City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Whether or not Saint Joseph’s game against Rhode Island was a “must-win” for the Hawks is up for debate.

As only the third of 18 Atlantic 10 conference games, there’s plenty of time left in the 2015-16 season for anything else no matter what happened on Hawk Hill on Sunday afternoon, in front of a nationally-televised audience on NBCSN.

It might not have been a "must win," but a "really should win" is probably accurate, at least if the Hawks wanted to keep up some early-season momentum.

After letting go of a 13-point, second-half lead in a home loss to Virginia Commonwealth on Tuesday, a two-game losing streak could quickly have worsened, with three of the next four games on the road. And for the second game in a row, a St. Joe’s lead early in the second half before giving up momentum to an Rhody team that rallied to tie it with 10 minutes left.

Head coach Phil Martelli told his Hawks that good teams don’t lose two games in a row, and they responded in kind.

Instead of letting a second consecutive late lead slip away at Hagan Arena, St. Joe’s made its foul shots down the stretch and got two clutch triples from Aaron Brown in a 72-67 win over Rhode Island.

“It was just a mirror image of what happened against VCU, except we didn’t respond,” Brown said afterwards. “We grew because we learned from what we did versus VCU, we matched (Rhode Island)’s intensity and we got it right back.

“Coach always says good teams do not lose two times in a row, so we really wanted to come out and give it our best shot and get the win,” the 6-foot-5 Penn Wood (Pa.) product added.

Brown’s 19 points were his first double-digit performance in five games and provided for his second-best output of the season.

His biggest shots came from the right corner, opposite the Saint Joseph’s bench. The first, with 4:35 left, made it a 60-56 game after a Four McGlynn 3-pointer mad brought URI within a point on the prior possession. The second, off another assist from DeAndre Bembry, made it a seven-point ballgame with three minutes left.

That was Brown’s fourth 3-pointer on as many attempts, setting a new career mark for the redshirt senior, who entered the game shooting 32.4 percent from beyond the arc.

“Those are shots I work on every day,” he said. “It’s been on-and-off all year, and it’s just about time I started making them.”

Two foul shots by Isaiah Miles, four by Shavar Newkirk and one more from Brown in the final two minutes sealed the win.

Though Bembry put together his usual stellar all-around game with 22 points, seven rebounds and five assists, he was plagued by the same issue that bothered him in the VCU game.

The 6-6 junior wing missed the front end of two separate 1-and-1 attempts in the final 10 minutes; as a team, the Hawks were 15-of-23 (65.2 percent) from the line, the first time all season they made fewer than two-thirds of their free throws and still won.

Martelli noted that Bembry had spent time during practice working individually with assistant coach Dave Duda on his foul shooting, but otherwise they “didn’t come in here and (have) everybody shoot 1000 foul shots, we stayed with what we do from the foul line.”

“I think I’m probably the only person’s head it’s in,” Bembry said. “We’ve got to make them, all you’ve got to do is just work at them, that’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

Next up for St. Joe's (12-3, 2-1 Atlantic 10) is a trip down to George Mason on Wednesday, with Fordham visiting Hawk Hill next Saturday. After that it's a week of local "road" games, at Penn (Jan. 20) and then at La Salle (Jan. 23).

"We’ve got to go on the road and measure up," Martelli said. "We gave a game away on Tuesday, a home game, and you can’t do that if you want to be in the top half of this league.”