With an Atlantic 10 regular season conference championship on the line, the Virginia Commonwealth University Rams traveled to Eagle Bank Arena to take on the George Mason Patriots on the host’s Senior Night. The matchup featured two of the top point guards in the A-10 with Marcus Evans of VCU up against Otis Livingston II for George Mason. Following a slow start, the Rams defeated the Patriots 71-36 with a dominating performance in the second half.
VCU struggled right out the gate on the offensive side. The team had nine turnovers and were making sloppy, uncharacteristic errors. But per usual, the defense kept GMU’s lead close and the largest it ever was by seven points.
“It was a little jitters early on,” Evans said about the slow start. “Obviously, everybody knew what was at stake — winning an A-10 championship — and we wanted it so bad that we weren’t focused on the goal at hand. But once we locked in, we got back to our brand of basketball and came out with the win.”
GMU came out aggressively on their Senior Night and matched the Rams’ intensity defensively early in the first half. The problem was that they never capitalized offensively to stretch the lead and because of it, the Black and Yellow started to knock down shots and create separation.
The turning point came in the last two minutes of the first half when Patriots guard Justin Kier, who was doing a great job at breaking the Rams full court pressure, had to come out the game when GMU had a two-point lead. Evans caught fire for VCU, scoring 10 consecutive points. He gave his team a 28-21 lead closing out the first half on a 19-5 run. The junior from Chesapeake, Virginia seems to always come up big when his team needs that extra push and this game was no different.
In the Rams previous matchup against the Richmond Spiders, they came out flat and blew a double-digit lead before ultimately winning. This time around, VCU turned up the pressure on defense which propelled the offense to start knocking down shots and running in transition. The depth of this team wears on opponents, especially in the second half. As good as George Mason played defensively in the first half, they couldn’t keep up with the conditioning of the champs.
The rout was on in the second half as Rams sophomore forward Marcus Santos-Silva scored the first six points in the post.
VCU turned up the intensity and went on a 23-0 run and the Patriots went over eight minutes without scoring a point. The Rams contested three-point shots at a tremendous rate as they held GMU to 2-18 shooting from range, and only gave up 15 total points for the entire half.
The Black and Yellow forced 22 GMU turnovers for the game.
The Rams won this game on a collective effort and got contributions from everyone with 11 players scoring in the victory.
The squad is playing as one.
An example of this was when Evans was about to get subbed into the game but noticed how well guard Malik Crowfield was playing. Evans told Head Coach Mike Rhoades to keep Crowfield in the game because he could see his teammate was in a rhythm. This ballclub genuinely enjoys seeing each other succeed as a unit instead of indulging in individual gratification.
High-point man for the Rams was Evans with 13 points on 5-11 shooting and guard De’Riante Jenkins chipped in 11 points on 5-10 shooting.
The Patriots were led by freshman Jordan Miller with 11 points on a struggling 3-8 shooting from the field
With the win, VCU improved to 24-6 on the season and 15-2 in the Atlantic 10 conference. GMU fell to 16-14 for the year. The 24 wins are the most ever for Mike Rhoades as a head coach.
The Black and Yellow will return home to the Siegel Center for one last go around on their own Senior Night against a Saint Joseph Hawks team that’s 13-17 on the season.