Bucknell University Athletics
Confident Abe Badmus is Bison's Unsung Leader
12/7/2005 7:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 7, 2005
By Jon Terry, Bucknell Athletic Communications
He stands just a shade over six feet tall, has a career scoring average of 4.8 points per game and is one of the most valuable Division I college basketball players in the country.
Seriously.
Abe Badmus, a late addition to coach Pat Flannery's 2003 recruiting class, is reminding Bucknell fans of the classic point guards of days past, a savvy playmaker on offense and a lockdown defender at the other end.
The Bison made headlines from coast to coast last season after knocking off powers St. Joseph's and Pittsburgh on the road, winning the Patriot League title and stunning Kansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. And Bucknell is at it again in 2005-06, capturing its first four games of the season heading into Saturday's game at DePaul, including yet another head-turner at No. 17 Syracuse.
Senior co-captains Kevin Bettencourt and Charles Lee, along with center Chris McNaughton, have received bushels of individual accolades, and deservedly so, as all three are All-Patriot League players.
But ask Flannery, a former Bison point guard himself, or any regular follower of the team, and they will tell you that the fabric of this group lies in Badmus.
"'Confidence' is the key word to describe how far Abe has developed," says Flannery. "He has just taken over the team, in terms of his ability to control the pace of the game, both offensively and defensively. It has been a joy to coach him and watch him progress."
Badmus is a pocket of energy, ready to pounce on a loose ball and start a fastbreak. With the dribble, he shifts gears more often than a Formula 1 driver, often spinning defenders dizzy.
Now a junior and in his third year starting alongside Bettencourt, Lee and McNaughton, he has an innate sense of the Bucknell offense and where his teammates will be on the floor. Under Badmus' direction, the Bison offense, which has had to overcome staggered spells in recent years, now runs fluidly.
And perhaps most notably, Badmus regularly appears in the nightmares of opposing point guards who have had to try to run their offenses while blanketed by an orange and blue No. 5 jersey.
He is the reigning Patriot League Defensive Player of the Year, and while he has hit a number of big shots for the Bison -- most memorable was the 3-pointer just before the buzzer that beat Lehigh last season -- much of his personal highlight reel consists of one defensive gem after another.
His game-saving block of Carl Krauser's breakaway dunk in the Pitt game last January is now legendary, as is his NCAA Tournament performance against Kansas, when he distributed 11 assists without a single turnover, and held Jayhawks point guard Aaron Miles to only four assists and no field goals.
As natural a fit as Badmus has become, it is surprising to some that his path to Bucknell was hardly a given.
Badmus attended Notre Dame High School for Boys in the Chicago suburb of Niles. The Irish featured an excellent basketball team, but it wasn't until the summer before his senior year until the college scouts began to take notice, including the coaching staff in Lewisburg.
After an injury limited him to only five varsity games as a junior, Badmus enjoyed a productive summer against top national competition under head coach Johnny Gage, a well-known AAU coach whose best-known pupil was a young Isaiah Thomas.
Badmus decided to put the recruiting offers on hold until after his senior season at Notre Dame, a decision that proved to be wise when his stock rose dramatically with a terrific final year. Healthy and given a prominent role on the team following the graduation of three top players, Badmus was named league MVP and earned all-state honors.
"That season really improved my confidence, and Bucknell kept calling along with the University of Chicago, Northwestern and Loyola of Chicago," Badmus says. "I just thought I would grow more as a person, as a student and as a basketball player if I went away from home. I was always known as a `mama's boy', and I still call home every day, but I decided I wanted to grow up and be a man on my own."
A little more than two years, one Patriot League championship and one NCAA Tournament victory later, Badmus has no regrets about his choice.
"I think I made the right decision," he says convincingly. "It was a little shaky at the beginning, My first year wasn't the best of years. We struggled a lot as a team, but we also had some spotlight moments."
Coincidentally, one of Badmus' breakthrough outings occurred just a few minutes from his old neighborhood, when Bucknell traveled to play Northwestern. The Bison offense struggled that night in a 69-61 loss, but Badmus picked up a few minutes at the end and delighted many of his former classmates in attendance with solid play.
"All my friends came from Notre Dame and it was a lot of fun," Badmus recalls. "We lost the game, but coach Flannery calls it my `coming out' game because I started to take charge at point guard. It was a good beginning for me. I was real young but I had to learn to run a team at some time in my career, and I think it started that night."
A month later, Badmus made his first start in Bucknell's Patriot League opener at American. The Bison were 3-9 at that point, but they went 11-6 the rest of the way with Badmus as the starting point guard.
"We all had diapers on that year," Badmus says figuratively. "But we learned together, made mistakes together and grew together. I think that is why we are so much better now. You need to take those baby steps in order to start walking. After we started winning all those games at home it hit us that we were a good team.
"We made a pact to each other that summer that we were going to work our butts off in the gym, in the weight room, watching tape, all of that. I think it really paid off."
And then some. A cohesive Bison team finished 23-10 in what many are calling the program's greatest season ever.
"Coach always asks, `what are you doing when no one's watching," says Badmus, who is routinely one of the first players on the floor for extra shooting before practice. "I take a lot of pride in that statement, because that's when I work my best, when no one's watching. People are surprised when I do certain things, but I say, `I've been practicing that all summer long.' When Chuck [Lee] makes a nice play, I'm not surprised because I know that's what he's been doing all summer."
So far this season it's been even more of the same for Badmus, who played for the Nigerian national team this summer (his parents emigrated from Nigeria) and helped lead D'Tigers to a third-place finish at the FIBA African Championships and a berth in next years World Championships in Japan.
Offensively he was shooting 63.2 percent from the field going into Saturday's game at DePaul, his first basketball trip back to his hometown since that Northwestern game during his freshman year. He has a 14-to-5 assist-to-turnover ratio, has 10 steals in four games, and he frustrated All-America guard Gerry McNamara of Syracuse into a 6-for-19 shooting night at the Carrier Dome last month.
With its quick start, Bucknell has marched to the precipice of the Top 25, garnering poll consideration never before seen at the school. And with the program reaching new, nationally recognized heights, no player has had a larger role in leading them there than Abe Badmus.
