By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — In its final home game of the regular season, coach Jim Crowley wanted to see his St. Bonaventure women’s basketball team put together a “complete performance.”
And despite its 67-57 loss to Dayton in its regular season finale, he acknowledged that his team was able to do just that.
“We played really hard, I thought we executed the things we wanted to defensively, we’re just disappointed we didn’t make some more shots,” Crowley said. “I thought we did some things that we really wanted to do, we executed our game plan, we played hard, we played for one another, and we’ve done that now for three straight games. We look like I want us to look so we’re getting there, and hopefully we continue that stretch.”
But while the overall performance was one he was satisfied with, the Bonnies were initially shell-shocked by the size and physicality of the Flyers. Their dedication to crashing the glass was a major factor in the game with the visitors winning the battle on the boards by a 45-25 margin, and on the offensive glass specifically, they won 16-1.
The biggest reason for the wide margin in Dayton’s favor was the presence of Arianna Smith. Her joint-game-high 20 points and game-high 17 rebounds made her a force to be reckoned with for Bona’s bigs.
“That’s just what they do,” Crowley said of Dayton’s dedication to rebounding. “Smith is really, really good. She’s physical, she’s strong, a quick leaper. It’s a skill (Dayton) has and it’s something to build on. And really, I thought after the first quarter we settled in OK with that. … But that first quarter, it was different. It took us a minute to settle into it, then I thought we were OK with it.”
And as Bona, gradually, became more comfortable with managing the physicality of Dayton, it managed to claw its way back on the scoreboard late in the first half and early in the second, cutting the visitors’ lead to just one point early in the third quarter.
However, Crowley noted that the fouls that the Flyers managed to draw on the back of a number of their rebounds prevented his team from completing a full-fledged comeback.
“They moved us a little bit, and … you get frustrated and you’re trying to get out what you work on,” Crowley said. “The past two games, I think we’ve only allowed five free throws, so we had been really good about it. But they were relentless with coming hard to the basket. It seemed like every time we were right there, we fouled. And so credit to them for how physical and how aggressive they played.”
Those fouls, in turn led to foul trouble for the Bonnies, specifically for Hannah Richardson, Caitlin Frost and Mackenzie Pettinelli, the latter of whom fouled out. This, of course, did not help the team’s comeback efforts late on as Crowley was forced to continually rotate players, taking away their ability to find consistency. However, he was ultimately pleased with Gabby Robinson Forde, Tamar voor de Poort and Macy Smith who were each able to provide good minutes.
“I thought Gabby played a really full game,” Crowley said. “She was able to do a lot of things throughout the game. It was good to keep Hannah on the floor in the second half, (but when she was out), credit to Tamar, credit to Macy and Gabby, they really held it together … but it was tough with limited minutes with Mack, Caitlin and Hannah.”
But where the interior defense struggled, Crowley handed credit to the perimeter defense of Dani Haskell and Zoe Shaw, the former celebrating her senior night with a joint-game-high 20-point performance.
Haskell, Shaw and the other Bona guards managed to keep Dayton’s season leader in points-per-game, Ivy Wolf, relatively quiet. She finished the game with 16 points but went just 5-for-15 from the field. Still, he would have liked to see his guards contribute a little more to the interior defensive duties which would have relieved some of the strain Bona’s bigs felt.
“I thought the perimeter defense was really solid,” Crowley said. “And while our forwards ended up with some fouls, I thought we could have done a better job, especially early, of guards getting in the mix and rebounding a little bit more.”
Now the game will go down as another tally in the loss column for the Bonnies, but for Crowley, it was another step in the right direction for his side, an upward trend he will hope to see continue as they prepare to take on the Atlantic 10 tournament.
