St. Bonaventures Mark Schmidt: What you didnt know about the underrated tourney coach -

We should know so much more about Mark Schmidt by now.

He guided St. Bonaventure to the NCAA Tournament for the third time in nine years. He has been a Division I basketball coach for 30 years, a head coach for two-thirds of that time and in charge of the same Atlantic 10 program since 2007.

He’s considered a commodity, an underrated coach who has built a consistent winner at a tiny school with the conference’s smallest basketball budget.

Yet his tales have gone untold.

Had you heard he once won a prestigious golf tournament under circumstances so dubious that college basketball monarchs give him side-eye?

Were you aware he was part of Boston College’s first recruiting class after Sports Illustrated published a cover story about a point-shaving scandal overseen by Henry Hill, the mobster at the center of “Goodfellas”?

How about that Schmidt played college baseball, or that his roommates were New England sports icons?

Did you know his first coaching job was high school football?

Schmidt has done a masterful job of restoring St. Bonaventure’s pride. His team claimed the Atlantic 10 regular-season title, breezed through the conference tournament and is seeded ninth in the NCAA Tournament. Bona will play eight-seeded LSU on Saturday afternoon.

At this school of 1,800 students, tucked along the Allegheny River at the Western New York and Pennsylvania border, the communal environment is stronger than most places. Basketball is significant to its identity, the Reilly Center its epicenter. The Bonnies not only boast the A-10’s coach of the year but also back-to-back first-team point guard Kyle Lofton and defensive player of the year Osun Osunniyi. They rank fifth nationally in scoring defense.

Bona’s basketball program was a smoking crater once Jan van Breda Kolff got done with it in 2003. Van Breda Kolff used an ineligible center, Jamil Terrell, a supposed junior college transfer who turned out to possess only a welding certificate. Bona tried to remedy the issue by forfeiting six Atlantic 10 wins, but the conference banned the team from its tournament anyway. The players boycotted the final two regular-season games.

University president Robert Wickenheiser resigned when word leaked he had overruled the compliance department and cleared Terrell to play. Wickenheiser’s son, Kort, was an assistant coach. He resigned, too, as did athletics director Gothard Lane. Board of trustees chairman William Swan died of suicide. State police said Swan had been despondent over issues he felt had occurred on his watch.

The program first tried to right itself with coach Anthony Solomon. The best of his four seasons was eight wins.

Then along came Schmidt.

“He has always looked up at the job,” said Jim Baron, who coached St. Bonaventure to the 2000 NCAA Tournament. “A lot of guys in the past would be negative about where it’s located or what it’s about.

“He gets it. It’s a place that values education besides the great tradition of basketball that it does have. He understands Catholicism and Franciscanism. He does a great job with getting the players to overachieve because he and his staff build a relationship with the players to make it such a valuable experience for them, to understand the Bonaventure legacy.”

Schmidt has built the most consistent winner at a school that has reached the NCAA Tournament eight times. True, the squads anchored by Bob Lanier were better than anything since, but landing a future No. 1 overall NBA draft choice is an outlier.

Schmidt has more wins and more NCAA Tournament berths than any Bona coach.

And yet there’s so much about him we don’t know. Like how his dad, Jim Schmidt, enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design and made a ring for Thurman Munson. Mark Schmidt can’t draw, not even a stick figure. But he learned from watching his father work.

“My father, when it came to drawing, everything had to be perfect,” Schmidt said. “I’ve got some of that in me. I’m not a perfectionist in my everyday life, but when it comes to my job I am.”

Here are some other anecdotes you might find intriguing about Schmidt’s life and career.

The BC Alum

Google “Mark Schmidt” and hit the spacebar.

The top suggestion is not “Mark Schmidt St. Bonaventure.”

Google’s algorithm figures you want to know about “Mark Schmidt salary” first and “Mark Schmidt Boston College” next.

Schmidt was a candidate for BC’s job in 2014, but his alma mater hired Ohio University coach Jim Christian instead. St. Bonaventure exhaled.

In February of 2021, angst roiled at St. Bonaventure all over again when BC fired Christian after a 3-13 start.

The fear was that Schmidt would be tempted to leave for home, and the idea of finding another coach like him, given the way St. Bonaventure failed in its two previous hiring searches, caused deep dread.

“It’s a major concern,” Baron said. “Just like me, when I was at St. Francis; I loved it there, but Bonaventure was my alma mater. Mark played at Boston College. He’s from that area. It’s hard not to have those feelings.”

Gary Williams, BC’s coach for Schmidt’s last three seasons and a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer, thought Schmidt would be a terrific choice to restore that program, too.

BC classmate Michael Adams, a three-time captain whose No. 23 hangs in the Conte Forum rafters, called Schmidt “a natural fit.”

“He was part of a program that won a whole lot of basketball games in those four years,” Adams said. “I hoped he was going to get that job seven years ago.”

Back in Schmidt’s hometown of North Attleboro, Mass., folks buzzed about a full-circle return.

“Everybody here wanted to talk about it,” said Ed Gagnon, Schmidt’s coach at Bishop Feehan High.

As the Bonaventure community braced for the Schmidt era’s potential end, immensely popular university president Dennis DePerro died on March 1 from COVID-19 complications.

Bonnies basketball provided a distraction. They not only won, they played an entertaining, admirable brand of basketball.

Their bench got shorter with the loss of three players, two of them established contributors, who left for personal reasons. The starting five averages at least 34 minutes a game. Sixth man Alejandro Vazquez averages a little over 13 minutes. Pandemic protocols ravaged their schedule. Cancellations left them with only two non-conference games. A positive COVID-19 test in November forced them to withdraw from the Bubbleville tournament.

Yet the Bonnies overcame, a testament to Schmidt’s management and those five experienced junior starters. No seniors are on the roster.

That sure seems like the type of program Boston College, without a winning conference record 10 years running, would want to reproduce.

Bonaventure winces turned into sighs of relief Monday morning: BC hired College of Charleston coach Earl Grant.

Schmidt noted BC showed interest, and he listened. When asked if he interviewed, Schmidt said he didn’t go to Chestnut Hill.

“There was communication,” Schmidt said, “but all my attention was on our team. I didn’t give that much thought.

“If it had lasted until after the season, then maybe there would have been more thought to it. But my concentration was on my team. My team deserved that.”

The Scandal

Sports Illustrated’s cover on Feb. 16, 1981, read “Anatomy of a Scandal: The Mastermind’s Inside Story of the Boston College Point-Shaving Scheme,” with a photo of a basketball net filled with $100 bills.

Schmidt arrived on campus as a freshman six months later, a member of its first recruiting class since the story was out.

For a couple of years, the investigation remained relatively quiet. The crimes were committed during the 1978-79 season, and Henry Hill wouldn’t become a pop-culture figure until Ray Liotta’s portrayal of him in the 1990 mob film “Goodfellas.”

The federal government learned about the scheme by accident. Hill, arrested for drug trafficking and under scrutiny for the December 1978 Lufthansa heist at JFK International Airport, simply offered up the information about what they did at Boston College.

Hill and two Pittsburgh associates who went to high school with role player Rick Kuhn concocted a scheme to keep scores within the point spread when BC was favored.

The prosecutor was Edward McDonald, who just so happened to have played on BC’s freshman team in 1964 and was a die-hard Eagles fan.

“Some alums thought I was disloyal to my school,” McDonald said. “It fell in my lap. There was nothing I could do about it. There were FBI agents present when Henry Hill told me about what happened at BC. I couldn’t say, ‘Guys, let’s just cover this up. I’m a big BC guy.'”

McDonald visited BC’s campus to meet with basketball coach Tom Davis and athletics director Bill Flynn, a former FBI agent himself. McDonald considered recusing himself from the point-shaving case until he met with BC president Fr. Donald Monan, a Blasdell, N.Y., native and Canisius High grad.

“Tom Davis and Father Monan said they really wanted me to stay with the case,” McDonald said, “because they thought I would be fair to them and said, ‘We commit to cooperate to whatever extent we can.'”

Kuhn in February 1982 was the lone player convicted, although teammates Jim Sweeney and Ernie Cobb were implicated. Sweeney was charged, while Cobb was found not guilty in 1984.

Also convicted was Jimmy Burke (portrayed in “Goodfellas” by Robert De Niro). Hill was listed as a co-conspirator but not charged. He was placed in the federal witness protection program in exchange for his testimony against bigger organized crime figures.

For years after the scandal, FBI agents would speak to the BC basketball team about being infiltrated by unsavory characters.

“This is one thing that stuck with me: These FBI agents came in with their suits and shoes so shiny they looked like mirrors,” Schmidt said. “It was intimidating. They explained to us how it all went down and how you can get tied up so quickly.

“The moral of the story is once you get in, it’s really hard to get out. It can start with a $20 bill, but once they got you, then they got you.”

Schmidt downplayed any notion that experiencing BC’s point-shaving aftermath made him better equipped to heal St. Bonaventure’s broken culture.

But it did provide a first-hand life lesson he can share with his players.

“I explain to the team all the time how you don’t want to put your life in someone else’s hands,” Schmidt said. “You start doing that stuff and someone can blackmail you, then you don’t have control of your own life.”

The Player

McDonald said the point-shaving case had a ripple effect on BC’s program, a development that indirectly affected Schmidt.

The investigation determined Davis was unaware, plausible given how difficult it would be to detect a couple of bad passes, missed rebounds or bad shots in a sport rife with such.

McDonald, however, recalled Davis feeling the burden of such an embarrassment occurring.

“Tom Davis was devastated,” McDonald said. “He blamed himself for not catching it and said he was going to move on.”

In Schmidt’s freshman season, Davis took BC to the 1982 Elite Eight, then left for Stanford. Davis eventually thrived at Iowa, reaching the NCAA Tournament nine times in his 13 seasons there.

BC remained formidable with Gary Williams in charge, making the Sweet 16 in Schmidt’s sophomore and senior seasons, though Schmidt did deal with reduced playing time under his new coach at points.

“The players on the team had the wherewithal to stay together throughout that whole thing,” Williams said, “because it couldn’t have been pleasant.

“Sometimes, there are additional reasons why you play hard. That might have just been to prove to everybody the kids remaining were good kids and Tom Davis was a good coach. I think there’s a little chip if you were part of that team to show the outside people what you’re made of.”

Mark Schmidt from the BC media guide his senior year.

In the second round of the 1985 NCAA Tournament, during Schmidt’s senior hurrah, the Eagles upset a No. 3 Duke team that featured Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Jay Bilas and Tommy Amaker. The stat line was quintessential Schmidt: Eleven minutes, one missed shot, one rebound, two assists, three steals, three fouls.

One of Schmidt’s hustle plays resulted in a serious injury to Duke guard Dave Henderson.

“There was a loose ball, and I dove on it,” Schmidt said. “He left the game, and come to find out years later I broke his ankle.”

Williams recalled a more eloquent steal late in the game that turned the game around.

“Mark, being a senior, that situation didn’t phase him,” Williams said. “That steal showed his intelligence because he didn’t pick the guy clean. It was anticipation of seeing what Duke was about to do.”

Schmidt was foggy on the details, but he remembered finding Adams for a quick layup.

BC won by a point to advance to the Sweet 16, where it lost to Memphis by a bucket.

The Coach

Schmidt’s first job after graduation was selling health-and-beauty aids to drug stores and supermarkets around Massachusetts.

“It was a good salary,” Schmidt said. “I got a company car.”

As he quickly discovered, selling Midol by the crate cannot reproduce the same thrill as eliminating Duke from March Madness. After about 20 months in sales, he went after a master’s degree in education so he could be a high school teacher and coach.

“When you’re selling pharmaceuticals, it’s all about you, getting your quota,” Schmidt said. “I missed the teamwork and togetherness. The chemistry that’s developed on a good team is something I didn’t think I could feel in the sales world.”

While working on his master’s, he picked up some side money as a substitute teacher. Bishop Feehan asked if he’d be interested in coaching freshman football.

Hell, why not? Schmidt played a couple of seasons before separating his shoulder. A whistle around his neck and some kids to instruct was gratifying. He added junior varsity basketball and baseball duties.

“It got into my blood,” Schmidt said. “I never thought of coaching until I coached freshman football. I knew that this is what I wanted to do.”

Problematic, though, was the classroom part.

“When I was substitute teaching,” Schmidt said, “I got to the point where I couldn’t wait for that bell to ring at 2 o’clock. I got excited that I could go to the field or the court.

“That’s when I knew. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a teacher, but I knew I wanted to be a coach.”

Schmidt has been the head coach of the Bonnies since 2007. ( Geoff Burke / USA Today)

A college coaching career became possible in 1989 through his old roommate and teammate Tim O’Shea, who interviewed to be head coach at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. The job went to former NBA player Barry Parkhill, but O’Shea’s brother was on the staff and knew the program was about to add another assistant.

A recommendation was made. Schmidt was paid $6,300 to coach and sell ads for the game programs.

“In Winooski and Burlington, Vt., I think they had about 52 bars,” Schmidt said, “but the AD at St. Michael’s would not allow any bar advertising in his programs. That was a challenge.”

The St. Michael’s chain reaction paid dividends to Schmidt’s coaching career. Parkhill’s brother, Bruce, was Penn State’s head coach. Schmidt would join that staff in 1991.

Two years later, he went to work for his dearest mentor, Skip Prosser, at Loyola (Md.) and then Xavier. Schmidt served under Prosser for eight years, reaching the NCAA Tournament five times.

Schmidt was hired to lead his first program, Robert Morris, in 2001. His teams went an uninspiring 82-90 over the next six seasons, but his reputation as a coaching prospect continued to grow.

The (Famous) Roommates

All these years later, Michael Adams still is amazed at Schmidt’s coaching career.

They were close from the time they arrived at BC in 1981. When they discussed the future, Schmidt had no interest in coaching or scouting.

Adams chased the NBA and made it work, his awkward jump shot dangerous enough to keep him around for 11 seasons and set the record for consecutive games with a 3-pointer (since broken by Steph Curry).

“We were really close our first couple years,” Adams said. “We would go everywhere together off the court.”

Rooming assignments changed for their junior year. Adams explained there was a lottery system for the most coveted apartments. Schmidt and the future NBA All-Star split up.

“Mark divorced me after or sophomore year in college,” Adams said. “He moved in with the football megastar.”

Schmidt’s roommates in the three-bedroom apartment included Doug Flutie, Gerard Phelan, Tim O’Shea and Joe Patten.

Flutie’s legendary Hail Mary touchdown pass to Phelan beat Miami and cemented the quarterback’s 1984 Heisman Trophy. O’Shea was on the basketball team. Patten became a New York Jets trainer.

Eleven years ago, Adams joined Schmidt’s St. Bonaventure staff as an assistant coach but resigned six weeks later. He reconsidered to maximize time with his son, who was entering his senior year of high school.

“I never thought he’d go into coaching,” Adams said, “and here I was about to be his assistant.”

Asked if he still wonders what it would be like to work with his old friend, Adams replied: “I’m not openly pushing, but I’d definitely jump at the chance.”

The Golfer

Williams, at the end of his interview, was asked if there was anything about Schmidt to emphasize that hadn’t already been discussed.

“If you golf with him,” Williams said, “you better watch his handicap. It’s a little suspect.”

Schmidt erupted into laughter at the comment.

“I don’t know how long you want this conversation to go …” Schmidt began, signaling the windup to a story that sounded like part defense plea, part confessional.

A couple of months after Schmidt wrapped up the first season of his St. Bonaventure rebuild, with an 8-22 overall record and just two Atlantic 10 victories, Coaches vs. Cancer national director and former Bonnies coach Jim Satalin reached out with an alluring invitation.

Michigan State’s Tom Izzo had to withdraw from the distinguished Coaches vs. Cancer annual golf tournament at Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, so Satalin reached out to the man who’d just taken over at his alma mater to fill the vacancy.

“I pull into the parking lot, and at the time Nike was the sponsor,” Schmidt said. “They give you like three golf shirts, shoes, a sand wedge. … Before I even get to the course, I have about $500 worth of gear. I’m the coach at St. Bonaventure. I’m not making a zillion dollars.”

Tournament organizers asked Schmidt what his handicap was. Schmidt estimated an 18. At Inverness, home to four U.S. Opens and two PGA Championships, organizers reasoned that would equate to a 22 handicap.

Off Schmidt went with a New England foursome: Mark Plansky, a forward from Villanova’s 1985 national title team, and two other guys from the Boston area. Unsure how it worked, Schmidt originally thought the tournament was a scramble until he was told — after a bad drive off the first tee — that it was two best balls; he had to play his ball throughout.

“After the seventh hole, I’m 1 over par,” Schmidt said. “The caddie says to me, ‘Sir, you are not a 22.'”

Schmidt re-enacted his reply to the caddie as an unintelligible mumble, all in vain. College basketball’s coaching royalty was about to know the name Mark Schmidt.

“We finish the first round, and I think I shot an 82,” Schmidt said. “So that’s a 60 net. I’m at the top of the leaderboard, and same for my team. I walk into the big charity auction event that night, and Bobby Cremins is yelling, ‘Where’s this Schmidt guy? Where is he? Sixty?’ They’re giving me all this shit.

“The next day we go out for the next round, and there’s a camera crew behind me. What is this? The guy says, ‘Well, you’re the leader of the tournament.’ I shot, I think, an 84. I eagled a par-5.

“Plansky starts saying, ‘Oh, man, we’re going to get in trouble.’ I didn’t know they took it so seriously. Believe me, I was an 18!”

Schmidt, with his “22 handicap,” won the tournament. So did his foursome. At the trophy presentation, the other players thanked Izzo for pulling out.

A week later, Schmidt went to Monroe Country Club for another charity tournament.

“I’m on the putting green and Jim Boeheim walks by,” Schmidt said. “He points his finger at me and says, ‘You’re getting a reputation.’

“Some guys were mad. If he had played with me at Monroe Country Club, he would have seen I was an 18. I probably shot 100. But at Inverness, the ball was going straight, and I made my putts.”

Schmidt’s affinity for golf began when he was about 8 years old. He would follow his dad around the course with a sawed-off 5 iron.

When time and weather permit, he’s a fixture at Bartlett Country Club in Olean, N.Y.

“I could play every single day, and when I retire from this sport, that’s what I’m going to be doing,” Schmidt said.

“Golf is like basketball. You can go into your driveway and shoot hoops forever. Right now, I love to go to the driving range at the club and just hit balls. There’s something about it that brings back my childhood.”

Schmidt said his handicap today is 9 or 10.

Williams remains suspicious.

The All-Around Athlete

Schmidt has treasured baseball the longest. A left-handed-hitting third baseman who tried to copy George Brett’s batting stance, Schmidt nearly played basketball and baseball at the University of Maine.

“I had more offers to play basketball,” Schmidt said, “and I think (as) a kid from the Northeast to play in the Big East, the best conference in the country, and go to a great school academically, that pushed me to concentrate on basketball.”

Schmidt spent his junior spring on BC’s baseball team. That followed the worst and shortest basketball season of his tenure, eliminated in the second round of the 1984 NIT after being ranked sixth in the country just three months earlier.

Schmidt didn’t see action, but he made BC coach and former Red Sox infielder Eddie Pellagrini’s squad.

Schmidt was a member of the Bishop Feehan Athletics Hall of Fame inaugural class. He set the school’s basketball record for 1,450 points, but a tidbit found on his Wikipedia page is truly remarkable: He also ran the steeplechase in 9 minutes, 52 seconds.

“No, that’s a lie,” Schmidt said. “Someone put that in there. There’s a guy who went to Bishop Feehan, Mark Coogan, and he was an Olympic qualifier. He has that title.

“I don’t know why that is in there. People ask me all the time, and I have to tell them that’s somebody else. I don’t know how to get it off my Wikipedia. That’s how dumb I am.”

The Program-Builder

Schmidt is a wizard at navigating logistical chaos.

The COVID-19 pause that scrubbed Bubbleville delayed the opener until Dec. 15. In an empty NBA arena, St. Bonaventure returned from quarantine to beat Akron 81-74.

“Walking out into the Cavaliers arena with nobody in the stands, without having any scrimmages, without a lot of practice, that was the unknown,” Schmidt said. “For our guys to be able to play so well gave me an indication we could be pretty good.

“I’ve been lucky because we have an experienced team that has been able to flip the page so quickly. Once a game was canceled, we put the concentration on the next opponent. We didn’t get disappointed or feel sorry for ourselves.”

St. Bonaventure lost three players before the season found traction.

Freshman guard Quintin Metcalf departed in November. Sophomore forward Justin Winston left in December after starting 28 games last season and averaging 8.7 points. Junior guard Anthony Roberts, a Kent State transfer, followed in January. He started 19 games last season and averaged 12.7 points.

“We came together,” Schmidt said. “The guys on the team knew that they were going to stick together and fight. From that point, we became a team. Nobody had agendas.

“They committed and played for each other. Those nine guys became a fist.”

Schmidt celebrates with St. Bonaventure players. (Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)

Schmidt emphasized his love for St. Bonaventure and suggested he’d be perfectly content to spend the rest of his coaching career there.

“When we took over this program,” Schmidt said, “people told me it was a big mistake and I was going to get fired and wondered why I was doing it.

“We wanted to become credible. We didn’t want people to say, ‘It’s hard to get to Olean, but once we get up there we can have some chicken wings and kick the Bonnies’ ass.’ We wanted to make it a difficult trip.”

That mission has been accomplished. In a conference that offers schools in bigger markets such as New York, Philadelphia, Washington, St. Louis and Pittsburgh, one of St. Bonaventure’s few inherent advantages is the raucous Reilly Center, a jackals den for opponents.

Even with the Reilly Center empty, St. Bonaventure dominated.

“What I’m proud of is that we’re not a one-hit wonder,” Schmidt said. “We’ve built a consistent team that can compete for the Atlantic 10 title every year.

“You can build a program in a quick way, take shortcuts and then it falls off a cliff. I’m proud of doing it the right way, a program that is respected nationally. We recruited the right kids, and they graduate.

“I put my head on the pillow at night with that in mind.”

(Photo by Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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