The Rams NCAA Tournament aspirations came to an end Friday night in a 51-48 upset loss against Saint Joseph’s. PHOTO CREDIT: Siobhan Richard
A return to the NCAA Tournament and a first conference championship win will have to wait at least one more year.
The University of Rhode Island women’s basketball team fell in upset fashion, losing to the seventh-seed Saint Joseph’s Hawks 51-48 in the Atlantic 10 Quarterfinals. With the loss, Rhody’s at-large NCAA tournament hopes are very much in doubt.
The Rams entered the A-10 tournament as the number two seed in the conference with a 22-5 overall record, earning the highest win total in program history. Their last win in the A-10 quarterfinal round came in 2003.
After the game, URI Head Coach Tammi Reiss says her team will need time to “regroup” after the loss.
“There’s nothing I can say that’s going to make them feel better right now,” Reiss said. “You’ve got to let them go through it.”
Similarly to Rhody’s 58-48 win over the Hawks on Feb. 9, both teams kept it close in the first half. After St. Joe’s jumped to an early 7-5 lead at the 6:19 mark in the first quarter, both teams exchanged buckets for the rest of the period to tie it up at 15 apiece.
The Rams shined brightest in the second quarter, as a 7-0 run extending from the end of the first made it 20-15 at the 7:50 mark. The offenses went cold after that, as a layup by the Hawks’ Talya Brugler was the game’s only points for the next 5:40 of action.
That streak was broken by Dolly Cairns, who scored the remainder of Rhody’s points in the first half. The sophomore guard scored a layup with 2:10 left before closing out the first half with a clutch three-point make from the corner with nine seconds left, giving the Rams a 25-21 halftime lead.
That three point shot was the last of the game for URI – as well as Cairns’s last points of the afternoon. Rhody ultimately finished just 2-of-15 from beyond the arc, going 0-of-8 in the second half.
Despite the Hawks’ lack of experience, Reiss says the opposition played with a strong sense of maturity. As a unit, four of their five freshmen were named to the A-10 All-Rookie Team, while Brugler was named the conference’s Rookie of the Year.
“I think their youth has really matured,” Reiss said. “Going through a whole season as young as they are, you see the maturity level of some of their players. And that makes them very dangerous at the end of the year.”
It was all St. Joe’s in the second half. The Rams led for all of 12 seconds in the third quarter before the Hawks ran off to a 7-0 run of their own to take a three-point lead.
Rhody fought until the end, however. Going into the fourth quarter down 41-33, they put together another 7-0 run and cut the Hawks’ lead down to as little as one point. Even with the effort and staying within four down the stretch, St. Joe’s never surrendered the lead.
A big blow for the Rams late was foul trouble for Emmanuelle Tahane, who was forced to sit for much of the last five minutes of the game with three personal fouls. The Rams’ hopes were crushed for good in the final seconds, when a desperation shot from Cairns fell short as time expired.
While the future of the season remains clouded, Tahane knows that she helped the program reach new heights during her time in Kingston.
“We really took the program to another level,” she said. “We proved that we could be at the top of the league.”
Even with the loss, the season may not be over for URI. With selection for the Women’s National Invitation Tournament (WNIT) around the corner, the Rams might have another chance to battle for a postseason title.
“Sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce your way,” Reiss said. “[It] doesn’t mean our season’s over. Hopefully we have postseason, WNIT, hopefully.”
Team selection for the WNIT is set for March 13, following the announcement of the official NCAA Tournament bracket.