Rhode Island basketball's woes continue. Here's what happened Sunday at La Salle.
PHILADELPHIA — Archie Miller didn’t mince words once the carnage was mercifully over. He promptly fell on his sword, choosing to put the blame for Rhode Island’s 84-61 blowout loss to LaSalle on his shoulders after a game that wasn't as close as the score indicates.
“It’s a total lack of responsibility on myself, which trickles down to my players,” Miller said. URI never led in dropping its fourth straight while falling to 11-16 overall and 5-9 in the Atlantic 10. “We weren’t ready to play.
“I’m embarrassed about the performance. Our effort level, our attention to detail and approach wasn’t there. At this time of year, if you’re not operating on all cylinders in terms of effort and toughness, you’re not going to have a chance.”
More: With UConn and Marquette losing, Creighton and Villanova on the rise in latest rankings.
More: Defense once again fails Rhode Island basketball in home loss to A-10 contender Richmond
The Rams certainly didn’t on Sunday against a LaSalle team they knocked off, 71-69, last month in Kingston. Since then, the teams seem to be going in different directions.
The Explorers, who lost eight of nine in one stretch, have now won three in a row to reach the .500 mark, at 14-14. Rhode Island, though, is struggling.
It didn’t help their cause having to go without their fourth-leading scorer and top rebounder, 6-foot-8-inch freshman David Fuchs, who was out with a sprained ankle. But Miller wasn’t about to use his absence as an excuse.
“It hurts a lot not having David,” said Miller, whose club shot just 40.3% from the floor but only 6-for-22, or 27.3%, from 3-point range, most of those treys coming with the game well out of hand. “He’s been a consistent cog all along from an effort standpoint and on offense, defense and rebounding.
“But that had nothing to do with it. Guys all over the country are going in and out. But we have enough guys who’ve played enough minutes by this point they should’ve been more than ready to go.”
More telling was there was no “Green-House” effect for the Rams, at least when it counted. URI’s two leading scorers, David Green (averaging 14.3 points) and Jason House (15.2) were completely shut out in the first half. That enabled LaSalle to build a 42-28 lead thanks to torrid 56.7% shooting while forcing eight turnovers
That wasn’t by accident. “I think we tried to focus on those two guys,” said LaSalle’s Fran Dunphy, back coaching at his alma mater after recording 580 wins over 30 years at Penn (17) and Temple (13). “I thought our guards did a good job on House and our forwards did a good job on Green.
”But they made some noise in the second half.”
Unfortunately, not enough to matter. While Green finished with eight points and House with seven, that scoring came far too late to make a difference. After a House layup made it 44-32 early in the second half, the Explorers exploded with a 17-2 run, knocking down a succession of threes to break it open, 61-34, with 13:13 remaining. Khalil Brantley (22) and Rokas Jocius (20) paced a balanced attack that placed four men in double figures.
“Coming out at halftime, you want to see a burst,” said Miller, whose club got 12 points from Brandon Weston and 11 from Zek Montgomery. “But the start of the second half was very similar.
“It was just a bad game for us. Put that one on me. Our team wasn’t ready to play. I think today was just a microcosm of our season and what we’re going through. It’s a very fragile group.
“I thought, early on, Lasalle did a very good job getting off to a good start and putting us on our heels. They’ve been playing really good basketball and we knew it would be very difficult.
“But we offered very little resistance. They played freely all game long.
"When you go on the road, you can’t count on your offense. You have to count on your toughness, your effort, your rebounding. You have to grind it out when your offense isn’t going well.
“That’s not who we were today. Our team was poorly prepared from my standpoint, not ready to go at the tip and got our butts kicked."
The Rams flew home immediately after the game, and they won’t have much time to lick their wounds before heading back on the road to Virginia Commonwealth on Wednesday. So, what does Miller intend to work on in the interim?
“Attitude,” he said. “The bottom line is we need guys who are about the right things or thinking about the right things, whether it’s going well or not going well for them.
“We can’t take the floor and have 5-6 guys out there that aren’t focused on the right things. That’ll be the next step for us as we prepare to finish this thing off.”
RHODE ISLAND (61): Brown 2-4 0-0 4, Green 3-7 0-0 8, House 3-9 1-3 7, Kortright 3-6 0-0 7, Weston 5-8 2-3 12, Estevez 1-7 2-2 4, Montgomery 5-8 0-1 11, Foumena 2-6 0-0 5, Wright 1-5 0-0 3, Dubsky 0-1 0-0 0, Ball 0-1 0-0 0, Stewart 0-0 0-0 0. Totals: 25-62 5-9 61.
LA SALLE (84): Jocius 8-13 2-2 20, Brantley 6-12 5-6 22, Brickus 4-11 1-2 11, Shepherd 6-10 0-0 13, Vahlberg Fasasi 2-5 1-2 6, Gill 3-6 1-1 8, Zan 1-2 0-0 2, Gardler 0-1 0-0 0, Mercandino 1-1 0-0 2, Kovacevic 0-0 0-0 0. Totals: 31-61 10-13 84.
Halftime — La Salle 42-28. 3-point goals — Rhode Island 6-22 (Green 2-4, Foumena 1-2, Wright 1-2, Kortright 1-3, Montgomery 1-3, Dubsky 0-1, Estevez 0-3, House 0-4), La Salle 12-26 (Brantley 5-7, Jocius 2-3, Brickus 2-7, Gill 1-1, Shepherd 1-2, Vahlberg Fasasi 1-4, Gardler 0-1, Zan 0-1). Rebounds — Rhode Island 28 (Montgomery 7), La Salle 31 (Shepherd 8). Assists — Rhode Island 10 (Kortright, Weston, Estevez, Wright 2), La Salle 18 (Gill 6). Total fouls — Rhode Island 15, La Salle 14. A — 1,642 (3,400).
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Rhode Island basketball falls at La Salle, 84-61, for 4th straight loss
