Patriots survive VMI (Video Highlights)

It was a great night for guys to pad their stats as the Patriots came away with a 89-86 victory over VMI Tuesday night. The run-and-gun Keydets stormed back in the 2nd half but Mason just flat out beat them at their own game mixed a little bit more defense. Sherrod Wright set a new career mark with 24 points off the bench, including 18 in the first half. It's no surprise to see him do well in the transition game and while you can see in the highlights he got a lot of easy twos, it was still an impressive showing. Rashad Whack was another freshmen who shined last night scoring 9 points in 10 minutes of action. However the Patriots didn't need much more from Cam Long other than to just not let the game out of hand, and he did just that. Long's leadership coupled with Ryan Pearson's rebounding effort really made the difference in this one. They were finally able to dominate on the glass, as they should have and created a lot of second chance points. Luke Hancock had another great do-it-all kind of game, even with an in-your-face dunk (2:23 mark of the video above).

-Louis Birdsong's falling out has been Isaiah Tate's gain. I had written last week about how Larranaga was finally using him correctly and it continues to be working well. In 22 minutes last night he had only 1 turnover and 12 points. Hopefully he can continue to be a consistent guy on an inconsistent team.

-Defensively the Patriots kept the game in control and limited the three-point onslaught that VMI is used to throwing down. They never really got lured into playing the Keydets style of play but capitalized on the fast breaks when they needed to.

-VMI seemed to give up lay-ups like no one's business, which was expected, and it was good to see the young Patriots settle from them as was the gameplan. They needed to be disciplined and they were, scoring 52 of their points around the basket.

-This was another game were we didn't see much offense from starters Mike Morrison or Andre Cornelius. I don't necessarily know if this is a bad thing or not, I mean other guys were scoring but there are going to be certain games this season that efforts like that could hurt if freshmen aren't stepping up.