VCU Rams clinch No. 1 seed in CAA tournament

By Mike Harris
VCU Athletics

College basketball fans across the country sometimes refer to what will take place in the coming weeks as the "real" season — March Madness and all that.

A better term might be the "reward" season. Players and coaches put in too much time and effort throughout the year to dismiss what they do in the regular season as anything less than real. Those who do it the best are rewarded with postseason play.

The men's basketball team at Virginia Commonwealth University has positioned itself for a reward. For the second straight year, the Rams finished in first place in the Colonial Athletic Association and they will be the top seed in the CAA tournament Friday through Monday at the Richmond Coliseum.

A guaranteed award for finishing first is postseason. VCU will definitely get a spot in the National Invitation Tournament, which is a very nice reward. But there's a bigger one out there and that's what the Rams want. The CAA tournament winner earns an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

The regular season was "the real one, too," said Eric Maynor, the VCU junior guard who was the CAA's preseason player of the year and is a strong candidate for the postseason award. "It maybe set us up for something bigger than a conference championship. It really gets started" this weekend.

The CAA race ended up looking pretty one-sided, though it was a tight race going into the final week. VCU won 15 of 18 league games, finishing three games ahead of second-place UNC Wilmington. But the Rams didn't secure the title until they beat UNCW in the final home game of the season.

Overall, VCU finished 23-6 and won 20 of its final 23 games. The total was a pleasant surprise, admitted second-year head coach Anthony Grant.

"You hope for 18 wins," Grant said. "I'm really happy with the way our team grew. I felt like coming into the year, one thing that would be important would be 'would our team continue to grow and develop over the year?' I think this team had a chance to get better and I think we've done that.

"You've seen growth not only with our freshmen and our newcomers but with our veterans as well. I think the leadership and maturity and growth you want to see as you go through the season have improved. Hopefully we'll continue to play with a sense of urgency and play our best basketball as we head into the tournament."

Measuring points of pride

That VCU is in its current position is testament to three things.

Grant's coaching. He was the CAA Coach of the Year in 2007 and may have outdone himself this season. Granted, he had Maynor, Jamal Shuler, Wil Fameni and Michael Anderson returning among others, but he was also without career 1,000-point scorers Jesse Pellot-Rosa and B.A. Walker. VCU couldn't be a success without blending in some freshmen and it takes a deft coaching hand to pull that off.

The leadership of the returnees. Maynor's play and Shuler's play — those wouldn't be enough. They had to help their young teammates develop.

The caliber of the young players. The freshman class, most of it recruited out of Florida, was well regarded but that doesn't always translate into results — especially right away. Guard Joey Rodriguez became a starter. Center Larry Sanders became a superb shot blocker — at one point late in the season, he had more blocks than four teams in the CAA. At various times, Lance Kearse, Brandon Rozzell, Ed Nixon and Myk Brown stepped up and contributed.

"I knew coming in, all those guys were good basketball players," Maynor said. "They were going to step in. I didn't know when they were going to come around but obviously they came around early and we were able to win a championship."

Grant shared the same confidence and the same concern. When would it happen?

"That was obviously one of the things we talked about," he said. "We had to blend a level of experience with some newness — how that would happen and the importance of that happening.

"I think our veterans took the lead and let the young guys know from the beginning of the year: 'We need you guys to step up, we have to become a team and we all have to work together.' Over the course of the year, different lessons, different things have come up to really emphasize that and demonstrate that, and I think our young guys have done a good job of allowing themselves to be led and our veterans have done a good job of tempering that leadership with being good teammates, showing the examples that needed to be set.  

"I'm really proud of the way our guys handled that process."

The freshmen showed up during the summer and Rodriguez said the bonding took place faster than it ever had with any group of teammates he'd played with previously.

"It only took a couple of weeks," he said. "I was surprised at how quickly we all adapted." The veterans, Rodriguez said, "helped so much. Without them, a lot of this year would be a struggle."

Ramping up for the CAA crown

The Rams stood at 3-3 after six games as they worked to get to know each other on the court. From there, they took off — two of the three losses the rest of the way were by a single point. The push started with the first December game, when the Rams upended Maryland of the Atlantic Coast Conference 85-76 at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. Maynor and Shuler had 55 of the team's points. Rodriguez also made a mark with 10 points and three assists in that game.

Other highlights of the season included a 20-point victory at home over non-league rival Richmond, which is one of the most improved teams in the Atlantic 10. VCU went on the road to win at Bradley in a return of last year's Bracket Busters game, and it won at Akron in the 2008 Bracket Busters game.

Then there were the 15 victories in the CAA — the Rams' 31 league victories the past two seasons are the most ever for a CAA squad.

"I really think as a basketball team we took advantage of our depth and the opportunity every day to push each other and get better," Grant said. "I think we've done that over the course of the year."

Getting down to business

Despite the three-game bulge in the regular season, no one in the VCU camp expects the CAA tournament to be a breeze. The league has too much depth. The 12th-seeded team, Georgia State, lost by only two to the Rams in one meeting and took VCU to overtime before losing in the other. VCU must win three games in three days to repeat as tournament champion and none of the three figures to be easy.

Should the Rams win, they go back to the NCAA tournament for the second straight year and third time in the past five. 

It has been more than 20 years since VCU got in the tournament with an at-large bid. VCU went as CAA champions in 1996, 2004 and 2007. If the Rams do not win the 2008 CAA tournament, they may be able to get an at-large bid and get in the NCAA tournament anyway. They know that is not the easy route to take.

"We're proud of the body of work we've had over the course of the season," Grant said. "The thing we've talked about all year is controlling our own destiny — one game at a time, preparing for the opponent in front of us and leaving nothing to chance.

"It would be a nice feeling going into that bye week knowing we've taken care of business and knowing that we're going to play in the NCAA tournament."