Nearly 150 Bona players spanning 12 teams and 69 years have been created for a live summer simulation no Bona fan should miss. A single-elimination tournament that includes 11 games over three weeks in Butler Gym, the Olean Armory, and Reilly Center, the Bona Cup aims to provide some entertainment for all of us who miss live sports.
Teams competing for the Bona Cup include 1952 with Bob Sassone and Bill Kenville; 1961 with Tom Stith, Fred Crawford and Whitey Martin; 1968's "Ironman Five" of Bob Lanier, Bill Butler, Billy Kalbaugh, John Hayes and Jim Satalin; 1970's Final Four team with Lanier, Kalbaugh, Matt Gantt and Greg "Bubba" Gary; 1977's NIT Champions with Essie Hollis and Greg Sanders; 1983 with Mark Jones and Mike Sheehey; 2000's NCAA Tournament team with Tim Winn, Caswell Cyrus, David Capers, Peter Van Paassen and JR Bremer; 2002 with Bremer and Marques Green; 2012's Atlantic 10 Champions with Andrew Nicholson and Demitrius Conger; 2016's "snubbed" team with Jaylen Adams, Marcus Posley and Dion Wright; 2018's NCAA Tournament team of Adams, Matt Mobley, and Courtney Stockard; and the future 2021 team with Kyle Lofton, Osun Osunniyi, and Dom Welch.
Criteria for seeding began with no "consecutive" teams, so rosters had to be at least two seasons apart. Also taken into consideration was how each team fared against their contemporaries. Finding a middle ground between that and how they would stack up against one another was difficult, but the main way teams were seeded. Furthermore, having both versions of Lanier and Adams on opposite sides of the bracket determined where teams were placed, and providing entertaining matchups with interesting storylines also played a role in how the bracket was formed.
This is not meant to be a list or ranking. I wanted to create the rosters as accurately as possible, construct interesting matchups, and let it play out however it does. You can catch all the action on the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZYmJrr5Hf2r8fxmkwp3Qgw, and find updates on Twitter.
Check out our Bracket Challonge leaderboard here: https://challonge.com/BonaCup/predictions