By Mike Vaccaro, '89
New York Post, lead columnist

Before we talk about what happened on Sunday, permit me to take a brief trip back in time two years – 728 days, to be precise. That was still what we might term “normal times,” and so there were a few thousand Bonnies fans prowling about Brooklyn that morning – St. Patrick’s Day morning – before funneling into the Barclays Center.

There, they would endure a two-hour roller coaster of emotions, the intoxicating high of a double-digit lead against Saint Louis in the Atlantic 10 Tournament championship game, the asphyxiating low of a Billikens comeback, all of it capped by one extraordinary moment: a basketball leaving the fingertips of a southpaw senior guard named Nelson Kaputo, arching toward the basket. There were 3.8 seconds left when Kaputo fired, 2.5 remaining as it neared the rim.

Behind Kaputo, what felt like every resident of Bona Nation stood, transfixed, hands over their heads, waiting for a signal to react appropriately. The sequence took 1.3 seconds total. It felt like 1.3 years. The stakes were simple:

Make it and the Bonnies advance to the most improbable NCAA Tournament berth in school history.

Miss it and the season ends, immediately, a plug kicked out of the wall.

I was sitting opposite that pile of brown sweatshirts, brown ball caps, brown windbreakers (and Beer Hat Guy, of course). I have an odd quirk about watching the Bonnies: whenever possible I opt for the stoic requirements of press row, a credential around my neck, my emotions in check, forced by propriety to sit stone-faced. Earlier, my dear friend and classmate Mary Beth King O’Donnell, in that crowd, had texted me.

 “Aren’t you coming over at all?”

 “No,” I said. “I can’t.”

 “Not even to say hello? Lots of people asking for you.”

 “No,” I said. “I can’t.”

What can I say? I know it’s moronic, if not downright pathological. But people tend to important matters in their lives in their own way. I’ve been professionally detached at so many sporting events for so many years I don’t really know how to properly root. Alone, I am alternately maniacal and manic; these are not pleasing qualities for anyone to observe. Even my dogs stare at me with sad, puzzled expressions during important Bonnies games (as if there are unimportant ones). I stayed put. And I watched the crowd. I saw my friends.

They were ready to celebrate.

They were ready to detonate.

But the ball didn’t go in. Saint Louis won, 55-53. Bona fans being Bona fans, the postgame groan was followed by a chant:

“THANK YOU, BONNIES” (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)
“THANK YOU, BONNIES” (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)
“THANK YOU, BONNIES” (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)

Anyway, two things from that day stuck with me all day Sunday, when the Bonnies made mincemeat out of our chronic and inherent fears as fans and also out of the Virginia Commonwealth Rams, when they captured their second A-10 Tournament with a resounding 74-65 win at the UD Arena in Dayton, when they backed up an undisputed regular-season title with a bid-clinching tournament win.

First was a brief chat I had with Mark Schmidt after that game at Barclays. What I remember is this: Schmidt wasn’t as destroyed by the game as I thought he’d be. Make no mistake: he was disappointed, especially for his seniors: Kaputo, Courtney Stockard, LaDarien Griffin. He was saddened that the Bonnies couldn’t put the Billikens away when they had the chance. But that whole season had been a house-money special for the team, a year after the dream ride they’d taken in 2017-18. They’d started the season 1-5 and 4-10.  They’d gotten hot at the right time, there were some timely upsets in the A-10s, enough so that the team actually wore the home white uniforms for the final.

But in a voice landscaped by two hours of coaching players and coaxing referees, he said, “You wait. This group isn’t just going to be good. This group is going to be special.”

Specifically, he was referring to three freshmen: Kyle Lofton, Osun Osunniyi, and Dominic Welch, all of whom had made remarkable strides across the season’s 34 games and 18 victories.

 “No lie,” Schmidt said. “Special.”

The second part of the day happened a little later. A couple of Bonnies players from the Class of ’87, Elmer Anderson and Darren Quinlan, were gathered near the exit to the Bonnies’ team bus. Osunniyi spotted them before he got on the bus, saw them wearing Bonnies gear. Darren and Elmer explained who they were, and when they’d played, and how proud Osunniyi and his teammates had made them.

And Osunniyi couldn’t have been happier, or more engaged, with a smile as wide as Flatbush Avenue that belied what had to be at least a tinge of regret raging in his heart. I talked to Elmer about that moment Sunday. He still has the pictures Osun took with him and Darren that day. And then Elmer said the same thing we all said at some point Sunday, maybe a dozen times, maybe a thousand.

 “I’m so proud,” he said, “to be a Bonnie.”

It’s been such a brutal year. We’ve all been beaten up and bloodied by the last 12 months, we’ve all been affected by the virus directly and indirectly, by the resulting changes that have consumed our lives and our world, almost none of them good. We have sought out small joys where we can find them, simple pleasures, easy reminders of how things used to be, how they’re supposed to be,

I can’t speak for you, of course.

But for me this team …

This team was a life raft. It was a shot of oxygen, 20 times since December. That would have been the case if they’d have gone 10-10, or 5-15, or 0-20. But this team didn’t go 10-10, or 5-15, or 0-20. Sunday’s win makes them 16-4. Thirteen of those 16 wins have come by seven points or more. All of them were delivered with a ferocity of spirit and unity that was, plainly put, addictive.

Damn, they are fun to watch.

And damn, do they seem to be having as much fun playing as we are watching. They are selfless to their core, all five starters, both top reserves, and the two others who dress. Yes, that’s only nine players. A few kids transferred out this year, the reality of college basketball in 2021, and yes: they could have helped a few games where foul trouble or nagging injury crept into the equation. It’s a dangerous gambit relying a small rotation and a narrow circle of trust.

But those who stayed were all-in. And you could see what that meant without searching too hard. It was there every game. In the 47-point blowout win over George Washington late in the season there was Lofton – the captain from the day he arrived, as accomplished a three-year starter as there’s ever been in a Bonnies backcourt – running around joyously when little-used reserve Alpha Okoli hit a late 3-pointer.

There was A.J. Vasquez, with limited minutes, always making the most of those minutes, hitting two gigantic 3s at the start of the Saint Louis semifinal game when Jalen Adaway’s nose was trucked by a stray elbow. And always being as active in the postgame dance routines as anyone else on the team – same as Jalen Shaw, Osunniyi’s backup, who played sparingly but still had his moments, who scored a huge basket Sunday when Osun was sent to the bench with four fouls.

There was Adaway, who patiently waited his turn for all of this, who transferred from Miami of Ohio and sat out last season but established his bonafides in practice every day and in street clothes every game. Adaway does a little bit of everything, mostly little things, except there was a season-defining moment when the Bonnies were tied at Davidson, late, and the ball was in his hands – same spot, different gym, as Kaputo’s had been – and he drained that 3. And the Bonnies won a had-to-have-it game.

There was Jaren Holmes, who on some nights looked unguardable, who proved how essential he is to the fabric of this team when the Bonnies suffered their only “bad loss” of the season in the A-10 opener at Rhode Island, a game Holmes sat for the final 35 minutes. And it was Holmes who stepped up on the most awful night of the season – the evening of March 2, hours after the St. Bonaventure community learned of the passing of Dr. Dennis DePerro – and presented flowers at a baseline table in front of a cardboard cutout of the beloved university president.

And yes, there were the three freshmen who’d made Schmidt’s voice echo with wonder in a hallway in Brooklyn on St. Patrick’s Day 2019, all now juniors, Welch and Lofton and Ossuniyi, the three of them leading in different ways, with different specialties – Welch’s deadly long-range shooting, Osunniyi’s interior dominance, Lofton’s coach-on-the-floor sensibilities and fearless leadership.

There was a time in the season when Lofton was shooting 8 percent from 3-point range. Not a typo. Eight percent. And yet: have a gander at Sunday’s box score: he was 4-for-5 from 3. Eight percent had become 80 percent at the most important moment. And each trey seemed to bleed a little more life out of VCU’s soul.

Whatever life they had left?

Osunniyi took care of that.

That’s where this starts, really, the day in spring 2018 when Osunniyi announced where he was playing his college ball. Remember: this was barely two months after that glorious thrill ride of a season that began with a soul-cleansing win at Syracuse, proceeded through a heart-stopping win at Reilly Center over Rhode Island on an electric Friday night, exploded during an unforgettable triple-overtime classic against Davidson on Senior Night and was capped with a victory over UCLA in Dayton, first NCAA win for the program in 48 years.

We are Bonnies. We are not greedy. We are realistic. We figured we’d have to soak in the afterglow of that for a while.

Except not long after the season ended, Welch signed on, after one of the most celebrated schoolboy careers in Western New York history. Lofton had made his announcement via Twitter, and his giddy Putnam Science teammates had captured the moment and the impromptu celebration on a cellphone camera. If you look closely at that video, you can see one of his teammates, a tall and rail-thin kid, smiling broader than anyone else.

That kid was Osun Osunniyi. He had originally signed out of high school with La Salle but after going to prep school at Putnam the staff had been fired there and he had grown into a coveted prospect: all arms, all raw ability, enough so that he had offers from Syracuse and Georgetown. But he didn’t sign with Syracuse or Georgetown.

He signed with St. Bonaventure.

And that’s when you could officially feel like something had been permanently altered in the Bona basketball narrative. No need here to rehash the bad times: those of us who lived through them understand how bad things were. Jim Baron had done yeoman work breaking the choking culture of failure with his 1995 NIT team and the 2000 team that took Kentucky to double-overtime in the NCAAs. Baron had proven you could still win at Bona, that it didn’t have to be a coaching graveyard.

And Schmidt had reaffirmed that truth through his first dozen years on the job, and added a twist: you didn’t have to sit around and hope for a miracle like Andrew Nicholson to fall out of the sky (although that was nice). You could build something here. Nicholson’s 2012 tournament run wasn’t an outlier; every year after that produced a positive vibe: Jordan Gathers’ shot that stunned top-seeded Saint Louis in the ’14 A-10s, the nice run to the semis the next year, the heartbreak kids of 2016, finally the NCAA return in 2018.

Schmidt had already proven winning didn’t have to be a fluke.

Now kids wanted to be a part of this. Good kids. And good players. And the good times keep coming.

 “This group isn’t just going to be good,” Schmidt had said. “This group is going to be special.”

These are the good times, these idle days between now and next Saturday, a time for us to savor and enjoy, same as the seven days off between the win over Saint Louis in Richmond last weekend – which all but solidified a spot in the dance – and Sunday’s crowning glory in Dayton over VCU.

And isn’t that a brilliant irony?

Think of it: the sidekick of this season, from the start, has been the frustration of inactivity. The season’s start was delayed because of a slew of positive tests that knocked the Bonnies out of the Mohegan Sun event and pushed the season’s starting date to Dec. 15. The virus ransacked almost every team in the A-10, wreaked havoc with the schedule. You learned after a while not to get too excited about any given game, to be fluid with your plans, because at any time could come an announcement, highlighted by the key sporting mantra of the day: “ … out of an abundance of caution …”

And as I said before: this team, these games, were oxygen. They made the miseries of an endless winter feel bearable. And when they would vanish … every time it was like a gut punch. It’s why the four-games-in-nine-days glut at season’s end was such a joy to experience as a fan, even if it might’ve been exhausting for the players. (And it was probably a combination of heavy legs and heavy hearts that sabotaged the season finale against Dayton on the day of Dr. DePerro’s passing – and 13 days later, when Mark Schmidt cut down a net in Dayton and said he was going to deliver it to his family, who among us didn’t want to join him in that bittersweet caravan?).

Now?

Now we can allow the wonder to marinate. We no longer have to obsess about Jerry Palm and Joe Lunardi every day, we can put our paranoia back into storage for another year, our text threads can be filled with easy optimism. We can relax. We can enjoy. We can wait for Saturday to come at its own pace, in its own time.

(As for me? My wife’s an LSU alum. If she were a normal sports fan – actually, if she were any kind of sports fan – that might cause some tension. And she’ll play along a little bit for the sake of her LSU friends. But she also told me Sunday, love in her voice: “I want the Bonnies to win because I know how happy that will make you. Even though I know how insufferable that will also make you.”)

Yes. These are the good times, and they may not last forever but, then, whoever promised that forever was even part of the equation? Live in the moment. Enjoy what we have. Forever will take care of itself eventually. We have this week, this wonderful and splendid week, and we will have Saturday – and maybe, just maybe, a little more, too.

Sign me up for this. This isn’t just good. This is special.