Rams pull off major comeback, beat Yale
KINGSTON – Sunday was a tale of two halves for URI men’s basketball.
In the first half the Rams looked lifeless, playing as if the team bought into the pregame metrics that expected them to lose to Yale. They were unable to stop 7-foot, 255-pound sophomore Danny Wolf who looked like Nikola Jokic at times with his highlight-reel passing and scoring touch. It played to a 44-32 halftime deficit.
Then, the Rams opened the second half on a 6-0 run and kept the score close until taking a lead with just over eight minutes left. Rhody held on and won 76-72, improving their record in non-conference play to 5-2.
“Before the game, you see that you have a 25 percent chance of winning,” junior guard Luis Kortright said. “It’s like, wow, that’s what people really see it as? And then you go down, you go through all this adversity in the first half, and then you put it all together in the second half. All you can do is be happy about the team, the coaches and the managers. Once we put it all together, we’re a very good team.”
The storyline for URI was nearly a forgettable loss to a favored non-conference team early in the year. Instead, the game could serve as a catalyst if the Rams continue to win, showing progression from their disappointing 0-2 performance at the Hall of Fame Tip-Off event the weekend before.
“Beating Yale in itself may end up being one of the best wins that we've had in a long time,” head coach Archie Miller said. “Learning how to win is an important thing.
Guys have to go through it. They have to believe that they’re going to win. Part of us doing it today hopefully will help us down the stretch.”
The first-half deficit was as much as 18. At that point, Yale was on a 9-0 run but URI sophomore guard Brandon Weston hit two crucial 3-pointers to make the score a little more manageable.
Yale shot 58 percent from the field in the first half, but just 39 percent in the second. For the Rams, it was an improvement from 46 to 54 percent.
Part of Yale’s diminished efficiency was that the Rams figured out how to stop Wolf, who, other than one stretch of seven straight points with just under five minutes left, was held in check in the final 20.
Wolf still made his mark on defense in the second half with three blocks, but the Rams continued to attack the basket anyway, a few times reversing the layup under the rim away from Wolf.
“We were really just being physical with him,” junior forward Tyson Brown said, who matched up with Wolf in the second half. “We made sure he’s not getting anything easy over his left or right shoulder. He’s a big guy, he’s really skilled, but I think we did a better job against him in the second half.”
Brown went a perfect 5-5 from the floor with 10 points in 25 minutes. David Fuchs started the game at center but played just 12 minutes with Brown taking his spot for most of the game so the Rams could play smaller. They did so while still pulling down 15 offensive rebounds and winning the battle on the boards 40-26 overall.
Luis Kortright had just three points in the first half
but stepped up in the final 20 minutes, scoring 12 in the period and leading the Rams in scoring overall. Twice he made and-one layups and hit a heat-check 3-pointer to go up 59-57, giving Rhody its first lead
since the opening minutes.
From there, Yale tied the game three separate times but never retook the lead. Tied at 70, Kortright missed a layup but Zek Montgomery jumped way up and pulled down a tough offensive rebound. Jaden House hit a short jumper for the second
chance points to retake the lead which URI kept.
“We’ve got a group of people that can really push each other,” Kortright said. “We all just mesh together; we don’t take anything personal. Everybody can talk to each other and criticize each other. That’s one good
thing about this team.”
After URI beat Johnson & Wales last Wednesday, the Rams had a players-only meeting. They won that game 97-59 but got off to a slow start and it still felt like something wasn’t clicking, especially after their two losses at the Hall of Fame Tip-Off.
Although the Yale game was similarly a slow start, the ability to overcome it shows big potential and gives a lot of confidence.
“We need to understand that our greatest weakness right now is ourselves,” Miller said. “The pity party; the body language; the woe is me; the why did I come out coach? We have a lot of that going on. We’re not perfect. But today was a great example of what can happen when you don't have it. We need to figure out how to bottle that up, keep it going in the right direction and keep making progress.”