Xavier Continues Dominance Over URI
Thursday, February 21, 2013
It had been 15 years since the URI men’s basketball team last beat Xavier during the regular season heading into Wednesday night’s game at the Ryan Center. It’s now going on 16 years.
The offensively-challenged Rams turned in their usual solid defensive effort, but they could not score the basketball and lost to the Musketeers 55-42.
Rhode Island shot an abysmal 24% (13-54) from the field. They went 5-30 (17%) from beyond the three-point arc and converted just 11 of their 17 free throws (65%).
As usual, Xavier Munford led the Rams in scoring with 15 points. However, Munford went 5-17 from the floor.
Senior Nikola Malesevic had the roughest night shooting finishing 0-8. Mike Aaman was the only Ram to shoot over 50% going 2-2 from the field and 4-5 from the free throw line.
Rhody actually led 33-32 more than five minutes into the second half. That's when Xavier siezed control of the game with a 10-0 run.
While Rhody did get outrebounded badly 43-27, those numbers are a bit misleading. First off, the Rams shot the ball poorly giving Xavier many more opportunities to rebound the basketball. Secondly, of the Musketeers 27 missed field goal attempts, the Rams grabbed 22 defensive rebounds.
What was also encouraging for URI was the fact that Xavier had only 7 assists to their 14 turnovers in the game which further emphasizes the fact that this game was lost on the offensive end of the floor.
The loss drops URI to (8-17, 3-9 A-10) while Xavier improves to (16-10, 9-4).
The Rams host LaSalle Sunday afternoon at the Ryan Center at 2pm.
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