Phil Martelli wasn’t afraid to admit it.
The Hawks were down on themselves following Tuesday’s painful defeat to VCU that saw them blow a 10-point lead with six minutes left and miss 10 free throws in the second half.
“The players and the coaches, their body language has been down,” he said.
Things were so bad that Martelli said he even received voicemails and emails telling him how to coach his players’ free throw form.
On Sunday against Rhode Island, St. Joe’s found itself in a similar situation to what happened Tuesday.
But this time, the Hawks responded by making defensive stops and hitting their free throws to wash away the stain of Tuesday’s loss.
Junior forward DeAndre’ Bembry, new shorter haircut and all, scored 22 points, grabbed seven boards and added five assists as St. Joe’s fended off a second-half surge by a tough Rhode Island team to earn a 72-67 win on Hawk Hill and improve to 12-3 on the season and 2-1 in Atlantic 10 conference play (see Instant Replay).
“I thought it was a 50-50 game going into it,” Martelli said after his team’s victory. “I knew we would have to play better than we did the other night, particularly from the foul line. And then we had that blink in the second half.”
The “blink” he referred to was a 10-0 Rams run that saw Rhode Island take a 53-52 lead with 7:18 left after the Hawks held their largest lead of the afternoon at nine points at the 12:32 mark.
That stretch run saw St. Joe’s go 0 for 11 from the field, miss the front end of three one-and-one free throw chances, stay scoreless for over seven minutes and bring Tuesday’s bad memories back for a tense crowd at a packed Hagan Arena.
But Sunday was different.
There was a respectable 15-for-23 mark from the free throw line, and, more importantly, there was no collapse.
Instead, there was a response, sparked by a James Demery three-point play and punctuated by two clutch Aaron Brown three-pointers that gave the Hawks a 63-56 lead, which they wouldn’t relinquish.
“It was basically a mirror image of what happened against VCU, except we didn’t respond then,” Brown, who finished with 19 points, said. “We learned, we practiced hard and, actually, we grew because we learned from what we did against VCU. We matched their intensity and got it right back.
“Everyone knew the situation. That happened to us before and we didn’t want it to happen again, so we had to answer it and play better defense.”
Better defense, you say?
The Hawks forced 16 Rams turnovers Sunday and just nine of their own compared to Tuesday’s loss when they forced just eight turnovers and had 13 of their own.
“That was my first thought — here we go again,” Bembry said. “It came down to stops as it went back and forth and they just kept scoring. We came out and just said we had to get a few stops. We got a few stops. I hit two threes in a row and that’s just how it got started.
"But I just said to myself that we need to get a stop. We got a couple consecutive stops and that’s what really got us to finish the game off right.”
From a team perspective, Sunday’s win was all about bouncing back from the VCU loss and overcoming a similar second-half situation.
From an individual perspective, it was all about Bembry and his monster performance.
In addition to his 22 points, seven rebounds and five assists, Bembry also had three steals and a block while playing all 40 minutes.
Even though he was the star of Sunday’s victory, he was quick to put the focus on the team and not on himself.
“We didn’t want to lose two conference games in a row out of the gate,” Bembry said. “We just wanted to play our game. If we play our game, we’ve been winning this year. So that’s just what we tried to do — get back to our game. Last game was a rough one for us at the end. So, we just tried to stick to our game and that’s what we did.”
Martelli has coached the Charlotte, North Carolina native for three years now, so he knows better than anyone what to expect out of Bembry’s game.
But Martelli said Bembry’s high volume of shots on Sunday — he took 21 of them despite averaging just 13.5 per game entering the contest — was unusual.
The fact is that St. Joe’s needed him to shoot more and carry the offense against Rhode Island.
That’s because senior forward Isaiah Miles, who entered Sunday as the sixth-leading scorer in the conference with an average of 18.3 points, found himself in foul trouble and was limited to just 10 points in 27 minutes on the floor.
Therefore, much of the burden fell on Bembry and he answered the call to lead his team to an important win before it heads to George Mason on Wednesday evening.
But what about cutting his signature hair?
“Now I just may cut it all the time since I played a little better today," he said.