You never know what you might see when you go to a high-level college basketball game.
Those who braved the cold and snowy roads to visit St. Bonaventure’s Reilly Center Wednesday night saw a performance they won’t soon forget. Jaylen Adams walked away with the best three-point shooting performance in the school’s history, by practically any measure.
The senior preseason conference player of the year broke teammate Matt Mobley’s record for made threes (nine in the infamous near-victory spoiled by technical foul against VCU last Feb. 4) with 10 of his own as the Bonnies pulled away with a 79-56 win over Saint Louis, their fifth straight in Atlantic 10 Conference play.
Adams finished with 44 points. Of course this is far from the start for Adams’ spectacular shooting. Just four days earlier, he dropped 40 including a game-winning three in the last seconds for an 84-81 win at Duquesne. Throw in a stellar Super Bowl Sunday (he’s an Eagles fan) and Adams has had quite the week, so good it’s hard to believe he played through some illness Wednesday.
“Once that ball goes up and that adrenaline is pumping, you don’t really feel nothing in terms of injuries and sickness,” Adams said. “I knew once the game started I would be OK.”
The Bonnies led 38-26 at halftime but the Billikens cut the lead to 43-40. With two big men — Amadi Ikpeze and Josh Ayeni — at four fouls each and forward LaDarien Griffin sidelines with an ankle injury, Bona needed its leader to respond.
Did he ever, scoring 21 points over the game’s last 13 minutes.
“They cut it to three, I think, and Jay just took over the game from there,” Bona coach Mark Schmidt said. “I think I was in that zone when I was in CYO (Catholic Youth Organization), eight years old, we’re playing at six-foot-high rims. He couldn’t have played better.”
How does a shooter like Adams find a zone like that?
“Early on I was able to get some shots to go,” Adams said, “I think I got some easy ones in transition that got me going early and then once a shooter makes his first couple, it felt like I couldn’t miss out there. I was really locked in.”
Adams’ 44 points tied for ninth all-time with Andrew Nicholson’s 44 in a quadruple-overtime win over Ohio in Dec. 2010. Bob Lanier still holds the single-game SBU scoring record with 51 against Seton Hall in Feb. 1969. Adams’ former running mate Marcus Posley is fourth with 47 against Saint Joseph’s in Rochester in March 2016.
Schmidt agreed with a question suggesting this was the best shooting performance by any of his players in his 11-year Bona tenure.
“Andrew’s was terrific too but Andrew’s a little bit different, where a lot of it’s dunks and so forth,” Schmidt said. “Jay (faced) a lot of pressure, guys are getting up into him and so forth and for him to be able to score that amount of points and only miss four shots, that speaks volumes.”
Saint Louis coach Travis Ford, a star shooter in his own right at Kentucky in the 1990s, made 190 threes in a three seasons with the Wildcats. So he would recognize the kind of roll Adams got on Wednesday.
“I knew they were going in,” Ford said of Adams’ shots. “You always go back (and say) we should have tried this, tried that, (but) a lot of those shots were over a bigger guy that we had on him.”
Ford said he could appreciate a game like that, but Adams shouldn’t have taken his team by surprise.
“I didn’t enjoy watching it, but I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for his game,” he said. “The name Adams has come out of our mouths about 10 billion times the last two days, so all respect to him to go out and score 44 on us when we’re trying to stop him.”
(Salamanca Press sports editor Sam Wilson may be contacted at samwilsonsp@gmail.com)
