LEXINGTON, Va. - Senior forward Grant Davis hit all eight shots from the floor including five 3-pointers to lead Birmingham-Southern over VMI, 82-49, in Big South Conference action Saturday afternoon at Cameron Hall.
Davis' 22 point-performance led all scorers and was the second highest scoring performance this season for the Arlington, Texas native. He also pulled down 12 rebounds for his fourth double-double game of the season.
Joining Davis in double figures scoring for the Panthers were Jakob Sigurdarson (19) and Shema Mbyirukira (10).
Birmingham-Southern (11-4, 4-1 Big South) won its fifth straight road game and sent the Keydets to their worst home loss since a 44-point setback to North Carolina (105-61) on December 15, 1996.
The Panthers tied a Cameron Hall record with 17 three-pointers out of 29 attempts. BSC's 58.6% clip beyond the arc surpassed its overall field goal shooting for the game - 57.1%.
BSC set the tone early in the game - racing to a 10-0 lead before the game was three minutes old when the Panthers canned a trio of three pointers - two from Sigurdarson. The Panthers led by as much as 24 points in the opening stanza when Mbyirukira converted a layup at the 6:38 mark.
Birmingham-Southern led 41-20 at the break, and was never threatened in the second half as the Keydets were unable to unable to shave the 21-point deficit . The Panthers led by as many as 37 points (77-40) when Joshua Bailey hit a jumper with 3:14 left.
VMI (3-12, 1-4 Big South) was held to 31% shooting (16-51) and went 1 for 18 in three-point shooting. The Keydets were led by senior forward Radee Skipworth, who extended his double figures scoring streak to 25 games. Junior forward Sam Mielnik had 10 points and seven rebounds for the Keydets.
The Keydets, who learned before the game that starting sophomore center Tadas Mankevicius will miss at least two weeks recuperating from a broken right hand sustained last Saturday at Winthrop, were outrebounded for the game, 36-25. Senior center Tim Allmond, recovering from a sprained ankle that sidelined him for three games in VMI's injury-plagued season, did not score and was limited to 15 minutes of action after picking up his fourth foul 15 seconds into the second half.
VMI will travel to Liberty Tuesday for a 7:00 tip-off, while Birmingham-Southern continues its road swing at Radford Monday night at 6:00 p.m.
VMI head coach Bart Bellairs - "They shot the lights out. They hit 17 three-pointers and we hit one. I give them a lot of credit - they not only shot well but they passed it well in order to do that. We're thin and we had a couple of guys not make the right rotations because they're playing in different positions. 17 for 29. They are a very good basketball team when they all their cylinders working. We didn't have any of ours going today. Our shooting was bad, but that doesn't concern me as much as the unforced turnovers. Into this part of the season, we have to know what we're doing well and not doing well, and unforced turnovers- when you've got guys wide open and throwing it out of bounds - that just shouldn't happen. We've got to really stress the fundamentals. We weren't ready to go today. I don't know what in the world it was. Birmingham-Southern's four man (Davis) was 5-5 for three-pointers and had a perfect day. I'm mad, but I've got a lot of fight in me. What I did like is that we were fighting at the end, but what I didn't like is we had Richard Little diving on the floor and four other white jerseys looking on. We just weren't there. It was a home game and we had the Corps in the stands."
