St. Bonaventure Basketball: Analyzing the Bonnies’ recent hot streak

Increased discipline on both ends

Outstanding production from the freshmen aside, perhaps the most telling statistical differences between the Bonnies’ start and the run that they’re currently enjoying has to do with improved discipline on both sides of the ball. En route to their 6-12 start, the Bonnies’ assist to turnover ratio was 0.88/1.00. As a frame of reference, if that were their number for the season as a whole, it would put them in the bottom three of the conference ahead of only GW and La Salle.

The only reason the Bonnies are out of the conferences’ turnover basement, so to speak, is because of how well they’ve taken care of the ball over this eleven game hot streak, during which their A/T has been a much more respectable 1.21/1.00. Perhaps it’s the mark of a young team finally starting to feel comfortable within Mark Schmidt’s system, or perhaps it’s the mark of a previously injury-laden team finally developing a consistent rotation. It could be that it’s an amalgam of both and several other factors. All that can be said for sure is that the Bonnies are exponentially more poised with the ball than they were in the early going.

On the defensive side, the Bonnies seem to have learned how to stifle their opponents without getting killed by free throws. Over those first eighteen games, they committed an average of 18.16 fouls, and too often their opponents were in the bonus early on in critical second halves. Schmidt must have made defensive discipline a priority in practice, because from game nineteen onward, they’ve averaged just 14.18 fouls per game, essentially a full four less than before.

I’ve already mentioned that this team is much healthier and deeper than they were in the non-con, but a more careful defensive approach goes miles towards allowing Schmidt to work with that depth and not have to worry about playing too cautiously.