Mason Travels Up North to Take on The Bonnies

Your 19-2 and 7-1 George Mason Patriots are taking on the 13-8 and 2-6 St. Bonaventure Bonnies. The Bonnies are coming off what is their victory by far of conference play, an eight-point victory on the road against a solid Duquesne squad.

St. Bonaventure is coached by Mark Schmidt, who has been there since the 2007-08 season. Schmidt has an overall record of 419-336, with a record of 337-246 with the Bonnies. In A10 play, he has a record of 169-145.

Joe and I had SBUnfurled, the most knowledgeable Bonny guy on A10 Twitter, on our podcast, and he said this was the low point of the Schmidt era. I agree. It is his first time having a truly bad team since the 2009 season.

Ilia Ermakov, Amar’e Marshall, and Xander Wedlow were all listed as out for their game against Duquesne. They have all been on that list for a while. Marshall took an official visit to Mason in the 2024 offseason.

St. Bonaventure By The Numbers

The Bonnies are the 148^th ranked team on KenPom, with the 104^th offense and 241^st defense. In A10 play, the offense is at fifth, and the defense is at 14^th, by a mile. 13^th is Loyola Chicago at 117.4 per 100 possessions, Bonny is at 120.

Since conference play started, Torvik has St. Bonaventure as the 232^nd team, with the 116^th offense and 332^nd defense. Oh my.

Schmidt still doesn’t play his bench, with only 22.3% of minutes coming from guys outside of the starting lineup. That’s 349^th.

The Reilly Center is one of the hardest places to play in the country, with them being listed as the 22^nd best home-court advantage on KenPom at 3.8, which looks at your last 60 conference games and takes the difference. That’s second in the A10, with SLU at 3.9, 16^th. VCU is sneakily at 8^th in the A10, which is not what you would expect from the narrative of games in the Siegel Center.

The numbers below will be in conference play unless specified otherwise.

Offense

The offense isn’t too bad, you take fifth. They get it by taking a lot of shots, having the third and fourth best turnover and offensive rebound rate.

The Bonnies have an average-ish eFG% at 8^th, which comes from the 4^th best three-point percentage at 36.7%, and the 11^th best from two at 49.5%. The problem is that a lot more of their shots are two, with only 33.5% of shots coming from deep, second to last to Mason.

As you would expect by a team coached by such a veteran, Bonny takes care of the ball really well, having the second-least non-steal turnovers, which shows discipline on this end.

The shot chart covers all of conference play minus their game against VCU. They struggle to take shots at the rim, with their average two-point distance being 6.5 feet, which is second longest in the A10. That rim is pretty blue, not good. At least the midrange is pretty red, as well as some spots from three.

The Bonnies have a 1A and 1B in Frank Mitchell and Buddy Simmons, a nice big-guard one-two punch.

Mitchell averages 15 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 3.4 assists. The former Minnesota big takes 25.2% of shots, 18^th, and has a true shooting of 52.7%. A volume scorer. More importantly, he brings a 20.7% assist rate, and a 15.4% turnover rate. You take it from a big, for sure. Along with that, Frank has the seventh best offensive rebound rate.

Buddy averages 18.9 points and 3 assists. It is pretty funny that the center averages more assists in less playing time than the 5’10 guard. Simmons takes 23.4% of shots, and has a 63.7% true shooting, which is seventh. Along with that, he brings secondary playmaking with a 15.2%-11.5% assist-turnover rate ratio. The Gardner-Webb transfer has made 48.1% of his 54 threes, third best. He is their version of Kory Mincy.

Cayden Charles averages 13.4 points and 7 rebounds a game. That rebounding number is really impressive when you consider he is 6’3. Charles draws 3.9 fouls per 40, which is somehow more than Frank Mitchell.

Dasante Bowen has the 6^th best assist rate at 27.9%, compared to a fine 16.6% turnover rate. He’s made 5 of his 12 A10 threes, 41.7%, but only shoots 9-30 on the year, and is a career 27.6% shooter.

Daniel Egbuniwe has made 37.8% of his threes on 37 attempts, Charles 34.5% of his 29, Joe Grahovac 30.8% of his 13, and Achille Lonati 11.1% of his 18. Grahovac was nails from deep in non-conference play, still being at 41.5% on the season.

Andrew Osasuyi is kind of their lesser version of Emmanuel Kanga, a guy that changes the energy of the game, and grabs boards. He’s only at 12.4% rebounding on the offensive end, compared to Kanga’s 19.4%. That is still the highest on his team.

Defense

St. Bonaventure has not held a team to under a point per possession since November.

The defense is absurdly bad, especially because you know they are decently talented. The Bonnies do a fine job at limiting the amount of shots, similar to their shot advantage on offense, forcing the fifth most turnovers, and giving up the sixth best offensive rebound rate, but give up an absurd eFG% of 58.6%. Second to last is Rhody at 54.7%, but they REALLY win the shot amount battle, instead of being okay-ish at it.

The insane eFG% comes from giving up 42.2% from three, last, and 55.3% from two, 12^th. And teams are making 80.4% of free throws, and I am going to assume that more means that guards are taking a lot of them, not that teams are just nails against Bonny.

Those must be some insanely late closeouts. There is no way that so many spots should be so red from three. And somehow, even with the overhelping, their average two-point attempt given up is only 5.1 feet away, 11^th.

Blocks are definitely not everything, but Frank Mitchell cannot have a 0.5% block rate on the worst defense in the conference. Some sliders need to be moved there. At least he has a 3.2% steal rate, along with grabbing 18.5% of rebounds, 14^th best.

The best rebounders on the team are 6’3 Cayden Charles, grabbing 19.8% of boards, ninth, and Joe Grahovac at 19%, 11^th.

Speaking of Grahovac, he has the second highest block rate at 11.3%, while only committing 2.9 fouls per 40.

Osasuyi really is an energy guy, with a block rate of 16.3%, steal rate of 2.6% and defensive rebounding rate of 14.8%.

The only players who foul a decent bit are Daniel Egbuniwe and Osasuyi, both at 4.4 per 40. Neither of those are problems, but I guess I have to mention anything above four. I guess you have to have low foul rates if you have to be prepared to play 35 minutes.

St. Bonaventure Scouting Report (First Half vs. Duquesne)

Offense

The offense is centered around Frank Mitchell handling the ball, with cuts all around him. Not too far from a Richmond/Princeton style. Mitchell is very good at finding the open cutter, but sometimes the cuts overlap with where Frank is going.

Grahovac is pretty raw on offense, but the flashes are crazy. He had a wild take to the rim that turned into a poster. You see the vision with him. The sophomore big man plays kind of like Stas Sivka on offense, chilling in the corner for a while, crashing for boards, and making you nervous when he dribbles with ball pressure.

I can absolutely see him being a great player down the road, as the tools are there, but the “NBA prospect” narrative really messed up expectations up front.

Buddy Simmons is very shifty with the ball in his hands, and very hard to stay in front of.

Osasuyi is a lob threat, and Egbuniwe might try some post play with uncertain results.

Defense

There is a lot of hedging ball-screens, but either Duquesne is awesome at passing over them, or both Mitchell and Grahovac aren’t great PnR defenders.

They generally switch off-ball, but try to stay on their man with the ball. Occasionally, they double the ball, and hope the handler can’t make the pass to the open three. Teams do quite often. It seems like there isn’t a lot of helping the helper, just hoping that they can’t find the open guy two passes away.

Bonny would lose guys in transition a decent bit. They also don’t challenge deep threes, which Kory Mincy could take advantage of.

Frank Mitchell is a fine defender.

When matched up with the right guy, Buddy Simmons is a good defender at 5’10. I don’t know what happens if he gets put onto a 6’5 Jahari Long, but I am interested to see.

Grahovac is a good defender, stays in front of his man, can get it done at the rim, whether helping or one-on-one. He is a step up from Mitchell. Not sure he can cover true bigs, only saw him on big wings/smaller forwards. Jumps a lot, pump fakes probably get him. Duquesne also scored in the pick and roll a bit on him, with the big man not being particularly challenged. Makes sense for a guy in his first year of D1.

Osasuyi is so fun. Think of early Malik Henry, where he just kind of flies around because he’s a crazy athlete.

Miscommunication on the perimeter leads to guards having wide open threes sometimes. It did feel like Egbuniwe was involved in a lot of the miscommunications.

Near the end of the half, Schmidt dropped into a 2-3 zone that went pretty well.

What Does This Mean For Mason?

St. Bonaventure is favored by 1.5 in Vegas, which is what the line opened at. That is pretty surprising since generally it starts at the KenPom prediction. My assumption is that someone overrode the original line because they think Riley Allenspach isn’t playing. He was questionable and a game-time decision for the Davidson game, so you really don’t know, unless you have insider information.

I predict a 75-65 victory for the Patriots. Kory Mincy, who’s coming off the TEETH chain, should match up well with Buddy Simmons. Frank Mitchell doesn’t really scare me, he is more of a volume guy that is just kind of keeping them in the game. Someone else needs to step up.