Hawks outwork Rhode Island with tough, 61-57 win

IT WAS Rhode Island's pace and its style. Even though it took the Rams forever to get to town (bus, train, subway), they were at Saint Joseph's to play and to make the Hawks play.

What had been easy for St. Joe's lately was suddenly difficult. The shots were not as open. The open shots were not going in. There was not much space and, as the clock closed on 13 minutes, not an overwhelming amount of time.

There was, however, no hint of panic from a veteran team, even as it trailed by six points. The Hawks were home with their five double-figure scorers. They were on a winning roll. Their time, they sensed, was coming.

URI has trouble scoring in the best of times. Eventually, SJU, which had made 33 threes over two games, was going to start scoring. The decisive run came in slow motion, but it did come, with good defense, smart enough offense and, after 11 straight misses from three, a three from Langston Galloway.

When the 18-2 run over 6 minutes was done, SJU had come from six down to 10 ahead. That was the offense such as it was. But it was enough to get out of Hagan Arena last night with a 61-57 win.

"I'm surprised," St. Joe's coach Phil Martelli said. "I didn't see that coming. I knew it would be a grind game. I knew that they really put a lot of stock in their defense . . . They made us fight every possession. I thought we did a good job defensively."

The 33 threes don't happen in real life, unless, of course, Creighton is shooting them. But they did not happen in a vacuum either. The Hawks (13-5, 3-1 Atlantic 10) led the league in field-goal percentage and three-point percentage. URI (10-10, 1-4) is about as good at stopping the three as the Hawks had been at making them.

In the end, the long-distance shooting was a bad dead heat as the teams combined to shoot 5-for-30 from the arc. The Hawks eventually won by doing what they had been doing worse than any team in the league - shooting free throws.

After going only 4-for-10 from the line in the first half, SJU got the Rams in immediate second-half foul trouble and shot 9-for-13 in one productive stretch before reverting to form by making only eight of their final 15. It was not terribly pretty over the full 40 minutes (21-for-38), but it was effective enough when it mattered.

"It's them," Martelli said of his team. "They're the ones that didn't panic when we were 4-4 . . . I want to excite people, but it wasn't to be. And in the league, maybe that's not the way it's going to be. But we trailed to Drexel, trailed to Denver, trailed to Boston U, we stayed with it."

Ronald Roberts dominated the basket area with 20 points, nine rebounds, three blocks and numerous high-degree-of-difficulty dunks. After missing time with back issues, he is all the way back to his high-flying self.

"I love playing basketball," Roberts said. "I know I was only out for a week, but it was a struggle just laying in bed all the time."

The coach was not thrilled that Roberts had one rebound at halftime. He liked the rest of it.

"Ron is a senior," Martelli said. "He deserves these opportunities."

Roberts saw all those missed shots as an opportunity to get rebounds and get the ball in the basket some kind of way. He was 7-for-9 from the field. His teammates were 12-for-34.

Galloway had to work for every one of his 15 points, eight of which came from the free throw line. He was 8-for-10. His teammates were 13-for-28. Halil Kanacevic (11 points) was in foul trouble all game, a victim of some strange calls in a game filled with bizarre calls both ways.

"You're not going to shoot the ball well every night," Kanacevic said. "We've been shooting the ball great. Eventually, something's going to give. You've got to grind out a game."

This was not a work of basketball art. But on a night when the offense disappeared and the Hawks got crushed on the glass, 40-30, they found another way, blocking nine shots, winning for the ninth time in 10 games, the final score closer than the reality of the game's final minutes.

"We were just in the huddle, saying as long as we play defense, we can win the game," SJU point guard Chris Wilson said. "When you hold a team to 57, even if you don't make shots, you've got a chance."

SJU has played well for a month. Its next six games may well tell their 2013-14 story - at Richmond, at Dayton, home against Massachusetts, Saint Louis and VCU over an 15-day period before a visit to La Salle.

As February beckons, the Hawks have, at the least, put themselves in position to have a very nice season. The results will reveal how nice.