Carl Jones seals St. Joe's win at Fordham
NEW YORK - For the last two weeks, Carl Jones has made it a priority to work on his free throws.
After shooting 76 percent from the line over his first three years at St. Joseph's, the senior guard had dipped to 64 percent heading into Wednesday night's game at Fordham.
While Jones made sure he made 100 free throws before finishing up his practices, he needed seven to finish off Fordham in a 66-62 win.
"I was thinking that they were going to go in because I've been practicing them," said Jones, who knocked down 7 of 8 free throws in the last 1 minute, 2 seconds and finished with 19 points.
Despite all the work at the line, Jones never expected to have the game in his hands there.
"I never envisioned that," Jones said. "But I knew if it came down to it I would hit it."
"We definitely needed him tonight," said Langston Galloway, who was limited to six points after playing basketball for the first time since Saturday because of a stomach virus.
"It shows that we're maturing," Galloway said. "We want to keep going and build off win by win."
St. Joseph's coach Phil Martelli did not know what to expect when Jones had the game in his hands.
"When you look back over his career there aren't a lot of big free throws that he made," Martelli said. "That's what you're supposed to do when you're the leading scorer.
"It's entered my mind. For a kid that's going to end up with a lot of points, you'd like to see some of them be really big, dagger kind of shots."
St. Joseph's (12-7, 3-3), the preseason favorite in the Atlantic Ten Conference, hung on for its seventh straight victory over Fordham (6-15, 2-4), thanks to two late miscues by the Rams' leading scorer, Branden Frazier, who finished with 24 points.
Frazier missed the front end of a one-and-one with Fordham trailing, 63-62, with 26 seconds left. He stepped out of bounds with his team down by two with 7.9 seconds remaining.
Contact Nick Carroll at ncarroll@phillynews.com, or follow on Twitter @NickJCarroll.
