[Sly Fox]

We head up to Lexington tonight to face a tough Keydets squad.

Tipoff was moved form this afternoon to 8pm tonight.

Consider this the game thread.

[bigsmooth]

scar and myself are heading up now! let's hope the men come out and play hard!

[TDDance234]

Any updates on the game? Campus is packed here for Woman's game - didn't go myself. Hopefully, we'll be rockin' the Vines for the next mens game as well.

[thesportscritic]

VMI 84 LU 68.

[thesportscritic]

We are going to get slaughtered at Winthrop on Thursday if this type of play continues. If we play well still we would lose by 20 or so at Winthrop.

[A.G.]

20? We could lose by 40 after getting thumped at VMI. It could be setting up for a LONG year.

[Sly Fox]

There's no sugarcoating this type of defeat. But obviously we don't have any time to fret over it with the Eagles coming up so quickly.

[TDDance234]

This team stinks.

It's time to juggle the lineup a little bit. Russell is not getting the job done underneath, I think we need to go small - maybe even playing Doug at the 5 and just run teams ragged. But losing to a bad VMI team, by that big a margian is sick.

[TIMSCAR20]

Guys,

I have seen VMI play several times this season making that aweful, aweful drive out to Lexington and I can tell you they are not that bad. Way better coached than last year and quite frankly have a few guys that can score points including the twins, Chavis and Travis Holmes. Reggie Williams is playing well enough to already be considered for POY as a soph. This was not a "bad" loss in the sense of losing to a bad team. I was there and it was a bad performance especially in the first half and we missed a few shots in the second half that could have made it closer at the end when we made our run but all in all I think we need to have a little more respect for the opponents in the big south especially on their home court.

[Ed Dantes]

Wow. What a stunning loss. It just goes to show what caliber team we are, when you see how we lose to a team such as VMI... badly. I mean you look at an 18 point loss and say that maybe it's not so bad, but then if you look at the fact that we were down early in the game 41-18... It IS as bad as it could have been.

And if you look, the FG% is roughly even (45 to 40%), and we have fewer turnovers than them (13-10)... But they waxed us because they had 50 percent more rebounds than us (46-30).

Just absolutely awful. These guys really stink.

[Chris Lang]

Well, I used the term "embarrassing" in my story, not really as a slap at VMI but more as a slap at the way Liberty played in that first half. VMI is not a bad team. They're not great and they have major flaws, especially up front, but Liberty looked like it didn't even try at times in the first half.

I've said before that I don't think the loss of Dees is the end all to this thing. Sure, it hurts. But look at last night, for example. Liberty gets NOTHING out of the five spot again. Rell Porter looked OK at the four, but he's really a three. As is Hubbard, who did just fine scoring 20 points. There is only one true five on the roster (Monroe) and he's terrible right now. Porter isn't stout enough to back people down and score. Nor is Bigby, who is often paired against a guy two inches taller than him. Eck can't even hold on to the ball right now. So what you have is a team with no point guard (Risher isn't getting the job done, and Holland is still too new), no center, no post presence and about nine two guards.

It's pretty predictable and easy to stop.

I'll give Dunton some props here. He actually found a way to get his team back in that Marist game when it really had no business doing so. But he's working with a very small hand right now and he's running out of combinations. It's going to be a struggle between Liberty, Chuck South and Coastal to see who grabs that No. 8 seed and makes the tourney.

[Guest]

I agree about Russel not getting it done underneath. I've always said he should play at the 4. He's not a back to the basket kind of guy. Imagine the center posting up and kicking out to a 7 foot guy with a sweet 15 foot jumper. I know it's kind of unorthodox to not have your tallest guy playing at the 5 but he would creat so many tuff matchups. The only concern there is him playing there on D, and I don't think that would be too much of a problem since he's pretty mobile himself.

[LUconn]

^^ that was me. I didn't know I wasn't signed in.

[WinthropEagleFan]

Well, I used the term "embarrassing" in my story, not really as a slap at VMI but more as a slap at the way Liberty played in that first half. VMI is not a bad team. They're not great and they have major flaws, especially up front, but Liberty looked like it didn't even try at times in the first half.

I've said before that I don't think the loss of Dees is the end all to this thing. Sure, it hurts. But look at last night, for example. Liberty gets NOTHING out of the five spot again. Rell Porter looked OK at the four, but he's really a three. As is Hubbard, who did just fine scoring 20 points. There is only one true five on the roster (Monroe) and he's terrible right now. Porter isn't stout enough to back people down and score. Nor is Bigby, who is often paired against a guy two inches taller than him. Eck can't even hold on to the ball right now. So what you have is a team with no point guard (Risher isn't getting the job done, and Holland is still too new), no center, no post presence and about nine two guards.

It's pretty predictable and easy to stop.

I'll give Dunton some props here. He actually found a way to get his team back in that Marist game when it really had no business doing so. But he's working with a very small hand right now and he's running out of combinations. It's going to be a struggle between Liberty, Chuck South and Coastal to see who grabs that No. 8 seed and makes the tourney.

Throw UNC Asheville into that mix too...they are so banged up right now (4 guys out for the season with injuries, 1 guy suspended for the rest of the year, and they might have lost Chad Mohn yesterday as he went down with what looked to be a bad ankle injury in the game against CSU), that I have a hard time seeing them winning many games this year. If Mohn can't play down the stretch, that leaves the Bulldogs with only 7 healthy scholarship players, without a true point guard or center left in their lineup.

[Stevev]

After the horrible football season we had I was hopeing the basketball would bring some excitement to LU sports. I guess I was wrong.

[Sly Fox]

Thanks for finding your way over here, Steve.

Hopefully the trip to Lexington turns out to be an aberration. Otherwise it could be a bumpy ride with Wintrop up next. But I prefer to stay optimistic.

[bigsmooth]

i get so tired when i hear people say "we lose to a team like VMI". these guys have talent and clearly put it to our butts. people are probably saying "we should beat a team like liberty". enough of the "we are so much better attitude". we are a bad team right now. again as larry goes we go. i was there and i saw it. at times anthony smith, rell porter, and damien hubbard show glimpses of being special...hubbard had a great game last night. bigby can bang but cant finish. russell tries but it is not happening. dunton did not use doug stewart enough last night IMHO. risher has really lost all confidence, and he pouts if he makes mistakes. yes we are young, and we lack consistency, we are going to struggle this year and will be near the bottom of the league. we will get better, but it is simply consistency and having somone other than larry score. im surprised the coaching staff did not pick up that if you pressure VMI they will turn it over. when we started to use full court pressure, VMI was coughing it up. it is really puzzling. SCAR and myself have seen VMI play quite a bit, and they have one player than can get the ball up the court. im not trying to be negative, im just stating facts here people. lets hope we can continue to mature and that hubbard, porter, and smith get some consistency.

[PAmedic]

First Half Dominance Lifts Keydets Over Flames

January 14, 2006 · Lexington, Va.

The homestanding Keydets outscored the Flames 45-20 in the opening 20 minutes of the game and then fended off a late charge by the Flames en route to an 84-68 Big South win over Liberty, Saturday evening, at Cameron Hall.

Liberty (4-11, 1-2 BSC) jumped out to a quick lead in the first half as a lay-up by Larry Blair (Jr., G, Charlotte, N.C.) gave the Flames a 6-2 lead at the 16:42 mark. However, VMI (7-8, 2-2 BSC) scored nine of the next 11 points in the game to take an 11-8 lead on a three-pointer by Chavis Holmes with 15:20 left to play in the half.

The Keydets continued to extend their lead over the next three minutes as a three-pointer by Reggie Williams pushed VMI’s lead to 18-10 before Damien Hubbard (Jr., G, Boyce, Va.) halted the scoring streak with a jumper at the 12:39 mark.

But the Flames would manage to hit just four field goals over the remainder of the period, while the Keydets outscored Liberty 25-8 over the final 12-plus minutes to take a 45-20 lead into the intermission at halftime. VMI shot 51.7 percent from the field in the opening period (15-of-29), while Liberty managed to hit just 33.3 percent (10-of-30) of its first half field goal attempts.

The Keydets looked like they were going to run away with the victory as Matt Murrer pulled down an offensive rebound and stuck it back to push VMI’s lead to 29 points, 53-24, with 16:25 left to play, but Liberty didn’t quit as the Flames slowly chipped away at the lead.

An old-fashion three-point play by Rell Porter (So., F, Pittsburg, Texas) trimmed the lead back to 19, 57-38, while Blair nailed a three-pointer on the next possession to get Liberty to within 16 at the 8:39 mark.

A lay-up by Murrer with 5:49 left to play pushed VMI’s lead back to 19 points, 67-48, but Liberty outscored the Keydets 12-3 over the next three minutes as a fast break lay-up by Blair cut the Keydets lead to 10, 70-60, with 3:09 left to play. However, the Keydets were solid from the free throw line down the stretch, while Murrer nailed three more baskets to seal the victory.

VMI finished the game 26-of-29 from the free throw line, while the Keydets dominated the Flames on the boards as VMI outrebounded Liberty, 46-30.

Williams led the Keydets with 30 points as the forward was 10-of-19 from the field and a perfect 8-of-8 from the free throw line, while adding a team-high 12 rebounds. Murrer followed with 16 points, while Preston Beverly came off the bench to add 10 points.

Blair paced the Flames with 28 points as he was 10-of-27 from the field, while tying for team-high honors with six rebounds. Hubbard netted a season-best 20 points as he was 9-of-11 from the field, while tying Blair with six boards.

Liberty return to action next Thursday when they conclude a brief two-game conference road swing when they travel to Rock Hill, S.C. to face defending Big South Conference champion Winthrop on Thursday at 7 p.m.

(Hubbard a bright spot)

[PAmedic]

courtesy of the fishwrap online (Nice to meet ya on Fri nite CHRIS!)

Williams lights up Flames

By Chris Lang
Lynchburg News & Advance
January 15, 2006

LEXINGTON - There had been evidence of this coming for a while. The recent slow starts against Radford and Marist were one indicator. The fact that Liberty's men's basketball team rarely does well unless Larry Blair is hitting just about every shot he takes was another.
Sometimes, it can look like Blair is a one-man team. But he needs some help sometimes, whether it be in the form of defense, ballhandling or screens from teammates. Liberty provided little of those things Saturday night at Cameron Hall and suffered one its more embarrassing defeats in a season strewn with losses.

Reggie Williams went unchecked for most of the night in leading the Keydets to a convincing 84-68 victory, which left VMI with a split of its four-game Big South-opening homestand.

At halftime, it was Liberty 20, Williams 16, which was indicative of just how easy VMI had it. The Flames (4-11, 1-2 Big South) offered little in the way of resistance.

Williams finished with 30 points, besting Blair, scored 28.

By the end of the half, already trailing by more than 20 points, Liberty started chucking up bad shots with no one in position to rebound misses. VMI (7-8, 2-2) would grab the rebound, launch a deep outlet pass and use numbers to score easy buckets. The Keydets led 45-20 at the break.

It was not the Flames' finest hour.

"It was a very poor performance in that first half," Liberty coach Randy Dunton said. "We've got nobody to blame but ourselves for that. ? I was as disappointed with that first half of play as I've been with any half since I've been coaching at Liberty."

Even the normally docile Blair turned irritable in the first half, pounding the ball on the floor in front of the Liberty bench. He rarely has shown frustration with his teammates this season, but he couldn't contain himself in the face of the Flames' awful effort.

"It was bad. We felt bad and we played bad," said wing Damien Hubbard, who scored a season-best 20 points and tied Blair for the team rebounding lead with six. "What made it worse was that we were prepared. Coaches got us prepared for everything they were going to do. But they just outplayed us in that first half."

The Keydets were without head coach Duggar Baucom, who has been out after undergoing surgery for an undisclosed ailment, for the fourth straight game. Twenty-six year-old Daniel Willis filled in just fine, though the Keydets' sloppy second half was enough to cause him to call a couple of timeouts.

After halftime, the game basically into a turnover filled rec-league affair with far too many "look at me" one-on-one moments on each side.

VMI didn't have to worry much. Its 25-point halftime lead held up.

Matt Murrer scored 16 points and grabbed eight rebounds and Preston Beverly scored 10 for the Keydets, who hit 26 of 29 foul shots. VMI held a 46-30 rebounding edge with Williams pulling down 12 boards.

This game looked a lot like Liberty's November loss to Longwood in Farmville. The Flames trailed by nearly 30 to the now 3-14 Lancers before making a brief rally to make the score respectable.

Liberty cut VMI's lead to as low as 10, but it never really had a chance. Had the Keydets played with the same effort and efficiency as they did before halftime, the margin of defeat could have been embarrassingly large.

"We executed in the first half, on offense and defense," Willis said. "Ultimately, that's why it went the way it did."

VMI fans weren't happy that Liberty was making a game of it, as evidenced by the hot dog one fan threw to the floor late in the second half.

Blair blew a dunk after making a second-half steal and caught nothing but air with a 3-pointer later on. The Liberty bench went scoreless until Evan Risher scored a basket with 47 seconds left. The Flames got two points from centers Eric Bigby, Russell Monroe and Jeremy Eck in 25 minutes between them.

It was not the way Liberty wanted to start a stretch in which it will play four of five on the road.

"You're in that time of the year when their bodies are absolutely starting to wilt, and you're on the road and you're struggling," Dunton said. "It's easy to take a step back mentally. This is where we need to take steps forward mentally. We weren't able to do that."

http://newsadvance.com/servlet/Satellit ... th=!sports

[krh44]

Not too make excuses but Lexington is a tough place to play especially w/ a young team. I think that someone on the old message board said that they didn't think that we had won at VMI. Which is probably true. I know that the year we won the conference I went to the game in Lexington. We were in first place and they were in last and they blew us out of the gym. Very rowdy crowd. I heard that the younger Keydets have to be there and they have to make a lot of noise or else. It doesn't get much easier. At Winthrop, BSC at home and a 3 game road trip.