The Collegian
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Spiders trounce Billikens, 62-36, avoids season sweep

The University of Richmond men's basketball team scored more points in the first half than Saint Louis University did in the entire game as the Spiders defeated the Billikens 62-36 on a snowy Saturday afternoon at the Robins Center.

The Spiders, who only trailed for the first two minutes of the game, quickly and strongly took away any hope that the Billikens had of sweeping the season series from the Spiders. The Spiders lost 63-58 in Saint Louis on Jan. 9.

"You remember what that [first] game was like and what you felt after that game," junior Justin Harper said. "It's an even better feeling after you can take care of business and even though it was a home game, you come out and play hard."

Back-to-back 3-pointers by senior David Gonzalvez gave Richmond an 11-4 lead and started the rout of Saint Louis. By the end of the first half, the lead was 37-20 and during the second half, the lead grew to as many as 30.

The Spiders held a big advantage in the turnover category. Saint Louis turned the ball over 23 times, which led to 24 points for Richmond. The Spiders' ball-handling was much better and they only were turned over 10 times.

"We came out with great defensive intensity," sophomore Darrius Garrett said. "I couldn't get too much on going on the offensive end so I wanted to make sure I made it up on the defensive end in this game. For what I didn't score I wanted to make sure they didn't score."

Although Garrett scored only three points -- all of them from the free-throw line -- he grabbed five rebounds and blocked four shots while altering many other shots. Garrett set a school and Atlantic 10 Conference record earlier this year with 14 blocks in the Spiders' overtime victory against University of Massachusetts on Jan. 13.

Harper led the way with 16 points as the Spiders improved to 16-6 and 5-2 in the A-10. Gonzalvez and sophomore Francis Cedric-Martel added 10 points each. Richmond got only six points from star junior Kevin Anderson who was averaging 18 points per game headed into Saturday.

"I think the stat I like the most is that he only played 29 minutes and the fact that he didn't have a huge offensive game and we were still able to win by a large margin," Richmond coach Chris Mooney said about Anderson, who was averaging 37 minutes per game. "That's important. That shows that maybe we are a little bit more well rounded than we were earlier in the year."

No Richmond player logged more than 30 minutes as Richmond coach Chris Mooney had substitutes play the last six minutes of the game.

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Despite inches of snow falling outside, 3,193 people attended the game. Mooney said the crowd turnout was great.

Twenty-eight of the Billikens' 36 points came from the combination of sophomores Kwamain Mitchell and Willie Reed. Saint Louis was 0-10 from behind the 3-point arc and missed all three of its free throws.

"I don't know how you're 18 or 19 years old and you come out flat," SLU coach Rick Majerus said. "But we were flat and [the Spiders] were on top of their game. And it was game over. Period."

Mooney and his staff were wearing sneakers to promote awareness for cancer as part of the Coaches vs. Cancer program.

Richmond will travel to Philadelphia to play Saint Joseph's University to play at 7 p.m. on Feb. 3.

Contact staff writer Andrew Prezioso at andrew.prezioso@richmond.edu

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