The Bonnies apparently aren't all that happy.
St. Bonaventure basketball torn amid chants to fire Mark Schmidt originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The chants were the kind that you'd never think would be heard in Olean, New York.
"Fire Mark Schmidt" were the cries of some St. Bonaventure basketball fans recently, directed at the Bonnies' head coach since 2007.
And, well, it's quite shocking.
The Bonnies fell to 13-9 on the season with a loss in their most recent game, but it was a four-point defeat to a George Mason team that's 20-2, so not exactly a brutal loss.
Has St. Bonaventure been quite up to par of some of the Schmidt era in the past few years? Not really.
But a chant to fire the guy? Man, that seems misguided.
Former Bonnies player Dion Wright had this to say on X:
It’s either you die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain . . . Chanting “fire schmidt” is absolutely disgusting. A lot of people didn’t even know anything about St. Bonaventure until he got there. At the end of the day it’s a players game.
— Dion Wright (@TheWrightHoops) February 1, 2026
The four seasons before Schmidt was hired at Bonaventure all featured single-digit wins.
It took him just one year of rebuilding before he got to 15 wins in his second season.
They haven't won fewer than 14 games in a season in his entire tenure.
That includes three NCAA Tournament appearances and two trips to the Round of 32.
Schmidt is Bonaventure's all-time wins leader, now with 337 wins and counting.
And this isn't like other jobs. Bonaventure, with an enrollment of less than 3,000 students, is one of the few smallest Division I basketball programs in the country.
In the NIL era and transfer-heavy era, it's hard to get recruits to come to Olean.
And so somehow, that all led to the chants by Bonnies fans. Apparently some people feel that way.
There are plenty of St. Bonaventure faithful who would never dream such a fate on Schmidt.
Category: General Sports
