When a coach is allowed to pass the ball into one of his players and this results in a score for his team, it is apparent that the officials either don’t care or are blind—or both.” 

On top of this, a story in the Charlotte Observer referred to a clock malfunction in the scoreboard in the final minutes of regulation, leading to “anxious inquiries about the time remaining.” 

Wake Forest lost its next game, the Eastern Regional finals, to a Jack Ramsay-coached St. Joe’s team.  For St. Bonaventure, there would be no rematch against Ohio State, which eventually suffered an overtime loss to Cincinnati in the NCAA championship game. Stith, who passed the 2000-point mark in the subsequent consolation victory over Princeton, saw his spectacular career at St. Bonaventure come to an end, and, just two months after the Wake Forest loss, Donovan accepted a head coaching position with the New York Knicks. 

The new Bona coach, 24-year-old Larry Weise, inherited the team later that year.  His success in the ensuing seasons propelled the program to new heights, which prompted kids like me to become ardent Bona fans and to keep special memories in all kinds of ways for decades to come.

I have been a fan of St. Bonaventure men’s basketball for as long as I can remember. As a kid growing up in Olean (NY), I recall the excitement of getting the cardboard schedule of the upcoming season and filling in the results as the year progressed. The games were often the topic of wintertime conversations at school, the neighbor’s hoop, the dinner table, and really anywhere in the community.

As a student at St. Bonaventure (SBU), I had the joy of interning in the Sports Information office and experiencing the excitement of Reilly Center games from a pressbox perspective. My first time on a plane (age 20) was flying from Bradford (PA) to Washington, DC, to see an SBU-GW game (sadly a 78-64 loss). After graduating from SBU (1983), I continued to follow the Bonnies. In fact, I distinctly recall listening to the championship victory in the 2012 A-10 tournament from a hotel in Armenia. For the upcoming season, I’ll be St. Bonaventure’s #1 fan in Dubai.

As many college basketball fans know, the St. Bonaventure basketball fan base is a special one: dedicated, loyal, and vocal. In launching this blog, I hope that fans enjoy the memories of some special games, both wins and losses, through the years.

My gratitude goes to the people featured in the blogs for sharing their memories and to Dennis Frank, SBU Archivist. This blog certainly wouldn’t be happening without them.