St. Joe’s is learning how to win in different ways. La Salle is just struggling to win.

Billy Lange joked Wednesday night at Hagan Arena that his analytics guy was going to be upset. Lange’s St. Joseph’s squad earned a narrow win over George Mason but took just 22 three-pointers.

After watching it back, Lange said there were about seven more threes the Hawks should have taken in that victory.

On Saturday afternoon in Olney, the team that shot nearly 31 three-pointers per game over its first 15 games, more than most teams in the country, put up just 21 during its 88-82 win over La Salle.

Over the last seven games, St. Joe’s is attempting 21.6 threes per game. The Hawks, 5-2 over that stretch, are learning how to win in ways they weren’t necessarily used to. The number of three-point attempts might be lower, Lange said Wednesday night, but the field-goal percentage has increased. The overall effectiveness of the offense has improved. Seven-foot big man Christ Essandoko is finally healthy and exerting his presence, but Lange said the fewer number of threes aren’t just because of Essandoko, who can make three-pointers himself.

The scouting report is just out on Lange’s Hawks.

“We’re trying to drive the ball and get threes,” Lange said Saturday. “Every team now is just fanning out … there’s just no kick outs. It’s really hard for us to get them.”

» READ MORE: Xzayvier Brown leading a youth movement at St. Joseph’s that will determine where the Hawks go

La Salle made it tough for St. Joe’s to find open threes all game. Lange has long preached spacing and sharing, and his team rarely settles for bad three-pointers. So the final line of 10 makes on 21 attempts checks out. St. Joe’s worked for its looks, and when it didn’t have open shots, it found ways to score inside, particularly late in the game when the Hawks turned a 12-point deficit into an eight-point lead largely because of Lynn Greer III and Xzayvier Brown getting inside and scoring or getting fouled — sometimes both.

“As the team — through recruiting and player development — has evolved, you get a guy like this who can shoulder a defender and score,” Lange said, tapping Greer on the arm. “You get a guy like [Brown] that can put a guy in the mix and get to the rim. You have a guy like Christ that can put pressure on the rim. You have a guy like Rasheer [Fleming] that can offensive rebound, and Erik [Reynolds II] is a little bit of both.

“It helps us not be so one-dimensional.”

Asked about the evolution of the offense, Greer said it’s mostly just about playing hard.

“We don’t think about, ‘Well we have to shoot this many amount of threes,’ ” he said. “We just want to go out there and out-toughen the other team, play as hard as we can. We’re not really too concerned about just chucking up threes the whole game. We just want to win the game.”

» READ MORE: To three, or not to three: For St. Joe’s, it’s rarely a question

St. Joe’s deployed some full-court pressure trailing by 10 midway through Saturday’s game, a press similar to the one it applied during a loss at St. Bonaventure last Friday. It didn’t work that night, but it worked against La Salle. A turnover turned into a missed Brown three, but Greer was there to grab the rebound, one of 10 he had on the day, and scored two of his 16 points to help kick-start a run that flipped the game. Greer scored 14 of his 16 points in the second half, and Brown scored all nine of his points in the second half. Their inside scoring — neither made a three — was critical down the stretch.

Reynolds led St. Joe’s with 21 points, including 5-for-8 shooting from beyond the arc. Essandoko added 16 points and nine rebounds, and Fleming had 17 and nine boards.

La Salle led by six at halftime and was 9-for-20 from three-point range, giving the Hawks a bit of their own medicine.

“They were making really tough shots in the first half, and coming into the second half, we just knew we had to help each other out, so basically help the helper,” Greer said. “We take a lot of pride in helping people. So we just had to get stops and just flow into our offense.”

The 19-point loss last week at St. Bonaventure, Lange said, was a teaching moment. His team, on the heels of a buzzer-beating win at Massachusetts, had to get better at winning on the road.

Saturday marked the Hawks’ fifth win in their last six. They improved to 5-4 in Atlantic 10 play after starting 0-3.

“We’ve learned how to have a level of resilience and a discipline, emotionally, to keep going,” Lange said.

» READ MORE: 5 thoughts on Villanova as the Wildcats suffer through a rare long losing streak

“We weathered a lot. We’ve been through a lot. These guys, from a week ago to today, learned how to weather that on the road, and I felt we earned this victory [today]. We had to go and take it [today] and earn it, and we did it because I thought La Salle played great.”

The Explorers did, just for 30 minutes instead of 40. But they looked a whole lot better than the team that lost by 20 at Hagan Arena on Jan. 15.

La Salle coach Fran Dunphy pointed to a few “poor choices” his team made after St. Joe’s dialed up the pressure.

“We had a couple of foolish plays on the offensive end,” he said. “We needed to have more poise.

“They’re a really good basketball team. We gave them opportunities, and they took advantage of it.”

The Explorers (11-11, 2-7) were led by Jhamir Brickus’ 24 points but lost for the sixth time in seven games. They played nationally ranked Dayton tough last week, then won at George Washington before losing to Rhode Island. Then came Saturday.

“We’re close,” Dunphy said. “But we just need to be more understanding of the moment.”

St. Joe’s, it seems, is learning how to master that part.