After Manhattan had suffered a 20-point beating last month, Iona’s Scott Machado crowed that his team had come to play and the Jaspers had not. Well, Manhattan sure came to play last night, Chris Smith’s thunderous dunk in Machado’s grill the exclamation point of a 52-39 vindication.
The ugly tilt was far more hard work than work of art, but the Jaspers came to play the same way they had every night since that humbling Garden loss on Jan. 24. They harassed Iona into a misprint-like 18.6 percent shooting, and when it was over, the game was won and the lesson learned.
“It was an important game. We needed to improve on the last time we played [them]. It’s been on our players’ minds,” coach Barry Rohrseen said. “Defense is how to win, even if shots aren’t falling. The guys understood. Sometimes you say something, it doesn’t sink in. In this instance, it did.”
Manhattan (14-10, 8-6 MAAC) has won three straight – four of five since that 71-51 humiliation – to pull into a fourth-place tie with Fairfield. And they’ve done it with defense, allowing 32.8 percent shooting in this streak. If Rohrssen’s words didn’t sink in, Machado’s surely did.
“Of course. . . . We looked at what he said. Everybody spoke about it,” said guard Darryl Crawford (13 points). “He just added fuel to fire, and we just wanted to come out and play hard.”
They did just that, despite playing without guard Devon Austin (back). A dunk by Iona’s Jonathan Huffman tied the game at 9 just 6:50 in, but the Jaspers didn’t allow another basket the rest of the half. Iona missed its last 10 shots, hitting just 3-of-18 in a first half that saw Manhattan lead 19-11.
They were leading just 36-31 after Gary Springer’s foul shots, when Smith (team-high 15 points) threw down a dunk right in the helpless Machado’s face.
“That first dunk is what separated it, got the crowd into the game,” Smth said. “Everybody got hyped, and we got going, got energized.”
That sparked the Draddy Gym crowd and the Jaspers, who closed on a 16-8 run. They held Iona (11-14, 6-8) to its third-lowest scoring total in the shot-clock era.
Manhattan 52 Iona 39
