ST. BONAVENTURE (0-0) vs. SAINT FRANCIS (PA) (0-0)
Monday, Nov. 7 - 7:00 p.m.
Reilly Center
TV: ESPN+

The St. Bonaventure men's basketball team opens the new season by hosting Saint Francis (PA) Monday night inside the Reilly Center. The game will be broadcast live on ESPN+.

OPENING NIGHT NOTES

• St. Bonaventure has won 18 games or more every year since 2013-14 – with the lone exception of the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 campaign when the Bonnies merely won both the regular season and postseason Atlantic 10 championships. This year, though, brings a year unlike any other for the Brown and White.
• A year removed from winning 23 games and reaching the semifinals of the NIT, the Bonnies are a completely different team. SBU returns less scoring from a year ago than any other squad in the nation – just four total points. It marks a sea change from recent seasons when the Bonnies were one of the veteran-most teams in Division I.
• Nine total newcomers join Bona's '22-23 roster with just three holdovers from last year and just one, sophomore Justin Ndjock-Tadjore, who saw any playing time last year. In addition, redshirt freshmen Anouar Mellouk and Brett Rumpel also figure to see time this season after sitting redshirt seasons last year.
• St. Bonaventure won last year's opener at home over Siena, 75-47. The Bonnies won their 2020-21 opener on a neutral court over Akron, 81-74, which snapped a three-year losing skid in season lidlifters, all at home, following a 2019 setback to Ohio, 65-53, an overtime loss to Bucknell, 88-85, in 2018, and 77-75 heartbreaker vs. Niagara in 2017. Prior to that, however, the Bonnies had won 12 straight home openers dating to 2004.
• Since the Reilly Center opened in 1966, the Bonnies are 50-5 overall in home openers.
• One of those Opening Night wins came over the Red Flash – the last meeting between the squads when Bona's came away with a 92-82 victory on Nov. 12, 2016. SBU would go on to be A-10 co-regular season champs that year and post a 20-12 record.

HONORING BOB LANIER
The season-long celebration of the legendary Bob Lanier's legacy will begin at Bona's season-opener Monday, Nov. 7 when the Bonnies start the campaign with recognition of the program's most famous alum. A special pre-game ceremony will highlight Lanier's accomplishments and lasting impact, and his famous No. 31 retired jersey banner will move to the center of the Reilly Center rafters where it will remain for the entire year.

Lanier's 31 will also adorn Bona's jerseys for the entirety of the 2022-23 season, beginning with the Nov. 7 game. Bonnies players will sport 31 patches on their jerseys, made to look like the Bonnies home uniform during his seasons with the program, in tribute.

In addition, St. Bonaventure is proud to announce the institution of the Bob Lanier Literacy Fund to continue his passion for work in the community.

For more, click here.

A WHOLE NEW YEAR

• St. Bonaventure boasts a nearly entirely new roster of nine newcomers: six transfers and three freshmen. 
• The Bonnies used the transfer portal to rebuild their roster after the loss of their senior class from a year ago. Last year, Bona's five senior starters accounted for all but five possible starts during the entire season. 
• The newcomers will have big shoes to fill: last year's senior class went 76-43 while the "Big Three" of Kyle Lofton, Dominick Welch and Osun Osunniyi posted a 64-20 record when all playing a full game together since February 2019 through last year. Those three played over 11,000 minutes together during their Bonnies careers.
• The Bonnies have a new face at point guard for the first time in four years: Kyrell Luc figures to take over for Kyle Lofton, who played 94 percent of possible minutes during his four-year Bonaventure career before transferring to Florida. At Holy Cross last year, Luc owned a 17 percent assist rate when on the floor.
• St. Bonaventure went from one of the veteran-most rosters in the nation the past two years to the opposite end of the spectrum. Of the three returners on this year's roster, only one, 
• Justin Ndjock-Tadjore, saw time last year. He played 30 minutes last year with the team's only returning points (four) and field goal (one). Brett Rumpel and fellow redshirt freshman Anouar Mellouk also are back after redshirt campaigns last year.

NEW LEADERS

• Despite being a totally different roster, the Bonnies are not without veteran leadership. Redshirt juniors Daryl Banks III and Moses Flowers were elected by their teammates to be team captains this season. Banks helped key an unforgettable Cinderella NCAA Tournament run by Saint Peter's last season, highlighted by a career-high 27 points in an overtime win over Kentucky as the Peacocks reached the Elite Eight. He poured in 890 points in three seasons at Saint Peter's, averaging better than 11.3 points per game last season and also finished with 26 points against Providence as well as 14 in a Sweet 16 win vs. Purdue. Flowers, meanwhile, played three seasons at Hartford, starting 66 of 69 career games. Last season, he averaged 14.7 points and 6.4 rebounds.
• The Bonnies boast four players with All-Conference awards on their collegiate resumes: Banks is a three-time All-MAAC pick while Flowers captured All-America East honors twice. In addition, Luc and Anquan Hill were each named Rookie of the Year in the Patriot League and NEC respectively. 

SIMILIARITY ON THE SIDELINES

• Despite of all the roster changes, the Bonnies figure to remain competitive based on who is on the sidelines. Under the leadership of Mark Schmidt, the Bonnies have been one the Atlantic 10's most consistent programs. The only A-10 team to enter this season having won at least 10 conference games in each of the past eight seasons, the Bonnies have reached at least 18 wins each year since 2013-14 with the exception of a 16-5 record in the 2020-21 campaign. Schmidt's teams have gone 214-127 (.628) between the 2011-12 and 2021-22 seasons.

SERIES HISTORY
St. Bonaventure leads, 32-12
 
PREVIOUS MEETING: St. Bonaventure 92, St. Francis (PA) 82 (11/12/16)
The Bonnies opened the 2016-17 season with a home win over the Red Flash. 

Jaylen Adams and Denzel Gregg both scored 23 points and Matt Mobley added 21 in his St. Bonaventure debut. 

The Bonnies led by as many as 18 points midway through the second half but the Red Flash came back within three at 69-66 with 6:42 remaining. Mobley helped St. Bonaventure hold off the visitors as he scored eight points in a 55-second span that pushed the lead back to 81-71.

Gregg's 23 points were a career high, and junior guard Idris Taqqee grabbed a career high 12 rebounds to go with five points.

This will be the 45th meeting in a series that St. Bonaventure leads 32-12. The two teams have not met in six years and went a five-year span between games prior to that. This will be just the sixth meeting between the Franciscan universities since 1980 as the schools once went 25 years without playing - after a January 1980 Red Flash win, the schools wouldn't meet again until 2005.

The first meeting came during the 1920-21 season, a 30-26 win for Saint Francis.

St. Bonaventure and Saint Francis were scheduled to meet during the 2020-21 season, but that game was canceled about an hour before game time at The RC when a Red Flash player tested positive for COVID-19. In a season of cancelations, the game was never made up. 

While Bona's head coach Mark Schmidt is undefeated in three meetings against Saint Francis on the Bonnies sidelines, he has a lot more experience lifetime against the Red Flash: Schmidt posted a 9-3 record against Saint Francis (PA) while coaching at Robert Morris from 2001-07. In all, he has won eight in a row over the Red Flash.

TRENDING NUMBERS 
0 – St. Bonaventure does not have a single senior (eligibility-wise) on its roster. Daryl Banks III and Moses Flowers are seniors academically, but have two years of eligibility remaining due to post-pandemic NCAA rules.
.004% – St. Bonaventure returns just four points from last year, all scored by sophomore Justin Ndjock-Tadjore. That represents a total of .004 percent of last year's Bona's scoring. That represents the lowest returning total of any team in the nation.
.635 – St. Bonaventure owns a .635 overall winning percentage during the past 10 seasons.
2 – Anquan Hill played against Saint Francis (PA) twice last year in NEC matchups between the Red Flash and Fairleigh Dickinson. He scored just two points in 17 minutes in the first matchup last December, but in the February rematch, he finished with 16 points and eight rebounds, going 7-for-14 from the floor including 2-for-5 from distance. He also had three assists and three steals. Hill was the NEC's top rookie last year, winning Rookie of the Year honors.
18 – Daryl Banks III posted 18 points, seven assists and three steals in his Bonnies debut Wednesday vs. Alfred, an exhibition contest at The RC. Kyrell Luc added 17 points and four assists while Barry Evans (12 points, eight rebounds) and Yann Farell (10 points, 11 rebounds) all made impacts in their first games wearing the Brown and White.
21 – Bona's had 21 steals in Wednesday's exhibition win over Alfred.
33 – The highest scoring output by a Bonnies player against Saint Francis (PA) at the Reilly Center: 33 points by Greg Sanders on Jan. 17, 1977, Bona's NIT championship season.
+150 –  Bona's was +150 in the second half of games last season. In the first half, it was a different story as opponents were +43.

ABOUT SAINT FRANCIS (PA)
The Red Flash finished 9-21 overall and 5-13 in the Northeast Conference last season. This year, Saint Francis was predicted to finish third in the NEC Preseason Poll.

The Red Flash return nine players including three of their five starters from last year. Redshirt junior Josh Cohen led the team in scoring last year at 12.9 points per game while grabbing a team-high seven rebounds per game, which put him overall in the conference, also while shooting 57 percent from the floor. Cohen was also named the NECs most improved player last year and a preseason All-NEC honoree. Behind Cohen is redshirt senior, Myles Thompson. Thompson was the third-leading scorer for the red flashes last year putting up 11.2 points per game. SFU is returning all four double-digit scorers last year to help boost the offense again this year. Behind Thompson and Cohen are two high-powered junior guards, Maxwell Land and Ronell Giles Jr who averaged 10.8 and 11.1 points each. Giles Jr. was also second on the team last year in steals with 1.5 per game and assists, dishing out 2.4 per game, he looks to increase those numbers this year and become a bigger part of the offense after missing 14 games last year with an injury. 

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