(Photo Credit: GoBonnies.com)

St. Bonaventure men’s basketball guard Marcus Posley has been voted the Intrepid’s inaugural Male Athlete of the Year.

The award was voted on by 13 Intrepid sports staffers, who were allowed to select any Division I Bona athlete. Posley received three votes, while senior swimmer Michael Pilyugin got two and eight athletes got one vote each: sophomore basketball player Jaylen Adams, senior soccer player Bobby Diaz, baseball graduate Steve Klimek, swimming graduate Vatslav Lets, swimming graduate James Martin, basketball graduate Youssou Ndoye, sophomore baseball player Cole Peterson and senior basketball player Dion Wright.

Posley was the team’s go-to scorer throughout 2015, his first full calendar year with the team. The 6-foot senior averaged 15.7 points a game on 36 percent shooting in conference play last season. He averaged 37.4 minutes, 2.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists a game while recording a steal a contest as well. His performance led to a spot on the All-Atlantic 10 third team after he tied for fourth in the league in scoring.

Posley has averaged 17 points a game on 36.8 percent shooting so far this season, finishing out non-conference play a smidgen below Dion Wright in scoring (three points, to be exact). The Rockford, Ill. native has upped his rebounding (4.1 boards a game) and passing (3.5 assists a game) numbers and is 86 percent from the foul line, the best of any teammate who has attempted at least 30 shots from the stripe.

The player nicknamed “MP3” by teammates and fans didn’t win this honor by statistics alone, however; he helped create some unforgettable moments this year that will go down in St. Bonaventure lore.

The MP3 moment that looms largest in the minds of Bonnies fans is the buzzer-beater to beat the no. 18 VCU Rams at the Reilly Center on Feb. 7. The degree of difficulty on the shot, an off-balance, up-and-under layup that Posley had to weave through two taller defenders to get off before falling out of bounds, was about as high as it gets. The payoff of such a significant upset over a Shaka Smart-coached team that made the NCAA Tournament was pretty sweet too; the students stormed the court and the highlight was third on Sportscenter’s top plays.

That game-winner may have been the most significant, but Bona’s Mr. Big Shot had other winning plays throughout the year. Three days before the VCU game, Posley beat the buzzer at Davidson to end the Wildcats’ 15-game home winning streak. Two weeks before that, Bonaventure was trailing by 11 with 2:48 remaining at Duquesne before he scored 12 points in the final 2:35 of regulation to lead the Bonnies into overtime in a game they ended up winning 100-97.

Posley’s heroics last season were phenomenal, but SBU needed his clutch gene one more time before the calendar rolled over to 2016. On Dec. 2 at Buffalo, the guard hit the game-winning jumper with 10 seconds left to end a six-minute, 14-second stretch where the brown and white did not score a point and saw an eight-point lead evaporate.

If the Bonnies had the ball and a chance to win the game this year, they were in good hands with Marcus Posley on the floor. For all of his big-game heroics and thrilling three-point barrages, he is a worthy Male Athlete of the Year.

(Photo credit: GoBonnies.com)

By Chuckie Maggio @chuckiemaggio

If this had been an NBA Jam video game, Marcus Posley would have been on fire for most of the second half.

Posley scored 17 in the second half, including 10 in a two-and-a-half minute stretch, to give himself 35 for the game and help power the St. Bonaventure Bonnies past the Canisius Golden Griffins, 77-73.

The 35-point performance will put Posley down in the 95-year-old rivalry’s lore. While some of the older box scores are not immediately available on the internet, no Bonnie has scored more points against Canisius in at least the last 15 years.

For the 6-foot guard, who was a head-scratching 5-of-26 from the field in the first two games of the season before scoring 26 against Loyola, the Canisius game was a reminder of how near-unstoppable he gets when he’s really feeling it.

It wasn’t just his Posley’s jumper this time around, either; five of his 11 made baskets were layups, and he also made all nine of his free throw attempts. The attacking mentality is becoming more and more a part of his game, and Bona is clearly benefiting from that mindset.

“The game was just coming to us tonight, and lucky me, I had the hot hand,” Posley said. “The guys were feeding me the ball and playing off me, and it’s a good feeling to get shots like that and bounce back from the last couple games. I was actually able to do some things for my teammates tonight.”

Posley’s scoring was a necessity, but his senior leadership was as well. Even with a fragmented Canisius student section due to most students leaving for Thanksgiving break, fans of both teams made the game a high-energy environment, imploring their players to victory. And when fellow senior Dion Wright picked up two fouls in the first four minutes of the game, Posley and junior forward Denzel Gregg found themselves as the only upperclassmen on the court on a very young team.

All three true freshmen played double-digit minutes. Forward Derrick Woods started as usual and played 30 minutes, scoring nine points; his previous highs were 17 minutes and six points. Guard Nelson Kaputo actually played his season-low, but still totaled 13 minutes with three points and three assists. Forward LaDarien Griffin was the most notable of the first-year players, however. Due to the foul trouble, he played 10 minutes, scoring two points and grabbing two boards; he had only played one minute in each of the previous three games.

“With them being on the floor, my main thing was just making sure they got the jitters out and they were being focused, just sticking to the gameplan and what we learned,” Posley said.

“I’m proud of those guys, they came in and contributed a lot.”

Everyone had to contribute, but in the end, most of the burden is on Posley’s shoulders. He understands that, and he was up to the task Tuesday night.

“I’m a senior on the floor,” he said. “The coaches look for me to be a leader out there and they look at me to carry the team.

“I just had to handle my responsibilities.”

By Chuckie Maggio @chuckiemaggio

The St. Bonaventure Bonnies shouldn’t need any extra motivation to come out strong against Loyola Maryland tonight, but if they did, the coaching staff could easily use last year as a case study.

Last season’s non-conference slate was a tumultuous one for Bona. A little more than a week after a highly competitive contest against ACC power Pittsburgh in which the team displayed one of its best efforts of the season, the brown and white went into a brief holiday tailspin, losing by two at home to Maryland-Eastern Shore on Dec. 22 and faltering by five at previously winless Delaware on Dec. 30. Those two games, among others, likely cost the Bonnies a postseason berth.

Tonight, Bonaventure plays in its first game since Tuesday’s game against Syracuse. Like the Pitt game last season, SBU led at the half on the road, only to lose in the final stages. Now, it faces a team it will be expected to beat and cannot afford an Eastern Shore-like disappointment in front of the home fans tonight.

Loyola was picked seventh in the Patriot League and has started the season 1-2, but this game won’t be a cakewalk. The Greyhounds have four players who average double-digit points per game, with senior forward Jarred Jones leading the way at 19.3. Jones has made 20 of his 38 shots from the field to start the season and has already been to the free throw line 23 times, making 18 of those. He’s also the leading rebounder at 10.7 a contest; luckily for Bona he is only 6-foot-7.

“They have a pretty good team, watching them on film,” said guard Marcus Posley. “They’ve got some guys that can shoot the ball (and) they have some pretty good scorers. (We just) need to stick to our keys that the coaches have been beating in our heads from day one on defense.”

“They share the ball,” said Bona head coach Mark Schmidt. “There’s not one guy you can concentrate on; you’ve got to play each guy.

“There’s not one guy you can double team. They share the ball and that’s why they’re good.”

For the Bonnies to win tonight, Posley will have to start getting back into the flow offensively. He’s only played two games, but the numbers are brutal: seven points per game, 5-of-26 from the floor, 4-of-18 from three.

For Posley, who scored 38 points in his first two games last season on 13-of-33 shooting, the start has been far from ideal, but the only remedy is to work through it.

“(I’ve got to) try not to think about it too much, try to not let the pressure get to me too much,” he said. “Having fun is the main thing. If you’re playing tight, you’re just bound to make mistakes.

“I feel like I’ve been a little tentative the last two games. I just need to attack, stop settling, the same stuff the coaches have been telling me…I’m looking forward to turning it around.”

Last time Posley was in a shooting funk like this, he snapped out of it with 29 points against Duquesne. The Rockford, Ill. native said this could be a “breakout game” for him.

“If we stick what we know, we should pull the game out.”