The Starting Five Notes: 

1. St. Bonaventure plays its third straight road game when it travels east on I-86 to visit Binghamton on Saturday afternoon. The Bonnies have not played since a Dec. 13 loss at Pittsburgh, while the Bearcats have been idle since a Dec. 14 loss at Boston College. It will be the first meeting between the teams since 2010.

2. St. Bonaventure hopes to continue what has been a very strong start to this season. The Bonnies' 6-1 start was their best in 14 years, and a win over Binghamton would give the Bonnies their best start to a season since the 2001-02 team started 8-2.

3. St. Bonaventure leads the A-10 in defensive field goal percentage (.379) and blocked shots (5.0 per game) and ranks eighth in points allowed (63.0 ppg). The Bonnies  have allowed only two of their eight opponents to shoot over 40 percent from the field, and none have shot better than 41 percent. 

4. Senior center Youssou Ndoye leads the A-10 in both rebounding (11.0) and blocked shots (3.0 per game). He ranks sixth and 16th, respectively, among all Division I players in those categories.

5. Bonnies freshman point guard Jay Adams has been named the Atlantic 10's Rookie of the Week twice already this season. Adams, who scored a career high 26 points in a win at Ohio Dec. 6, is third on the team in scoring at 12.1 points per game. He is 17-36 (.472) from three-point range this season.

6. (We get to give an extra one as an early Christmas present)  Junior guard Marcus Posley, who is in his first season at St. Bonaventure, has been the impact scorer that the Bonnies hoped he would be. Posley has scored in double figures seven times, including three 20+ point games, and ranks sixth in the Atlantic 10 in scoring at 15.9 points per game. He has connected on 21 three-pointers.

Series Notes:

• This will be the fifth meeting between the schools and the first since 2010. The Bonnies lead the series 3-1. The only time St. Bonaventure lost to Binghamton was in Coach Mark Schmidt's second season, a 64-59 decision at the Events Center on Dec. 30, 2008.

Binghamton Notes:
• With one of the youngest and most inexperienced teams in Division I, the Bearcats have struggled to a 1-11 mark so far. At the start of the season, the team's 14 players had a combined 10 seasons of collegiate experience.
• Binghamton has lost nine straight games, most recently Dec. 14 at Boston College by a score of 63-49. The team's only win came Nov. 19 over Division III Hartwick.
• Dusan Perovic, a 6-9 freshman forward from Montenegro who attended South Kent (Conn.) Prep, leads the Bearcats in scoring at 12.2 points per game. No other Binghamton player averages in double figures, and BU is averaging just 57 points per game.  Other top scorers are freshman swingman Willie Rodriguez (9.1 ppg), sophomore guard Yosef Yacob (7.3) and freshman guard Romello Walker (7.1).
• One-third of Binghamton's field goals are three-pointers; Perovic is the best on the team at 20-41 (.488) from behind the arc.

Rebounding Strong
St. Bonaventure is off to a good start to the season in many ways, and rebounding is one of those:
• The Bonnies have outrebounded five of their eight opponents with one tie.
• St. Bonaventure outrebounded Pitt by three. The Panthers came into the game with a +8.8 rebound margin.
• The Bonnies rank fifth in the Atlantic 10 in rebound margin at +4.8 and stand second in the A-10 in rebounds per game (40.0).
• Youssou Ndoye leads the A-10 and ranks sixth among NCAA Division I players in rebounding at 11.0 per game.
• Dion Wright ranks sixth in the A-10 in rebounding at 8.3 per game; Andell Cumberbatch stands 15th with a 6.1 average.

Posley Makes Immediate Impact
Replacing 2014 graduate Matthew Wright, who averaged 16.3 points per game last season and scored over 1,000 career points, is not a task that can fall on one player. Marcus Posley, however, has begun to gain the confidence of Bonnies coaches and fans. He leads the Bonnies in scoring at 15.9 points per game, which ranks sixth in the Atlantic 10. He has scored in double figures seven times in eight games, including three games of 20 points or more: 22 vs. Siena, a game-high 20 points – including nine over the game's final 3:16 – in a 59-53 win over Canisius Nov. 22, and 20 at Ohio. Posley has scored before; as a freshman point guard at Ball State in 2012-13, he averaged 6.5 points per game. Last season at Indian Hills Junior College, when he switched to shooting guard, he averaged 13.5 points a game.

New Backcourt Productive
Entering the year, the major question mark about this Bona team was how it would replace the production and leadership of its 2013-14 senior backcourt of point guard Charlon Kloof and shooting guard Matthew Wright, who both had outstanding senior seasons. So far, the new starters have been just what the Bonnies hoped they would be. Jay Adams is the first freshman point guard to start for Bona since coach Mark Schmidt's first season of 2007-08 (Andrew Nicholson, a power forward, did start as a freshman in 2008-09; Malcolm Eleby was the freshman guard who started in 2007).
Marcus Posley, who is far more experienced than Adams with a year at Ball State and a year of junior college under his belt, has six double-digit scoring games and leads the Bonnies in scoring at 15.9 points per game. Between them, Adams (17) and Posley (21) have made 38 three-pointers and are shooting .404 from long range. 

Dion Wright Backing Up Sports Illustrated's Breakout Projection
Following a sophomore season that could easily been described as a breakout, St. Bonaventure junior Dion Wright has been named to Sport Illustrated's list of the "Projected Breakout Players" for the upcoming year. Wright is slotted 22nd on the list of 50 players based upon a projection that he will increase his scoring to 13 points per game this season.
The SI system "forecasts advanced statistics -- such as offensive efficiency, usage rates, and rebound and assist rates -- for each player and then fits them within the context of their team's rotation to yield raw stats."
SI wrote: "Wright was the Bonnies' most efficient player last season. He finishes well around the rim, makes his free throws and rarely turns the ball over." A 6-7 forward from Carson, Calif., Wright averaged 8.7 points and 4.8 rebounds per game coming off the bench in all 33 games as a sophomore. He made exactly 50 percent of his field goal attempts and 74 percent of his free throws. Wright more than doubled his per-game scoring and rebounding averages from his freshman season, taking advantage of 22 minutes of playing time per contest.
So far this season, Wright has lived up to the hype. He's scored in double figures seven out of eight games and ranks second on the team in scoring at 12.8 points per game. Wright, who has rarely left the floor this year, is also averaging 8.3 rebounds a game, which is sixth among A-10 players.

Gregg Returns To Give Bench A Lift
Sophomore forward Denzel Gregg returned from a team-imposed, six-game suspension in the Dec. 6 win at Ohio. Gregg played 21 minutes - the most of any Bona reserve - and scored four points. The 6-7 Syracuse native then scored four points and grabbed six rebounds at Pitt. Last season, Gregg played in 26 games and averaged 2.0 points. 

Ndoye A Force On Defense
While his scoring has fluctuated, what have remained constant are Youssou Ndoye's defense and rebounding. Always a force on defense,  leads the A-10 in both rebounding (11.0) and blocked shots (3.0 per game). He ranks sixth and 16th, respectively, among all Division I players in those categories. Ndoye has grabbed 10 or more rebounds in six consecutive games with a high of 13 against Buffalo.