By Mikael DeSanto
Sports Assignment Editor
In a season that opened with many new faces, Matea Britvar, a junior forward on St. Bonaventure University’s women’s basketball team, has faced changes of her own. These come in the form of an expanded role and more responsibility on a young team.
“I would follow the team when I was at Bowling Green. I mostly knew Matea from the NCAA tournament game last year, where she had a nice game,” head coach Jesse Fleming said. “She is just very skilled, she does the little things: she can make the jumper, she is good in the pick and roll [and] she is probably our best one-on-one post defender. You tell her ‘hey, you have to take away a specific move of someone,’ she’ll do it; just very smart.”
Britvar explained what brought her to the university, despite being from Orlando, Florida.
“Bonaventure showed unconditional love to me, no matter what,” Britvar said. “I tore my ACL right before I was supposed to come on my unofficial visit here and we had a Skype tour instead. The fact that they put in so much work, the coaching staff put in so much work, to make sure I still felt loved even after I tore my ACL was amazing. No other school could compare to the compassion they showed me.”
After averaging 8.2 minutes per game her freshman year and 15.9 minutes per game her sophomore year, Britvar has seen her minutes nearly double to 34.0 over the first two games. She has also seen a jump in her points and rebounds averages, from 1.3 points and 1.1 rebounds as a freshman, to 3.3 points and 3.2 rebounds her sophomore year and finally to 12.0 points and 7.5 rebounds so far this season.
“She is playing about 35 minutes per game; she probably leads us right now in minutes played or is pretty darn close,” Fleming said. “She is asked to do a lot. Sometimes she is asked to defend the other team’s best post player, she has to stretch the floor for us, [and] she doesn’t have to be a high rebounder, even though she had 11 rebounds [against Colgate]. She at least has to box her kid out, we were looking for her to create and pass as well, we put her at the high post a lot too, and she has to make plays from there, so she has a pretty expansive role.”
Britvar said that while she has improved on the court, the biggest difference in her game has been her internal progression.
“I definitely have changed a lot mentally because as a freshman you come in and you don’t know what to expect transitioning from high school to college basketball, so it let me open up and embrace new ways of playing,” Britvar said. “I have definitely gone through the workouts and all the hard, tough situations through the summer and through the season. So I have seen the most progression mentally, I believe.”
Britvar also welcomed all of the things that have come with being a starter for the first time in her collegiate career.
“It kind of feels awesome,” Britvar said. “To be able to be called out in the first five, run through our little tunnel and everything makes me feel pumped up [and] ready to go from the start. I know I can’t slack off, but it also is a responsibility thing. I know that the freshmen that are watching from the bench are going to be looking up to me to see how I am playing, so they know how to come in and preform afterward.”
Fleming sees her progressing through bringing what she can to the team’s game every night.
“If she can keep playing like she did against Colgate; I thought she was the best player on the floor,” Fleming said. “She affected the game with her defense, got a ton of deflections, she finished around the basket, made a couple really good open jumpers, made some passes inside, just really filled up the stat sheet. I think throughout the year, it is just whether we can get a version of that, it doesn’t have to be that every game, but a version of that and start to see some really good consistency out of her.”
Britvar and the Bonnies will return to the court Saturday when they play at Delaware at 8 p.m.
desantmj13@bonaventure.edu
