Rams confident headed to A-10s
The University of Rhode Island men’s basketball team is riding a four-game winning streak to Brooklyn and is aiming to double it. Four wins in four days at the Atlantic 10 Tournament would secure a championship, and the suddenly confident Rams aren’t shying away from that goal.
“We’re not going down to Brooklyn for anything else, other than to win a championship,” coach David Cox said. “That’s the culture that’s been established here. Those are some of the expectations. But at the end of the day, we have to keep things in perspective. We’re going to play a really good La Salle team [today]. We want to go and win that game, and then take it from there.”
Eighth-seeded URI opens tournament play today at noon against the ninth-seeded Explorers. The winner advances to face top-seeded VCU in Friday’s quarterfinals.
A long and difficult road looms with the title hopes, but the Rams are relishing the opportunity. Just three weeks ago, they were looking for any road forward as they tried to claw their way out of a five-game losing streak.
“We just never stopped,” sophomore guard Fatts Russell said. “A lot of people gave up on us, but we always stayed together. That’s just a credit to our coaches and our leaders. I could have quit when I was down. I was in a really bad place, but I just kept fighting. And now we’re here.”
Positive steps in a loss to Davidson set the course for the turnaround. URI then beat George Washington, won overtime road games at Dayton and St. Joseph’s and blasted UMass 94-75 in Saturday’s season finale.
“We took a few on the chin, but everybody stuck together and we kept fighting,” junior guard Jeff Dowtin said. “Fought through adversity, came together as a group. We had a few player meetings and coaching meetings. Everybody just figured out, if we stay together and focus on our one goal, we’d be able to achieve it.”
“At one point during the year, we were almost counted out,” Cox said. “That group in there, those individuals – not the staff, not myself – those individuals decided individually to make some changes. And then they decided collectively to make some changes. I told them I was very proud of them for the resiliency they showed, particularly these last four games.”
The changes manifested themselves in improved shooting and offensive efficiency. URI shot 33 percent from the field and just 19 percent from 3-point range in the losing streak. In the four-game winning streak, they’ve hit on 53 percent from the floor and 39 percent from beyond the arc. The 68 percent shooting URI logged in the season finale is the sec- ond-best mark in school history.
“I’m feeling very confident in our play right now,” Dowtin said. “We’re feeding off each other and just playing great basketball. I guess it took us a while to finally get this team going. But we’re just feeding off each other, we’re hitting shots. We’ve got this thing rolling right now.”
Russell followed up his 41-point performance against St. Joseph’s with 27 points in the win over UMass. Russell, Dowtin and junior for- ward Cyril Langevine have all scored in double figures in each game of the win streak. Against UMass, they combined to shoot 76 percent from the field.
With URI’s earlier slump also leaking into the defensive end, the offensive strides and good feelings in turn brought the defense back to a more familiar level. Opponents scored an average of 1.12 points per possession when URI was sliding. Since then, they’ve averaged .97 points per possession, the same number that last year’s NCAA Tournament team recorded for the full season.
“We got tired of losing,” Langevine said of what fueled the turnaround.
That feeling will be even stronger in Brooklyn, where a loss will end URI’s season. With VCU the only A-10 team feeling secure in its NCAA Tournament at-large resume, Rhody won’t be alone.
La Salle earned the No. 9 seed after a resurgence in conference play. Under first-year head coach Ashley Howard – a former Villanova assistant – the Explorers went 2-12 in the non-conference portion of the schedule, started their A-10 slate with four losses in five games, then went 7-6 the rest of the way. That stretch included a signature win over Davidson.
“We’re playing against a very confident group in La Salle, a group that has overachieved themselves,” Cox said. “They have a coach who is very fiery and competitive and gets them to play really hard, selfless basketball.”
La Salle was mired in its early struggles when it played URI. The Rams won 78-67 in Philadelphia Jan. 19.
“They’re definitely a different team,” Cox said. “They’ve found some depth. They have a number of guys playing well, including Pookie Powell, who seems like he’s been in this league forever. They have found three bigs they can rely on now. Their depth, their one-on-one ability and the way they play the game – they’re a tenacious team. I give them a lot of credit for the way they’ve turned around their season. They didn’t start off the non-conference that well. But they’ve showed a tremendous amount of perseverance as well. It’ll be two teams who are kind of similar in that regard.”
What La Salle doesn’t have – and what most of the field doesn’t have – is URI’s March experience. Dowtin and Langevine have played in the A-10 title game in each of their first two years in Keaney Blue, to go with four NCAA Tournament games. Russell was a key player in the A-10 tournament last year and starred in the NCAA victory over Oklahoma.
“It makes a big difference,” Russell said. “We know what these games call for.”
And they know what it takes for four more wins.
“Every play is going to matter,” Langevine said. “It’s win or go home, but I’m confident and my teammates are confident.”