2019 Men’s College Lacrosse Year In Review: #72 St. Bonaventure Bonnies

With the 2019 college lacrosse season complete, it’s time to start looking back at how all 73 teams did during the season, and an early look at each squad for 2020.

Note: These are not end of season rankings.

We started our series on Friday with LIU and Merrimack as they become the two new teams entering Division I in 2020, as well as our first 2019 recap with Hampton.

So let’s continue our 2019 Year In Review!

#72 St. Bonaventure Bonnies

Conference: MAAC
2019 Record: 0-13 (0-7 in MAAC)
Head coach: Randy Mearns (1st Season)

Statistical Leaders

Goals: Matthew DeGirolamo (15)
Assists: Sean Westley (13)
Points: Sean Westley (27)
Faceoffs: Jack Almond (33-of-75; 30.6%)
Ground balls: Nick Conklin (44)
Caused turnovers: Nick Conklin (24)
Goals against average: Brett Dobson (14.23 GAA)
Save percentage: Brett Dobson (55.7%)

Personnel Losses

Key seniors departing: None
Senior scoring departing: 0 of 122 points (0%)
Senior starts lost: 0 of 130 (0%)

Season Summary

Fun fact: There’s been a good amount of first-year teams that didn’t win a game in Year 1 that ended up being fine. The most recent example was Monmouth, and they won the MAAC in their fourth year.

St. Bonaventure didn’t win a game in 2019, and that’s okay. A team with a ton of freshmen will have their rough spots early on, and perhaps going winless was one of them.

But did the Bonnies improve throughout the year? Absolutely.

Their first game was not pretty, getting shutout by High Point, 13-0. But a couple weeks after losing to Saint Joseph’s, the Bonnies managed to play competitive against Manhattan despite falling to the Jaspers by three goals in their first ever MAAC conference game.

March and April saw the Bonnies lose big to some ranked teams such as Cornell and Lehigh, as well as seeing themselves in a 10-0 hole to Cleveland State in the second quarter. They also lost to Hobart by 10, but St. Bonaventure played a great first quarter which ended in a 1-1 tie.

Their two best games were against Monmouth and Marist in April. The Bonnies jumped out to a 3-0 lead after the first quarter against the Hawks before Monmouth scored five straight goals. St. Bonaventure hung in there but ended up losing by two. To end the season, the Bonnies lost to the Red Foxes by six goals. However, if you take away Marist’s five-goal second quarter, it would have been a one-goal game as the Bonnies equalled the Red Foxes’ goal total in the first and fourth quarters.

Looking Ahead

There is a lot to look ahead for the Bonnies program in 2020. For starters, only one player graduates, but with a new class entering to a team that had over 30 freshmen, there might have to be some roster cuts.

The strength of the team is on defense. It’s rare that a team has two very good goalies, and very rare a first-year program has them. Rising sophomores Brett Dobson and Ben Mazur each showed flashes of brilliance during the season. Despite giving up 13 goals against High Point, Dobson recorded 23 saves in the loss, which was tied for the fourth-highest in a single game this season. He also had the third-best save percentage in the MAAC.

Defenseman Nick Conklin recorded a team-high 24 caused turnovers and was second in the conference with 1.85 caused turnovers per game. His 44 ground balls also led the team. Zack Belter also had a good year with 16 caused turnovers and 31 ground balls. His 1.23 caused turnovers per game were eighth in the MAAC.

The offense should be much better with a year under their belts, with starting attackmen Sean Westley, Jackson Rose, and John Killcommons, as well as starting midfielders Matthew DeGirolamo, Cian Collins, and Austin Blumbergs. Everyone but Killcommons scored at least 10 points on the year, with Killcommons registering nine goals.

One area of improvement will have to be at the faceoff X. St. Bonaventure’s FOGOs went 24.1% on the season. Jack Almond (30.6%) and Brandon Ramirez (28%) took most of the draws.

The team’s schedule was very tough outside of the MAAC, but the program did not want to schedule any easy games just to force that first win. Despite the tough games and outcomes, it definitely made the Bonnies better because of it. St. Bonaventure will try to look to earn their first win in Year 2, and will have some home games as well. They’ll more than double the three home games they had in 2019 for next season.