Rams bull-y South Florida with second-half surge

Quinn Casteel
Assistant Sports Editor
Commonwealth Times Sports’ Twitter

Following a near three-week hiatus between home games, VCU returned to Richmond with a vengeance on Wednesday night, dismantling South Florida 69-46.

The Rams and Bulls matched each other bucket-for-bucket in the first half and went into the break tied at 28, but VCU owned the second half, outscoring USF by 23 points.

The story of the night was VCU’s stifling defensive effort. They allowed just 18 points in the second half and forced 15 USF turnovers, 11 of which came from steals and two from shot-clock violations which were direct results of team-wide defensive tenacity.

“That’s been the Achilles heel for us this season, second half defense,” Bradford Burgess said. “We just wanted to keep our defensive intensity up and play a great second half. It shows in a lot of games – when we sit down and get stops, we win.”

Juvonte Reddic, DJ Haley and Burgess overpowered South Florida’s big men, who were depleted by injuries and could not match the physicality of the Rams’ frontcourt. Reddic led all players with nine rebounds, four on the offensive side. He also had a defiant block of USF forward Ron Anderson to force a shot-clock violation just seconds after Rob Brandenberg blocked a three-point attempt in the midst of VCU’s run in the second half.

“I thought all the post players for VCU came out and executed their game plan,” Anderson said. “In the second half, I felt like they turned it up to that second notch, and it gave me a tough number. Right now we’re waiting on (Augustus Gilchrist) to come back, but for this game they had more numbers out there.”

Anderson had 15 points and matched Reddic’s nine rebounds in 32 minutes of physical basketball for the Bulls, who were down to just seven healthy players by the end of the game.

VCU’s offense was an exact science in the second half as Havoc and the half-court game began to take shape. Darius Theus played statistically his most efficient game of the season, racking up six assists and had no turnovers for the first time all year.

“I felt like I played aggressive and was calm the whole game,” Theus said. “My teammates give me a lot of confidence, and they told me that no one could stay in front of me, so they told me to attack. And when I attacked, and someone stepped in front of me, I just made the extra pass.”

Theus also had 13 points on 6-of-10 shooting, which is his highest output of the season. But perhaps more important than his individual numbers was the way he facilitated the offense, as the Rams ran a balanced attack with four players reaching double figures.

In addition to Theus’ 13, Troy Daniels had 17 with five three-pointers, Burgess had 15 and Brandenberg contributed 10 on top of a tenacious defensive effort.

Shaka Smart said the team has made “really good progress” since they played their last home game 19 days ago in the season opener against St. Francis (Pa.), and it was the three weeks away from Richmond that made them better as a unit.

“You spend a lot of time together when you’re on the road,” Smart said. “After one of the games in Charleston we were up till three in the morning watching tape as a team … the time around each other with our players and our staff is really good for our team because we’re developing leadership and we’re developing roles.”

The Rams will be back on the road this weekend when they travel to Washington, D.C. for the BB&T Classic and a matchup with George Washington of the Atlantic 10 on Sunday afternoon.

A crowd of 7,116 represented the Siegel Center’s sixth straight sell-out. VCU’s win over South Florida marks the second win in the three games against schools from the Big East with an average margin of victory of 20.5 points.

Photos by Ian Myers