ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 16, 1997 TAG: 9702180041
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL UTHMAN STAFF WRITER
THE MAROONS MOVE closer to locking up the top seed in the ODAC men's tournament by beating the Generals 82-54.
Chris Zupko has a name for the Roanoke College men's basketball team.
``We're the luckiest team in America,'' said the Maroons assistant coach.
Zupko was referring to the fact that with Virginia Wesleyan's loss Saturday at Emory & Henry, Roanoke was in position to move into a first-place tie atop the Old Dominion Athletic Conference standings. All that was needed was a victory over Washington and Lee on Saturday night at the Bast Center.
The Maroons didn't need luck to accomplish the task. Roanoke cast aside the league's last-place team 82-54 before a season-high crowd of 1,749.
The result was expected. The Generals have not won since Dec.6, 1996, a span of 16 games. And after a five-game losing streak two weeks ago, the Maroons had a chance to nearly seal up the ODAC regular-season title. By holding W&L to its lowest points total in the series since the Generals' 57-51 loss in 1987, Roanoke moved closer to the crown.
The Maroons (17-6 overall, 12-5 ODAC) moved into a first-place tie with Wesleyan, but hold the tie-breaker advantage by virtue of their two victories. Roanoke has one regular-season game remaining, Monday at home against Guilford.
``The regular-season championship may be meaningless, but it would be great for our veterans to go into the tournament with the mindset that we're the No.1 seed,'' said Page Moir, the Maroons' head coach.
At the opposite end of the league spectrum is W&L (2-20, 1-15), which is mathematically eliminated from next week's eight-team ODAC tournament. Playing a lineup made up almost exclusively of freshmen and sophomores, the Generals have been a team of good intentions but little else this season. Every good pass or nice steal seems to lead to bad things for these guys. Lately, it has been difficult for W&L to find purpose.
``We tried to motivate to be a spoiler,'' said Kevin Moore, the Generals' coach. ``We said, `Let's not allow them to win a second consecutive league championship.'''
W&L heeded those words for most of the first half. The Generals trailed 30-14 with a little more than five minutes left, but they closed to 30-23 on Kelly Dyer's signature one-handed stick-back with 1:32 to play before the break. But in the next 30 seconds, Maroons forward Derek Bryant came off a screen and sank a 3-pointer and Jason Bishop made a driving layup to push the lead back to 12, 35-23.
``We had the opportunity to get the ball back, but they took it away,'' Moore said. ``Right then it looked like we packed it in.''
Moore conceded his players may be eager for the season to end, considering they haven't won for more than two months. With a few minutes gone in the second half, all of the Generals may have been eager for Saturday night's game to end, too.
A 10-0 run gave Roanoke a 56-35 lead with 9:47 to play and gave Moir a cozy feeling on the bench. That was because his top reserves - Bryant, Dewayne Bullock and Courtney Fitch - scored eight of those 10 points.
``We were kind of goofing around, and they came in and stretched the lead up to 20 in a five-minute span,'' Moir said. ``Those guys really were the key to us getting the game under control.''
The goofing around resumed at that point, with the Maroons attempting alley-oop dunks each time down the floor. Only one, from Bishop to freshman Kyle Murphy, was successful. This is the ODAC, after all.
Murphy's dunk made it 67-43 and left the crowd leaping in the stands and streaming for the exits.
Luck probably didn't cross their minds, but stronger hopes of an ODAC title surely did.
'NOKE NOTES: Maroons point guard Nathan Hungate missed his first start since the 1996 ODAC tournament. Hungate began the game on the bench because Bryant was a ceremonial senior starter. ... With a career-high eight assists, Bishop moved into fourth place on Roanoke's all-time list with 352. ...
W&L freshman forward Gavin Dean entered the game having made his past six shots. He missed his first attempt of the game. ... Randy Neal, a former All-ACC linebacker at Virginia, attended the women's game before the men's matchup. Neal dates W&L assistant coach Charleata Beale, a former UVa women's star.
NOTE: Please see microfilm for scores.
LENGTH: Medium: 80 linesby CNB