Late surges double trouble in twinbill at home

Forget the coach’s box.

By the start of the second half, VCU men’s head coach Jeff Capel was barking orders from the Alltell logo near halfcourt. In the next 15 minutes his team would run like Bulls out to a 25-9 run, hooking up the highlight reel with trey balls, dunks (two- and one-handed) and alley-oops.

The Rams dominated the second half, picking up a 69-49 win over the Phoenix in front of 4,296 fans at the Alltel Pavilion to improve to 2-1 on the season. So maybe he had a reason to be excited.

“I’m just out there half the time I have no idea where I am or what I’m doing. I’m just trying to give them energy,” Capel said. “I want them to feed of the energy that I have and the passion that they see me with.”

So after letting Elon hang around far too long in the first half (the Rams went five minutes without scoring a basket), VCU came out in the second half with all the energy of a 2-liter Red Bull.

Start with the layup from B.A. Walker, the one with the extra clutch at the end to avoid the Elon defender (29-20).

Move to the pair of three pointers from Jesse Pellot-Rosa and Jamal Shuler (35-20).

Count two more from the magic rainbow from Walker and Alexander Harper after a pair of Pellot-Rosa free throws (40-25).

And add Shuler’s two-handed slam of an outlet from Walker and you’ve got the cherry on top of a 20-point victory that was absolute cake.

Ask Elon coach Ernie Nester.

“We didn’t compete,” said Nester, in his third season with the Phoenix. “That’s the bottom line. We didn’t compete.”

“It was an embarrassing performance for us. We didn’t shoot the ball well. We didn’t compete at a very high level. VCU’s got too much athleticism.”

What about the first half, you know, the one where you held the Rams to 38.5 percent shooting, forced nine turnovers compared to your one and for six minutes had VCU’s side of the scoreboard stuck on 12 like a broken odometer?

“An aberration,” Nester said, grumbling. “That was aberration. We were reactionary the whole night.”

But how do you react with 22 three-pointers flying in your face and 11 of them connecting? How do you react to Pellot-Rosa throwing down a two-hander (two of his game-high 13 points) and

then running down the other end and grabbing five rebounds (second only to sophomore center Sam Faulk, who had six in replacement duty for Calvin Rowland who sat out with back problems).

Huh, coach? How do you react?

“Well obviously we didn’t react well,” Nester said. “You try to call timeout, that’s not going to stop them. Then we contribute to it by turning the ball over, letting them get out and run a little bit. Then the game becomes an athletic game and they’re going to win that game, that’s for sure.”

That athleticism allows his team to do some things Rams fans may not be used to seeing. Guards like B.A. Walker can feel free to hook up with leapers like Mike Anderson and Renardo Dixon, making the possible poster ops for this season endless.

“We think we’re an athletic team,” Capel said. “We want to start playing athletic, though.”

They way Ernie Nester tells it, they already are.