The St. Bonaventure Bonnies are a great example of a college basketball program with a proud history that’s on the rise once again. That history has given the Bonnies a strong following that makes it somewhat challenging to find cheap St. Bonaventure basketball tickets. At the same time, the program’s sudden reclamation inside the Atlantic 10 Conference during the 2010s has kept last-minute St. Bonaventure basketball tickets in high demand for a mid-major that’s on the rise.

The Good Ole Days

The proudest days of St. Bonaventure basketball started in the late 1950s under head coach Edward Donovan. He made St. Bonaventure a top-20 program and a regular in the NIT. In 1961, Donovan took the Bonnies to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history before passing the torch to former player Larry Weise. In his 12 seasons, Weise continued to make St. Bonaventure a fixture on the national stage, guiding the Bonnies to the first Final Four in program history in 1970.

A New Hope

Unfortunately for St. Bonaventure, the program started to fizzle out following the team’s Final Four appearance in 1970, making just one more NCAA Tournament appearance until 2000. A player-eligibility scandal in 2003 also set the program back. However, with the arrival of Mark Schmidt as head coach in 2007, the Bonnies started to turn things around. Schmidt took over a program that was at the bottom of the Atlantic-10 but only needed five seasons to take the Bonnies back to the NCAA Tournament in 2012. In 2016, Schmidt led St. Bonaventure to its first regular-season conference championship since 1958 and helped the Bonnies earn another at-large bid to the Big Dance in 2018. It’s been a long journey back, but St. Bonaventure is finally starting to show signs of being a basketball program worth watching.