Oklahoma NCAA Basketball: Scouting the No. 10 VCU Rams
By Chip Rouse
The second stop in the 2016 Oklahoma NCAA Basketball Tournament journey finds No. 10 Virginia Commonwealth awaiting the second-seeded Sooners.
The VCU Rams may not be as dangerous a team as they were the past several years when Shaka Smart, now the head man of Texas Longhorn basketball, was there, but they are plenty good enough to knock the Oklahoma out of this tournament if the Sooners fall into the trap of taking their Sunday opponent for granted.
Seedings make for a nice discussion point, but the reality is teams that allow their seed to do the talking and don’t take care of business on the court are probably not going to have a long run in this high-profile tournament pitting the best in college basketball against one another.
You don’t have to go very far to validate this point. Four Big 12 teams, all seeded higher than their 2016 first-round NCAA Tournament opponent, did not even make it to the first weekend. So much for the Big 12’s claim to being the equivalent in college basketball to what the Southeastern Conference is in football.
The Sooners, the No. 2 seed in the West Region, are one of the three teams still carrying the Big 12 banner in this year’s March Madness party, joining No. 1 overall seed Kansas and No. 4 seed Iowa State.
The Jayhawks and Cyclones are in action on Saturday, while the Sooners’ fate in the opening weekend of the tournament won’t be decided until Sunday.
Sooner fans are well aware of what Oklahoma has to offer in the round of 32, but what about Virginia Commonwealth?
The Rams (25-10) are making their 15th NCAA Tournament appearance overall and ninth trip to March Madness since 2004. They were one of three teams that tied for the Atlantic 10 Conference title this season (St. Bonaventure and Dayton were the others).
The 2011 Virginia Commonwealth team made it all the way to the Final Four.
The Rams are led on the offensive end by senior guard Melvin Johnson, who is averaging 17.2 points per game. He averages three made three-pointers per game and shoots 38 percent from the three-point line.
Three other VCU starters average in double digits in points: Korey Billbury (11.4), JeQuan Lewis (11.0) and Mo Alie-Cox (10.5).
In the Rams’ 75-67 opening-round victory over Oregon State, Lewis scored a game-high 21 points to go with eight assists and seven rebounds. In the same game, Alie-Cox added 20 points and a game-high eight rebounds.
In the believe it or not category, Virginia Commonwealth is the only team in the country, along with Kansas, that has produced at least 20 wins a season for the last decade.
Oklahoma is a seven-point favorite in the game, according to the Las Vegas oddsmakers.