Game Preview: VCU v St. Bonaventure

[Natty]

VCU, the A-10’s current No.1 at 3-0, heads to St. Bonaventure, the A-10 defending champ and preseason pick to repeat, for a Frid-A10 rematch between last season’s tourney title championship teams. The Rams are red-hot as winners of their last seven while St. Bonaventure narrowly avoided a three-game losing streak in what would have been brutal fashion, having to come back from down double-digits against La Salle, a game after almost a month-long COVID pause that followed the Bonnies’ 37-point loss to Virginia Tech.

VCU (10-4, 3-0)
ST. BONAVENTURE (9-3, 1-0)
A QUICK LOOK AT ST. BONAVENTURE
If there’s a team in the Atlantic 10 that’s easy to understand who they are this season, it’s St. Bonaventure. The Bonnies return all five starters from last year’s Atlantic 10 regular season and tournament champion team, a starting group that accounted for over 90% of available minutes played on last year’s team in what was and what remains one of the shortest benches in America.
Mark Schmidt...

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[Natty]

From the game preview...​

VCU REGULATION POINTS SCORED v KENPOM TOP-100 DEFENSES​

57* v No.91 St. Peter’s
44* v No.89 Wagner
48* v No.56 Vanderbilt
61* v No.9 Baylor
56* v No.30 UConn
53 v No.87 Dayton

This performance was pretty predictable. The reality is the timing of Ace's return was a little bit of fools gold. YES, we are gonna be better with Ace in the lineup running the point, but him just being there isn't going to turn us into a good offense. We have issues on that side of the ball that one man isn't gonna fix.

We scored 75 against ODU's 175th-ranked defense. We scored (just) 66 points against Florida Atlantic's 225th-ranked D. We scored 85 points against La Salle's 249th-ranked D and then 84 against GW's 204th-ranked D.

There are under 3 minutes left in this game against St. Bonaventure's 110th-ranked D and we've got just 51 points.

Curious to see how we figure out ways to improve the offense going forward.