St. Bonaventure comes to Charlottesville with a chip on its shoulder

By Jerry Ratcliffe

St. Bonaventure will be a very angry bunch of Bonnies when they arrive at John Paul Jones Arena tonight for an NIT quarterfinals battle with Virginia. A trip to the tournament’s final four at New York’s Madison Square Garden will be on the line.

The Bonnies felt that they should host after they knocked off their bracket’s No. 1 seed, Oklahoma, on the road Sunday night. However, Virginia, which beat North Texas on the road, also Sunday, was awarded tonight’s (7 p.m., ESPN) game. For a statistical breakdown and complete NIT bracket, see the end of this story, and you can also check out our in-depth podcast previewing the game here.

“The NIT didn’t do us any favors,” said longtime St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt. “Going 1,400 miles to Colorado and playing at 5,400-foot altitude, and then us going back to Olean for a couple of days and coming back out [to Oklahoma], it hasn’t been easy. But we dealt with adversity, we have veteran guys that understand life’s not always fair. But you go to work and you keep on at it and good things will happen.”

St. Bonaventure was the only team in the NIT field that did not receive a regional first-round matchup and is the only team in the event’s final eight that did not host at least one game in the 32-team tournament.

The NCAA’s Will Hopkins told SBU-TV Sports that “seeds 17-32 were not put into the bracket based on seed only, but geography also played a role where we could get some bus trips. On the committee’s overall seed list of 1-32, Virginia was higher than St. Bonaventure and given the option to host the quarterfinal round game as the higher seed.”

Virginia owned a No. 83 NET ranking as opposed to St. Bonnie’s 85.

“I need answers now,” said SBU senior guard Dominick Welsh on his Twitter account. “So why we not playing at the crib?”