KINGSTON, R.I. — Two seasons ago, Mike Magpayo’s UC Riverside team sat at 3-8 in Big West play before ripping off four wins in a row and seven of the last nine to finish 10-10 in conference play.
Three thousand miles east, Magpayo is trying to pull off that same trick in his first season as head coach at Fordham.
“Of course it crossed my mind,” Magpayo said postgame on Saturday of the season turnaround from 2024. “Like can we do it again, drawing some of those same parallels. This team is so together, so there’s always a chance. I always feel pretty good that we’re gonna fight the fight.”
With 11 minutes to play at the Ryan Center, Fordham trailed Rhode Island by 11 points. The Rams clawed back, forced overtime, and used that momentum to eke out a 70-66 victory that took five extra minutes. It’s the third consecutive road win for Fordham, and brings the team to 5-8 with five regular-season games to play.
The Rams have found their identity as an elite two-way rebounding team that uses its length and size in a funky zone to stifle opposing offenses. In the last seven games, Fordham has allowed no more than 70 points and has held teams under a point per possession in four of those games.
It was that defense that flipped Saturday’s game on its head in the final 10 minutes of regulation, as Rhode Island made just one field goal after the eight-minute mark. Whenever Rhody attacked the zone with drives, it coughed the ball up, and it led to some low-quality possessions and tons of missed threes.
“The best thing (Rhode Island) does (offensively) is draw fouls,” Magpayo said. “So it was when the ball gets to the high post, let’s just swarm as best we can. We were really trying to swarm (Tyler Cochran). He’s so good. And in that stretch in the middle of the game, every time he touched the ball, guys were digging on him, and I thought that created some turnovers.”
As Fordham strung together stops in the final minutes, it finished its defensive possessions with a rebound, another key part of the team’s identity.
In the first half, the Rams lost the battle on the glass 18-14, but in the second half and overtime, Fordham won the rebounding game 27-15. After Myles Corey made a three-pointer with five minutes left to put Rhode Island ahead by eight, Fordham grabbed a few contested rebounds and forced key turnovers as Rikus Schulte scored twice in the paint to cut the game to one possession with under three minutes to go.
By that point, Fordham’s edge physically had exerted itself.
“(Rebounding) was the first thing I said at halftime,” Magpayo said. “Their game is turn you over; that’s how they win the possession battle. Our game, we have got to win possessions on the glass.”
Schulte finished with 17 points and nine rebounds, 12 of the points coming in the second half or overtime.
Fordham made a few runs over the course of the game to cut Rhody’s lead down to one or two possessions, but couldn’t create enough consistency with the half-court offense to break down the wall and tie or take the lead. Star guards Dejour Reaves and Christian Henry couldn’t settle in early, with their minutes split up in the first segment of the game as Rhode Island took a 16-4 lead with four triples and a few turnovers.
The Rams reigned it in from there against Rhode Island’s aggressive hedge.
“Once Christian and Daedae started to figure it out,” Magpayo said. “They kept the ball in their hands, they tried to stretch out that hedge trap as far as we could, and then we started getting some more backside threes.”
Magpayo opted for more dribble handoffs and fewer traditional ball screens in the second half, telling his guards to get downhill and find a way in the paint, which took Rhody enough out of its comfort zone.
Down by three in the final 30 seconds, you’d expect Reaves or Henry to be the one taking the shot, but instead, Roor Akhuar stepped up and made the biggest shot of his Fordham career, banking in a right-wing triple to tie the game.
“He admitted he didn’t call bank,” Magpayo said. “As you can tell by how fast he was running in, but credit to him for having the courage to take it.”
In overtime, Rhode Island kept missing shots. All ten of Rhode Island’s last field goal attempts in the game were missed threes.
Fordham only needed one, and Henry delivered it at the end of the shot clock.
“That’s what you need,” Magpayo said. “The close ones you lose, you’re like ‘it’s shotmaking’ and your guards have to come through. That’s the second game in a row that Christian Henry has hit a big dagger.”
Don’t look now, but the Rams have a manageable schedule to close out the regular season. Two of the final five games are against teams Fordham has already beaten (La Salle and Rhode Island). Last place Loyola comes to town on Wednesday, and then Davidson, which Fordham led by nine against in the second half on the road last month before falling by four, next Saturday.
And with the uniqueness in the way Fordham is able to defend, other coaches aren’t excited to see them pop up on the schedule at the moment.
“Fordham does a great job of once the ball goes in, there’s a matchup where you’re not really getting that in-to-out where it touches the middle and gets pinged out, you give up a lot of shots,” Archie Miller said. “They won’t give up a lot of threes, so you have to play below the foul line.”
“Their plan is good, and how they’replaying right now, they’re a really difficult team to play.”
