Men’s basketball loses season opener to McNeese State, 76-65

Thailon Wilson, Sports Editor

After the exhibition win against Mars Hill, VCU men’s basketball played their first official non-conference matchup against former VCU head coach Will Wade’s McNeese State University and lost 76-65.

The game started with   Max Shulga making a three-pointer to create the first lead of the game, 3-0.

Shulga said he really enjoyed his first game playing in the Stu in front of the fans. 

“I loved the energy, and it was more than I expected to be honest,” Shulga said. “The Stu was packed out, but unfortunately we did not come up with the win.” 

The first five minutes of the game went back-and-forth between the Rams and the Cowboys trading baskets which ultimately led to a tied 6-6 game with 15 minutes left in the first half.

McNeese State went on a 7-0 streak in a minute to give the Cowboys a 13-6 lead. 

McNeese State graduate guard Shahada Wells had a team-high 23 points for the Cowboys.

VCU head coach Ryan Odom said Wells is a great player and his speed is hard to deal with.

“[His] pace to the game is really good,” Odom said. “He’s a good player and he was able to get downhill on us quite a bit.”

VCU scraped away at the Cowboy lead, but McNeese would continue to hit shots and maintained a 28-15 going into the eight-minute media timeout.

McNeese continued to move the ball around and scored at will to go up 38-20 with four minutes to go in the half.

VCU went on a 9-3 run to end the half and lowered the Cowboys lead to 41-29 going into the second half.

Odom said he liked that even though the team went down, they were able to still play and go on runs.

“We got down 20 and our guys were shell-shocked, but to their credit they came back and scored,” Odom said.

The black and gold continued their momentum going into the second half and chipped away the lead to under 10 at 49-41 with 14 minutes left in the game.

McNeese ran the lead back up with some playmaking and three-pointers which gave the Cowboys a 59-46 lead with 11 minutes left.

The black and gold shot only 30.6% from the arc tonight, according to StatBroadcast.

VCU senior guard Zeb Jackson said he took shots within the style of play of the team, but they weren’t dropping.

“I feel like I shot shots that I work on all the time, and I feel like a couple of them definitely went in and out, unfortunately,” Jackson said.

VCU and McNeese stopped the runs and trends style of play and went into a dogfight of scoring baskets back-to-back, but the Cowboys 64-54 lead remained with 4 minutes left.

Jackson said the team never fell out of the game, but McNeese kept making the little shots to keep the game away. 

“It was never a point where we felt we were out of it,” Jackson said. 

The Rams tried to claw back into the match but were not able to do so and the Cowboys beat the Rams 76-65. 

Odom said the team is now focused on getting better for the next matchup against Samford on Nov. 10.

“The approach is, obviously, we’ve got to get better, and we’ve got to understand why,” Odom said. “I’ve got to help them more than I did tonight, to make sure that they understand how good they can be and how good they are.”

VCU Rams will play against the Samford University Bulldogs at the Stuart C. Siegel Center on Nov. 10 at 7 p.m.