A reeling St. Joe’s falls to 0-3 in Atlantic 10. Can Billy Lange turn it around?

Billy Lange clapped along enthusiastically at center court inside Hagan Arena as the fight song played. His St. Joseph’s team had just suffered its third straight defeat to fall to 10-6, and it had another game 48 hours later, so Lange knew his immediate job was to be a nurturer.

“You just talk to them,” Lange said a little later when asked how he tried to help his team — picked to finish near the top of the Atlantic 10 Conference standings — avoid feeling the pressure of its losses. “You love them. You care on them. You help them grow in their confidence. You help them learn how hard this is. Our national champion lost six games in a row last year. Six. This is college basketball.”

It was five of six, and six of eight, that last year’s champion, Connecticut, lost during one stretch, but the point stands.

Yes, this is college basketball. This, for the first time in Lange’s five seasons on Hawk Hill, is college basketball with expectations attached. It’s a new world, and these Hawks are learning that quickly as A-10 play begins. Saturday’s 78-75 loss to visiting Loyola-Chicago marked an 0-3 start to conference play. The three losses are by a combined 10 points.

In previous seasons? Shrug. This one? Less than two weeks ago there were real discussions about the path to an at-large NCAA Tournament bid for the Hawks. Lange’s job now is to keep this all from spiraling away.

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“We’re not ready yet. We’re heading that way, of being a dominant, dominant group,” Lange said.

“If you want to be a team that’s going to be really good, you’re going to be in games like this at some point in the season. We’re just going through it right now.”

A three-pointer by Erik Reynolds II with 6 minutes, 13 seconds on the clock gave the Hawks a nine-point lead, 68-59. Their defense, which failed them in losses at Rhode Island and St. Louis to start the A-10 campaign, finally looked like it was turning the corner.

But the Hawks didn’t make another basket, and the Ramblers closed the game on a 19-7 run. They cut into the deficit scoring inside and then sophomore guard Jayden Dawson drilled back-to-back shots, the second of which came with 1:12 remaining and gave Loyola a three-point lead.

Reynolds got two good looks to tie the score late, but both rimmed out as St. Joe’s missed its final seven shot attempts.

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“I thought we got the ball wherever we wanted to get the ball,” Lange said. “We got the ball to the guy that we wanted to get the ball and I just believe in him.

“Our execution tonight, when I compare it to the last two games, was better. The results just weren’t what we wanted.”

This, Lange knows, is a results-oriented business. His brain, partially trained on the 76ers’ bench during the lean years, is wired on process. He liked Saturday’s process plenty. But the defense, again, hurt the Hawks down the stretch.

This is also a team still learning how to play with redshirt freshman Christ Essandoko in the lineup. The big man had been in and out with a toe injury during the nonconference slate. The Hawks have had to “make some changes,” Lange said, with Essandoko playing. Saturday dropped St. Joe’s to 4-5 with Essandoko. He didn’t play during the Hawks’ signature nonconference wins over Villanova and Princeton but played when St. Joe’s pushed Kentucky to the brink on the road.

“It’s early,” Lange said. “Still learning how to play offense through him. Still learning how we have to use him defensively in our conference. But it’s early. It’s almost in the infantile stages with him.”

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A quick turnaround and another home game vs. a La Salle team that fell to 1-3 in conference play Saturday awaited. But the defeat didn’t do Lange any good as far as swatting away the reality of his record on Hawk Hill. None of the previous four seasons featured a winning record, though the job required a rebuild when he arrived in 2019.

There is plenty of positive momentum. The recent recruiting classes have been strong. And this group is the first one with the talent to compete at the top of the conference.

But here the Hawks stand, 0-3, at the bottom of the A-10.

An at-large NCAA Tournament bid is out. But, more importantly, the Hawks are putting themselves in poor positioning in the conference tournament. Earning a top-four seed in the A-10 Tournament places you in the quarterfinals and decreased the amount of games you need to rattle off to cut the nets down.

Lange wasn’t ready to think about that math yet.

“I just don’t think like that because so many things can happen,” he said. “What I know is I believe in the group and they’re going to have to be able and ready to fight through some things that are going to be very hard. That’s what it is. That’s all it is. Double bye, triple bye, it doesn’t matter. What if we lost five in a row heading into the A-10 Tournament and we didn’t feel good about ourselves and we had the double bye? I don’t know. The season is long and I don’t think like that.”

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Lange’s role Saturday night, he said, was less math teacher and more caretaker.

“This team has done some great stuff this season and we still have a lot of games left to play,” he said. “I’ve just got to get them to keep their heads in the right spaces, which is part of coaching as much as out-of-bounds plays and defenses are.”