The University of Richmond basketball team soundly defeated Gardner-Webb University 102-67 on Saturday, Nov 22.
This marks the fifth home game and fifth victory in a row for the Spiders and follows their crushing of Virginia Military Institute on Nov. 19.
This is also the first matchup between the two teams with the Spiders starting off the record 1-0.
The teams started the first half even with the Runnin’ Bulldogs leading 3-2, but Richmond quickly flipped the script, going for 16 over the next five minutes.
The two teams went on to both score points with Richmond keeping a strong lead from its previous run.
In the second half of the game, the Spiders started to grow their lead as multiple players scored points, led by junior guard Mikkel Tyne and graduate guard AJ Lopez.
Richmond ended the half scoring six points in the last minute. Senior forward Jonathan Beagle made a layup in the last play bringing the score to 62-30 for the Spiders.
After returning from halftime, Richmond continued its dominance, bringing its lead to over 40 points in the first eight minutes.
Gardner-Webb attempted to come back, shrinking the Spiders’ lead by several points until the last five minutes of the game, where Richmond reached 100 points.
The game ended with Runnin’ Bulldogs cutting the margin again, but it was too late. The Spiders were up by nearly 40 points.
This was the first game of the season where Richmond scored in the triple digits, with the most recent match being their opener in 2024 against the University of Mount Olive.
“We practiced everyday super hard, prepared for them really well, knew what we wanted to do going into the game and we just executed the game plan,” Lopez said in a postgame interview. “We have a really talented group this year and I’m just happy that my teammates found me and I could hit shots.”
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The score was spread out, with 11 players making baskets. Lopez led with 18 points followed by freshman guard Aiden Argabright showing 15 points. The Spiders made over half of the field goals and over 70% of free throws during the game.
“We played with great energy, our defense set a great tone early forcing a lot of turnovers early in the game and on offense we moved the ball very nicely and shot the ball extremely well,” Head Coach Chris Mooney said in a postgame interview. “That’s always great [11 players scoring points] today was very good and we shared the ball a lot”.
Richmond will play its first away game against Furman University on Thursday Nov. 27 at 11 a.m.
Contact sports writer Liam Gunawardena at liam.gunawardena@richmond.edu
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