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St. Bonaventure 71, Saint Louis 68
Jeff Hawkins is an award-winning sportswriter with more than four decades in the industry (print and digital media). A freelance writer/stay-at-home dad since 2008, Hawkins started his career with newspaper stints in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Upstate New York and Illinois, where he earned the 2004 APSE first-place award for column writing (under 40,000 circulation). As a beat writer, he covered NASCAR Winston Cup events at NHIS (1999-2003), the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks (2003-06) and the NFL's Carolina Panthers (2011-12). Hawkins penned four youth sports books, including a Michael Jordan biography. Hawkins' main hobbies include mountain bike riding, 5k trail runs at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and live music.
All posts by Jeff HawkinsUpdated15 Oct 2021
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — To get past top-seeded Saint Louis in the Atlantic 10 quarterfinals, St. Bonaventure just needed a little bit of the Wright stuff.
Senior guard Matthew Wright hit a key 3-pointer with under a minute left and junior guard Jordan Gathers nailed the game-winner as the Bonnies pulled off a big upset with a 71-68 win over the No. 18 Billikens on Friday in the first of four quarterfinal games at the Barclays Center.
One 3-pointer by Wright gave the Bonnies their first lead of the game with 9:12 remaining. Another by the Canadian senior less than a minute later put SBU up 57-52, and for the first time in the game a rather large contingent of Saint Louis fans was silenced.
SLU rallied to take a two-point lead on forward Dwayne Evans’ wide-open layup off an inbounds play with 1:41 remaining, but Bonaventure scored the next five points. Evans tied it 68-68 with 17 seconds remaining on just his fourth 3-pointer all season, setting up Gathers’ big shot.
The junior from Woodland Hills, Calif. took a feed from guard Charlon Kloof at the top of the arc and let fly, hitting nothing but net as the horn sounded.
Wright and Kloof finished with 22 points to lead all scorers, while junior center Youssou Ndoye added 13 points; Gathers finished with just five.
Saint Louis was led by senior guard Mike McCall with 21 points, while their A-10 first teamer, Evans, had 15 points and eight rebounds.
St. Bonaventure struggled to get scoring in the first half from anybody other than Kloof. The Suriname native surpassed his 11.6 points-per-game average with 14 points in the opening 20 minutes alone, hitting four of his five shots while the rest of his team was six of 19 during that span.
Saint Louis’ halftime lead was 38-28 hanks to a big half by McCall. With the Billikens’ advantage at 20-17 midway through the period following seven straight by Kloof, McCall answered with a big 3-pointer and then a fast-break layup, adding another trey a few minutes later to help his team restore the double-digit advantage it took into the break.
NOTES: Though the schools have been in the same conference for the last nine seasons, this was the first time Saint Louis and St. Bonaventure met in an Atlantic 10 tournament game. … Saint Louis, which won the Atlantic 10 regular season titles in 2012-13 and 2013-14, is also going for back-to-back A-10 tournament championships. The program’s 81 wins in the last three seasons are its most in any such span in school history. …St. Bonaventure G Charlon Kloof, who is in his third year in the program, was born and raised in Suriname but moved to the Netherlands in 2004, and played for that nation in the 2009 and 2010 U-20 European championships.
