01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, January 4, 2005

It's now January, and things have changed for the Univerity of Rhode Island's basketball team, all those preseason dreams already having run out of the Ryan Center like some fastbreak going in the wrong direction.

The record is 2-9 now, and it's all about survival.

Trying to keep the lid on.

Trying to get something out of a season that's turned sour.

You could see that Sunday in the game against Holy Cross. Go back a couple of months, and this figured to be a game the Rams would win. At home. An Atlantic 10 team against one from the Patriot League. The kind of game you win if you're going to have a good season.

But that was a couple of months ago.

Before Dawan Robinson got hurt.

Before Jamaal Wise got hurt.

Before the life went out of this Ram season before it began.

Before it became all about survival.

Once again, the Rams fought the good fight. No surprise. Jim Baron's teams always fight the good fight. Once again, though, their inability to score proved their undoing. No surprise there, either. Take away all the weight training, all the video sessions, all the game plans, all of the accoutrements of how the game has changed in the last two decades, and basketball still comes down to putting the ball in the basket. Something this Ram team doesn't do very well.

You could see that in Sunday's loss to Holy Cross, too. Once again, the Rams were right there in the closing minutes, like they've been in so many of their losses. Once again, they couldn't score when it counted. Once again, they lost the kind of game they would have won the previous two years.

Not that we haven't seen the same scenario before. Maine. Manhattan. BU. Providence College. Iona. It's the same sorry little script. Fight the good fight. Stay in the game. Lose in the end. Film at 11.

And the most frustrating thing?

There's really no one to blame.

No easy thing in an era when we always are looking for someone to blame.

But who do you blame for the loss of Robinson, akin to taking Ryan Gomes off the Friars? Who do you blame for the loss of Wise?

Because let's get something understood.

Give this team Robinson and Wise, and the Rams probably are 8-3 this morning. Give them Robinson and Wise, and everyone is happy and content this morning, a season very much alive and well.

Give them Dustin Hellenga, too, and they might even be 9-2, their record reversed. Combine him with Robinson, and that would have given URI two flat-out scorers, the one thing they miss now.

Ah, Dustin Hellenga.

When last year's N.I.T. ended, the Rams figured to have four-fifths of their starting team back, plus Scott Hazelton to replace Brian Woodward in the starting lineup. Not bad, right? Especially in an A-10 that's in a down year. In short, the Rams figured to be a veteran team that was coming off two 20-win seasons.

Then Hellenga decided he didn't want to come back for his senior year.

The start of the bad karma.

That's what this is, no doubt about it. The baskeball version of Murphy's Law.

Which is why it's now all about survival.

So there was Baron after Sunday's loss, saying how he and his team have to continue to be gritty, continue to try to get better, and how he is "working as hard as I've worked."

Baron knows this is the hardest part of coaching. Not when you're doing well, the arena bathed in cheers, those times when everyone loves everybody, winning softening all the hurts. Not when every bounce seems to go your way, like it did those first two years in the Ryan Center, when good karma seemed to sit right there in a uniform on the Ram bench. But now. When your team seems snakebitten, there are too many injuries, and the ball never seems to go in when you need it the most.

Now.

When you're 2-9, all those preseason dreams lying in dust under your feet. When your best player is out for the year, your young players aren't ready to win yet, and there's simply not enough firepower.

Baron knows this is when it's all fragile. Knows this is where teams either come together or splinter off into different factions. Knows that right now the Rams already are playing for next year, trying to develop young players, trying to develop an attitude that one day will pay off, regardless of when that day comes.

"I believe in them," Baron said Sunday.

So he keeps pushing forward.

Trying to survive.

That's the only thing left when you're 2-9 and the ball never seems to go in when you need it most.

The only thing left when all the preseason hopes already have left the building.