By Dave Johnson
W&M Athletics
Connor Kochera found his stroke,
Tyler Rice had an outstanding floor game and William & Mary won the boards. But the Tribe was unable to get past two game-turning stretches and its own mistakes in an 83-67 loss at Hofstra Saturday afternoon.
The Pride used a 12-2 run to take command in the first half and then put it away by outscoring the Tribe 15-3 to start the second half. W&M finished the regular season with its ninth consecutive loss and will go into next week's CAA tournament as the No. 8 seed.
"Those were pretty big runs by them," W&M coach
Dane Fischer said. "A lot of it was us giving the ball away and giving them some opportunities for some easy baskets. Against a good team, it's hard to win when you do that stuff.
"I thought we played the first half with some really good focus on the defensive end with the exception of too many fouls. Offensively, we moved the ball really well and got some good shots. We obviously turned the ball over too many times. But I was pleased with the way we bounced back after Thursday's game."
W&M (5-26, 4-14) came in less than two days removed from a 62-28 loss at Northeastern. The Tribe came out a different team Saturday, especially on the offensive end where it shot 43%, 7-of-21 from the 3-point arc.
Ben Wight led the Tribe with 19 points on 8-of-11 shooting and five rebounds. Kochera finished with 15 points and six boards. Rice had 10 assists, the most by a W&M freshman since Randy Bracy in 1996, along with seven points and five rebounds.
"We had a much better flow to our offense," Fischer said. "Tyler was great. That was one of the better floor games he's played in a long time. He got us a ton of shots, and he had a great way about him on the floor today."
Kochera had scored 15 points in his previous three games on 4-of-18 shooting. Saturday was his highest-scoring game since UNC Wilmington on Feb. 5.
"It was nice to see him hit his first two threes and he was able to score the ball today," Fischer said. "He's been a little bit up and down this year in terms of production, but it was good to see him produce today."
The Tribe's chief issue, once again, was turnovers. W&M had 19 of them on Saturday, three more than its season average coming in.
Yuri Covington's three free throws put W&M ahead 13-12 just over five minutes into the game. But Hofstra used a 12-2 run over the next 3½ minutes to take over. Darlinstone Dubar's layup put the Pride ahead 25-15 with 10:56 remaining in the first half.
The Tribe didn't let the margin get any bigger going into the break, but Hofstra quickly widened it in the second half. The Pride outscored W&M 15-3 in the first 7:05 of the second half and took a 56-34 lead on a pair of Kvonn Cramer free throws.
The Tribe missed six of seven shots and turned the ball over four times on its first 12 possessions of the second half.
After returning to Williamsburg, the Tribe will have five days to prepare for the opening round of the CAA tournament in Washington, D.C. As the 8 seed, W&M will go against No. 9 Northeastern at 5 p.m. Saturday at the Entertainment and Sports Arena.
The Tribe and Huskies split in the regular season with each winning on its home floor.
"We'll give them a little time to rest up physically," Fischer said. "This has been quite a stretch because of the rescheduling we had. A couple of days to rest their bodies will be a good thing.
"Then we'll work our way back to practicing and getting prepped for Northeastern. We'll focus on a couple of areas we need to attack better against their defense and get ourselves ready to go for that game on Saturday."
