Stepping up?

Sophomore Renardo Dixon came out of nowhere over the winter break and stuck up Hofstra for 12 points in the Rams 70-58 win over the Pride.

The 12-point margin of victory was the Rams largest win since blowing out Hampton on Dec. 1, and for Dixon, it was the best game he’d played, since … well … the game before that when he came off the bench and scored a career-high 18 points, including a 24-footer with 2.7 seconds left on the clock in a 66-64 loss to Drexel.

He gave the Pride and head coach Tom Pecora a clinic in playing above the rim, scoring eight of his 12 points on dunks, mostly of the two-handed variety and one off a lob from freshman Jamal Shuler. Dixon got two more after getting a pair of shots from the free-throw line.

“You know what, I’ll take as many dunks and free throws as I can,” said Pecora, who worked Dixon into his team’s game plan after hearing about his performance against Drexel a few days earlier.

Dixon’s two-game coming out party came on the heels of another Rams’ breakthrough performance.

After VCU had lost five straight road games, senior guard Michael Doles posted a career high 22 points against George Mason, leading the way in the Rams 81-74 win. And with the Rams back on the road two nights later to battle the Towson Tigers in Maryland, Doles decided to match that career high, hitting 7 of 13 shots from the field and 6 of 8 from the charity stripe.

Doles, who sat out the team’s first two games as he recovered from mononucleosis, saw a boost in his scoring average (12.5 points per game-third on the team behind junior Nick George’s 13.7 and sophomore B.A. Walker’s 12.6), and Dixon saw his minutes spike from the 10.8 he had been putting in. But neither could be seen after the Hofstra game. While George and point guard Alexander Harper handled post game comments, Dixon and Doles were at the west end of the Siegel Center with the rest of the team, signing autographs.

They missed a subtle, yet resounding message from third-year head coach Jeff Capel.

“We have some talent, it’s about us utilizing that talent,” Capel said. “The main thing for us when we come down the floor is we have to get a good shot every time and it has to be we want a good shot. We can’t use I in our program. Everything has to be we. We have to rebound. We have to get a good shot every time.

“For us, it shouldn’t matter who gets the good shot, because when we score, the points are for VCU … that’s what has to be important for us.”