BROOKLYN, N.Y. – With 10.7 seconds left in his final Atlantic 10 Tournament game, senior John Kopriva pulled up and airballed a three. It was the 18th missed shot for the Colonials since they’d gone up by four with 11:30 to play, and it was also the last straw. Head coach Mike Lonergan subbed in rookie Anthony Swan and the Rhode Island players on the court started to embrace.
The Colonials made just five baskets in that period, and shot 21.2 percent in the second half to fall 71-58 to the Rams in the Atlantic 10 Championship Quarterfinals.
“A tough loss for us. Though we were in pretty good position,” Lonergan said. “So give them credit. They are a very good defensive team. They played very hard. Just couldn’t put the ball in the basket the last ten minutes.”
The Rams, the A-10s best scoring defense, stifled the Colonials. Only Patricio Garino, who put up a heroic 17 points, shot at least 50 percent. Kopriva joined him as the only other Colonial in double figures, putting up 11.
As the saying goes: Live by the jump shot, die by the jump shot. A day after scoring 73 points, the Colonials shot 31.1 percent from the field overall and were 1-16 from three-point range.
“I don’t think that was 16 bad shots,” Kopriva said. “I thought we got some good looks. They just didn’t go down.”
But though the top scoring defense did it’s work the Colonials, who foul the least of any A-10 team, sent Rhode Island to the line for 44 free throws which led to 29 points.
It was the second time this season that free throws had doomed the Colonials against Rhode Island. In their regular season matchup GW missed four shots from the stripe down the stretch and watched the Rams go 20-22 from the line in their best free throw shooting performance in program history.
“You know, ten of them, we fouled at the end, but our game plan was to don’t foul,” Lonergan said. “We had veteran players that kept getting silly fouls, running, offensive rebound. And we don’t have a bench with too much depth. So we can’t afford to have our veteran players getting silly fouls that keep them out of the game.”
Thirty-one of those shots from the line came in the second half, after GW had battled all the way through the first and led 32-30 at the break.
It had been back-and-forth all the way and the score hovered in the high 30s midway through the second half for what seemed like an eternity. Both teams were struggling to score – E.C. Matthews travelled, only to have Biggie Minnis steal the ball to stop GW. Then Minnis missed a wide open dunk.
Just after, with the game tied at 39, Rhode Island stopped GW from even getting a shot off before the shot clock buzzer sounded on the next possession, mostly by trapping Savage in the corner.
But the Rams got their own turnover on the next possession and as Garino shot down the court, Matthews, the A-10’s fifth most prolific scorer, fouled him. Matthews didn’t like it and put on an emotional display that gave him a technical foul, the team’s second after head coach Danny Hurley took one earlier in the period, to put him at three personal fouls with 11:30 to play in the game. The Colonials made all four of their free throws coming out of the break to go up 43-39.
But that’s when it all unraveled. Rhode Island scored six straight points, a layup and a free throw for Minnis, a layup and one for Buchanan. Kopriva picked up his second and third fouls during the run.
“We just didn’t make plays. I thought our guys put themselves in position to try to make the right plays but didn’t. Separation just became too great,” Lonergan said.
At that point there were ten minutes left in the game. The Colonials got nothing out of their next offensive possession and Martin gave the Rams a four point lead with a dunk on the other end, in the midst of what would be a 17-5 run.
Try as they would, GW couldn’t get back in the game. A backcourt violation turnover for Savage was especially costly, as was a missed layup for Larsen. Larsen finished with 10 rebounds to tie with Garino for the lead and the Colonials outrebounded the Rams 42-39. Garino said the rebounding margin was a positive, but that it didn’t matter in the loss.
“We just try to fight every possession we can, and maybe today wasn’t enough,” he said.
With the possibility of an auto-bid to the NCAA tournament gone, GW will await its postseason fate. Lonergan said he is hoping to go to the NIT, where the Colonials have been projected as a four-seed.
