The University of Rhode Island men’s basketball defended its home court on Saturday with an 82-77 comeback victory over the University of Richmond, but fell back below .500 in Atlantic 10 Conference play with a 75-70 defeat at the hands of George Washington University on Tuesday.
The Rams headed back to Kingston on Saturday in hopes of bouncing back from a 15-point loss against Duquesne University on Feb. 1, a loss that snapped Rhody’s three-game winning streak.
URI opened up the game on a 12-4 run over the first three minutes, with eight of those points coming from seventh-year Tyler Cochran. URI went 4-5 from the field and 2-2 from the free-throw line during the run.
The Spiders took over for the next 13 minutes of play with a 27-9 run, forcing seven URI turnovers within a five-minute stretch. At the end of the run, the Spiders held a game-high 10-point lead with three minutes left in the first half.
“We got a veteran group, a lot of older guys,” third-year Jahmere Tripp said. “I know after my first year, I’ve never given up in any game. So, it’s just not giving up at any point, and I think that’s something we all possess.”
The Rams broke out of the web that the Spiders’ defense had them in, and closed out the first half on a 12-3 run. Tripp scored eight of his 17 points during the run to bring the deficit to within one.
URI didn’t carry its momentum into the start of the second half, as fourth-year Mike Walz and third-year Mikkel Tyne hit back-to-back threes in the first minute of the second half to bring the Spiders’ lead back up to three scores.
Rhody kept inching its way back into the game over the next eight minutes as the Rams went 9-10 from the line in an 18-9 run to tie the game. The 49-49 tie was the first time Richmond hadn’t held a lead since 9:36 remained in the first half.
The Rams continued to build their lead at the free-throw line, hitting 19 free throws over the last 11 minutes of play. The Rams finished with season-highs from the charity stripe, with 34 makes and 42 attempts.
“I think at this time of year, you have to be able to find different ways to win,” URI Head Coach Archie Miller said. “I thought from a game plan perspective, our guys took to heart the physicality that we wanted to play with on offense, and I thought shooting 42 free throws wasn’t a mistake in terms of the way we tried to play.”
Cochran scored a career-high 34 points, as he went 8-13 from the field, 3-6 from beyond the arc and 15-17 from the free-throw line. He also added 10 rebounds for his second double-double of the season. The victory marked the fourth in the last five games for the Rams, who started A-10 play losing four of their first five games.
The Rams traveled to the nation’s capital on Tuesday to take on George Washington and looked to build on their surge in A-10 play.
Unlike Saturday’s game, the Rams went cold to start the game. URI started with three misses from the field and allowed the Revolutionaries to take an early 7-0 lead. This strong start from George Washington forced Miller to use his first timeout two minutes into the game.
Rhody went on a 9-2 run over the next four minutes following the timeout to tie the game. Sixth-year Myles Corey scored seven of his 20 total points during the run.
The 9-9 tie was the closest the score was for the rest of the game. The Revolutionaries held URI to just 18 total first-half points, a season low for the Rams. Meanwhile, the Revolutionaries scored 25 more first-half points with runs of 12-2 and 9-0 following the tie.
Despite the Rams’ 52-point second half, the second-most in a half for the Rams this season, the comeback attempt fell short. Rhody brought the deficit to within four with 14:48 remaining in the second half, but Revolutionaries’ fourth-year Luke Hunger’s 11 second-half points allowed George Washington to continue to pull away from the Rams.
Hunger led the Revolutionaries with a career-high 21 points, while Cochran led all players with 24 points. This was the eighth straight game for Cochran with double-digit points and the fourth in his last five games with 20 or more points.
URI returns home on Saturday for the start of a two-game homestand against Fordham University at noon. The game will be available for streaming on ESPN+ with radio coverage from The Varsity Network and WRIU 90.3 F.M.
