WASHINGTON, DC (01/29/03) - The game was somewhere between really physical and violent. There were 50 free-throw attempts in the second half. There was blood on the floor in each half, stitches in the upper lip of one player and cotton stuffed in a nostril of another. Saint Joseph's coach Phil Martelli nicely summed up what had taken place on the Smith Center floor. ``Really bad basketball in my opinion,'' he said. It was. And this St. Joe's team, as good as it has been, simply does not do well when the game gets too wild. George Washington, beyond desperate without a single Atlantic 10 victory, made certain it was frenzied. They made the Hawks play their way. And the end result was St. Joe's third ``bad'' loss of what has been a really good season. GW started great, appeared to lose control late and found a way to win it very late, 74-68. St. Joe's did not find a good rhythm until very late in the second half. And, just as it appeared the Hawks had seized control, they let it all get away in the final moments and lost a game they had to think they were going to win. St. Joe's (14-3, 5-2 Atlantic 10) has been pressuring teams to distraction all season. This time, GW (7-10, 1-6) was the aggressor from the start. The Colonials did the trapping. They ran two men at Hawks point guard Jameer Nelson all game, daring one of the Hawks forwards to try to make plays in the middle of the floor. ``Normally, we control the tempo,'' said Hawks guard Tyrone Barley, the conscience of the team. ``We did not do that tonight. They came out, threw their punch and we were always answering their punch. And that's not like us. Hopefully, that will not happen again. '' GW, which had lost six straight, scored the game's first seven points. The Colonials actually made five straight baskets at one point, which had to be a season-record against the NCAA's best field goal defense. After the start, it was back and forth all night. The score was tied 15 times. The lead changed 20 times. Just when GW seemed to have control midway through the second half, leading by five points with Nelson on the bench with four fouls, the Hawks exploded. Delonte West (18 points) scored seven points in 74 seconds. Pat Carroll (17 points) hit three treys in 94 seconds. Carroll, who got five stitches at halftime, did not miss in five trey attempts and is now shooting 50 percent from the arc on the season. The Hawks led 63-57. There were five minutes left and Nelson was returning. It looked like St. Joe's had to win. Instead, GW kept getting into the lane and to the line. And when they absolutely had to have an unlikely three, Mike Hall drilled it from the corner. And when the Hawks had to defend their interior, they couldn't do it, even when playing zone. ``To go 9-for-20 from the foul line in the second half, that's deplorable,'' Martelli said. ``We go zone when we get the lead because we've got so much foul trouble...they dribble penetrate. This is disheartening for me.'' Nelson, who shot just 2-for-10, appeared to get fouled on one breakaway. There was no call on an evening when few whistles were silent. West may have gotten hit on a late shot. No call. Even with that, there could be no complaints. West wasn't so disappointed that his team lost just a few miles from his Greenbelt, Md. home. He was just disappointed, period. ``It's just losing to bad teams,'' he said. ``We made this team look like they were 14-2 and we had the record they had...Every game we've lost this year, we've lost in the last three minutes.'' The Hawks have lost to Pacific, Rhode Island and now GW. Those three are a combined 28-22, 9-10 in league play. The losses don't take away the wins, but they don't help the image either. And they lost all three down the stretch with bad free throw shooting, bad play or both. ``We've struggled with games like this,'' Nelson said. ``We had two great practices. We were prepared. We got to the game and it was a different story.'' West and Nelson were a combined 1-for-11 from the arc. That won't do. Neither will all those misses from the foul line. Backup center Dwayne Jones missed just one shot from the field and was incredibly active. Still, he was just 1-for-7 from the foul line and needed a favorable bounce to get that one. On the season, he is 12-for-41 from the line. ``You get into clutch and grab games,'' Martelli said. ``It's not really our forte. We need a rhythm game and that wasn't a rhythm game. That was chopped up. We live on an edge. We were 14-2, but I've always felt we were right on the edge because we have these flaws. We have a frontcourt flaw. They were basically playing five against four.'' GW's Chris Monroe became just his school's second 2,000-point scorer on Saturday. He got to the foul line 19 times and finished with 24 points. Philly's Omar Williams (Celestial Prep) and Tamal Forchion (Roman Catholic) combined for 16 points. GW's Dokun Akingbade watched the final minutes from the bench after blood poured out his nose. It was that kind of game. It was the kind of game where both teams were in the bonus with nearly 14 minutes left. It was definitely not St. Joe's kind of game. By Dick Jerardi, Philadelpiha Daily News (reprinted with permission)