The St. Bonaventure University men's basketball team will return to the NCAA Tournament.
Hours after winning the Atlantic 10 tournament championship, the Bonnies learned their tournament opponent. The Bonnies are a nine seed in the 68-team NCAA Tournament and are scheduled to open Saturday against No. 8 LSU.
The Bonnies are in the East region, and the winner of the Bona-LSU game will advance to a second-round game Monday, and will face either No. 1 Michigan or the winner of the Mount St. Mary's-Texas Southern First Four game.
Tournament times and locations are to be determined. Tournament sites in Indiana are Lucas Oil Stadium, Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Hinkle Fieldhouse and Indiana Farmers Coliseum in Indianapolis; Mackey Arena in West Lafayette and Assembly Hall in Bloomington.
The Bonnies secured their spot in the NCAA Tournament by winning the Atlantic 10 tournament title Sunday in Dayton with a 74-65 win against VCU.
Kyle Lofton led St. Bonaventure (16-4) with 23 points against the Rams, while Osun Osunniyi had 14 points and 12 rebounds in the Atlantic 10 championship.
"This trip has been amazing," Lofton said. "As soon as we ran out on the court, you could hear, 'Let's go Bona,' and it gave me flashbacks to us being at the Reilly Center. But going to Indianapolis and the NCAA Tournament, it's like a dream come true. Since we were kids, we've been working for that and finally, we can live the dream."
Osunniyi was named the tournament's most outstanding player, while Lofton and teammate Jalen Adaway were named to the Atlantic 10 all-tournament team.
"They endured a lot of things this year and were able to come through," Bona coach Mark Schmidt said. "It's difficult to beat a No. 1 seed going into the tournament, but our guys played like the No. 1 seed."
The Bonnies earned the Atlantic 10's automatic bid, and the NCAA Tournament begins Thursday with the First Four. Schmidt said Bona will leave Dayton tonight for Indiana and the NCAA Tournament and will quarantine through tomorrow in preparation for LSU (18-9) and the tournament.
“We start watching tape tomorrow morning,” Schmidt said. “ We take off (Monday) because of quarantine and we’ll introduce (LSU) Wednesday ,and we’ll keep our same schedule that we’d have during the year, the same schedule we had this week.
“We have plenty of time, and LSU has plenty of time to scout us.”
The Bonnies have qualified for the NCAA Tournament eight times in program history, and on Sunday won their first Atlantic 10 tournament title since 2012.
Bona returns to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018, when it defeated UCLA in a First Four game in Dayton, Ohio. Bona’s win against UCLA was the first NCAA Tournament win for the program since 1970.
Schmidt, however, called the title bittersweet, following the death of Bona president Dr. Dennis DePerro, who died March 1 of Covid-19 complications.
Schmidt said the Bonnies will give a piece of the net from the Atlantic 10 championship to the DePerro family.
"We weren't leaving Dayton without a championship," Osunniyi said.
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