After their putrid offensive showing in Sunday’s blowout loss to Xavier the Rhode Island Rams looked to be in trouble heading down to Richmond for Thursday night’s contest. But despite 18 turnovers Jim Baron’s team shot their way to a 78-74 win at the Robins Center to even up their Atlantic 10 record while handing the Spiders their first conference defeat. Nikola Malesevic led URI (10-6, 1-1) with 24 points and 12 rebounds, tallying the first double-double of his college career, and Orion Outerbridge added 18 and seven rebounds off the bench. Akeem Richmond (12 points) hit a pair of key second half three pointers and Marquis Jones scored the Rams final five points of the game to seal a much-needed road victory.

Justin Harper (25 points, seven rebounds) and Kevin Anderson (20 points) led the way for Richmond (13-5, 2-1), but shooting 38% from the field and being outscored by 18 points from three-point range proved to be too much to overcome. Rhode Island got off to a good start, knocking down their first three shots from beyond the arc and going into the under 12 timeout tied at 15 despite a combined 13 points from Anderson and Harper. The Spiders then scored the first seven points out of the timeout and had the look of a team ready to put their stamp on the contest. But that’s where Thursday’s Rhode Island differed from the group that played so poorly on Sunday. Outerbridge scored three the hard way to cut the Richmond lead to four, then Malesevic provided five straight to give the Rams a 23-22 lead with 8:26 remaining in the first half.