SMITHFIELD — It might have seemed like a winnable game on paper: an Army team coming into Bryant’s home court reeling from a six-game losing streak.

But spotty shooting and poor ball movement in the face of Army’s stifling defense sent the Bryant Bulldogs to a 59-48 defeat to the Black Knights last night in a game where Bryant seemed outmatched from the start.

“I knew this was going to be a challenging game for us in terms of how physical and athletic they are,” Bryant coach Tim O’Shea said.

Army moved the ball well against Bryant, lured the Bulldogs into offensive fouls, and disrupted Bryant’s offense on possession after possession.

“They really got into us, they made it very, very difficult for us to run anything,” O’Shea said.

Bryant has made the jump this year to Division I, yet its inaugural schedule would make an experienced athletic program cringe. For the first-year Bulldogs — who have already played UConn and Iowa and will visit Boston College tomorrow — it is overwhelming, and they came into last night’s game with a 1-5 record.

“This is an enormous jump between Division II and Division I. My biggest job right now is to keep guys mentally up, try to keep confidence where it needs to be, and to keep looking for that gradual improvement,” O’Shea said.

In that, seeing 1-6 Army on the schedule could have seemed like a respite. Compared to a UConn or an Iowa, Army might seem undersized, and could have presented a good matchup for Bryant.

On top of that, Bryant’s first win since joining Division I came against Quinnipiac on the road Nov. 22 — a team that had beaten Army a week before.

But Army crashed the boards hard, and rebounded in bunches. The two teams finished even in rebounding with 25 each, but O’Shea said that statistic was deceiving.

“There were a couple sequences where they got two or three shots at the basket. … I felt like we were struggling to rebound at critical times,” O’Shea said.

Army ranks second in the Patriot League in 3-point shooting percentage, and it used its outside shooting to jump out to an early lead, picking at the edges of Bryant’s zone defense. The Black Knights were 5 for 10 on three-pointers in the first half, and both teams finished 8 for 18 from 3-point range.

Army also excels in creating turnovers — it leads the Patriot League in steals — and the Black Knights disrupted Bryant’s passing game, notching seven steals in the first half alone.

With little margin for error against such an athletic squad, Bryant needed to hit its shots; Bryant’s top scorers, however, were ice cold last night, allowing Army to grow its lead largely unanswered. Guards Chris Birrell and Barry Latham, Bryant’s second and third leading scorers on the season, were barely heard from, with Birrell blanked and Latham held to three points.

Junior forward Cecil Gresham, Bryant’s leading scorer, chipped in 14 points and seven rebounds, while guard Peter Lambert scored 11 for the Bulldogs.

“During the first half, we were stagnant, just standing around. In the second half, we got the ball in the post, got some flow to the offense, got some open shots,” Gresham said.

While the offense improved, Bryant’s defense was unable to stop some long Army possessions in the second half, and the Black Knights eventually built a 20-point lead.

“We played pretty well tonight. We had been struggling, and were able to score in different ways. We got some points off our defense, we got some points off the break, and complemented it with a couple threes,” Army coach Jim Crews said.

Bryant finally came alive as the clock wound down on the second half and Army emptied its bench. Bryant tightened the gap against Army’s reserves, to finish within 11.

Bryant’s O’Shea was still pleased with what he saw out of his squad. “I firmly believe that if we can turn a corner with our execution, and raise our intensity up to the level it needs to be at, we can catch some teams, but we really have a very small margin of error right now. And we know that,” O’Shea said.

dbarbari@projo.com