After beating UMASS on Friday, VCU advanced to the Atlantic 10 semifinals on Saturday. The Davidson Wildcats pulled off an amazing overtime comeback against St. Bonaventure to advance to play the Rams.
Fortunately, the would be the only comeback the Wildcats had in them as the Rams handled Davidson, 76-54 and will advance to the Atlantic 10 finals on Sunday to face St. Joseph’s who defeated the #1 seed Dayton.
It was a full team effort in the win for the Rams and this time around, VCU shot better from behind the arc. After shooting just 1-16 from deep against UMASS, the Rams were able to connect on 10 of 25 this time around.
Senior Korey Billbury led all scorers for VCU with 17 points on 7-15 shooting (3-5 from three point range). Junior Mo Alie-Cox chipped in 13 points while junior Jequan Lewis contributed 11 points.
VCU’s bigs off the bench played a large role. Sophomore Justin Tillman scored 4 points but was able to grab 5 rebounds while Junior Ahmed Hamdy Mohamed scored 5 points and collected 6 rebounds.
VCU’s defense was able to limit Davidson’s junior guard, Jack Gibbs to just 4 points and 3 assists while forcing him to turn it over 4 times.
The Atlantic 10 finals against St. Joseph’s will be the second time the teams have matched up this season. Their first meeting was on Tuesday, January 5th, which saw VCU fight back to win 85-82.
The finals will air live on CBS Sunday at 12:30pm and the winner will earn an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
