Fordham Basketball

Fordham didn't have to worry about closing this one out. For all intents and purposes, Saturday's game at Saint Joseph's was over early.

In his pregame interview on WFUV Radio, head coach Tom Pecora talked about how his team has struggled down the stretch of games.

"Closing games out is a challenge for a young team, and closing games out on the road is even that much more challenging," he said.

Against the Hawks, it would never get to that point. 

While it's true Fordham did go on a 15-3 run that cut what was once a 22-point lead for Saint Joseph's to 10 points early in the second half, the Hawks got the lead back up to 29 points midway through the half and sent the Rams home with an 87-72 loss, the fourth in a row for Fordham.

Going into the game, no one gave Fordham much of a shot. Saint Joseph's is currently in second place in the Atlantic 10. The Rams are in last place, and for some time they've been as bad as the Hawks have been good.

If the Rams had any chance against Saint Joseph’s on Saturday, they were going to need to get off to a good start. That didn't happen.

The Rams played from behind from the start, and 6:07 into the game, they found themselves down by double digits. Despite the run to close out the half, you never got the sense Fordham was in this one.

The Hawks connected on 15 three-pointers, 10 by Langston Galloway, who finished the game with 33 points.

Saint Joseph's had four players score in double digits; Fordham had two. The Hawks shot 51.7 percent from beyond the arc and 59.2 percent from the field; The Rams shot 40.6 percent from the field.

One constant all year for Fordham has been the play of point guard Branden Frazier, the only senior on the roster who gets significant playing time. He came into the afternoon averaging 18.2 points and 37.3 minutes per game, but scored only two points and played just 19 minutes after missing a couple of defensive assignments in the first half.

If Fordham has any chance of winning, it needs Frazier to score, distribute and lead. None of that happened on Saturday.

The Rams get almost half of their points from Frazier and freshman Jon Severe. The problem has been finding a third consistent scorer. So on a day when someone other than Frazier and Severe did indeed step up—Bryan Smith scored a career-high 28 points—it's just the Rams' luck that not much else went right.

Severe scored 12 on Saturday, but shot poorly from the field. Mandell Thomas, Ryan Rhoomes, Chris Whitehead, Travion Leonard and Ryan Canty all played significant minutes but combined to score just 23 points.

Smith proved to be the lone bright spot offensively. Before the game, Pecora talked about the junior's potential.  

"I know what he's capable of doing," he said. "You just have to give shooters confidence. He started to get to a point where he was passing up shots.

"Trust me, he's a very bright guy. He loves Fordham. He's got a great passion for the school and he wants to represent and play well. He's in the gym every day shooting. I keep telling him 'today's the day.' Hopefully I'll be right today."

He was. But nothing else went right.

"The other guys do have to pick it up offensively to help out," associate head coach David Duke told WFUV Radio after the game.

With the loss, Fordham is now 9-16 overall and 2-10 in conference play. The Rams will have to work real hard over the last four games to avoid the play-in-game on the first night of the conference tournament at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

With games against Virginia Commonwealth, La Salle, Rhode Island and George Washington to close out the season, it doesn't get any easier.

"In the past you would talk about getting wins to get to the tournament," Pecora said. "This year no one wants to play Wednesday night."

The way things are going, it's looking more and more like Fordham may have to.

After Wednesday's loss to St. Bonaventure, Fordham head coach Tom Pecora provided a brutally honest assessment of his team's performance during opening remarks of his press conference broadcast on FordhamSports.com.

"That's as disappointing a loss as I've had since I've been here at Fordham," he said.

He then spent the majority of his time with reporters talking about how upset he was with the Rams' defensive effort, noting that the Bonnies collected 17 offensive rebounds and scored 44 points in the paint.

To help illustrate his point, consider the following: The four guards who started the game that night played a combined 135 minutes and had only 11 rebounds. Pecora specifically mentioned Mandell Thomas, who grabbed just two rebounds in 37 minutes. (Jon Severe played 33 minutes and had one rebound.)

As a result, Pecora insisted that "changes are coming," and said that his team would "play big the rest of the year."

Presumably, that meant going away from the four-guard lineup that started against St. Bonaventure.

But then there's this: Pecora can talk all he wants about shaking things up, whether that means going big or demanding more production from his guards, but the fact remains that, given the players he has, there's only so much he can do. 

As a result, the Rams find themselves struggling down the stretch. Earlier this season, coming off a strong showing against non-conference opponents, the mood was very different.

On Jan. 11 at Rose Hill, Fordham lost to Richmond, 77-74, in overtime. As bad as things were going for the Rams at the time (it was Fordham's fourth consecutive loss), when the teams met again on Saturday night at a sold-out Robins Center, things had gotten worse for the Rams. 

If you don't focus solely on the final score—an 82-70 loss to the Spiders—and instead go off of what Pecora talked about a few days ago, there are some positives you can take from Saturday's game.

If defense and rebounding were the Rams' two biggest concerns heading in, then you have to like the improvement from a few nights ago.

Fordham out-rebounded Richmond, 37-25 (the four starting guards had a combined 18 boards), collecting 12 offensive rebounds while the Spiders had just four.

The Rams had 30 points in the paint; Richmond had 28. Though the Spiders took a double-digit lead late, Fordham stayed with them for most of the game. The Rams were within two, 51-49, with 10:38 left before Richmond pulled away.

But when you're struggling, all it takes is for one thing to go wrong. For the Rams, it was turnovers. Fordham turned the ball over 14 times, leading to 23 points for Richmond. That was the difference in the game.

"We played very hard," associate head coach David Duke told WFUV Radio after the game. "We had a couple untimely turnovers, and those turnovers led to easy baskets for them."

What was most disappointing was that the majority of the turnovers were unforced. On a night when Fordham showed improvement, when its defense came through with a better effort and the rebounding was strong, the Rams were done in by the turnovers.

"We got a lot of good stops," Duke said when asked about the team's defense. "We did a good job on the glass. But once again those turnovers, with them scoring 23 points off of those turnovers, it was just tough for us to overcome that."

Severe, a freshman, led all scorers with 28 points, and senior Branden Frazier contributed 24 points and nine rebounds as Fordham dropped to 9-15 on the year, leaving the Rams to wonder what could go wrong next.

In college basketball, games are won and lost on the defensive end of the floor.

In his press conference broadcast on fordhamsports.com following the Rams' 76-65 loss to St. Bonaventure Wednesday night at the Rose Hill Gym, Fordham head coach Tom Pecora expressed disappointment with his team's defensive effort.

"It all starts with defense," he said. "If you can't contain the basketball, you might as well just get on the bus."

Well, in that case, start the engines.

Against Fordham, the Bonnies collected 17 offensive rebounds. They scored 44 points in the paint. Needless to say, Pecora wasn't happy with what he saw.

"Our keys to the game were to be able to control the paint and the glass. If we were able to do that and really commit to rebounding and defending, we were going to be fine. We came out and didn't do it," he said.

"We had guys looking like they were playing in quicksand," he added. "Defensively, they weren't moving their feet."

That pretty much sums up the defensive struggles for Fordham all year. Ten times this season, the Rams have allowed 80 or more points. They haven't held an opponent to under 70 points since their win over Loyola all the way back on Dec. 23.

Not that any team can win with those types of performances, but Fordham doesn't have the offense or the experience to compensate for that kind of defensive ineptitude.

"We're doing an incredible number of defensive drills every day," Pecora said. "Defensive rebounding is 80 percent effort, 20 percent technique. They have to find it in themselves to dig down and do it. We've seen spurts of them doing it, but they're not doing it consistently."

To make matters worse, Pecora talked about how the lack of defense has hurt his team offensively, forcing it to run its offense against a set defense as opposed to a philosophy he calls "rebound to run."

While it wasn't the focus of his postgame remarks, the Rams shot just 41.5 percent from the floor Wednesday night.

So where does Fordham go from here? Coming off back-to-back disappointing performances, the Rams are now 9-14 overall and 2-8 in conference play. They've lost 10 of their last 12 games.

Now, they enter a very difficult stretch to close out the season. In their final six games, Fordham will face opponents with a combined record of 94-50. To have any shot at a win, the Rams will have to make major changes on the defensive end of the floor.

To that end, Pecora said that he's leaning toward "play[ing] big the rest of the year," mentioning how he was disappointed that his guards weren't doing more defensively—specifically with regard to rebounding. The four guards who started the game Wednesday night combined for just 11 rebounds.

We'll see if that makes any difference at all on Saturday when Fordham takes on Richmond for the second time this year. The first time the teams met, a month ago at Rose Hill, the Spiders won 77-74 in overtime.

Richmond had 32 points in the paint and only seven offensive rebounds.

Defense wasn't the problem that day, but after giving up 93 points in a loss at George Washington last Saturday and coming off Wednesday night's performance, it is now.

It's been a long time since Fordham has been good. 

Heck, it's been a long time since they haven't been bad. 

However, all the negativity surrounding the once-great program seems to be quickly receding as Rams, who were considered the joke of the A-10 the past three seasons, have strung together two huge upsets on their home court. Last week they defeated ACC school Georgia Tech, and then, probably more impressively, outlasted nationally-ranked Harvard tonight. 

On Tuesday night the Rams had to fight every possession but held one of the best teams in the country to just 54 points, while scoring 60 for themselves in front of a raucous Rose Hill crowd in the Bronx. 

Chris Gaston led the way once again with 18 points and 10 rebounds. It was his 11th double-double of the season, the most in all of college basketball. Freshman Bryan Smith also had the game of his career for the Rams, dumping in 22 points, including a dagger three-pointer to give the Rams a five-point lead with less than 40 seconds left to play. It was a career-high for Smith, who had been averaging just 9.2 points per game.

With the win Fordham now has won four of their last five. That includes wins at home against Texas State and on the road at Siena. The next big test isn't too far in their future. They will host A-10 conference powerhouse Xavier at Rose Hill on Saturday. It is the first conference home game of the season for the Rams (they play at UMass on Thursday) who snapped a 41-game in-conference losing streak in the last game of the year last season against UMass.

It was the first win over a ranked team since December of 2000, when they defeated then No. 24 St. John's at Madison Square Garden. They last defeated a ranked team at home in 1978 against then No. 19 Georgetown.

If the Rams can put together a very nice run in conference play they could put themselves in position for an NCAA tournament berth. However, it would be very unlikely given the fact that they have already lost to poor teams such as Monmouth and Manhattan.

Just getting some solid wins in conference play and making the A-10 tournament would surely be a huge step in the right direction for this program, which hasn't seen success in the tiny, yet very loud Rose Hill Gym in quite a while.

It was the final game of the season. Their last chance to get that elusive conference victory, their first since January 28th, 2009 when the Rams defeated St. Bonaventure by seven on the road. Since that game Fordham has won just eight contests in total, all in the non conference season.

Today, they were determined to change that.

Rose Hill Gym was rocking from the opening tip. The Rams came out storming on Senior day and took a quick 8-2 lead on the back of two three-pointers from five-year senior Brenton Butler, who was playing in his final game as a Ram. He finished with 29 points to lead his team.

UMass briefly had the lead at 11-10, but that was the only time they had control the entire game. Fordham went up 32-22 with 2:28 left in the half, and the Minutemen came back to cut it to two, before a Jacob Green dunk sent the Rams into halftime with a four point edge. 

Fordham has had the problem all season where they have been able to play for one half, whether it is the first or the second, but cannot play the other. They have just been unable to put together a solid 40-minute game.

Today, that was not a problem. The extended the lead to 13 in the second half, but couldn't totally take UMass out of the game thanks to 30 points from Anthony Gurley. The lead hovered around 10 until the final minute when the Minutemen tried to live up to their name and put together a furious rally in the final 60 seconds. They would cut the lead down to three as the Rams had a lot of trouble inbounding the ball. 

However, in an almost perfect ending Brenton Butler hit two free-throws with 20 seconds remaining to give them a five-point edge.

As the final seconds ticket off the clock the fans stood up and gave a standing ovation while the players ran to the student section and started hugging and thanking all the supporters.

For players like Brenton Butler and Jacob Green, who will now graduate, this is the end of the line.

However, this game was just the beginning. It was a sign of the future and what is possible for this program, which has been irrelevant for several years. With new head coach Tom Pecora, who helped the Rams pick up a solid win against St. John's earlier this year, things seem possible. 

The Rams are young and boy are they hungry to be good. In a conference like the A-10 with teams such as Xavier and Temple, it can be daunting, however, someday, hopefully soon, Rose Hill might be rocking as well. 

After Fordham beat what is now a 15th nationally ranked St. John's team on their home court back in December, people were proclaiming the resurgence of Fordham basketball. The fans of the sold out Rose Hill Gym, the oldest court in division one basketball, rushed the court as the Rams had dispatched of their bitter New York rivals. That win gave the Rams their fifth of the season, matching the total amount of wins for the previous two seasons combined. They then went on to win their sixth game the following week, to improve their record to 6-4. 

And here we are, more than two months later, with the Rams record at 6-21 (0-17 in A-10 play). Now, no fans are storming the court, the games aren't sold out and most fans are too scared to even look at the box score. They have lost nearly 40 straight conference games, and are praying that they will have a chance to knock off UMass in their final home game of the season on Saturday to break the curse.

If you want to look at the bright side, it's best to forget about the Rams this season. What you should do is go find a good book, and try to forget all about this season. Everyone knew that this would be a rebuilding year with the new head coach, Tom Pecora working in his first season with the team. Pecora, who previously coached at Hofstra, is known as an excellent recruiter. He is such a good recruiter that all of his players that he brought to Hofstra have led the Pride to a second place finish in the CAA, and will have a good shot at going to the NCAA tournament and are virtual locks for the NIT.

Pecora, no matter if it takes two or three years, or even more will lead this team back to the prominence it once held when Digger Phelps was the coach back in the 1970's. With huge alumni support and a large budget, it is only a matter of time for the Rams. 

They have a lot of young players including sophomore Chirs Gaston, who was the A-10 rookie of the year last year and continues to lead this team as he heads into his junior season.

The Rams have 10 underclassmen on the roster, and will only lose one significant player after this season. Brenton Butler, will graduate this year. Jacob Green, a transfer from West Virginia will also graduate. However, a lot of the players currently on the roster may not even be a factor in the coming years. Pecora will likely try to instill many of his recruits into the Rams system as soon as they arrive.

Playing in the Atlantic-10 with teams like Temple and Xavier, there is always a ton of competition, but there is also the opportunity to play against the best, and beat the best. It has been tough for Fordham to complete that in the recent years. That being said, once the Rams do actually become relevant again, New York will adopt these guys just as much as they do with a team like St. John's. 

It's time to get Rose Hill rockin'. Just got to wait a little longer. 

The Rose Hill Gym on the Eastern Bronx Campus of Fordham University is the oldest Division I basketball court still in use. It holds just 3,200 fans, which also makes it among the smallest in Division I.

However, in the past few years, it hasn't needed nearly that many seats. That wasn't the case last night as the Fordham Rams picked up their biggest win in years in front of a sold-out crowd after defeating St. John's, 84-81 to improve to 5-4 on the season, matching their win total of the last two seasons combined. 

After firing head coach Derek Whittenburg following a sluggish start to last season, interim head coach Jared Grasso couldn't really find success either in a competitive Atlantic-10 conference, and the Rams finished with a horrid 2-26 record. However, after the end of the season, the university committed to a higher budget for the men's basketball program, meaning they could really go and spend on a new coach.

Although there was some speculation on the possibility of Bob Knight, the winningest coach of all time, coming to Fordham, it ended up being Tom Pecora, who has been the head coach at Hofstra for the past nine seasons.

Pecora had major success with the Pride, and is known as an excellent recruiter. He wanted a new challenge, and with the higher budget for the men's basketball program, it didn't take much for the desperate Rams to pull Pecora out of Long Island and into his new home at Rose Hill. 

After getting off to a rough start at 2-4 following an 80-57 loss to Harvard, the Rams have reeled off three straight wins, including one last night which will go down in the history books as one of the best games ever at Fordham.

There was a lot of hype surrounding the game, which was completely sold out two weeks before tipoff. With fans packed into their seats, and some even scalping tickets outside, these fans were hoping to see a miracle.

The young Fordham squad really didn't match up to the Red Storm, who have 10 seniors, and right from the start it seemed to be going St. John's way. They jumped out to a 30-11 lead, and led 45-33 at halftime. That lead was extended to 60-39 with just over 16 minutes to go in the second half, and it seemed as if the game might finish with a blowout. However, two 16-0 runs eventually put Fordham up 77-73 with about five minutes to go.

The Johnnies tied it up and took a one-point lead with about a minute-and-a-half left, but two free throws by Marvin Dominique and a bucket by Brenton Butler, who played with four fouls for almost the entire second half, put Fordham up three.

Two three-point attempts by Dwight Hardy couldn't find the bottom of the net as time expired, and the Fordham fans rushed the court. Alumnists such as ESPN announcer Mike Breen and YES announcer Michael Kay stayed onlooking in their seats, soaking in the victory.

Not only was this a great win and a fun one too, but it was also significant. This win will hopefully signify the turning point for this program, and the end of futility at Fordham. And hopefully, tiny Rose Hill Gym will be jam-packed again. 

It hasn't been a long time since Fordham 2-26 (0-16 in A-10) closed out one of the worst seasons in program history. However, if you were to ask anyone in the Fordham Basketball Program right now, they might have no recollection of it.

Two things became apparent to the Rose Hill faithful this January. One, this team wasn't going to be an A-10 Championship team. Two, that next season was going to be much better. This was because around that time Fordham had announced a major budget rise for its Men's Basketball program.

This was meant specifically for the coach, who in the college game acts as a general manager to some extent because he is the one recruiting players and hiring assistant coaches. 

So soon after the basketball season ended, Fordham was very much interested in finding a basketball coach for a team dying to return to its winning ways. Names like Mike Rice (Robert Morris)*** and Steve Donahue (Cornell)*** fell through, however, one name, Tom Pecora, the head coach at Hofstra, seemed to be a perfect fit.

Pecora was known for his ability to recruit and ability to coach, leading the Pride to postseason tournaments numerous times.

Pecora left behind a job with a team on its way up, and with a player who will most likely be in the NBA by the 2012 season by the name of Charles Jenkins.

In the time since Pecora has gotten to the East Bronx, he has gotten four verbal commitments to Fordham. He has also recently brought over the entire basketball staff from Hofstra that worked with him while he was with the Pride.

The Hofstra program is now in shambles as it had already found a new coach, Tim Welsh, but after being arrested for DWI he was forced to resign.

Fordham will enter the new year with many young faces and players who have improved from the year before. With last year's team, 11 of the 16 players were underclassmen. But now, as those players have progressed and reigning A-10 rookie of the year Chris Gaston has decided to stay with the Rams, they will have a team with some decent experience.

Let's face it, it might take at least a year before Fordham is going to be competing for an A-10 championship. But they are on the right track, and Fordham fans couldn't be happier.

It has been a tough two years for the Rose Hill faithful.

Fordham has been able to boast just five wins over the past two years, and have been unable to find that winning factor. 

Well, today marks a new beginning in the East Bronx. The Fordham athletics Web site announced earlier that the school has hired Tom Pecora, the now-former coach at Hofstra to be the new leader of this once elite program. 

Tom Pecora has led his Pride to winning seasons the last two years.

Fordham announced last month that they would be giving a larger budget to the basketball program. This was all aimed at bringing in a big-time coach to a team that not only lost 26 games but also its head coach and best player this season.

After a 1-4 start this year, head coach Dereck Whittenburg was fired. Interim coach Jared Grasso took the reigns, but got just one win. He didn't lead his team to a single win the entire conference portion of the 2010 schedule.

They also lost last year's A-10 Rookie of the Year, Jio Fontan, who left immediately after Whittenburg was dismissed. He transferred to the University of Southern California (USC), and will begin playing early next year. 

Grasso will now be replaced by Tom Pecora, who is well known for being able to recruit good New York City ballers. He coached at Hofstra, which is located in Hempstead, Long Island, less than an hour from the Big Apple. 

Fordham should have a bright future; 11 of their 16 players last year were underclassmen. One of the 11, Chris Gaston (above) was named the A-10 Rookie of the Year. This is impressive, as this was arguably the best the A-10 conference has ever been.

Cornell coach Steve Donahue was also up for the job, but since Fordham wanted to get things done quickly with Seton Hall looking at the same coaches as Fordham, they wanted to pull the trigger on Pecora. They would have to wait until next week at the very least to talk to Donahue, who is now coaching in the Sweet 16.

So, will this be the turnaround that this dying program needed? Will the Rams come back into the national scene? Will they become New York's team? A slot that was once held by St. John's in its glory days, by Manhattan in the early 2000s, and by LIU way back when.

Well, only time will tell.