St. Bonaventure Players Bring a Screwdriver to a Fistfight

St. Bonaventure has not bee relevant on the national college basketball scene since a junior college transfer with a welding certificate was admitted. No surprise that their latest moment in the limelight is not related to their actual game.

Four St. Bonaventure players were arrested after brawling with some local junior college basketball players. Two of the junior college players were apparently stabbed with a screwdriver during the fight.

The whole thing started at a bar (of course) on St. Bonaventure's campus. The junior college players from Jamestown Community College-Olean and St. Bonaventure players got into it a bit on Friday night. The Jamestown players were told to leave the bar. They did, and all appeared to have blown over.

Instead, it apparently festered with the JCC-Olean players. To the point where they drove to the student townhouses where the St. Bonaventure players lived on Saturday night/Sunday morning, and challenged them to come out and fight. So they did, and according to the state police report, a brawl that involved eight to ten people ensued.

St. Bonaventure's athletic director has gone with the predictable response that "we're not going to proceed as a university or as an athletic department until the legal process has concluded."

Despite two JCC-Orleans players suffering minor stab wounds from the screwdriver, the charges leveled to this point against only four St. Bonaventure players are termed "violations." These are the equivalent of minor citations that do not even rise to the level of misdemeanors. They are not even criminal charges.

While the police don't rule out more charges being filed against more individuals from the incident and escalated charges, it seems that the view of the police is that this is a case of general idiocy, not criminal acts.