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‘She’s A Bona Kid’

Maycock Recognized On Senior Night At Reilly Center

Mckenna Maycock is all smiles during Senior Night at St. Bonaventure University on Thursday night. P-J photo by Tim Frank

ST. BONAVENTURE — If Jesse Fleming could build the perfect St. Bonaventure student-athlete, it would be Mckenna Maycock.

It’s not hard to see why.

Maycock was a match with the Bonnies as early as middle school when her Randolph basketball career took off. Playing her home games just 37 miles from the Reilly Center, Maycock scored 2,947 during a historic high school career that landed her fifth on the New York state all-time girls scoring list.

It was easy for former St. Bonaventure coach Jim Crowley to offer Maycock a scholarship to join the Bonnies back in 2015.

Once on campus, Maycock was even more impressive.

Mckenna Maycock drives to the basket. P-J photo by Tim Frank

The accounting major graduated in just three years last spring with a 3.97 GPA as a two-time Atlantic 10 All-Academic Team and CoSIDA Academic All-Region selection.

“If you’re asking for perfect in a student … what you want to get out of a kid — and take the basketball ability part out of it — I’m talking about work ethic, respectful, good teammate, she just checks every single box,” said Fleming on Thursday night after the Bonnies beat Rhode Island, 62-61, on Senior Night at the Reilly Center. “She’s really coachable … and she’s very, very smart. I’m just going to be proud to say that I got to coach her.

“I’ll probably ask her for a job when they kick me out of here because she’ll be some rich CEO in a few years,” Fleming joked.

On the court, Maycock got better with age and experience, upping her scoring and rebounding averages each year while playing more minutes and taking on more of a leadership role.

“She was our best player last year before she got hurt. That second semester of her sophomore year, she really figured it out. She came back so great her junior year,” Fleming said. “She was a huge building block, and hopefully as we keep building this … Mckenna’s values carrying over from Jim (Crowley) … will be a huge deal for us.”

Mckenna Maycock is joined in her Senior Night celebration by, from the left, her father Mike, her mother Robin and St. Bonaventure women’s coach Jesse Fleming. P-J photo by Tim Frank

It has all come to a culmination this season as Maycock has led the Bonnies in scoring (12.1 ppg) and rebounding (5.5 rpg) while working on her master’s in business administration with a focus in professional accountancy as a graduate student.

“She’s a Bona kid. That’s the kid when we are going through a recruit’s presentation now, we point to her for what we want a Bona kid to look like,” Fleming said. “She just fits in here. I think that’s why she has had an amazing four years. She found the right school, found the right program. There was a value match there. The accounting program, she dominated that. Academically, socially and athletically, it really was the right fit for her.”

Tasked with being the lone senior on Fleming’s roster this year, Maycock has filled the role to a T, taking the young Bonnies under her wing.

“It’s been neat how much her and the freshmen have bonded. … She has just adopted them,” Fleming said. “She has a relationship with every single person on the team. She’s a connector and that’s what we look for.”

It was evident at the end of Thursday night’s victory over the Rams.

Trailing by one with 12 seconds remaining, Fleming drew up an inbounds play designed to give Maycock an opportunity to score with the game on the line.

Maycock took a handoff near the top of the key and dribbled into the lane before unfortunately her left-handed attempt was blocked out of bounds.

With no timeouts remaining, the Bonnies were forced to scramble together another inbounds play with 1.1 seconds left and this time freshman Asianae Johnson was the recipient of Deja Francis’ inbounds pass, putting a shot up that bounced off the rim and in as time expired to send St. Bonaventure to its fifth A-10 victory of the season.

“Mckenna has made a big impact on our team, on the way we play,” Johnson said during the postgame news conference. ” … Just getting that for her means everything.”

After the shot was reviewed and deemed successful, Maycock joined in on the celebration with her teammates — two freshmen, two sophomores and five juniors.

“Everything these last four years has meant so much to me,” Maycock said. “This has been the greatest four years of my life like everyone said it would. I’ve learned so much and grown so much. It just means the world to me to end my senior game on a win.”

The team’s lone senior got to walk off the court as a winner — not that there was any doubt she was already that.

“I think we really wanted to get the win for Mckenna,” Fleming said. “She’s a kid that deserved to have her own night.”

“It has flown by so quickly I can’t even explain it,” Maycock said of her Bonnies’ career. “It’s been the best four years I could’ve asked for.”

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