This profile is one of a series of articles posted on GoBonnies.com throughout this basketball season that will shine a light on some great players from Bonaventure's rich men's basketball history.

When he donned the brown and white St. Bonaventure uniform in the 1980s, Barry Mungar was not only an offensive threat from the forward position, scoring 1,361 career points, but he also was a bit of an enforcer.  He maintained law and order underneath, as evidenced by his leading the team in rebounds his last three seasons.

It is only fitting then that, upon graduation, Mungar gravitated toward a career in law enforcement in his native Canada.  

The Bonaventure-Canada Pipeline
As Mungar, a native of Dundas, Ontario, tells it, he visited the United States after his senior year at Highland Secondary School as a member of an all-star team that played a series of games against U.S. high school all-stars.  (He had averaged 25 points and 15 rebounds while leading Highland to a 17-1 record his senior season)  
 
It just so happened that one of Mungar's teammates on the Ontario all-star squad was Rob Samuels, his future SBU teammate.  Then-Bona's head coach Jim Satalin had driven to one of their games, at the renowned Kutsher's Resort in the Catskills, to watch Samuels play.  Satalin was unfamiliar with Mungar up to that point, but the latter's performance in that game impressed Satalin, which led to Samuels' introducing Satalin to Mungar. 
 
Mungar subsequently visited Bona's and immediately took to it.  While Canada is principally known for hockey, Satalin and his staff recognized the country also produced quality basketball talent and had begun developing a Canadian pipeline.  In fact, Norman Clarke, from Toronto's Oakwood Collegiate Institute, was a freshman for the Bonnies at the time and spoke very highly of the school and the basketball program to Mungar.  
 
Also working in the school's favor was the fact that Bona's was only a three-hour drive from Dundas, which meant that Mungar's parents could see him play often.   After considering Siena, Central Michigan and some other schools in the States, Mungar cast his lot with St. Bonaventure.
 
"I was drawn to the program's reputation," Mungar says.  "It had a long history of great basketball and, more recently, it was coming off an NIT championship and an NCAA season just a few years before I arrived."  

His freshman campaign met a premature end, unfortunately.  A back injury suffered the previous spring was exacerbated in the fall.  He played just two games his first year in a Bona's uniform before undergoing back surgery and redshirting. 
 
"Barry was raw at the time, 6'8" and skinny, but was a great runner and leaper," says Satalin, who only coached Mungar that one year before becoming the head coach at Atlantic 10 Conference foe Duquesne.  "When he got hurt, it really set him back.  It took a long time for him to get back from the surgery."
 
 
When he returned to the court for his redshirt freshman season (1982-83), Mungar wore a metal back brace wrapped in leather that resembled a corset or girdle.  He appeared in 27 games that season, starting eight, and averaged 4.3 points and 2.8 rebounds per contest.   The team, whose key contributors were all Satalin recruits, lost to Iona in the first round of the NIT that year.
 
Mungar came into his own a year later, leading the team in scoring (14.3), rebounding (6.5) and field goal percentage (53.6%), capturing team Most Improved Player and Co-MVP awards.  He was named Honorable Mention All-East by Basketball Weekly, as well.
 
As a junior (1984-85), despite being hampered for much of the season when he aggravated his old back injury, Mungar led the squad in rebounding (5.8) and field goal percentage (55.3%) and finished second behind Samuels in scoring (12.3).  He led the Atlantic 10 in field goal percentage and was 14^th in the league in rebounding.  He exploded for a career-high 27 points and tied a career high with 15 rebounds in a blowout win over Little Three rival Niagara.  He also was named to the All-Tournament team for the Merrill Lynch Classic in-season tournament in Dayton, Ohio.
 
Mungar capped his collegiate career by being named Atlantic 10 First Team All-Conference his senior season (1985-86).  By then 6'8", 215 pounds and team captain, he led the team in scoring (17.1), rebounds (7.9), field goal percentage (49.4%) and free throw percentage (75.3%).  
 
Mungar is proud of the fact that he played with three other Canadians at Bona's (Clarke, Samuels and Radcliffe "Rocky" Llewellyn), and all were 1,000-point career scorers (Llewellyn 1,572; Mungar 1,361; Samuels 1,112; Clarke 1,097).
 
He fondly recalls the Canadian flag hanging from the Reilly Center rafters and the playing of the Canadian national anthem along with the United States national anthem before home games.   What made his time at Bona's extra special was the fact that his parents drove down from Dundas for every Bonaventure home game (and then drove back home the same night!).
 
Speaking of the Reilly Center, Mungar adds:  "In the '80s, Reilly Center audiences were the epitome of the NCAA basketball experience.  Fans tossing rolls of toilet paper over the court upon our team's first basket was a visual I'll never forget.  I'm sure opposing teams thought Bona's fans were crazy, and they knew they were in for a hard-fought game."

Mungar "felt privileged" to be one of the first Canadians to play stateside.  "There weren't a lot of Canadians playing ball in the U.S. at the time, so I was proud to be one of the first to head south to play ball, and to pave the way for others after me," he says.  "I was filled with pride whenever I'd look up to the Reilly Center rafters and see my country's flag."
 

An All-Around Star, Taking On All Comers
For his part, Satalin recognized Mungar's talent and potential and wished he could have coached him longer.  "I saw him as an athletic 6'8" who ran the floor and jumped as well as anyone we've had," the coach recalls.  "He really improved every year and I was very disappointed that I didn't have more time to coach him."
 
Incidentally, Satalin did get another opportunity to briefly coach Mungar, when Satalin (then at Duquesne) and then-West Virginia coach Gale Catlett coached a group of Atlantic 10 players during a summer tour in Spain. Mungar and Mike Sheehey represented Bona's on the tour.  
 
Mungar led the team in field goal percentage and rebounding in each of his final three seasons and ranks 14^th among Bonnies in career field goal percentage.   He is a member of a select group of SBU players who notched at least 1,000 points and 500 rebounds for their careers (he had 651 career rebounds to go with his 1,361 points). 
 
Looking back, he has many warm memories of his time at Bonaventure.  Certain games stick out, such as playing Syracuse, led by Dwayne "Pearl" Washington, Rafael Addison and Andre Hawkins, in the Carrier Dome his sophomore year (a game in which Mungar had 12 points and 6 rebound).   
 
He also faced off against St. John's and future NBA draftees Walter Berry, Mark Jackson, Shelton Jones and Ron Rowan in the ECAC Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden in December 1985.  The Red Storm (then called the Redmen) finished 31-5 that season, ranked #4 in the country.
 
We'll let The New York Times explain Mungar's performance against St. John's:  "… the afternoon's most memorable individual performance was turned in by Barry Mungar, St. Bonaventure's 6-foot-8-inch forward. He brought the Bonnies back in the second half, even though the Redmen used four different players to guard him and twice attempted to double-team him.
 
"Limited to 12 minutes and 10 points in the first half because of foul trouble, Mungar scored 20 of St. Bonaventure's 36 second-half points. He finished with a game-high 30 points on 9-of-16 shooting from the field and 12 of 12 from the foul line."
 
During one stretch in the second half, Mungar outscored the entire St. John's team 7-0!
 
When Bona's lost to Duquesne 71-67 on February 25, 1986 in an Atlantic 10 tournament game at the Reilly Center, Mungar thought his hoops career was over. 
 
A Second Act, On The International Stage
 
Instead, he received a call from Jack Donohue, then the coach of the Canadian National Basketball Team but whose claim to fame was earlier having coached Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) at Power Memorial Academy in New York City.  Donohue met with Mungar on the SBU campus and convinced him to try out for the team. 
 
Sure enough, Mungar made the squad, which competed at the FIBA World Championship in Spain in July of that year.  Mungar found himself going up against international legends such as the great Yugoslav and Croatian player Drazen Petrovic and 7-3 center Arvydas Sabonis, considered one of the best European players of all time.
 
In fact, Mungar was in Spain when he received word that he had been selected in the fourth round of the NBA Draft by the Washington Bullets.  Unfortunately, Mungar had taken ill in Spain and, by the time he arrived at the Bullets' training camp he had lost weight, was weakened and tired, and subsequently did not make the regular season roster.
 
Mungar continued playing for the Canadian National Team for the next two years, including during the 1988 Seoul Olympics – where he was reunited with Norman Clarke on the Canadian squad.  The Canadian team went 3-5 in Olympic play, including a 76-70 loss to the United States after leading at halftime and for much of the game. 
 
"I was honored to play for Canada in international competition," Mungar says. "It represented a culmination of my hard work, and being with Norm on that Olympic team was like reliving old times."

Serving And Protecting
Once his playing days were really, finally over, Mungar turned his attention to law enforcement.  He was drawn to police work because it was not a desk job, his efforts would impact the community, and teamwork was critical to success.  He worked for the Hamilton, Ontario, Police Service for 29 years, retiring as a Sargeant five years ago.
  
During his last nine years on the force, he was Crime Prevention Coordinator in Hamilton, leading the Canadian Auto Association (CAA) School Safety Patrol program that involved some 40 schools. While overseeing the program, he and his team trained more than 6,000 student Safety Patrollers.  For his efforts, he was given the 2018 CAA School Safety Patrol Program Achievement Award.
 
"It was a very fulfilling career," Mungar says.  "It was exciting, dangerous and rewarding all at the same time.  All while serving my community."
 
Prior to retiring from the police force, Mungar had been training aspiring basketball players at the International Basketball & Sports Academy, which operates out of several cities on the western banks of Lake Ontario. One of his proteges, Mfiondu Kabengele, was selected by the Brooklyn Nets in the first round of the 2016 NBA Draft.  In addition to continuing to train young hoopsters today, Mungar attacks home improvement projects, specializing in cabinetry and woodwork.
 
He and his wife Nancy, who will celebrate their 30^th wedding anniversary next year, have two daughters, Peyton and Reece.
 
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Mungar is just one of a number of Bonnies basketball players and teams whose exploits, although perhaps not well-known, were essential in weaving the fabric that is Bonaventure Basketball.  As we move further into the 21st century, it is important that their stories are told and remembered. 

This is one of the objectives of Project Unfurl, a documentary in progress.  Project Unfurl: The Heart of Bona's Basketball will tell the story of the remarkable aura surrounding the St. Bonaventure University men's basketball program over the last eight decades. 

In addition to chronicling the great NCAA and NIT teams, Project Unfurl will also shine a spotlight on many unsung SBU players and teams. To learn more about Project Unfurl, visit its official website: https://www.projectunfurl.com.