Men’s Basketball: Exhibition win opens hopeful season

The men’s basketball team jumped into action for the first time since Oct. 13 at Ram Madness. The Rams beat Virginia State 84-78 Friday in an exhibition match at the Stuart C. Siegel Center.
VCU’s Jesse Pellot-Rosa (Richmond/George Wythe HS) opened the game up with a three-pointer. Seconds later, B.A. Walker (Onancock/Nandua HS) put another three points on the board. Michael Anderson (Virginia Beach/Landstown HS) shot a field goal shortly after to put the Rams at a very early eight point lead.
When the Rams scored their 12th point, however, Virginia State came back to put themselves in the lead with 13 points. T.J. Gwynn (Burlington, N.C.) put a stop to it though, as he scored a free throw to put VCU in a lead that would not be broken for the rest of the game.
In response, State called a timeout which mildly helped, but was not enough to overcome VCU at any point in the first half.
In the second half, VCU kept an average of a 10 point lead, but VSU stepped up in their aggression, thinking the Rams might not be able to respond. The idea was if the Rams had control of the first half, VSU might be able to catch them off guard with a stormy offense. But it just didn’t happen for them.
Virginia State’s coach Tony Collins said they could have made better plays and the team’s ball-handling skills were not up to his standards.
Pellot-Rosa scored 22 points for the Rams and Anderson made 15. Also, Eric Maynor (Fayetteville, N.C.) scored 12 points with six assists and four steals.
After the game, VCU head coach Anthony Grant said that as the intensity of the game picked up, particularly towards the end of the second half, the team did a much better job adapting to VSU’s offense.
Even though the Rams took the match, Grant said the results of this game are not representative of what to expect for the future.
“It looked like our very first scrimmage match,” he said. “We did not get up to the three-point line as much as we wanted to, but we hope to learn from it and improve.”
Collins mentioned Gabriel Paul’s bad knee playing a factor in VSU’s loss. He said Paul had trouble with the knee in the past and when it began to cramp up Thursday night at the game, he got scared.
About his knee, Paul said, “Coming back, you have to get over the anxiety. There’s a saying we have, usually for these away games – ‘we all we got.’
He said the pain got serious Thursday night.
In preparing for the match against the well-known Rams, Collins said he not only paid attention to last season’s team beforehand, but ran scouting reports on Florida also. He said, “After being so successful there, I expected him (Grant) to do that here.”
The Rams next game is an exhibition match Wednesday night at 7 p.m. against Virginia Union at the Siegel Center. It will be a good chance to find out if the Rams have improved in their overall ability to adapt to opponents’ strengths and exploit weaknesses.