The Andrew Wilson era at VMI saw the Keydets hang around for a while with Richmond, but the Spiders dominated in the second half on their way to a 69-48 win at the Robins Center on Monday.
VMI senior Sean Conway led the Keydets with a game-high 17 points and 13 rebounds for his seventh career double-double. Junior Devin Butler came off the bench and provided 10 points, while freshman starting guard Asher Woods finished with eight points.
Richmond built a 10-point lead at three separate points of the first half, but the Keydets hung tough and kept the score close as the Spiders took a 28-21 advantage into the break.
VMI trailed by just 10 points midway through the second half when Conway logged a three-pointer at the 10:20 mark to make the score 42-32 in favor of the Spiders.
Following a Tyler Burton trey, the Spiders built their largest lead of the game at 26 points as Richmond led, 62-36, with four minutes left in regulation.
Jason Nelson led the Spiders with 13 points throughout the contest, followed by 11 from Isaiah Bigelow.
Postgame: VMI head coach Andrew Wilson
“I’m really, really proud of these guys tonight. They competed so hard. We had a starter go down in the first 10 minutes of the game, and we held Richmond – a high-level offensive team -to 28 points in the first half. I was very happy with our defensive effort.
“We got a lot of good shots, we just weren’t able to knock them down tonight. Five of our top eight guys are freshmen. What an experience for our younger guys, playing against an NCAA Tournament team from last year which beat Iowa and made it to the round of 32.
“There are a lot of positive things to take away from this game and we are going to build off this to get better. We are just really happy with the overall effort.”
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Chris Graham
