Women's basketball drops second-straight home game due to second-half stumble

Photo courtesy of Michaela Benford

For only the third time in six years under head coach Tammi Reiss, URI women’s basketball fell to a pair of consecutive losses at home as a red-hot St. John’s squad dealt the Rams a 60-45 loss on Sunday. 

The early-season battle marked the Johnnies' fourth-straight victory over the Rams in a series where you’d have to go back more than two decades to find the last Rhody win. In similar fashion to last year’s meeting in New York – which marked the first meeting between the two schools since 2010 – the Rams faltered in the second half, struggling to execute down the stretch and letting a nine-point halftime lead slip.

​​”It was a tough game, but for our team, we talk to them about getting better every day, just one day at a time,” said URI Assistant Coach Adeniyi Amadou, who was filling in as head coach while Reiss was out with an illness. “So, we learned how to compete today. Now we have to learn how to win.”

The Rams were held to a season-low 35% from the field in the loss, as a disciplined St. John’s defense allowed the hosts to keep them from operating efficiently from the field. Rhode Island capitalized on just seven of its 14 shots from the charity stripe, including an 0-2 trip in the late stages of the fourth quarter that kept the Rams from chipping away at a growing deficit. 

“When we talk about learning how to win, those are the things that we're talking about,” Adeniyi said. “Can we stay locked in, keep up the concentration level, the communication level, while things are not going well offensively for us? It's a young team. They are learning every day.”

Although the first half featured 14 combined turnovers, Rhode Island held a 16-12 lead after 10 minutes. Newcomers Cia Ëklof and Plamire Mbu helped sparked a 7-0 run off the bench with a pair of buckets, snapping a four-minute scoreless drought and giving the Rams’ offense much-needed life. 

That life continued to shine in the second quarter as the Rams outscored the Red Storm 11-6, complimenting a 48% first-half shooting clip with a 6-0 run to give Rhode Island a 27-18 lead going into the break. 

The second half, however, is where things started to get ugly for the hosts. Throughout the final 20 minutes, URI connected on just six of its 26 field goal attempts, allowing more than 20 points in each of the final two quarters to put the game out of reach. St. John’s forced six Rhode Island turnovers and bossed the defensive glass 14-8 to keep the Rams at bay, ultimately taking a 7-0 run to the buzzer to seal a decisive 15-point win.

“The mark of good teams [is that] you're able to sustain it throughout four quarters,” Adeniyi said. “And that third quarter, it's hard to get back from that quarter like that…The theme all week long has been to persevere through adversity. So these are the situations that happen [where] adversity hits a little bit.”

Despite the loss, Anaelle Dutat brought down a career-high 17 of the Rams’ 32 total rebounds, adding eight points in team-leading 38 minutes on the floor. Ines Debroise finished as the only Ram in double figures with 10 points, while Palmire Mbu continued to impress in her second appearance for the Rams with a career highs five rebounds, four assists and three blocks to go with eight points.

Up next, the Rams will hit the road for the third time this season as they travel to UMass Lowell for a 6 p.m. tip-off on Wednesday night on ESPN+, looking to rebound from back-to-back defeats and bring their record back to .500.