Women’s basketball: Dayton shows defensive grit in big win at Rhode Island

Coach Shauna Green has said many times her program “hangs its hat on defense,” and that was true in this game.

“To hold them to 37 points, it was just really fun to watch,” Green said Thursday at the Cronin Center. “It was fun to watch these guys come out and play with toughness, discipline and grit defensively — all those things we really pride ourselves on.”

Rhode Island had not shot worse than 36% or scored fewer than 45 points in its previous 13 games, all of which it won to put itself atop the Atlantic 10 Conference standings. Dayton had 10 steals and nine blocked shots, while Araion Bradshaw and Jenna Giacone led the offense with 10 points each. Rhode Island shot a season-worst 26.5% from the field and tied its season low in 3-pointers made (2 of 9).

“They came in here with a great gameplan and really, really competed,” Rhode Island coach Tammi Reiss said, according to a report by Bill Koch, of the Providence Journal. “That’s why they’re top of the league every year. They really took us out of what we wanted to do offensively.”

The victory moved Dayton back into first place three days after it fell into second place with a 60-58 loss to Virginia Commonwealth at UD Arena.

“It was a huge win, but every win right now in conference is critical,” Green said. “Obviously, it was a tough, tough game on Sunday here again VCU. I’m really, really proud of our kids because we responded. This league is too good this year. No one was going to go undefeated. We learned from it. We self-evaluated and came back with a big bounce-back win at a tough place against a really good URI team.”

With three games remaining in the regular season, Dayton (20-4, 11-1) has a half-game lead over Rhode Island (20-4, 10-1). The teams meet again at 2 p.m. Feb. 26 at UD Arena.

Dayton plays at Fordham (16-7, 7-4) at 2 p.m. Saturday and at Saint Joseph’s (9-15, 5-7) at 7 p.m. Wednesday in its other remaining games.

Rhode Island plays at Richmond (14-12, 5-8) on Saturday and then plays St. Bonaventure (12-12, 4-9) on Wednesday. It has played one fewer game because of a postponed game against Virginia Commonwealth (13-8, 8-3) that has not been made up.

Dayton ended Rhode Island’s 13-game winning streak three days after its own 13-game winning streak ended.

“I think it added a little fire to us,” Green said of the loss to VCU. “You win 13 in a row, and we haven’t played well in some of those and still found a way to win. I don’t know if the pressure keeps building and building. We just did not play well Sunday. Give VCU credit. But we just were not ourselves. I never want to say a loss is a good thing, but it kind of refocuses you. You’ve got to look deep within you. It’s a character check. What are you going to do? How are you going to respond? We talk about that all the time. One thing throughout the past five years here is when we’ve gotten knocked down, our kids have bounced back. I’m really proud of that. That’s a life lesson. You get knocked down. You get back up. And you’ve got to go to work. I’m really proud of our team for that.”