Rams back in championship after holding off epic Mason comeback

Quinn Casteel
Assistant Sports Editor
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With five minutes left in VCU’s (27-6, 15-3) 74-64 win over George Mason (24-9, 14-4) on Sunday, and the Rams holding a nine-point lead, Shaka Smart and point guard Darius Theus were at a crossroads: Sit on the ball and milk the clock, or continue to attack.

“It’s a fine line, and it’s something that we need to get better at, to be honest with you,” Smart told The CT after the game. “When you get up by a big margin, you want the clock to run; you want to be smart. Conventional wisdom says you should be more conservative, but today that worked against us.”

It was a sticky dilemma, perhaps even a Catch-22 because if they tried to run out the clock, they would have put the offense at a disadvantage and risk wasting possessions as the Patriots rode a wave of momentum. However, if they kept playing for transition baskets, they would risk giving Mason an excess of possessions and opportunities. Luckily for the Rams, Smart and Theus found a medium between the two evils as some timely free-throw shooting sealed the game for VCU.

“We knew they weren’t going to give up that easily,” Theus, who recorded seven assists, three steals and five points, said. “We would throw a few blows, they would throw a few blows, but like Coach tells us we keep battling for 40 minutes, and you saw the outcome. We did our job.”

“I was just telling Darius, ‘Run the show, make sure we get a great shot, make sure we eat all passes (meaning step out on passes),’ and he did a nice job of making sure we did that,” Smart added.

Despite the fact that his team scored the game’s first 22 points and led by as many as 28 in the first half, Smart said something didn’t quite feel right at halftime.

“It was a strange halftime speech for us because we were up 16 but at the same time didn’t feel like we were playing very well,” he said.

Mason trailed 41-13 at one point in the first half, but showed fortitude by getting the lead to as few as six in the second half. Bradford Burgess said that he and the coaching staff knew the Patriots would go on a run; it was just a matter of how big of a run that would be, and how VCU would respond.

Burgess and the Rams responded well enough, which mentally was a difficult task considering how the game began, with things being seemingly over five minutes into the game and VCU leading by 20. VCU connected on its first seven three-point attempts and hit 11 on the evening, with five coming from Burgess and four from Troy Daniels. Burgess finished with 20 points, and Daniels had 17 along with six rebounds and one of his best defensive performances all season.

With the win, VCU takes the season series 2-1 over Mason, and advances to the CAA title game to face Drexel on Monday night at 7 p.m. The Rams also improved their chances of earning an at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament, should they fail to pick up an automatic bid by beating the Dragons in the championship.

However, the VCU players don’t have their minds on the dreaded bubble or any sort of Bracketology for that matter. They want the automatic bid.

“I’m pretty sure they’re (the selection committee) looking at us more now, but we don’t want to put it in their hands,” Briante Weber said.

Weber and VCU are one win away from taking it out of the committee’s hands, but will have to hand Drexel its first loss in 20 games in order to do so.