Rams ground Flyers in defensive showcase

Photo courtesy of gorhody.com

Backed by a clinical defensive performance, Rhode Island women’s basketball placed Dayton on a no-fly list with its 57-36 win on Saturday.

While holding the visitors to just 11 points through the first 20 minutes of play, Rhode Island’s offense, which has entered periodic hibernation this season, operated efficiently in the first half. The Rams scored 31 points in the opening half, 10 of them coming from the hands of senior guard Sophie Phillips.

The veteran leader in the backcourt scored 18 points total in the game, snapping a two-game funk where she produced just six points total.

“I knew the last two games I was rushing a lot of my shots, so today I just let the game come to me a bit more,” Phillips said. “But I know I just need to be aggressive and keep attacking, that’s what my team needs me to do, and I need to put the ball in the hoop.”

Phillips’ patient approach paid its dividends, as she shot 7-10 from the field and 4-5 from the arc, all while dishing out five assists. 

In addition to Phillips’ ability to produce offensively, the guard also swatted away three shots and recorded a steal on the other end of the floor. 

“I think [defense] is an area of my game where I really try to step up, especially this year,” Phillips said. “I definitely take pride in guarding some of the top shooters in the league, and its kind of fun for me too, to lock them down.”

The aforementioned player, Dayton’s senior guard Ivy Wolf, entered the game as one of the conference’s most premier deep range threats. However, after high-pressured defense struck the Flyers early, Wolf went to the locker room after 20 minutes with no points, a rare occurrence for one of the A-10’s best.

That is a testament to the defense of a Tammi Reiss led team, shutting down teams is what the Rams are all about. In the past two weeks alone, Rhode Island has held Fordham, Duquesne and now Dayton to their lowest offensive outputs of the season. 

With the improved defense, Rhode Island has revolutionized their season. After a rocky non-conference schedule that sent concern through Kingston, conference play has provided a sense of relief that Reiss’ dominance can in fact continue. 

“When we lost a couple of our go-to players in graduation and in the portal, and we added the new faces, the roles, what we envisioned for certain players, just took a little longer to materialize,” Reiss said. “We knew what this team was capable of and in [the] beginning it was frustrating that it didn’t materialize as quick as we wanted. We took some really hard losses, but definitely we are coming together at the right time.”

With their latest stretch resulting in a 5-1 record, and the lone loss coming to the defending conference champion and the 31st ranked team in the country Richmond, confidence currently sits high in Kingston.

Rhode Island returns to the hardwood on Wednesday night against the second-best team in the conference in George Mason. The game tips-off from EagleBank Arena at 7 p.m. and can be streamed on ESPN+ with an audio broadcast available on the Varsity Network.