FORT MYERS — On Tuesday night, the St. Bonaventure Bonnies got to contribute to the buffet of college basketball heaven as they took on the North Carolina Tar Heels in the Sketchers Fort Myers Tip-Off. Despite a fiery effort, the Tar Heels eventually pulled away and escaped with an 85-70 win at Suncoast Credit Union Arena.
The Tar heels were paced by Henri Veessar, who had 24 points and 13 rebounds. Caleb Wilson was impressive as well, recording a double-double with 20 points and 12 boards.
Wilson also shot incredibly well from the line, recording a 10-10 clip on the night. He didn’t shoot the ball efficiently, but he made up for his 5-13 shooting at the charity stripe, as well as on the glass. Free throws were a factor in this one, with UNC shooting 21-27 from the line and the Bonnies only shooting eight free throws and making five of them.
On the topic of the fouls, Bonnies Head Coach Mark Schmidt thought that the size of UNC hurt them and was a factor in the success the Tar Heels had getting to the line.
“They’re just big and strong, you know,” Schmidt said. “Some of them (the fouls), it was our mistake. Sometimes we’re in the wrong position.”
In the first half, the Tar Heels got things going early with a 15-5 surge in the first 3:44 of the game. The lead got stretched out to 21-10 a few minutes later, but then the Bonnies made their run.
They outscored UNC 18-7 in a 5:37 span to tie things up at 28, which sent the Bonnies faithful into a complete frenzy. The run was headlined and bookended by Frank Mitchell, who had 6 points on the run and scored the first and last basket of the spurt.
After the halftime break, UNC came out and built on its 2-point halftime advantage, ballooning their lead to 58-43 with 12:40 left. Things did not change the rest of the way, with the largest Tar Heel lead being 20 points.
UNC guard Kyan Evans noted the difference in the second half for UNC was their communication.
“I think we had some communication errors in the first half,” Evans said. “And we kind of came together and talked about that, and wanted to fix that.”
Wilson shot incredibly well from the line, recording a 10-10 clip on the night. He didn’t shoot the ball efficiently, but he made up for his 5-13 shooting at the charity stripe, as well as on the glass.
Mitchell battled all night amongst the trees of UNC’s frontcourt, scoring 18 points and grabbing 6 boards. Darryl Simmons II also lit up the Tar Heels with a team-high 22 points, as he hit four 3-pointers on night, which supplemented his 9-16 shooting performance.
Simmons found different ways to make it work offensively, saying postgame that he was using a couple different methods.
“To be honest, I was seeing 7 foot, 6’11 guys up in front of me, but the majority of the time though, they’re really icing the ball screens,” Simmons said about what he was seeing from the UNC defense. “So sometimes I’ll use the ball screens, I’ll snake it because we’ve been working on the snakes.”
St. Bonaventure will be back at it on Thursday at 1 PM, when they take on the East Carolina Pirates. Both teams will be looking to shake off their loss in their respective first games of the MTE. The Pirates fell to Michigan State 89-56 in the early game.