With an entirely new look to the roster this season, nearly every position could be up for grabs when practices officially begin this fall for the St. Bonaventure men's basketball team.

While the battles for starting jobs and roles in the regular rotation could be fierce, Brooklyn native Chad Venning feels up to the task.

After all, he's a natural fighter.

It's that toughness gained from pick-up games in New York – and from experience in the boxing ring – that figure to serve him well in his first season at the Atlantic 10 level.

Venning, a 6-foot-10, 280-pound transfer from Morgan State, grew up in Atlanta first, then moved to Brooklyn in the seventh grade.

"Around New York, pick-up is a huge thing. You play a lot of 1 on 1s in the park," he said. "I feel like that's where some of my arsenal comes from. Tough games. I feel like you gain a lot of toughness from that."

Along with his competition on the courts around the city, Venning spent part of his teenage years in the ring, following in the footsteps of his father who was a boxer.

"I gravitated to boxing because I wanted to be like him," he said.

Boxing workouts have been staples of offseason regimens of NBA stars like Damian Lillard, Kristaps Prozingis and others. Venning, too, feels his boxing lessons – he spent three years boxing as a teenager – help him on the court today.

"It helped my footwork. All my career, even before I knew how to put the ball in the hoop, everyone always told me I had good footwork," he said. "In boxing, footwork is everything, which a lot of people don't understand. So I was already coordinated and once I learned how to translate that into basketball it made me a lot better as a player."

 

But as he grew taller it became apparent that perhaps another sport would be his true calling.

"One day I was at my barbershop and my barber was like, 'You're too tall to not be playing basketball,'" Venning recalls. "I wanted to get into it and he introduced me to my first coach."

Venning has the genes. Three of his cousins all played the highest levels: AJ Griffin was a first round pick this year out of Duke to the Atlanta Hawks and Alan Griffin played at Illinois and Syracuse while their sister, Aubrey, is on UConn women's basketball team.

As his development as a player continued, he played at Bishop Loughlin High before rising through the prep ranks at Woodstock Academy. Boasted by a 7-foot-1 wingspan, Venning began to gain the attention of Division I scouts.

"I was noticing everyone around me were Division I players. I had other guys around me at that level and I started to feel I could play at that level," he said.

He committed to Morgan State where he would play in 42 games during his freshman and sophomore seasons. Last year, he averaged 7.2 points and 3.0 rebounds per game while joining the starting lineup late in the year. He made great strides from his freshman to sophomore campaigns, adding nearly six points and two rebounds per game to his averages.

One of his better performances came under bright lights playing in the NBA HBCU Classic on All-Star Weekend. In that game played in Cleveland on national TV as part of All-Star festivities, he posted 11 points vs. Howard.

The Chad Venning seen today in the Reilly Center looks much different than the man who set foot on campus at Morgan State as a freshman.

He entered his freshman year at 345 pounds but implemented lifestyle changes to get himself into shape. He dropped 30 pounds his first collegiate season, then another 20 last year.

"I was always in the gym at Morgan State. At first, it was hard (losing weight), but it became routine," he said. "I changed every aspect of my life. I got slimmer, got faster, could jump higher. I turned into a different player."

 

As his body and game continued to evolve and improve, that brought him to this past spring when he found himself at a crossroads in his college career.

He decided to enter the transfer portal in the hopes of finding a spot where he could continue his development while playing at a higher level.

"I feel like Morgan did the best they could with what they had. I wanted to see what I could do here," he said. "I wanted to be somewhere I could focus all my attention on school and basketball, a place that felt like a family."

Venning now hopes to make his own mark at St. Bonaventure, following in the footsteps of other post players who have gone pro.

"From all the other schools I was recruited, I felt like Bonaventure was the right choice for me. It's the best thing for me," he said. I want to get to the next level, to become a pro. I feel Coach Schmidt did a good job giving us the blueprint. Now we have to get it on our own."

"Chad's size and strength will bring a physical toughness to our team right away," Schmidt said when Venning officially committed. "He is an athletic five-man who has the ability to score the basketball both inside and out.  We are excited to bring Chad into the program and expect him to make an impact."

Away from the court, Venning has hopes of potentially one day putting the values of his new Franciscan institution to good use whenever his playing days end.

In the future, he'd like to work with those in need after seeing his mother run a nonprofit agency called Young People Matter, which provided an array of services to youth in need in metro Atlanta during Venning's teenage days.

"Hopefully one of these days I can start that back up. Doing things from the kindness of your heart, that's what you should do," he said. "I always watched my mom do things for other people and wanted to do the same thing."

Kindness is a virtue away from the court. On the court, though, Venning plans on being tough.

 

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