The Collegian
Friday, March 29, 2024

Richmond wins slow-paced game against St. Joe's, 62-52

The resiliency of a basketball team can be tested many ways. A key player can get injured or be in foul trouble, a bad call by the referees can give the other team momentum or, as in the case that the University of Richmond found itself in Wednesday night, the opposing team can get offensive rebound after offensive rebound. The mark of a truly good team is its ability to find a way to overcome those incidents and still find a way to win.

The Spiders, a team with four seniors in the starting lineup, proved that they were a good team by overcoming those offensive rebounds in their 62-52 victory over Saint Joseph's Wednesday night in the Robins Center.

The Hawks came into the Robins Center as one of the worst teams in the Atlantic 10 Conference with a 5-16 record and 0-7 in A-10 play. To counter the gap in talent with Richmond, who is now 17-6 and 6-2 in the A-10, the Hawks were content to play a slow-paced game by holding the ball for about 25 seconds before starting to look for a shot.

Although many of their initial shots were missed, the Hawks — normally a weak-rebounding team — were frequently able to grab the offensive rebound and get either an easy putback or take another 30 seconds off of the clock before shooting again.

"That's difficult at times," senior center Dan Geriot said. "But I think the way we played tonight, with the leadership and the seniors we have and the guys coming in, we were able to control it a little bit. But it's definitely frustrating and it's hard to play like that."

Richmond was able to counter Saint Joe's slowed-down pace by shooting the ball well, especially on 3-pointers. Richmond made half of its 40 shots, including 7-of-16 3-pointers. Geriot led the offense for Richmond with 15 points.

Despite the Spiders hot shooting, the Hawks were able to hang around throughout the game because of those offensive rebounds. Eighteen of their points came off of their 19 offensive rebounds and the putback dunks energized the Hawks, especially after freshman Ronald Roberts' dunk brought the Hawks within three early during the second half.

The Roberts dunk capped off a 10-0 run for SJU with 15:32 left in the game after Richmond had started the second half with five-straight points to get a 13-point lead. But once again, it was the Spiders' experience that carried them.

After senior Kevin Smith made a pair of free throws for Richmond to extend its lead to five, freshman guard Langston Galloway made a 3-pointer (one of SJU's two 3-pointers on the game) to cut the Richmond lead to two, the smallest it had been since 12:35 left in the first half.

But on the next Richmond possession, Smith started to drive down the middle of the lane and instead of driving all the way to the basket, he found senior Kevin Anderson for an open 3-pointer. After a miss at SJU's end, it was freshman Cedrick Lindsay's turn to hit a big shot as the Hawks miscommunicated on their inbounds defense and left him wide open for a right-corner 3-pointer to give Richmond a 47-39 lead with 13:20 left in the game.

"I think our older guys, our veteran players really just came out and kind of calmed ourselves down and played well and knew that we could score on offense, knew that we could defend a little bit better," Richmond coach Chris Mooney said.

Those senior players did step up for Mooney. Besides Geriot's 15, senior Justin Harper had 13 and Anderson had 12. Although Smith did not match his fellow seniors' scoring, he did have eight assists and also had an electrifying two-hand dunk during the first half for two of his four points.

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Since entering the starting lineup five games ago, Smith is averaging six assists per game and has turned the ball over four times.

"He's extremely valuable," Mooney said. "I told Kevin when he first got here that I thought he would be a part of a lot of wins while he was here. And he's been a part of many, many wins; he's been an integral part of many wins."

Mooney himself has been a part of many wins at Richmond. The win was his 100th with the Spiders. But besides the wins, he has also turned around the program that did not have a guard on scholarship when he took over in 2005.

Richmond starts its two-game road trip on Saturday with a 1 p.m. game at Fordham University. Like Saint Joe's, Fordham is currently winless in the A-10 after losing by 20 Wednesday night at the University of Rhode Island.

Contact staff writer Andrew Prezioso at andrew.prezioso@richmond.edu

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