LAWRENCEVILLE – Once again, Rider was down by double digits, its back against the wall in a game it needed to win.

The Broncs, coming off a damaging home loss to Loyola, trailed by 14 at the half against Niagara, like Rider a talented but erratic team.

Yet for the second time in two games against the Eagles this season, Rider responded. Ryan Thompson, playing his third dominant game in the past two weeks, carried Rider to a 70-62 win that pointed the Broncs’ season back in the right direction.

“A gutsy performance by our guys in the second half,” coach Tommy Dempsey said. “… It would have been very easy at halftime to pack it in and get beat again at home, but we were really resilient.”

Thompson scored 31 points – tying the career high he set just two games earlier in a win at Fairfield. His emphatic dunk capped an 18-1 Rider run that turned an 11-point deficit into a six-point lead, and his clutch shooting helped hold off the Purple Eagles.

Truman High’s Tyrone Lewis scored 17 points and Demetrius Williamson added 13 for Niagara. Justin Robinson (14) and Novar Gadson (12) joined Thompson in double figures for the Broncs.

Rider (14-12 overall, 7-7 MAAC) is alone in fifth place in the MAAC – an important factor since the top six teams receive first-round byes in next month’s conference tournament.

The Broncs completed a season sweep of the Eagles (13-13, 6-8) who have virtually no margin for error down the stretch. Niagara is tied with cross-town rival Canisius for sixth in the league, meaning the play-in round is a distinct possibility.

With its next three games against teams with winnings records in the league, Rider is by no means out of the woods. Yet the Broncs have won three of their last four after a 3-6 MAAC start, and are still capable of playing their best basketball down the stretch.

Trailing by 14 at the half, the Broncs rallied. Robinson’s floater capped a tied the game at 51 with 8:19 left -- the first tie since 5-5. Jhamar Youngblood’s jumper on Rider’s next possession gave the Broncs a 53-51 lead with 7:20 left, and Thompson’s dunk with 5:51 left capped a 15-0 run and gave Rider a 55-51 lead.

All year, there's a temptation to talk MAAC tournament seeding far before anything will be set in stone. Now, though, it's possible to talk specifics.

Siena can clinch then No. 1 seed, for instance, with a win tonight over Fairfield, while several other games will have major seeding implications.

Here are my top five games of the week, all of which will help determine how the teams stack up at the end of the month:

5. Saint Peter's at Loyola, Friday, 7 p.m.

With back-to-back wins at Rider and Manhattan, the 5-9 Hounds suddenly aren't a lock for the play-in round. With a healthy Brett Harvey being joined in the backcourt by Jamal Barney, it's conceivable Loyola could get hot down the stretch, jump a few teams, and finish in the top six. But if they're going to do that, beating the Peacocks at home is a must.

4. Siena at Canisius, Sunday, 2 p.m.

This game is intriguing primarily because of the bad blood that came out of the teams' first meeting, when the Golden Griffs' Robert Goldsberry took out the Saints' Alex Franklin and tempers flared.

Of equal importance, though, is that it's at least conceivable Canisius could get hot, feed off the home crowd and make this interesting. With Siena closing in on an undefeated regular season, any game that COULD be close deserves added attention.

3. Fairfield at Siena, tonight, 7 p.m. MAAC TV

The Stags, as they will be for the rest of the year, will be playing without Yorel Hawkins. But that didn't stop them from taking it to Saint Peter's in an impressive -- and much-needed -- win last Friday.

Fairfield has played well enough all year that it's not a lock for Siena, but you can expect the Times Union Center to be rockin' with a regular-season title within reach.

2. Siena at Niagara, Friday, 8 p.m., MAAC TV

Even given the Purple Eagles' struggles, this is a losable game for Siena if the Eagles get hot from 3. The Gallagher Center should be hoppin, and it's a big game for Niagara given the Eagles' undesirable position in the MAAC standings.

1. Niagara at Rider, tonight, 7 p.m.

This game has always loomed large on the calendar for both teams, but for reasons wholly different from the ones that matter tonight.

Instead of the teams jockeying for second place in the league and a potential NIT bid, they're battling to avoid the play-in round, with the teams part of a three-way tie with Canisius for fifth place.

The winner will have some breathing room, while the loser will have no margin for error down the stretch.

I didn't get around to posting these quotes yesterday. Given that Rider lost, maybe now is just as good a time as any to put them up.

Tommy Dempsey has had various takes on his team's play throughout the year. He's been dejected at times. He's been defiant, vowing to prove his and his team's critics wrong.

I met with him in his office Thursday to talk about the Loyola game, and as far as I'm concerned, he made his best effort yet to simply tell it how it is. Since our conversation came when Rider was on a three-game winning streak, most of this is in the context of looking back at what HAD gone wrong before the Broncs began what looked like a turnaround.

After Friday's loss, he made it a point to say he didn't feel the same way about the game that had just taken place as he had felt two weeks ago. But nevertheless, he had some interesting things to say about how the season drifted off course. Here are some highlights:

I don't think we were playing hard enough. I attribute a lot of it to that. I think they thought they were playing harder than they were. I was screaming and yelling at every halftime and before every game that you need to play harder, you need to play harder.

There was a sense of 'it's not that coach, we're playing hard.' I think that there was that sense there, and I think that's changed a little bit. I think they've actually played harder, and I think they know that now. I think if they were to look back on it now, they would think 'you know what, we're playing harder now than we were two weeks ago. Yet two weeks ago they thought they were playing hard. Everyone's giving a little bit more of themselves, and I think when you play hard, you get that rhythm, you get some easy baskets, you create some offense with your defense.

... I said to the team at halftime (of the Fairfield game), I got in front of the team and said 'I used to coach a team that played like that.' And I think there was a sense from them too that 'yeah, that felt different. We were playing harder, we were sharing the ball more. Then it started to be that sense of, you hear them talking amongst each other, saying 'yeah, let's share the ball, yeah let's keep playing hard.' I've been preaching to them those things but it hasn't naturally been ticking with this group as well.

I think the light went on in the second half against Manhattan. It was a heated halftime discussion. Not that we haven't had those before, but I pretty much told the team, you're about to get booed off your home court and I didn't necessarily say it in those words. ... I thought that hit them hard, because I didn't think our effort was anywhere near where it needed to be in that game. To let a guy (Rico Pickett) get 28 points and talk to your crowd and talk to your bench, I really challenged some guys' manhood at halftime. I was embarrassed that he had 28. I was embarrassed at the way he acted. I was embarrassed that we couldn't get our crowd into the game because they seemed to be looking at a team that was lethargic.

I told them how disappointed the building was in the way that they were playing and that if they booed us off the court, I wouldn't blame them. It was an animated discussion. That was pretty much the theme of it.

... That first half against Manhattan I considered to be our worst half of the year amongst a lot of bad halves, because they were getting run-out dunks. We weren't getting back on transition defense a couple times. They were dunking the ball. You had the ninth-place team in the league dunking the ball, yapping at your crowd, yapping at your bench, and I was like 'wait a minute, is this where we are?' That's pretty much where I took a lot of frustration into the locker room, thinking 'I can't watch my team play like this for one more minute. Fortunately, from that point on, I haven't had to.'

... I expect to play better (against Loyola). I expect to be in a better place. To me, my approach to these guys is 'don't just talk, go out there and back it up.' I don't want to go out there and have the game go live and be down by 14 points. They don't have, they haven't built my trust yet that that can't happen to us again, because it happened too frequently during that stretch. I think if we go and play really well, they have to get me believing a little bit too. Not that I don't believe in them. I know it's there, but I feel like I've poured more into this team than any other year that I've been here emotionally, and I haven't been rewarded up until, rewarded from a standpoint of them taking ownership of it.

That's what I want. I don't want it to be me constantly preaching to them. I want them to hold each other accountable to play hard. ... It's not about me screaming at (them) all the time, and that's kind of what it turned into for a while. Every day in practice, I was screaming at them to play harder, to rebound harder, to block out, and until they start to get it, to try to be more demanding of each other, it's almost like I feel that I'm banging my head against the wall at times.

If there's another coach in college basketball who casually drops Rocky references into postgame press conferences, please let me know. Until that happens, I'll assume Patsos is the only one. I'll also assume that Patsos and Ed Cooley will make for the best postgame posts now that I've got this handy flip camera: