ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Three of the four Philly teams’ Tournament lives are in the balance this week here in Atlantic City at Boardwalk Hall. La Salle faces Duquesne, and Saint Joseph’s goes up against Fordham today, and Temple, which earned the 2-seed and a bye, faces the La Salle-Duquesne winner tomorrow.

FINAL: St. Joe’s 80, Fordham 62

The Hawk will live another day. St. Joe’s gives its starters a much-deserved break for the final 10 minutes. Even C.J. Brown, 8 minutes to his name this season, gets in the game for a minute.

Outside of the opening 10 minutes, this game was never close. Fordham didn’t hit enough threes, and St. Joe’s was left too open on the outside, and penetrated with too much ease.

1:11 2nd Half: St. Joe’s 78, Fordham 62

Hilliard throws it down as zeros hit on the shot clock. It probably shouldn’t have counted, but I’m not sure anyone cares at this point. After a three, Fordham puts on a press, but even the Hawks’ 7th-through-11th men can easily break it.

Haha, Green takes a steal and throws down a ridiculous 180 dunk, but hangs on the rim so much that he draws a technical. Rivera misses both from the line though, so it doesn’t matter. I really credit Martelli for leaving the scrubs in, but they have barely held on. Fordham is only down 16, and they’ve missed a bunch of threes.

3:49 2nd Half: St. Joe’s 74, Fordham 51

After Hilliard throws a layup out of bounds, Butler jacks up an airball, and Calathes takes it the other way for an and-1.

Edwin Lashley is now in at guard for the Hawks, I’ve never seen him play before. Fordham had the checking line in, but the starting lineup comes right back in for the shift.

It doesn’t make any difference, though, as Nivins hits a nasty turnaround over Dunston with the shot clock winding down. He gets an ovation as he gets subbed out for Arydas Lidzius. D.J. Rivera comes in for Govens, and there are no starters in the game as of now.

The Fordham Ram is ridiculous, it just stretched and fell over, thudding on the ground, clearly on purpose. That’s all the entertainment Fordham fans will get today.

7:52 2nd Half: St. Joe’s 68, Fordham 43

The Hawks have kept everyone in the top-6 rotation in for a while, but Idris Hilliard gets into the game finally. I’m sure Phil Martelli would love to keep up this 23-point lead to rest some guys for tomorrow.

Nivins takes an offensive rebound for an and-1, and then ups the lead to 25 with another hoop and harm two possessions later. If Nivins has a bad half, he usually follows it up with a productive second.

15:00 2nd Half: St. Joe’s 58, Fordham 32

This isn’t even fair. Calathes is left open for a three to open up a 25-point lead. Meanwhile, Fordham is just getting nothing to fall.

Anderson gets an offensive board, but Ferguson throws the ball to mid-court, where Govens picks it up and hits Calathes with a behind-the-back pass for a layin. Govens hits Nivins the next possession on a no-look dish for Nivins’ first points.

Dunston is tired of this, and throws down an and-1 dunk over Ferguson. The teams trade threes, but that sure isn’t going to do it. If Fordham shut out the Hawks the rest of the game, it would still need to score about 1.6 points per minute.

Halftime Stats: The Hawks are shooting no better than they did last time against Fordham. Well, 64 percent is still fairly respectable. Other than Nivins, who is somehow 0-for-4, they have hit 16-of-24 from the floor.

Halftime: St. Joe’s 44, Fordham 25

Carr simply plucks Brenton Butler, and goes in for the open layup. The Hawks are on a 24-5 run in the last 10 minutes or so. I don’t have the stats in front of me, but I’d be surprised if the Rams have more than five field goals.

With the shot clock winding down, Williamson hurls the ball at the basket, and it nearly goes in off the bank, but bounces to Calathes, who gets fouled.

The lanky forward finishes the half out on a good note, scoring with only five seconds to go. This is a severe beating Fordham is taking.

3:34 1st Half, St. Joe’s 38, Fordham 19

Fordham’s defense is really starting to fail. Calathes just teases Binns with the step-back jumper, and the Rams inconceivably leave Ferguson wide open for three. He’s 2-of-3 today, and 42.2 percent on the season. Stout then leaves Williamson wide open for a three from the corner, and it goes down.

Wow, with the shot clock winding down, Carr hesitantly goes up for a three from the top of the key, and drains it over Stout. If the Hawks keep shooting the way they are and the Rams keep missing free throws, this is going to get out of hand quickly.

Calathes drives for a layup, Carr is wet on a three coming off of a screen and Dereck Whittenburg needs a timeout.

7:56 1st Half, St. Joe’s 22, Fordham 16

Nivins pins Binns’ shot on the backboard, and then rejects him again. The big man can’t convert on the other end, though, despite getting two cracks at it. After a foul each by Calathes and Nivins, Stout hits one from the line.

Finally, someone hits a three. Ferguson connects from the top of the key, and Williamson shrewdly waits for Anderson to catch up to him on the fastbreak, turning it into another three-point play.

There really aren’t too many Hawks fans here, although except for the last minute, there hasn’t been anything exciting to cheer about yet.

11:29 1st Half, St. Joe’s 14, Fordham 11

Fordham takes an early advantage, but the Hawks come back with a few easy layups by Nivins, Carr and Calathes to take the lead.

Fordham cuts the lead to one now on a pair of free throws, but Calathes hits a nice elbow jumper over Greene to bump it up to three. Both teams are in a man defense. Green isn’t a bad defende, but Calathes has four early points on him.

Dunston powers his way through for a deuce, but Carr answers with a sweet bank. Garrett Williamson, now in the game for Govens, hits Ferguson, who gets fouled.

_______
St. Joe’s plays in the first game of the day, tipping off at, I’ll estimate 2:43 p.m. The Hawks (RPI=55) need to beat Fordham (RPI=161) and Richmond (RPI=115) to even have a shot of making the NCAA Tournament. They might need to reach the championship to do it, and barring a Dayton win, the Hawks must survive a rubber match with No. 8 Xavier.

There are more Fordham fans than there were SLU faithful, but still there aren’t many. Just like last year, the first round draws very few fans. There was actually a very loud Billikens fan right behind me, but apparently he’s switched to support Fordham. The two bands now play against each other, as Fordham was doing something, and the St. Joe’s band plays “When the Hawk comes marching in.”

Dunston is Fordham’s player to watch, he’s averaging a double-double.

Starters:

St. Joe’s:
G Tasheed Carr
G Darrin Govens
F Pat Calathes
F Rob Ferguson
C Ahmad Nivins

Fordham:
G Marcus Stout
G Kevin Anderson
F Michael Binns
F Sebastian Greene
C Bryant Dunston

_________

Dayton 63, Saint Louis 62, OT

In today’s first game, Dayton led pretty much all the way through. Saint Louis, which had been laying bricks all day, finally hit two threes to cut the lead to six and then stole an inbounds pass, to cut the lead to four with under three to go. Tommie Liddell then made a fantastic move on the baseline to make it 55-52 with 1:08 left, and they nearly got it back with a five-second call on the inbounds pass.

Then everything went crazy. An errant buzzer went off as Liddell was going up for a three at the top of the key, so the defense essentially stopped, while the three tickled the nylon. Dayton’s coach went berserk, but it won’t matter, it’s tied at 55.

After a charge, SLU gets one chance to win it. But London Warren plucks Saint Louis’ Kevin Lisch, but he misses the bank for the win. The ball is slapped out, and Andres Sandoval’s NBA three for the win clanks off the rim, and it heads to overtime.

In the extra session, each team trades threes, until yet another inbounds pass went awry for Dayton, giving SLU the ball down one with 1:35 to go. Danny Brown then made a fantastic and-1 teardrop, but Dayton takes the one-point lead right back.

Warren plays fantastic defense on Lisch, wasting the clock down to 6 seconds before he can give it up for a desperation three, and Dayton barely hangs on for the 63-62 win. The Flyers (RPI=33) are an impressive 21-9, and may be in the tournament already, though a win over No. 8 Xavier would really help.

Wednesday at Boardwalk Hall:
No. 8 Dayton vs. No. 9 Saint Louis, 12 p.m.
No. 5 Saint Joseph’s vs. No. 12 Fordham, 2:30 p.m.
No. 7 La Salle vs. No. 10 Duquesne, 6:30 p.m.
No. 6 Charlotte vs. No. 11 Rhode Island, 9 p.m.

Thursday:
No. 1 Xavier vs. Dayton/Saint Louis, 12 p.m.
No. 4 Richmond vs. St. Joe’s/Fordham, 2:30 p.m.
No. 2 Temple vs. La Salle/Duquesne, 6:30 p.m.
No. 3 Massachusetts vs. Charlotte/URI, 9 p.m.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 1:50 pm and is filed under City, Game Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.