University of Richmond Athletics
University of Richmond
DAYTON
Men's Basketball Tops Dayton 58-50 For 300th Victory In The Robins Center
01/14/2006 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 14, 2006
Box Score | Quotes | Notes | Photo Gallery
UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND, Va. - Senior Jermaine Bucknor tied a career-high with five 3-pointers, including a clutch trey with 52 seconds left that gave the University of Richmond men's basketball team the lead for good in the Spiders' 300th victory in the Robins Center, a 58-50 win over Dayton on Saturday afternoon.
The Spiders improved to 9-7 overall and 2-1 in the Atlantic 10, their best three-game conference start since opening 2-1 in 2002-03.
Bucknor scored a season-high 21 points, just one short of his career high and hit five 3-pointers in a game for the second time this season and the third time in his career. It was Bucknor's eighth game this year with at least three 3-pointers. Richmond is 7-1 in those games.
"(Bucknor) hit a couple of shots today where I don't know how he did it," Richmond junior Peter Thomas said. "He has done that for us throughout the year, and to have a senior leader like that - who steps up and hits shots like that - is priceless."
Bucknor's 3-pointer in the final minute got the lead back for the Spiders, but his fourth trey of the afternoon was also clutch. The senior hit a fade-away 3-pointer off the dribble to beat the shot clock buzzer and put Richmond up 41-37 with 7:05 to play.
Richmond scored 42 points in the second half, the most the Spiders have scored in a half this season, including 13 in the final minute. Richmond took a 38-37 lead on two free throws by Bucknor with 7:58 and held the lead until Dayton's Brian Roberts completed a three-point play to put the Flyers up 46-45 with 1:07 remaining.
That's when Bucknor buried his fifth 3-pointer of the game to put Richmond up 48-46. The Spiders then made 10-straight free throws to ice the win.
"I think our guys refocused on the game and the opportunity that we had because even though we struggled offensively in the first half, we were only down four," Richmond head coach Chris Mooney said. "And we played pretty good defense."
The Spiders, who lead the nation in scoring defense (53.0 ppg), held Dayton (8-9, 0-3) to 35.8 percent shooting. Richmond did give up 20 offensive rebounds, but even after giving the Flyers a second chance, the Spiders defense kept coming up with stops.
"We had 20 offensive rebounds and we only had 13 second-chance points," Dayton coach Brian Gregory said. "We needed to capitalize more on that."
Dayton's Roberts led all scorers with 28 points, making 10-of-22 shots from the field, including four 3-pointers.
"I don't think we did an awful job on Roberts," Mooney said. "We took charges on him and blocked his shot late in the game. I think they became a little one-dimensional in looking for him to score. I think the last four minutes of the game, we guarded him better than we had in the previous 36 minutes."
Richmond led by five after a bucket by sophomore Monty Sanders with 5:17 to play, but Dayton tied the game at 43-43 with 3:47 to play. Sanders, who made all three of his field goal attempts, scored again inside to give the Spiders a 45-43 lead with 3:28 to play , but Roberts' three-point play put Dayton up 46-45 with 1:07 remaining.
That's when Richmond got the ball to Bucknor on the right wing and the senior put the Spiders up for good.
The Spiders host Saint Louis on Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. in the Robins Center.
