Box Score

LEXINGTON, Va. – The VMI men's basketball team nearly rallied all the way back from a 19-point second half deficit Saturday, but The Citadel held on for an 83-79 win in a Southern Conference game.  

The visiting Bulldogs led 40-32 at intermission and went ahead 57-38 after opening the second half with a 17-6 run. The Keydets slowly chipped away and cut the lead to just two at 78-76 after a Jake Stephens layup with 30 seconds left. Hayden Brown converted two free throws for The Citadel and Stephen Clark, the leading shot blocker in the conference, made a key defensive play on the other end, rejecting a VMI layup attempt. The Bulldogs sealed the game from the free throw line.

Stephens, a senior center, had his 10^th double-double of the season with 21 points and 17 rebounds with two blocked shots. Sophomore guard Trey Bonham filled the stat sheet with 12 points, a career-high nine rebounds, seven assists and three steals.
Freshman guard Honor Huff had 19 points while junior Kamdyn Curfman posted 14 points and five rebounds. Tanner Mans posted 11 points. The loss snapped VMI's four-game conference winning streak, its longest since the 2013-14 season.

The Bulldogs (11-13/5-8 SoCon) nailed 17-of-32 (53.1%) from behind the three-point arc for the game. Brown had 22 points and seven rebounds in just under 18 minutes of game time. David Maynard and Tyler Moffe each scored 16 and Clark finished with 10 points, 16 rebounds, six assists and four blocks.  The game also marked the return of The Citadel head coach Duggar Baucom who guided the Keydets to an all-time best 151 wins in 10 seasons between 2005-2015.

The Keydets travel to Samford University (Ala.) Thursday at 8 p.m. EST.

Quotes from head coach Dan Earl:

"I was proud of our guys for continuing to fight. They did a good job of not hanging their heads and continued to swing and go at The Citadel. Credit to them, Coach Baucom had them playing hard. Hayden Brown is a tough cover and Maynard and Moffe both made a tremendous amount of threes. Unfortunately for us, and you see this sometimes, we came out with the right mindset and a tremendous amount of energy but we were trying to hit a home run ball, to use a baseball analogy, rather than trying to stay in character. Sometime our decision making wasn't great. It wasn't out of selfishness by any means, it's just you are amped up, the crowd is here and everyone knows it's a big game, and I don't think we handled it well and when we weren't making shots, we got a little tight to be honest. It wasn't our day. We just didn't make shots."
 
"They (The Citadel) switched the ball screens and we had a tough time throwing the ball into Jake (Stephens) -it's just decision making - when you throw the ball in, and when you try to drive in and it all comes down to decisions and we didn't do a good job of that."
 
"I told our guys to keep their heads up. It's okay to be disappointed and it's okay to be hurting a little bit. This one stings especially since we've been playing well. At the end of the day we've got to keep our head up. We have a lot of basketball left."