Jimmy Patsos was more impressed by what Jamal Barney did off the court than how he scored 40 points on it.
“With eight minutes to go and four minutes to go, I heard Jamal’s voice saying ‘We just have to get one stop,'” he said. “That’s a Baltimore thing: Just get one stop and we will be OK.”
Barney backed up the words he shouted at his teammates on the bench by leading an inspired defensive effort to close out the New Jersey Institute of Technology, 70-62, on Wednesday night at Retiz Arena.
The Highlanders (0-18), who trailed by as many as 19 early in the second half, cut the lead to 40-39 with 14:01 remaining. Loyola (6-12), however, held off NJIT and refused to gain national notoriety by allowing it to snap its NCAA Division I-record 50-game losing streak.
“I am trying to play hard and Coach Patsos is the hardest on me in practice every day,” Barney, who is averaging a team-high 18.2 points per game, said. “He coaches me like I am the last player on the bench. We butt heads sometimes, but I know it’s helping me to be a better player.”
Barney emerged as the team’s catalyst in the win, making a school-record 18-of-22 free throws to compensate for a poor performance in which he made 10-of-27 attempts. In an 86-62 win at Canisius on Jan. 3, he finished with a career-high 41. His two 40-point games are more than any Greyhound has posted in a career.
“This game was different because I had to grind out 40,” Barney said. “I took a lot of questionable shots I shouldn’t have taken, but my teammates told me to just keep attacking the rim. Canisius, I was more in a rhythm and shots were around the key. This one was more grinding — like a Ravens game.”
The Greyhounds (1-5 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference) will need another consistent scorer to emerge to complement Barney if they are to beat Manhattan (9-7, 3-3) tonight at 7 in Riverdale, N.Y., on ESPNU.
Against the Highlanders, Loyola shot a season-low 29.8 percent from the floor and had just nine assists against 14 turnovers. But the team — specifically Barney — expects to exploit the Jaspers, who allow opponents to shoot a MAAC-high 44.5 percent.
“You don’t reload at the mid-major level, you rebuild,” Patsos said of his team, which had won at least 18 games in each of the past two years. “We are learning and we are young. It’s not going to change just like that. Thank God we have Jamal Barney.”
