NEW YORK -- Pops Mensah-Bonsu was on George Washington's bench, standing with the aid of crutches to yell and encourage his teammates any way he could as they played their first game without him.
"He's the ugliest cheerleader I've ever seen," Danilo Pinnock said after the sixth-ranked Colonials extended the nation's longest winning streak to 16 games with a 78-67 victory over Fordham on Saturday.
The win also clinched the Atlantic 10 regular-season title for the Colonials (24-1, 14-0), who didn't seem to miss Mensah-Bonsu, their second-leading scorer and rebounder. The 6-foot-9 senior forward injured his knee against La Salle on Wednesday and will miss the final two games of the regular season. He might be able to play in the Atlantic 10 Tournament quarterfinals, which begin March 9.
"This is the first time this year we have had to deal with true adversity. We've been very fortunate," Colonials coach Karl Hobbs said. "We have to accept the truth and the truth of the matter is he's hurt. The second truth of the matter is that there is nothing we can do about it except wait for the healing process.
"I'll you, though, we really do miss his emotion, and he gave us some of that from the bench."
Maureece Rice scored 13 of his 19 points in the final seven minutes for George Washington. The 6-1 sophomore guard has been the Colonials' sixth man all season. He had two points on 1-for-4 shooting in the first half, but made all seven of his field goal attempts in the second half and finished two points off his career high.
"I thought he played pretty well the whole game," Hobbs said. "We went with our experience and that's what we've been doing all season. This was nothing unusual."
Pinnock added 17 points and eight rebounds and Carl Elliott had 16 points for George Washington, which tied the school's record for wins set in 1953-54 and matched in 1997-98.
Marcus Stout had 18 points and Jermaine Anderson added 17 for the Rams (12-15, 7-7), who lost their fourth straight overall and seventh in a row to the Colonials.
George Washington dominated inside in taking a 37-24 halftime lead. The Colonials outscored Fordham 26-14 inside in the first half and forced the Rams into 11 turnovers.
Two free throws by Rice with 14:01 left gave the Colonials their biggest lead, 49-31. Fordham then took advantage of a cold shooting spell by George Washington to go on a 13-2 run and get within 51-44 on a layup by Kevin Anderson with 9:03 to play. It was the first of four times the Rams would get within seven points.
The last time was at 60-53 on a jumper by Stout with 4:11 to go. Pinnock scored on a breakaway dunk and Elliott scored inside around a Fordham turnover, and the Rams were never closer than nine points the rest of the way.
"In the second half we hung in there and had our chances to make a run," Fordham coach Dereck Whittenburg said. "It was a seven-point game there and we missed a couple of wide-open 3s that could have pulled them in. All the turnovers we had turned out to be points for them."
Jermaine Anderson was 4-for-12 from 3-point range for Fordham, which was 5-for-22 from beyond the arc and finished with 17 turnovers.
"We didn't even think about Pops," Whittenburg said when asked whether he prepared his team differently because of the injury. "They have so many good players and they control the game with their defense. They played they way they play."
The game was the second straight sellout for Fordham at 3,200-seat Rose Hill Gym, the oldest building in use by a Division I program. The first game was played there on Jan. 16, 1925.
The noise reached an earsplitting level the times Fordham got within seven, but it didn't seem to affect the Colonials.
"We're an experienced team," senior forward Mike Hall said. "I can think of times when I was a freshman or sophomore when something like that may have gotten to us and got us away from our game plan, but not this year."
