Colonial Fans

Virginia Commonwealth 68, St. Louis 56

Virginia Commonwealth junior guard Joey Rodriguez continued to make his case for being named the College Basketball Invitational Most Valuable Player, scoring 22 points and dishing out 6 dimes to lead the Virginia Commonwealth Rams (26-9) to an emphatic 68-56 victory over St. Louis (23-12) in the first game of the best-of-three CBI championship series.  Rodriguez dropped 14 points on the Billikens during an exhilarating two-minute second-half blitzkrieg during which he personally outscored St. Louis, 14-6, staking the Rams to a 55-40 lead they never relinquished.  Rodriguez’s run began with a layup at the 14:15 mark and concluded with a four-point play no more than two minutes later.

It was cruise control the rest of the way for coach Shaka Smart’s squad, as the Rams extended the lead to 64-44 on a Darius Theus layup with 7:46 remaining, and kept the Billikens at a Plastic Man-like arm’s length the remainder of the game.  Junior big Larry Sanders was the inside yang to Rodriguez’s perimeter yin for VCU. Sanders stuffed the box score with 4 blocked shots, 9 boards, 3 pilfers, and 20 points.  Willie Reed, who banged with Sanders all game, led the Billikens with 11 hard-earned points.

The Big Picture: VCU is not known as a team that wins games with defense.  Indeed, the recipe for the Rams in their run to the CBI championship series has mostly consisted of an offense so deep and so efficient that it simply overwhelmed opponents’ defenses.  While the Rams made plenty of shots Monday night, as Shaka Smart said after the game, “(We) won this game on the defensive end.”  With Sanders anchoring the Rams’ interior defense, and Rodriguez keeping SLU’s Kwamain Mitchell from penetrating, the Billikens were often forced to chuck up threes.  That just isn’t Billiken basketball.

Employing a trapping, full court press that was more disruptive than a Texas tornado, VCU continually forced either St. Louis turnovers or rushed shots.  The Rams converted 15 Billikens turnovers into 25 points, many of which were uncontested layups, helping to account for the Rams’ 40-28 points-in-the-paint advantage.

The Good: The tendency might be to focus on individual superlatives, but VCU’s spurtability (as CBS analyst Clark Kellogg would say) stems directly from its depth and teamwork.  VCU closed the first half with a 12-4 spurt; the Rams dropped dimes on four of the six buckets scored during that run.  As Smart noted in his postgame remarks, “(We) shared the ball and made the extra pass.”  Too often this postseason, teams have hoisted the first open three rather than making one more pass that just might lead to a better shot.  That the Rams didn’t do so on Monday night has as much to do with their win as anything else.

The Bad: We can’t really recall the last time we saw a Rick Majerus-coached team have such a complete and total second-half meltdown.  The Billikens began the second half with a 9-2 run, which got them back in the game, and that’s precisely when the roof caved in.  St. Louis came unglued over the next 11 minutes, struggling to so much as inbound the ball, or run a cohesive offensive set in the face of VCU’s energetic and withering defense.  Unsurprisingly, the Billikens found themselves trailing 66-46 with 7:46 remaining, and the game was reduced to an extended period of garbage time.

The Ugly: At the risk of being accused of sounding like a broken record, St. Louis, like an endless slew of teams this postseason, just took too many bad three-pointers in Richmond, Va.  The Billikens finished the game 5-of-20 from downtown, which included a brutal 2-of-10 second half.  During the Rams’ decisive second-half run, the Billikens missed five three-pointers.  They actually made four two-point field goals during that stretch, so if they had worked the rock a bit more, who knows, maybe this wouldn’t have become a rout.

What’s Next?

VCU held serve at home, which the Rams had to do since the next two games (if necessary) are to be played at the Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, where the Billikens are 18-3 this season.  Winning at Chaifetz Arena is no easy feat, but the simple fact remains: Virginia Commonwealth is the deeper, more experienced, more talented team.   Tonight’s game was, for the most part, played at St. Louis’s preferred half-court-oriented pace, and VCU still won.  Our forecast is for an even slower game on Wednesday night, and even more postseason heroics from VCU’s Joey Rodriguez and Larry Sanders.

By: Tim Coyne
DFN Sports Guest Writer