Sports

St. Joseph’s falls to VCU

Havoc was the perfect word for the final two minutes of VCU’s game against St. Joe’s The Rams, who flaunt their “havoc” system, almost blew a 15-point lead with 2:09 left to play against the Hawks but managed to hang on to come away with a 82-79 win in the quarterfinals of the Atlantic 10 tournament at Barclays Center last night.

“It was a hard-fought game,” VCU head coach Shaka Smart said. “I give St. Joe’s credit. They really battled and came at us in the second half. We need to play better defense [moving forward] than we did in the second half.”

Trailing 72-57 with 2:09 remaining, Carl Jones and Langston Galloway would score 19 straight points for the Hawks but would ultimately fall short. Jones and Galloway combined for 54 of the Hawks’ 74 points.

“[Jones] scored a lot of points, take what you will from that,” St. Joe’s head coach Phil Martelli said. “When your team loses, scoring points means nothing. Nobody on our team played well. We lost.

Although VCU lead wire to wire, at several times throughout the game St. Joe’s made the Rams sweat, but each time the game would get close, it seemed as if Shaka Smart’s club would go on a small run or force a turnover.

In the first half, after a Langston Galloway trey, VCU freshman guard and Bronx product Melvin Johnson (12 points) scored six straight points to pull away once again.

“I just wanted to come out and play as hard as I could,” Johnson said. “I didn’t anticipate that [stretch] I just came in wanting to do whatever the team needed. I didn’t want to try and do too much to impress anybody. Coach gives me the green light to attack at any time.”

The game would once again appear to be in reach with 6:21 left in the first half after a Jones jumper cut the Rams lead to 21-19.

Led by Darius Theus, VCU would outscore the Hawks 12-4 over the rest of the half and take a 33-23 lead into the locker room.

“We didn’t do a very good job with how quickly [VCU] moved the ball,” Martelli said. “The ball was really hot for them. We had some assignments that we thought were sound but we missed assignments during some of that run. Like most young players we dropped our head when the ball didn’t go in and they caught us.”

The Rams’ swarming “Havoc” defense was just too much for the Hawks early on. St. Joe’s turned the ball over nine times in the first half and shot just under 37 percent from the field. VCU went into the locker room with a double-digit lead.

“I thought [what won us the game] was our first-half defense,” Smart said.

The same kind of burst opened the second half and it seemed as if St. Joe’s would be able to shoot its way back into the game. Galloway scored eight of nine Hawks points to open the half and Jones would hit a trey to again pull within three.

“We needed that lead at the half because we did not defend particularly well in the second half and only won by three points,” Smart said.

The Hawks did contain Juvonte Reddic, who entered the game as the Rams’ second-leading scorer, averaging over 14 points per game, to just seven points.

asulla-heffinger@nypost.com