Rams senior guard Jimmy Baron pulls up against Duke’s Jon Scheyer for one of his seven consecutive 3-pointers in the second half Sunday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

AP / Sara D. Davis

There are great performances.

And there are great performances.

And then there are some that belong to the basketball gods.

That’s the kind of performance Jimmy Baron had Sunday against Duke.

For I have seen a lot of great shooting performances in my time, but I haven’t seen too many better ones than the one that Baron had in the second half against Duke.

It would have been an unbelievable performance if it had come against Brown at the Ryan Center, never mind in Cameron Indoor Stadium, one of the toughest places in all of basketball to play.

All Baron did was score 21 points in the second half against the fifth-ranked team in the country, hitting some jumpers so deep they should have brought rain. All he did was have the kind of game that, if you saw it, you would never forget it. Rest assured that if it had happened in the NCAA Tournament he would be the talk of the country this morning.

Or as Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said, “Baron had one of the great halves of any kid that’s played against us.”

Think about that for a second.

Think about all the great players that have played against Krzyzewski and Duke in the last 27 years.

At one point, Baron hit seven straight 3-pointers with some guy right in his face. He hit one in front of the press table with a guy all over him, a degree of difficulty that was flat out off the charts. He hit one off the dribble in front of the URI bench. He hit another from out top that was so deep you thought it was a guided missile.

Shooting range?

Maybe no one shoots the ball any deeper than Jimmy Baron does

We have known that around here for awhile now, of course, but it’s easy to take him for granted.

I hear it all the time. Yeah, he can shoot, but he doesn’t take anyone off the dribble. Yeah, he can shoot, but he doesn’t do anything else. Yeah, he can shoot, but other teams can take him out of the game. Yeah, he can shoot, but blah, bah, blah.

Well, guess what?

Forget all that.

We should never take him for granted.

He is a great shooter, and Sunday was the ultimate example of that, an unforgettable shooting performance, one that was delivered by the basketball gods themselves.

He has become one of our all-time great basketball stories around here, this son of coach Jim Baron, this kid who started out at Hendricken, back when he was just a skinny kid and there were doubts he was ever going to be a Division I player, never mind be good enough to play for his father at URI.

That was the dream, though, one that had begun up there in Olean, N.Y., back when he just a little kid hanging around his father’s St. Bonaventure teams, back when the dream was just some childhood fantasy. Back before he would come to understand that being the coach’s kid is a double-edged sword, comes with its unique pressure. For Jimmy Baron never had the luxury of being just another kid with his basketball dreams. Even in high school he was always under the microscope, whether he wanted to be or not.

What were the odds back then that he was going to come into Cameron Indoor Stadium one day and have a game for the ages?

As high as the moon.

But he no longer was the same kid he was at Hendricken when he first came to URI in September of 2005, no question about that. He had been to a year of prep school at Worcester Academy. And from the beginning he was ready, complete with one bigtime skill, the one that sets him apart, the ability to shoot the ball as well as anyone in the country.

It’s become part of his legend: how hard he’s worked on his game. There’s no question he’s a different person physically than he was three years ago. He’s also been known to shoot by himself at midnight at the Ryan Center, even if it’s virtually in the dark because the lights function by some special code he’s not privy to. He has worked to get stronger. He has worked to get quicker. He’s always known there are going to be guys bigger and quicker than he is.

“I’ve worked hard to make up for my lack of athleticism,” he said two years ago.

The fruits of that were on display Sunday, too.

This was not a game the Rams were supposed to win, make no mistake about that. It was supposed to be little more than a tune-up for the Dukies, a nice little middle-of-the-road, A-10 opponent in mid-November, just another game for the Duke students to jump up and down the whole time, just another show.

Until the Rams came out and matched Duke’s intensity.

Until Delroy James, an emerging talent, had a great first half.

Until the Rams were ahead at the half.

Until Baron started throwing in bombs and gave the Rams a legitimate chance to dream about an upset.

Until the Rams showed that they have a chance to be a lot better than people thought.

That is Sunday’s little legacy, the afternoon that this URI team found some identity, proved that they have the pieces to brighten this winter.

And Sunday’s big legacy?

Jimmy Baron’s great performance.

A performance Krzyzewski said was as good a half as “any kid that’s played against us.”

As good a shooting performance as you will ever see.

A performance that belonged to the basketball gods.

breynold@projo.com