SMITHFIELD — Peter Lambert has got game — in particular, an accurate 3-point jump shot.

He’s also got his act together and his priorities in order.

Not only is he just a few months away from getting his degree at Bryant University, but he also has landed a job with a public accounting firm in Providence and, at the age of 22, owns a house on Cape Cod.

He is not one of that multitude of Division I players who, next to "career aspirations" in the school media guide, lists "playing professional basketball."

"I knew I’d be going pro in accounting, not basketball," he said.

What he didn’t know, coming out of Cumberland High School in 2005, was that he’d be playing Division I basketball four years later. Back then, it was questionable whether he’d even play in Division II, which was the level Bryant was playing at when Lambert tried out for the team as a walk-on.

"Max Good gave me a chance," Lambert said of his former coach with the Bulldogs. "I knew I wouldn’t be able to play right away. I also knew what my work ethic was like. And I knew I could shoot. If you can shoot, you can play. But I had to work on the other aspects of my game."

Hard work, whether on the court, in the classroom or on the "fixer-upper" house he bought in Cautamet, a long-range jumper beyond the Bourne Bridge, in Falmouth, that he’s been re-habbing with the help of his father, Paul, and 82-year-old grandfather, Raymond, comes naturally to Lambert.

"If, a few years from now, I pick up the paper and see that Peter Lambert has just gotten a big promotion or is running a corporation, I won’t be the least surprised," said Bryant coach Tim O’Shea, who returned to Rhode Island from Ohio University to take on the task of leading the Bulldogs into the ranks of Division I basketball.

"He’s got brains, competitiveness, and he’s not afraid to take charge," O’Shea said.

What Lambert doesn’t have is size. He’s listed in the Bryant media guide at 6-foot-1, but he admits to being a tad under 6-feet, and O’Shea insists he’s no more than 5-foot-10.

"His footwork, his technique and his release on his shot are as good as any kid I’ve ever coached," said O’Shea, who was a longtime assistant for Al Skinner — first at URI, then at Boston College — before going to Ohio U., where he led the Bobcats to the NCAA Tournament in 2005.

"If he were 6-4, he’d be playing in the Big East, because he has so much grit, so much toughness," O’Shea added.

As a small kid who played high school ball in the smallest state in the nation, the odds against Lambert ever playing Division I basketball were huge.

"I love to play," he said. "I was approached by some Division III schools, but I wanted to try to play at the Division II level, and I wanted to go to business school and major in accounting."

Not surprisingly, that led him to Bryant, where Good had taken the Bulldogs to the championship game of the NCAA Division II Tournament in 2004, and university president Ron Machtley was intent on enhancing the school’s reputation both academically and athletically.

"Max told me I could be on the team," Lambert said, "but that he couldn’t give me any scholarship money. I never thought he’d leave. I thought he’d be here forever. It was kind of a shock when he left."

Good left Bryant, after leading the Bulldogs to five straight Division II tourneys, to become an assistant coach at Loyola Marymount, a Division I school in Los Angeles.

"We were stepping up to Division I with a new coach and a new system," Lambert said.

And with a brutal schedule, which had the Bulldogs playing on the road early in the season against the likes of Connecticut, currently ranked No. 1 in the country, Iowa, Boston College, Rutgers, Providence College and Maryland.

"We had no opportunity to gain any traction," he said.

Nevertheless, it was an opportunity Lambert is grateful to have had.

"When I came to Bryant," he said, "I never thought we’d be playing Division I by my senior year. Teams like Connecticut, BC, PC and Maryland are a totally different size level than we are. They play the game above the rim. They totally take away our inside game."

Which meant the Bulldogs had to rely on the outside shooting of Lambert, who was hitting 33 percent of his 3-point attempts (52 of 156, one less trey than team leader Cecil Gresham) while averaging 7.1 points a game, including his 9-point performance in Tuesday night’s 70-46 victory over the New Jersey Institute of Technology .

That was a "grudge" game for the Bulldogs, who weren’t happy last month to have been the team NJIT beat to end a 51-game losing streak.

Bryant bounced back from that setback and has now won five its last eight games, three of them on the road, and has raised its record to 8-19.

"The kids took a lot grief for losing that game (to NJIT)," O’Shea said. "So what I did was tell our seniors that I was putting this game on them. I asked them to watch the tape of our last game and tell me who would start and what our game plan should be. The guy who was in here all day, watching tape, was Peter Lambert."

jdonalds@projo.com