Rams face Blue Devils in tourney
Rhode Island plays for berth in Sweet 16
PITTSBURGH — The Rams are on the precipice.
No. 7 Rhode Island is in the Round of 32 for the second straight season, and the only thing standing in the way of a Sweet 16 berth is a bigname, higher-seeded foe.
After coming up just short of knocking off eventual Final Four team Oregon last March, coach Dan Hurley and his Rams are determined to get over the hump. No. 2 Duke is the team attempting to stop them this time, when the teams meet at PPG Paints Arena today at 2:40 p.m.
“Thrilled to get the opportunity to play again Saturday,” Hurley said. “I don’t know if there’s a college team in the tournament that’s had a chance to play two more exciting games than us to start the tournament off. Trae Young and Oklahoma to kick it off yesterday, with CBS. And then a chance to play Duke.
“[It’s] an excited group of guys that can’t wait to take the court tomorrow against the best college basketball program in the country.”
Look back at URI basketball history and the Blue Devils pop up in some interesting spots. First, there was the one-point loss in the opening round of the 1978 NCAA Tournament. The likes of Sly Williams and Jiggy Williamson nearly guided the Rams to the upset back then.
Ten years later, the two teams met, this time in the Sweet 16. Again facing off in a year ending in eight, the Rams - led by coach Tom Penders and local legend Tommy Garrick - lost by a single point.
There are more recent and immediate connections, too. Hurley’s older brother, Bobby, played under Duke’s legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski, and the two families have been connected for decades.
“I remember Bob’s recruiting process, and meeting Coach K. at open gym at White Eagle Hall, the bingo hall that’s so famous where it all began at St. Anthony,” the younger Hurley said. “And then Coach K flying back with Bobby after the official visit and meeting Coach K in the home and just how easy he made everyone feel, his personality, his wit.
“And you could see that special connection that he made with Bobby on that recruiting visit and for me, the multitude of times that, as a high school player, that I was at Final Fours, and how gracious and nice Coach K was to me and our family. And then even as a high school coach at St. Benedict’s, he recruited several of my players.”
“We feel like we’re in the same family,” Krzyzewski said. “Whether they said it that way or not, we love the Hurley family.
“Like Bobby, for me, I had as much fun coaching him -- I always related to him. I was a point guard and I was never as good as him, but I gave him the freedom that I would have liked if I was as good. I’m not saying I deserved that freedom, so I’m putting that -- if you write about this, make sure you say ‘if I was as good.’”
The teams met last season in the finals of the Hall of Fame Tip-Off Tournament at Mohegan Sun, giving some of the current players a look inside the URI-Duke dynamic.
“They’re a different team,” from last year, Jared Terrell said. “They have a lot of shooters, they had shooters last year. But the size inside, it’s completely different than last year’s team.”
“I didn’t even play last year when we played against Duke,” Jeff Dowtin said. “Not seeing them, but watching them from the sidelines, they’re a great team. They move the ball very well. They got two monsters down there in the post.
“It should be a great opportunity for us, like I said. I know I’ve been watching a lot of film, seeing what they do and all of the different things on the court, so that should be good for us.”
Since that early-season meeting a year ago, the Blue Devils have added freshman forward Marvin Bagley, as well as three other stellar freshmen, Trevon Duval, Wendell Carter and Gary Trent. Safe to say, the Rams don’t think that this year’s Blue Devil team knows a lot about them.
“Yeah, we watched a couple of their games, I don’t think they really watched us,” Stan Robinson said. “Someone told me they saw them in Chipotle yesterday or two days ago, and they asked them about Rhode Island, and they said they didn’t know who we were.”
“I think Duke will have respect for us when they take the court, but that’s not surprising,” Hurley said of the anecdote. “We’re not all over ESPN, or FOX Sports. Our league doesn’t get a whole lot of respect, but there’s some pretty good basketball that’s played in the Atlantic 10.”
Respected or not, the Rams will be tasked with taking on a 6-foot11 player that very few teams in the country have an answer for. Bagley averaged 22.5 points a game this season and put up 22 against Iona in Thursday’s first round action.
The Ram frontcourt has not been the secret to their success by any stretch. Andre Berry has been an efficient scorer but a defensive liability, while Cyril Langevine has recovered from a mid-season injury to return to the form Ram fans saw in Sacramento last year.
“We’ve been overmatched in terms of size the whole year,” Hurley said, noting that he would not be swapping Berry out for Langevine in the starting five. “Obviously, it hasn’t been to this extent. And at the other end of the court, too, our ability to maybe spread them out in the zone will hopefully create some issues for them. Maybe our quickness, the multitude of players that we have that can make threes or make plays against that zone can hopefully offset the challenges that we’re going to have at the defensive end.”
The winding connections don’t just involve Duke and the Hurley family. E.C. Matthews is ending his collegiate career with success on multiple levels.
To go along with his own firstround heroics, Matthews high school coach at Romulus (Mich) High, Nate Oats, was responsible for one of the biggest upset on Thursday. Oats and Buffalo pulled off the biggest upset of the first day, a stomping of No. 4 Arizona, 84-77.
“It was great,” Matthews said. “I called and congratulated him. Also my high school teammate, Wes Clark, is on the team also. It’s great to see that we’re both doing good and hopefully we can keep winning.”
Oats has guided his team to the NCAA Tournament twice in his first three years as a college coach. Matthews former running mate Clark, a transfer from Missouri, had a game-high 25 points and seven assists in Oats’ first-ever postseason win.