A-10 Tournament: VCU defeats Mason to win Championship

Final Score: (No 1) VCU 68, (No 2) George Mason 63.
Location: Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.
Updated records: VCU 28-6. George Mason 26-8.

In a nutshell: It was pretty much what a conference championship's final game really should be -- two good teams going all out. Most of the points scored were hard to come by. Clearly, defense ruled and both teams fully deserved to win. 

The fierce battle continued into the last possession with the best team, at least for March 16, 2025, emerging from the ordeal with the league's title. That, along with the conference's coveted bid to Big Dance in hand. 

No doubt, both schools should be proud of the superior effort their teams exhibited. Moreover, most Virginians ought to be pleased with how two of their commonwealth's largest public universities' basketball programs performed in the season's national spotlight, under pressure.  

Stats: Max Shulga scored a game-high 18 points, in spite of being double-teamed frequently. He added four rebounds and three assists. Shulga's steady hand at point guard, for much of the game, was vital. 

Jack Clark scored 17 points and blocked three shots. Clark won the tournament's Most Outstanding Player award. 

Joe Bamisile scored 17 points, mostly driving to the rim. Luke Bamgboye contributed five points, eight rebounds and four blocks. The Rams held the Patriots to 34 percent shooting from the field. 

NOTES (Information provided by Chris Kowalczyk, VCU Assistant A.D.).

• VCU led by as many as 10 points with 9:08 to go, but George Mason whittled that advantage to just 59-58 with 2:27 left on back-to-back 3-pointers by Darius Maddox and Haynes. 
• But Shulga hit a stepback triple with 1:59 on the clock, and Bamgboye hammered home a two-handed putback dunk a short time later to keep the Patriots at bay at 64-60 with 67 seconds left. 
• Shulga and Bamisile combined to hit 4-of-4 from the free throw line in the final minute, and a late jumper by Haynes caromed wide as VCU held on. 
• VCU outrebounded George Mason 36-33. 
• The Rams have now won three A-10 Tournament titles (2015, 2023, 2025). 
• VCU has earned its 20^th NCAA berth, including its 14^th since 2004.

BOXSCORE

NEXT UP: VCU is a No. 11-seed in the NCAA tournament. The Rams will take on No. 6-seed BYU Cougars in Denver on Thursday. Tipoff: 4:05 p.m. TV: TNT.

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A-10: Rams stiff-arm Ramblers late rally

Final Score: (No. 1) VCU 62, (No 4) Loyola Chicago 55. 
Location: Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. 
Updated Records: VCU 27-6, Loyola Chicago 22-11.

In a nutshell: After trailing by small margins for most of the game, Loyola went on a 13-5 run, to take a 51-to-50 lead at the 5:10 mark of the second half. Then the Rams' smothering defense did its job and shut down the rally. Fifteen seconds later Zeb Jackson slammed home a dunk that sparked a 9-0 run. Meanwhile, VCU held Loyola without a field goal for the entirety of the game's final 5:10. 

Of the Capital One Arena's enthusiastic crowd, VCU fan Greg Marrs said, "The huge [VCU] fan contingent carried them through those final 2 minutes—it was louder than the Stu in here." 

Stats: Max Shulga scored 14 points and pulled down 10 rebounds. Phillip Russell scored 10 points. Jack Clark scored seven points and grabbed eight boards. Luke Bamgboye blocked four shots to go with the six points he scored.

NOTES (Information provided by Chris Kowalczyk, VCU Assistant A.D.).

• VCU shot 43.1 percent from the floor (22-of-51) and held Loyola to just 29.4 percent shooting from the field (20-of-68). 
• Loyola Chicago led 22-9 in offensive rebounds and held a 17-4 advantage in second chance points. 
• The Rams and Ramblers went back-and-forth in the first half with three ties and three lead changes. The teams were tied at 21-21 with 5:50 left before halftime, but a 14-2 VCU run capped off by a Russell 3-pointer gave the Rams a 35-23 advantage with 1:37 left before halftime. 
• VCU held a 36-27 lead at the half, after the Ramblers scored the final four points of the half. 
• The Rams led 45-38 with 10:08 left after a Bamgboye free throw, but the Ramblers went on a 13-5 run to take a 51-50 lead with 5:10 left.
• VCU then closed the game on an 11-4 run to pull away for the win.
• VCU advances to its ninth A-10 Championship game since joining the league in 2012-13.

BOXSCORE

NEXT UP: For the A-10 championship the Rams will face No. 2 seed George Mason. Tipoff at 1 p.m. on Sunday, March 16. TV: CBS.

A-10: VCU tops St. Bonaventure, 76-to-59

Final Score: (No. 1) VCU 76, (No. 8) St. Bonaventure 59.
Location: Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.
Updated Records: VCU 26-6, St. Bonaventure 22-11.

In a nutshell: VCU is the top-seeded team in the Atlantic 10 Conference Championship tournament and it certainly looked the part in defeating the No 8 seeded Saint Bonaventure, 76-to-59. From the game's first minute to its last, the confident Rams looked well prepared. 

After a bitter loss on Mar. 7 to Dayton at the Seigel Center, to finish their regular season, it appeared the Rams used the six-day layoff well to face the intensity of postseason play. For instance, Coach Ryan Odom used his depth to great advantage, as the Rams' bench outscored the Bonnies' bench by a whopping 30-to-5 margin. 

Stats: Jack Clark scored 17 points, to lead the Rams offense. He also grabbed six boards. Zeb Jackson (A-10 Sixth Man of the Year) scored 14 points. Brandon Jennings scored a career-high 12 points. Joe Bamisile was the fourth Ram to score in double figures with 13 points. 

Michael Belle grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds. Max Shulga had a bad game shooting, but he dished for 11 assists and got six rebounds. VCU outscored St. Bonaventure 21-6 in points off turnovers. 

NOTES (Information provided by Chris Kowalczyk, VCU Assistant A.D.).

• The Rams also owned a 38-26 edge in points in the paint. 
• VCU led just 27-23 with 3:24 left in the first half before using a 7-0 run capped off by a Clark layup to help build a 36-26 halftime advantage. 
• The Bonnies cut into VCU’s lead twice in the second half, getting with 43-38 with 13:36 left. VCU immediately answered with a Jennings.3-pointer as part of a 5-0 burst. 
• VCU only allowed St. Bonaventure to get as close as the 51-45 deficit for the remainder of the contest as the 9-0 run broke the game open.
• Max Shulga surpassed 1,000 points in a VCU uniform, becoming the 40th Ram to achieve the milestone. 
• VCU’s seven turnovers were the second-fewest this season, with the Rams committing six also in a win over St. Bonaventure back on Jan. 24.

NEXT UP: The Rams will face No. 4 seed Loyola Chicago. Tipoff at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 15. TV: CBS Sports Network.

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Dayton upsets VCU at Siegel Center

Final Score: Dayton 79, VCU 76.
Location: Siegel Center
Updated Records: Dayton 22-9, 12-6 in A-10. VCU 25-6, 15-3 in A-10.

In a nutshell: The Flyers began the game aggressively; with a hot hand the visitors raced to an 11-point lead over the Rams (16-to-5). That, while VCU was misfiring from both short and long range. 

Although the stunned home team played hard and eventually closed the gap, it never completely recovered from the early injury to its confidence. It all ended with Dayton stiff-arming a spirited VCU last-minute comeback. 

Thus, with its defense allowing 51 second half points! VCU fumbled away the last game of the regular season. It was the Rams only loss this year on its home court. 

Stats: Joe Bamisile scored a team-high 18 points, all in the second half. He also snatched eight rebounds. Max Shulga scored 16 points and got nine rebounds. Zeb Jackson scored 16 points and added three boards. The Rams sank just 5-of-30 of their attempts from 3-point range; that while Dayton’s made good on 9-of-23. 

NOTES: (Information provided by Chris Kowalczyk, VCU Assistant A.D.).

• VCU owned a 41-33 total rebound advantage over the Flyers, with a 19-11 advantage in offensive rebounds. The rebounding edge led to the Black and Gold notching 16 second-chance points compared to Dayton’s 11. 
• The Flyers started the contest on an 16-5 run before the Rams mounted a 17-7 run of their own to make it a 23-22 game with 3:12 remaining in the first half. 
• Bennet knocked down an and-one three-pointer and made the free throw with 1:39 remaining in the game to extend the Flyers’ lead to eight at 72-64 with 2:11 remaining. The Rams then rallied their own 14-7 run to bring the game within one with six seconds remaining.
• VCU had one final look at the final horn, but a contested 3-pointer did not fall.
• VCU saw its nine-game win streak snapped Friday. The Rams are 19-11 all-time against the Flyers.
• Graduate guard Phillip Russell missed the contest due to an ankle injury he sustained against Duquesne on Tuesday. 
• VCU has clinched a share the A-10 regular season crown, as well as the No. 1 overall seed in the upcoming conference tournament. 

BOXSCORE

NEXT UP: The Rams are the top seed in the upcoming A-10 tournament in D.C. It begins on Wednesday, March 12. VCU's first game is set for Friday, March 14. Tipoff at 11:30 a.m. TV: USA Network.

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Blood Isn't Just Red

Each terrible time we tend to ask the same sort of questions: 

• Did the mayhem stem from a humiliating rejection? 
• Why is it almost always a young white male? 
• Was it television or video games that made an already disturbed man into a crazy shooter? 
• The Internet? 
• What role did his family life play in bending his mind? 
• Were there some words of celebrities also rattling around in the shooter's head? 
• Did a dog tell him to do it?

Sorry, I can't offer any useful answers. However, pretending that people do things, even remarkably strange things, for a particular single reason doesn't usually get us much closer to the truth. 

So searching for an overriding motive for spraying bullets into a schoolroom, or a movie theater -- some clue to help make sense of it -- doesn't usually lead to any sort of satisfaction. Yet, to ease our stunning pain we always look, anyway. While we will likely never really make sense of how someone could do such a thing, our common sense tells us there's something about America's culture that has been contributing to these massacres. 

Certainly, the availability of the rapid-fire weapons facilitates the slaughter. Still, what else combines with that factor and should also be seen as a common denominator remains sort of mysterious? 

All that said, thanks to the OpEd editor at that time, Robert G. Holland, the piece that follows was published by the Richmond Times-Dispatch on its May 1, 1999 OpEd Page. The point the piece makes about the long-term effects of repeated images on television still seems apt to me. That's mostly because the lesson about the power of repetition I learned while working at WRNL, 54 years ago, is surely as true as ever.

Blood Isn’t Just Red
by F.T. Rea

Television has dominated the American cultural landscape for the past 50 years. A boon to modern life in many ways, television is nonetheless transmitting an endless stream of cruel and bloody images into everyone’s head.

However, if you’re still waiting for absolute proof that a steady diet of video violence can be harmful to the viewer, forget it. We’ll all be dead before such a thing can be proven. This is a common sense call that can and should be made without benefit of dueling experts. Short of blinding denial, any serious person can see that the influence television has on young minds is among the factors playing a role in the crime statistics.

How significant that role has been/is can be debated.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m as dedicated to protecting freedom of speech as the next guy. So perish the thought that I’m calling for the government to regulate violence on television. It’s not a matter of preventing a particular scene, or act, from being aired. The problem is that the flow of virtual mayhem is constant.

Eventually splattered blood becomes ambient: just another option for the art director.

My angle here is that in the marketplace of ideas, the repeated image has a decided advantage. The significance of repetition in advertising was taught to me over 25 years ago by a man named Lee Jackoway. He was a master salesman, veteran broadcaster, and my boss at WRNL-AM. And, like many in the advertising business, he enjoyed holding court and telling war stories.

He had found me struggling with the writing of some copy for a radio commercial. At the time he asked me a few questions and let it go. But later, in front of a group of salesmen and disc jockeys, Jackoway explained to his audience what I was doing was wrong. Basically, he said that instead of stretching to write good copy, the real effort should be focused on selling the client more time, so the ad spot would get additional exposure.

Essentially, Jackoway told us to forget about trying to be the next Stan Freeberg. Forget about cute copy and far-flung schemes. What matters is results. If you know the target audience and you have the right vehicle to reach it, then all you have to do is saturate that audience. If you hit that target often enough, the results are money in the bank.

Jackoway told us most of the large money spent on production went to satisfying the ego of the client, or to promoting the ad agency’s creativity. While he might have oversimplified the way ad biz works to make his point, my experience with media has brought me to the same bottom line: When all else fails, saturation works.

Take it from me, dear reader, it doesn’t matter how much you think you’re ignoring the commercials that are beamed your way; more often than not repetition bores the message into your head. Ask the average self-absorbed consumer why he chooses a particular motor oil or breakfast cereal, and chances are he’ll claim the thousands of commercials he paid no heed had nothing to do with his choices.

Meanwhile, good old Lee Jackoway knows that same chump is pouring Pennzoil on his Frosted Flakes because he has been influenced by aggressive advertising all day long, every day.

OK, if repetition works so well in television’s advertising, why would repetition fail to sell whatever messages stem from the rest of its fare? When you consider all the murders, all the rapes, all the malevolence that television dishes out 24 hours a day, it adds up. It has to.

What to do?

I have to believe that if the sponsors of the worst, most pointless violent programs felt the sting of a boycott from time to time, they would react. Check your history; boycotts work.

It’s not as though advertisers are intrinsically evil. No, they are merely trying to reach their target audience as cheaply as possible. The company that produces a commercial has no real interest in pickling your child’s brain with violence; it just wants to reach the kid with a promotional message.

If enough consumers eschew worthless programs and stop buying the products that sponsor them, the advertiser will change its strategy. It really is that simple.

As we all know: A day passes whether anything is accomplished or not. Well, parents, a childhood passes, too, whether anything of value is learned or not.

Maybe television is blocking your child off from a lesson that needs to be learned firsthand -- in the real world where blood isn’t just red, it’s wet.

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Determined VCU outlasts gritty Duquesne

Final Score: VCU 71, Duquesne 62
Location: UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse  in Pittsburgh.
Updated Records: VCU 25-5, 15-2 in A-10. Duquesne 13-17, 8-9 in A-10.

In a nutshell: It wasn't pretty. VCU found a way to win. In the doing, the Rams' ninth straight victory, they clinched at least a share of the Atlantic 10 Conference regular season title, plus they will be the No. 1 seed in the league’s upcoming championship tournament. 

Gritty Duquesne was better than its record suggested. So VCU had to dig down to find the will and determination to win on a night in which it didn't have its best stuff. The Rams got it done with a team effort.        

Stats: Max Shulga scored a game-high 22 points. He pretty much carried the team in the first half with a 15-point contribution. He added four rebounds, three steals and a block. Zeb Jackson came off the bench to score 16 points. He also grabbed  four rebounds and he made two steals. Jack Clark added seven points and pulled down a career-high 14 boards.

NOTES: (Information provided by Chris Kowalczyk, VCU Assistant A.D.).

• VCU shot 47 percent (14-of-30) from the field, including 4-of-10 from long range, on the way to a 37-29 halftime lead.
• The Rams’ defense forced 15 turnovers and held Duquesne to 41 percent (21-of-51) shooting. The Dukes were just 4-of-16 from the 3-point arc.
• The Rams owned a 38-33 advantage on the glass and corralled 14 offensive rebounds.
• Bamisile connected on a pair of buckets and Clark buried a 3-pointer during a 15-7 VCU burst that provided the Rams with a 37-27 cushion with 55 seconds left in the first half.
• The Rams expanded their lead to as many as 14 points early in the second half, only to watch the Dukes trim the margin to 46-42 with 14:46 left on eight straight points by Edwards. But VCU held firm and later pushed its advantage to 59-47 with 5:31 remaining on a layup and a 3-pointer by Jackson.
• VCU improved to 15-2 in A-10 play and clinched a share of the league’s regular season championship for the fourth time since joining the conference in 2012-13. The Rams shared the title in 2016 and claimed outright regular season crowns in 2019 and 2023. 
• VCU can win the A-10 championship outright with a win over Dayton Friday or a loss by George Mason. 

BOXSCORE

NEXT UP: VCU will host Dayton on Friday, March 7. Tipoff at 7 p.m. in what will be the regular season finale for both teams. TV: ESPN2.

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VCU glides past Davidson, 80-to-56

Final Score: VCU 80, Davidson 56.
Location: Siegel Center.
Updated Records: VCU 24-5, 14-2 in A-10). Davidson 16-13, 6-10 in A-10.

In a nutshell: It's that time of year; college basketball's annual madness of March is now underway. 

Meanwhile, during February the hot-handed VCU Rams made beating visiting teams before sellout Siegel Center crowds look pretty routine. Friday night's 24-point victory over the Davidson Wildcats ran VCU's current winning streak to eight consecutive tilts -- five at home, three on the road. 

The Rams outscored their eight February opponents by an average of 21.4 points. They have played those eight games with lots of confidence, punctuated by a few brief spells of nonchalance. 

However, when you begin a game with a 16-to-1 run, as VCU did with the Wildcats, it's rather difficult not to get a little cocky. Because VCU is a well-coached team, its occasional spells of nonchalance have been short and fairly easy to overcome ... so far. 

Stats: Jack Clark scored 18 points. He shot 7-for-9 from the field, including going 4-for-4 from 3-point range. He added four rebounds and two assists. Luke Bamgboye scored a career-high 17. In the doing, he converted 7-for-8 attempts from the field, while adding four rebounds and a block to his stat line. 

NOTES (Information provided by Chris Kowalczyk, VCU Assistant A.D.).

• The Rams opened the game with a 16-1 run, which was capped off by a Phillip Russell 3-pointer with 15:03 left in the first half. 
• The Black and Gold shot 51 percent (18-of-35) from the field and 46 percent (7-of-14) from beyond the arc in the first half on the way to a 43-19 lead. Jackson punctuated VCU’s first-half performance with a deep 3-pointer from the right wing as time expired in the period. 
• The Rams dominated the glass to the tune of a 43-25 advantage. The Black and Gold corralled 15 offensive rebounds. 
• VCU outscored the Wildcats 40-24 in the paint and 16-6 on second-chance opportunities. 
• Davidson shot just 37 percent (19-of-52) in the contest, including 6-of-22 from 3-point range. 
• VCU is 14-8 all-time against Davidson, and the Rams have won the past six meetings.

BOXSCORE

NEXT UP: VCU's last regular season road game will take place in Pittsburgh, to face Duquesne, on Tuesday, March 4. Tipoff at 7 p.m. TV: CBS Sports Network. 

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