St. Bonaventure Returns To The NCAA

Twelve years since their last NCAA bid, St. Bonaventure is once again a force to reckoned with on the college hoops scene. St Bonaventure beat Xavier with a score of 67 to 56 in the title game.

Coach Mark Schmidt appeared to be quite pleased with the outcome of the game and St. Bonaventure’s return to the college basketball limelight without the scandal they were embarrassed by back in 2003 in which they were caught utilizing an illegal player. After the illegal player was suspended, the players boycott the final two games of the regular season. Schmidt was quoted by Newsday saying:

“This is a great moment for the program and for the school. From where we have come it’s been a long hard battle. A lot of times, you work and you work and you work and you still don’t have success. But someone is looking over us, and I told the guys in the locker room, we worked and worked and worked and got lucky. We had success.”

Conference Player of the Year, Andrew Nicholson, scored a total of 26 points accompanied by 14 rebounds and 8 shots blocked. While Nicholson might not have any collection of the embarrassing scandal of 2003, the 250-pound Canadian knows that they played an excellent game. The Canadian power forward Nicholson sunk all 10 free throws and set a conference championship game record with his 8 blocks! His performance was so impressive that Xavier coach Chris Mack said:

He is an NBA player. Man is he good. We had a really good plan that we were able to executive in game one. He out-executed our plan. He’s extremely long, he’s skilled, he’s unselfish, a poor man’s Tim Duncan, by far the best player in our league and an NBA team needs to take him in the first round.”

Who do you think will win the NCAA tournament? Will it be St. Bonaventure?