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Saint Joseph's stunned by Fairleigh Dickinson, 58-57

    by Jake Kaplan, Daily News Staff Writer
    Published 

MUSTAFAA JONES grew up on Diamond Street, five blocks from where Saint Joseph's Hagan Arena now stands.

As a kid, Jones attended Phil Martelli's St. Joe's basketball camps. Even the last few years, throughout his collegiate career at Fairleigh Dickinson, Jones has spent summer days working out in the Hawks' gym.

Last night, that same gym served as the locale as Jones stunned St. Joe's in its season opener. With only 4 seconds left in the game, FDU's senior guard sunk an off-balance three-pointer over DeAndre' Bembry to lead his team to a 58-57 upset win.

The triple gave Jones a game-high 13 points. A vocal contingency of family and friends made itself known behind the visiting team's bench.

"I hit a shot like this in an exhibition game, but it's nothing like hitting it in my home gym basically," said Jones, a Neumann-Goretti alum. "I grew up here. This is my gym just as much as theirs."

The sequence leading to the decisive shot started on an inbounds pass with 9.2 seconds left and St. Joe's leading by two. FDU actually called a hand-off flip play for one of its other players to get the shot, Jones said, but it fell apart and left Jones scrambling as the seconds waned.

Jones said he wasn't sure how much time remained but he knew it wasn't much. With Bembry contesting, he rose up for the shot.

"I should've fouled him before he even got the shot off," Bembry said. "That was on me. We had another foul to give. But he made a tough shot over me."

This was St. Joe's first loss in a season opener since 2010, when it lost to Western Kentucky.

"He just hit a tough shot," SJU point guard Chris Wilson said. "At this level, that's what happens. Guys hit tough shots. I think more than it being about that shot, credit to them, they played well, but I think we played ourselves into that position. I would've liked for us to not have been in that position in the first place. The last 4 or 5 minutes of the game, I can't remember us getting more than one or two stops. You're not going to beat a lot of teams like that."

St. Joe's (0-1) turned the ball over 16 times, 10 coming in the first half. Though they dominated on the glass, 44-28, and blocked five shots, the Hawks failed to come up with much-needed defensive stops down the stretch. They trailed at halftime, 28-25, on the heels of a 13-3 FDU run.

Isaiah Miles led St. Joe's with 12 points and 14 rebounds, the junior forward's first collegiate double-double. The tandem of Miles and Javon Baumann combined for 15 offensive rebounds. Wilson added 12 points, while Bembry, the reigning Co-Atlantic-10 rookie of the year and the team's top returning player, scored only eight points on 3-for-10 shooting.

For FDU, which finished eighth in the Northeast Conference last season, Matt MacDonald tallied 12 points and a team-high eight rebounds. Freshman Darian Anderson, the younger brother of former Villanova player and current Penn State assistant Dwayne Anderson, added 10.

St. Joe's, which before the game unveiled its 2013-14 Atlantic 10 championship banner, plays five games in the next 12 games. The Hawks visit Drexel on Monday.