Bonnies Headed to A-10 Final

After being up by as many as 16 in the second half, the St. Bonaventure Bonnies staved off a furious University of Massachusetts comeback to reach it's first Atlantic 10 final since 2000.

The Bonnies lead by by seven, 48-41 at the break and were guided by junior guard Demitrius Conger who finished the game with 22 points, 10 rebounds, and 8 assists.

Conference player of the year Andrew Nicholson hit a three point shot with 7:33 left in the second half to give his Bonnies a 70-54 lead. After a UMass timeout, they slowly started to chip away at the lead and trailed by just one, 81-80 with 0:16 left.

After Charlon Kloof made one of two shots at the free throw line for Bonaventure, Raphiael Putney missed a deep three for Massachusetts and the rebound was secured by freshman Mathew Wright for the Bonnies who went on to ice the game with two free throws.

Conger said of his performance, "I felt like going with the flow of the game, you know, teammates was open, you know, they had open shots I passed the ball to them. I was open, they passed the ball to me. It was the flow of the game. Just so happened I scored 22 points."

Nicholson, who only played 25 minutes due to foul trouble had 19 points to go along with 6 rebounds.

When asked after the game what he thought of his team having the opportunity to go to the NCAA tournament, head coach Mark Schmidt said "It would be a great accomplishment for our team. You know, I said it yesterday, we said we were going to rebuild this program and we were going to rebuild it the right way, bringing in good guys, kids that are going to class, graduate, keep their nose clean socially, and we've done it."

Massachusetts was lead by Terrell Vinson who had 20 points. Freshman Maxie Esho came off the bench for Minutemen and contributed 16 points and 8 rebounds.

Saint Bonaventure, the tournament's fourth seed, moves on to face the winner of the other semifinal game currently in progress between (2) St. Louis and (3) Xavier. The final will take place tomorrow at 1:00 pm EST on CBS Sports.

Quotes obtained from www.atlantic10.com
Statistics obtained from www.ESPN.com