Vincent Orange, fighting Kwame Brown for Gray’s seat, went with a smaller Cadillac SUV than his competitor. What, he couldn’t afford an orange paint job?

Photo by ohad*.

It was a light week in college basketball, as most teams shift from the travel-heavy preseason tournament/cash-grab parade to mentally and physically prepare for run up to a grueling conference schedule — not to mention the need to leave time for student athletes to actually take their exams. Of course, that’s not to say that there wasn’t plenty of hoops on the platter.

At the top of the list was the city rivalry between Virginia Commonwealth and Richmond. VCU, who disappointingly dropped their conference opener last week, was out for some redemption. They found it, using an impressive second half to beat the Spiders 65-57 last night. It was a streaky game: the Rams missed 17 of their first 22 shots, but then went on a 19-4 run to start the second half, and held Richmond to two baskets in the final six minutes of the game. What carried VCU to victory despite a lack of rhythm was their success at the free throw line — 23 free points from the charity stripe, as opposed to Richmond’s four. Both these teams will be in the tournament come March, and at least one will win a game there. Mark it down.

Now the fact that we have to go to Richmond to mention a real “city game,” well, that’s another topic for another day.

The Hi:

  • One team who didn’t have a quiet week? Georgetown. The Hoyas took full advantage of the spotlight with a pair of resume-building wins: outlasting #22 Butler on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden on the back of Greg Monroe’s career-high 24 points and 15 rebounds, and using a 21-2 run to smoke #17 Washington in Los Angeles yesterday afternoon. The Hoyas are without a doubt the best team in the region at the moment, and look like definite contenders for the Big East crown, especially if Monroe ever gets motivated to tap into his full potential game in, game out.
  • VMI Century Watch: Virginia Tech fell two points short, but managed to keep the high octane Keydets to 73 points, no small feat. (Though, we really have to wonder whether reports calling 98 points against VMI “impressive” have looked at some of the Keydets box scores from the last year or two.) Seton Hall had no such problems, putting 134 on the Keydets yesterday afternoon. 134 points in regulation! With VMI’s 107 point output, our century watch (the number of times VMI has scored or allowed 100 or more) now stands at 8. Here’s to the death of defense.
Filed Under: College Basketball, sports, the hi-lo, weekend,