St. Bonaventure Game Notes | Lafayette Game Notes
St. Bonaventure (3-3) vs. Lafayette (2-4)
Dec. 1, 2010 | 7 p.m. | Reilly Center

Wednesday Night's Matchup
St. Bonaventure is looking to bounce back following a 55-44 loss at home Monday night to now No. 20/24 St. John's. Lafayette heads to the Reilly Center for the first time looking for its first road win of the 2010-11 campaign, as the Leopards have dropped decisions at Long Island, Liberty and Monmouth.

Last Time Out
With the game tied 38-38 with 8:36 left, No. 20/24 St. John's went on a 15-2 run to break away from a scrappy St. Bonaventure team on Monday evening at the Reilly Center, on its way to a fifth consecutive win. The Red Storm (6-1) raced out to leads of 8-0 and 16-3, never trailed and held the Bonnies to 34.7 percent shooting.

Stats That Could Determine A Winner
St. Bonaventure entered this week as the 13th-best free-throw shooting team in the country at 79.4 percent … the Bonnies are also ranked inside the top 50 nationally (out of 333 Division I schools) in scoring defense at 55.4 points per game (49th), fewest turnovers with 16 per outing (48th) and field-goal percentage defense at 34.1 (38th).

Lafayette is ranked in the top 100 in the country in just one category – free-throw shooting – as it is connecting at a 72.1 percent clip … the Leopards are shooting just 23.5 percent from 3-point range, and make an average of 2.7 3's per game (319th in the country) … St. Bonaventure's Jessica Jenkins averages 3.4 3-pointers a game on her own, a stat which is currently the 11th best in the land.

Scouting Lafayette
-- Lafayette enters Wednesday night's game with a 2-4 record following a  52-39 loss to Fairfield on Sunday
-- The Leopards return nine letterwinners and all five starters from a team that finished 6-23 and 4-10 in the Patriot League
-- Senior co-captain LaKeisha Wright leads the Lafayette scoring attack at 12.8 a game, and recently became the 15th member of the Leopards' 1,000-Point Club 
-- Lafayette's leading rebounder (7.0) and shot blocker (2.0), Danielle Fiacco, has not started a game this season
-- The Leopards have 10 players who average between 1.5 and 8.5 points per game
-- In all four of its losses, Lafayette has scored fewer than 60 points, whereas in both its wins it has scored more than 70 points

                    St. Bonaventure vs. Lafayette       
                    Series Quick Facts 

                    Overall: St. Bonaventure Leads, 2-1

                    At St. Bonaventure: N/A
                    At Lafayette: Tied, 1-1
                    At Neutral Site: St. Bonaventure Leads, 1-0

                    Most St. Bonaventure Points: 68
                    Most Lafayette Points: 82

                    Fewest St. Bonaventure Points: 58
                    Fewest Lafayette Points: 38

                    Largest St. Bonaventure Margin:  20
                    Largest Lafayette Margin: 19 

Dianne Nolan became the fifth head coach in Lafayette women's basketball history on April 20, 2010. Nolan joins the Leopards following a three-year stint at Yale University and 28 years as head coach at Fairfield University. Her career record in 33 seasons at St. Francis (N.Y.) and Fairfield is 517-416, which ranks her 22nd in victories among active Division I head coaches entering the 2010-11 campaign.

Nolan spent the last three seasons as an assistant at Yale University, including her final campaign in 2009-10 as the associate head coach and recruiting coordinator. Nolan and Bulldogs' head coach Chris Gobrecht represented one of the winningest tandems in college basketball, sharing a combined 63 years of head coaching experience and 990 head coaching victories.

In 28 years as the head coach at Fairfield University, she accumulated a program record 456 wins and led the Stags to four NCAA Tournament appearances. Nolan's teams won three Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Championships, and she earned MAAC Coach of the Year honors on five occasions. With Fairfield's 69-53 victory at Rider on Jan., 29, 2006, Nolan became the 28th coach in Division I history with 500 career wins.

Don't Foul Them
St. Bonaventure's Jessica Jenkins entered this week shooting 90.5 percent from the free-throw line, a pace that puts her as the 39th-best free-throw shooter in the country. On the other side of the ball, Lafayette's Lauren Jackson is shooting 94.1 percent from the line, making her the 16th-best free-throw shooter in all of America.

All-Time Against The Patriot League
Heading into tonight's game, St. Bonaventure is 23-11 all-time against PL foes. The Bonnies have played Colgate the most, owning a 10-6 all-time advantage over the Raiders. In its last meeting with a PL team, the Brown and White fell to Lehigh, 68-66, in overtime on Dec. 30, 2009 in the championship game of the Mountain Hawks' Christmas City Classic.

Frosh Friends Making New Friends
Freshmen Doris Ortega and CeCe Dixon came to Bonaventure as a package deal from the same high school in Manhattan, and they're starting to let their presence be known on the court. Ortega played a career-high 27 minutes off the bench against St. John's, while Dixon also came off the bench to log 28 minutes. The 55 minutes is the most combined game action the two have seen yet this year, breaking previous highs of 46 in the season opener against Binghamton and 52 at Morgan State. Dixon is doing her best to make friends of her new teammates as well, as the 5-foot-3 guard currently leads the Bonnies in distributing the basketball, issuing 2.2 assists per game.

Can't Score Without The Rock
After finishing 2009-10 as the 7th-best ball-protecting team in the country with just 13.6 turnovers per game, the Bonnies are currently coughing the ball up 16.2 times per contest. However, the more troubling statistic for head coach Jim Crowley's club is that St. Bonaventure is 0-3 when it has more turnovers than its opponents, and 3-0 when it has fewer.

A List Of Firsts
With St. Bonaventure's loss to St. John's on Monday evening, a few "firsts" happened for the Bonnies:
-- Their first home loss of the season (2-1)
-- Their first game this year with just one player scoring in double figures
-- Their first game this season scoring 20 or fewer points in the second half

Deadly From Distance
Jessica Jenkins is rapidly moving up the St. Bonaventure career 3-point list. The junior currently sits in sixth place on the all-time list with 147 made 3's, and if she continues at the pace she has the last two seasons will head into her senior year in sole possession of third place.

Home (Not So) Sweet Home
Junior Megan Van Tatenhove loves playing on the road … at least that's what her numbers indicate. In three road games, the forward is averaging 20.6 points and 8.3 rebounds per game. In the Reilly Center, she has cracked double figures in points just once, and is averaging 9.6 points and 5.0 rebounds in three games so far this year.

Looking For Another Sub-30
St. Bonaventure held Niagara to just 28.8 percent shooting in its win on Nov. 24, including a 20.8 percent clip in the second half. That is the lowest total shooting percentage from an opponent since Fordham shot 28.6 percent last year. Fordham was the lone opponent the Bonnies held under 30 percent from the field as they finished as the ninth-toughest scoring defense in the country last year at just 52.7 points per game.

Trying To Re-Ignite
Senior Cara Gustafson got her final campaign in Brown and White off to a fast start as she scored 11 points off a career-high-tying three 3-pointers in the season-opening win over Binghamton. However, after taking the final shot of regulation she landed awkwardly and missed the team's next game at Indiana with a right ankle sprain. Since then, she has played just 67 minutes in four games and has scored just three points, going a combined 1-10 from the field in those contests.

Don't Remember November
For the first time in four years the Bonnies finished the month of November without a winning record. The last time Bonaventure failed to achieve that was during the 2006-07 season when it went 3-4 in November.

Trying To Stay Afloat
With the loss to St. John's on Monday, St. Bonaventure's record is back at .500. The Bonnies have either been at, or below, .500 for the majority of the season. That record signified the first time that any member of the current Bonnies' roster had ever been at, or below, .500. Prior to this year, the last time St. Bonaventure was at .500 was during the 2006-07 season when on Feb. 15, 2007 it left Saint Joseph's with a loss to level its record at 13-13.

Picking Up Where They Left Off
It's still early, but after finishing last year in the top 10 in the country in four different statistical categories, St. Bonaventure is on a similar pace this season:

2009-10 Free-Throw %: 80.3
2010-11: 78.3
2009-10 Scoring Defense/Game: 52.7
2010-11: 55.3
2009-10 3-Point %: 38.5
2010-11: 31.8
2009-10 Turnovers/Game: 13.6
2010-11: 16.2

You Gotta Know When To Hold 'Em; Know When To Fold 'Em
Despite turning the ball over only 16.2 times a game, only one St. Bonaventure player who has played at least 20 minutes per contest has a positive assist-to-turnover ratio. Freshman CeCe Dixon has issued 13 assists while coughing up The Rock nine times, for a 1.44 ratio.

Next Up
The Bonnies will travel east to meet the Red Foxes of Marist on Saturday evening at 7:30. Marist is currently 4-1 and has won four straight games after losing its opener to St. John's. The Red Foxes have yet to play a home game, and currently lead the nation in fewest turnovers per game and are second in assist-to turnover ratio.