SOUTH KINGSTON, R.I., Jan. 23 — The warm-up T-shirts that read “40 hard” on the back were created last year for the GW men’s basketball team to materialize a thought that had put them in the upper echelon of the Atlantic 10. If the team played 40 hard minutes, head coach Karl Hobbs always says, they would give themselves a chance to win.
Before the Colonials played Rhode Island at Ryan Center Wednesday night, senior Maureece Rice wore the shirt as the rest of the team wore the traditional Nike jump suits.
And for the first 20 minutes of the Colonials’ 81-70 loss to the Rams, GW kept it close, matching nearly shot for shot. But the second 20 that could have completed the mantra were played at a different intensity. Fatigue appeared to set in as shots stopped falling, and the Colonials (5-9, 1-3 A-10) dropped to four games under .500 for the first time.
The Rams (16-3, 2-2 A-10) hit two three-pointers in a row and went on a 6-0 run that quickly gave them a double-digit advantage.
Rice’s T-shirt, which disappeared during the game, did not ring true. He had 17 points in the first half and then none in the second half in front of a nearly packed house of 7,008.
“He started to rush his shots and that hurt him,” Hobbs said of Rice’s second-half performance.
Every member of GW’s team appeared to start rushing shots in the second half, in what seemed like a frantic attempt to catch up. Hobbs used his bench more against the Rams than in the past few games, which should have given the team’s starters more time to rest.
For the first time in almost a month, freshmen Miles Beatty and Xavier Alexander clocked significant minutes. Each hit three-pointers in the first half that helped keep the Colonials in the game and finishing with eight and nine points, respectively. Hobbs would not say whether he would use Alexander and Beatty more in future games.
The seventh-year coach said he saw a positive in his bench’s ability to contribute to the game and compete with what he said were Rhode Island’s more experienced second-string players. GW scored 29 points off the bench, only one less than the Rams.
“There were a bunch of positives from this game,” Hobbs said. “The bench, the fact that we scored more points (than in previous games). We’re a work in progress for the season.”
The Colonials now travel to Pittsburgh to face Duquesne. Hobbs said that winning on the road is very tough, which has shown in his team’s 0-8 record away from Smith Center. Rhode Island’s Ryan Center may have been particularly daunting because almost all of the seats were filled. But Junior Wynton Witherspoon, who had 10 points, said that was not a factor.
“That didn’t bother us,” he said. “We just have to execute better.”
