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In only his fourth season as the Bonnies head coach, Jim Satalin found himself in the national spotlight against famed coached Guy Lewis.  Looking back 45 years later, Satalin recalled, “It was certainly a challenge for me to coach against someone of that stature, but I felt ok going into the game.  I felt comfortable that we would be very competitive in this game for sure.”

A crowd of 12,451 packed Madison Square Garden for the 1pm tip on March 20, and Houston star Otis Birdsong was ready.  The Bonnies led, 45-42, at halftime, but, by midway through the second half, he had already scored 36 points with Houston leading, 73-63.

However, Satalin wasn’t too concerned. 

“I thought there was enough time left,” he recalled.  “If it was a different team that might have been able to milk the clock more or wanted to do that, that might have been [different].  But Houston was not like that.  They weren’t built that way.  That gave us an opportunity to call timeout and say, ‘OK, we have plenty of time here.  We just have to tighten up defensively, force them into some tough shots, and then go with it.’”

In the moment, even Satalin didn’t know that the spotlight was about to shift from Birdsong to SBU forward Greg Sanders.  While Birdsong went quiet offensively, Sanders was just starting his barrage.  “Greg at that point just got ridiculous,” Satalin said with a chuckle.  “What he did was incredible down that stretch.”

One of the most famous baskets in Bona basketball history followed.  In the closing minutes and the Bonnies down 87-86, Sanders made a 22-foot jumper from directly in front of the Bona bench.  It may not have been the best shot selection on the possession, and Sanders admitted as much after the game in saying, “If I had missed, I wasn’t going to look at Coach.”

Satalin admired his confidence in shooting.  “He was that kind of guy,” he remembered.  “He just looked at it and thought, ‘I’m making this thing…it’s my time and I’m making this and that’s it.’  And he did…he had the game of his life.”

A miss by Sanders, in Satalin’s eyes, wouldn’t have meant defeat.  “Had he missed that shot, there was still time for us,” he said. 

 Sanders’ basket, likely the most critical basket in the 2238 points of his Bona career, was crushing for Houston.  “At that point, once we got ahead of them, that was going to be hard for them to come back,” Satalin said.  “Our confidence was soaring at that time.”

The Bonnies prevailed despite 17 turnovers, the last of which could have been most costly.  According to The New York Times, Houston guard Ken Williams hurried downcourt after the turnover and took a shot, “seemingly in panic, instead of slowing down the game and setting up a play.”  Bona center Tim Waterman grabbed the rebound and headed to the foul line, making one free throw. 

Another free throw by Bonnie guard Glenn Hagan extended the lead to 92-89 before Birdsong hit a basket—his last field goal in the final nine minutes—to close it to a one-point Bona lead.  Hollis’ layup at the buzzer electrified the Bona crowd in capping off its first post-season tournament championship. 

Sanders’ performance earned him tournament MVP honors.  His 40 points hid one other key statistic: He collected a game-high 12 rebounds, an area of the game that some saw tilting toward Houston and its leading rebounder Mike Schultz prior the game.  “Greg was a very, very good offensive rebounder, so my guess is, in that game, he got a significant amount of offensive rebounds.  Probably five or so at least.”

Satalin pointed to the Bona free throw shooting (32-46) that resulted from Houston’s 29 fouls. “We tried to create a lot.  Hagan was great at that, getting to the basket and getting [the ball] to the right guys.  That was a major factor in the game.  No question,” he said. 

Looking back, Satalin expressed pride in the four-game streak culminating in the championship.  “We played the best teams, which proved to me that I was right in saying that we were good enough to win this thing,” he said. 

And win they did…a first post-season tournament championship in a program dating to 1919-20.

In what was St. Bonaventure’s tenth overall trip to the NIT, Coach Jim Satalin was a realistic optimist in his first look at the list of 16 teams in 1977, something he even remembers 45 years later.  “It was a strong field, but we were really good that year,” he said in looking back to that year. “We probably should have gone to the NCAA…but I looked at the whole field and thought, ‘We’re as good as anybody in this field.’”

One team in the field was the University of Houston Cougars, coached by Guy Lewis, who ended up winning nearly 600 games in his 30 years as its head coach.  In their first-round game, a sophomore named Larry Bird nearly derailed Houston’s season.  Riding a seven-game win streak into the NIT, Indiana State relied on the high-scoring forward who averaged 33 points per game that season, but fell to Houston on the road.  Bird, the #3 scoring leader in the nation, poured in 44 points in the 83-82 loss.  Otis Birdsong, the Houston star who was #4 in scoring in the nation and a UPI first team All-American, led the Cougars with 30 points. 

Houston then survived against Illinois State (91-90) before beating Alabama, 82-76, to reach the championship game.

St. Bonaventure had its own challenge in the first round.  Satalin led a 20-6 squad to Princeton, NJ, to face Rutgers, a matchup with a team that the Bonnies had lost to 374 days prior in the previous season.  This outcome was different, however, with Glenn Hagan scoring the winning shot in the 79-77 overtime win.  Essie Hollis and Hagan led Bona scorers with 25 and 21 points, respectively. 

The following games against Oregon and Villanova featured three- and four-point wins, respectively.  In the lone game St. Bonaventure has ever played against Oregon, Sanders only missed five shots, going 11 of 16 from the field and a perfect eight-for-eight from the free throw line.  The Bonnies were badly outrebounded, 42-23, with Oregon star and second team USBWA All-American Greg Ballard nearly matching the Bona total with 15 rebounds.  Nonetheless, St. Bonaventure left the Garden with a 76-73 victory. 

The Hagan-Baron backcourt flourished against Villanova, which ultimately finished third in the tournament.  Hagan led all scorers, including the Herron brothers of Villanova, with 26 points, and Barron added 13 points in only 22 minutes of play.  The backcourt dished out 14 assists, while both Hollis and Sanders fouled out of the game. 

Birdsong’s scoring prowess hadn’t declined during the Cougars’ run.  He carried a 26 points-per-game average during the tournament, yet prior to the Bona game, Lewis remarked, “He’d be the first to tell you he hasn’t had a good tournament.”  One high point of Birdsong’s season was scoring 43 in a nationally televised loss to UCLA at Pauley Pavilion in January, proving that explosive games were possible. Since that setback, Houston went 20-4 with the most recent loss to #7 Arkansas in the championship of Southwest Conference tournament. 

Entering the game, Birdsong and the size of Houston’s roster were on Satalin’s mind, but there was a key factor that he liked.  Both teams were similar in one way.

“The good thing was that they played a style that was similar to ours in that they loved to get up and down [the court].  They weren’t a great defensive team.  Neither were we, quite frankly, but we and they were able to outscore teams most of the year.  When we looked at that game, I thought, ‘This team is really good, and we’re going to have to score a lot of points to win this thing, but it should be a great game,’” he said.

And he was right.

In Fall 1976, Jim Satalin knew his team was good.  Just how good was the story. 

The Bonnies went 14-10 in their 1975-1976 season.  They lost their last regular season game at third-ranked Rutgers, 85-80, in a heartbreaking defeat.  With a 24-0 record to that point, the Scarlet Knights hadn’t really been tested in their College Avenue Gymnasium.  The Bonnies managed the game for nearly the entire contest before a controversial foul in the closing seconds sealed the Rutgers’ victory.  With 30 seconds left, Jim Baron seemingly stole the ball from Rutgers guard Mike Dabney in open court where the Bonnies were poised to score and tie the game at 82. 

An apparent late whistle against Baron on the steal affected the outcome.  Even Eddie Jordan, a guard for Rutgers at the time, acknowledged as much on another website, “He (Baron) took two dribbles, then a whistle blew,” he said. 

Satalin remembers the call 46 years later.  “It was a tough call to have at that particular time of the game, and that saved them their undefeated season,” he said.

Nonetheless, the defeat to Rutgers may have shown something to four of the Bona starters: Essie Hollis, Greg Sanders, Glenn Hagan, and Jim Baron.  “We were good that year,” Satalin recalled.  “All of those guys were ready to take the next step, and that game showed them that they could do that.”

The team lost 6-7 forward/center Bob Rozyczko and his 17 points per game average to graduation, but the foursome of Hollis, Baron, Hagan, and Sanders brought a 55 points-per-game average into the ’76-77 season. 

Then there was 6-8 Tim Waterman, a true center that even Satalin acknowledged was missing from the previous year.  “Timmy was our only size to speak of,” Satalin said.  “We kind of almost gave him that [center] position and hoped that he could handle it.  He more than handled it for us.  He was the kind of guy who did all the dirty work.  He didn’t need the ball at all.  He didn’t need to take any shots.  He blocked out.  He rebounded.” 

“Timmy was a key factor on that team.  It took so much pressure off the other guys,” he added. 

The ’76-77 Bonnies jumped out to an 11-3 record by the end of January, losing only at Georgetown and DePaul and to Princeton at the Rochester War Memorial in the championship of the Kodak College Basketball Classic.  The 55-point output by Bona against Pete Carril’s Tigers was a season low, yet was two points more than opponents’ average against Princeton.  The Bonnies shot 36 percent from the floor, far lower than their 57 percent success rate per game to that point in the season.

Fast forward to February 12, 1977.  The Bonnies had just come off consecutive road losses to two Top 20 teams.  Providence (#15) upended St. Bonaventure, 82-75, before a Dick Vitale-coached Detroit squad (#19) defeated the Bonnies, 78-62, in the Motor City.  (This brief stretch may be the only consecutive three-game run of facing top 20 teams in Bona history.) 

At 14-4 on the season, the Bonnies were looking to rebound in facing Syracuse (#17) in the Reilly Center.  They responded.

Hollis scored 37 points—27 in the first half alone—before a capacity crowd in what was Jim Boeheim’s first year as the Orangemen head coach.  Hollis scored 27 of Bonnies’ first 50 points as they headed into halftime with a comfortable 52-33 lead.  Syracuse started the game in an uncharacteristic man-to-man defense instead of a 2-3 zone, something that surprised Satalin according to an Olean Times Herald post-game story.  Boeheim’s assessment in the same story echoed respect for the Bona offensive threat in saying, “We couldn’t play zone here, not with the shooters they have.”

The Bona backcourt of Baron and Hagan got into early foul trouble, but Satalin’s squad got 18 bench points from Dan Viglianco (8 points), Delmar Harrod (5 points), and Nick Urzetta (5 points).  The Times Herald story related that Satalin “juggled his lineup like a master magician.”

The Bonnies reeled off another four straight victories to end the regular season at 20-5. 

In a game with likely NCAA implications, Syracuse enacted revenge in the ECAC tournament game at the Manley Field House in Syracuse in early March.  Hollis got into early foul trouble in the 85-72 loss. Syracuse got the subsequent NCAA bid (32 teams at the time) and lost in the second round to Charlotte, 81-59.

The loss—what became the last setback of the ’76-77 season— may have been historic for St. Bonaventure.  A win may have vaulted the team into the 32-team NCAA tournament.  Instead a 16-team NIT opportunity awaited.