“I was a little embarrassed to be honest,” Garino said. “Only being able to beat them once? That wasn’t the right thing for us to leave here, our legacy.”
By midday, Garino was amidst a 27-point, four rebound performance, the best of his career, that led the Colonials to a 72-69 win in Richmond Saturday afternoon, the first win allowed by VCU in 12 games, including all of Atlantic 10 play.
He was GW’s most reliable presence at the rim, in the right spots for putbacks and shaking his defenders for transition dunks, while still shooting 4-for-7 from beyond the arc.
But the shot that put GW (18-8, 7-3 A-10) up for good came off a – rare – Garino miss. Senior forward Kevin Larsen (nine points, seven rebounds, three assists) snagged a rebound and passed to senior point guard Joe McDonald, who sank a three to put the Colonials up by one with 1:12 to play.
“The defense was just collapsing and I had a chance to get a wide-open shot,” McDonald said.
“Thankfully it went in, I know my three hasn’t been falling a lot lately but I’m never going to complain winning one at VCU.”
McDonald blocked a layup attempt by VCU point guard JeQuan Lewis (16 points, five assists) on the other end, and the Colonials called a timeout. VCU (17-6, 9-1 A-10) began its next possession with 33 seconds left, but with 10 remaining on the clock had not found anything. First-year head coach Will Wade called timeout and drew up a play designed to get his leading scorer, Melvin Johnson, a three-point look from the corner. He got it, but Johnson missed. VCU guard Korey Billbury collected the rebound but sophomore guard Yuta Watanabe (two points, six rebounds, one block) got a hand on his attempted layup, which missed as well.
“I almost had a heart attack,” Garino said. “It was a clean layup but luckily he missed it, Yuta had a good contest and we got the ball but it was definitely scary.”
McDonald (11 points, five rebounds, two assists, two steals) came up with the ball, got fouled, and hit a free throw to put away the game.
“I’m glad they took a three, I don’t know if I could have handled overtime,” head coach Mike Lonergan said.
Garino’s transition scoring, especially, helped the Colonials close the gap in the paint and then some
Lonergan said that the Colonials were hesitant to box out at times because of VCU’s athleticism, but that he expected to win the rebounding battle. Redshirt Junior forward Tyler Cavanaugh led the Colonials with eight rebounds to go with his 11 points, though he missed much of the first half with foul trouble.
The game stayed within five points for the entire first half, which had five ties and six lead changes. The Colonials shot 42 percent to VCU’s 35 and made five three-pointers, but the Rams dominated the paint 18-8.
The second half started on a promising note for the Colonials, with Larsen getting his first points of the game to tie the score at 31.
But VCU quickly opened up a nine-point lead with an 11-2 run including three consecutive three-pointers and eight straight VCU points from Lewis.
“We scored the first bucket and tied it up and then boom,” Lonergan said. “Three threes in a row, the crowd got into it, I’m like, ‘Oh, boy, here we go again.’ So our guys kind of hung in there. We had to grind it out.”
The Colonials responded with a 7-0 run of their own, with five of the points coming from Garino. Back and forth they went, trading runs. But the Rams never got more than a 7-0 run going after that, mitigating at least a little bit of the damage from the sellout crowd in the Siegel Center.
“It can get out of hand so quickly here,” McDonald said.
The win adds some heft to the Colonials’ NCAA Tournament case, which was looking a bit shaky entering the game. GW is in the middle of one of the toughest stretches of its season, with its next game coming Wednesday against Saint Joseph’s.
For now, though, Lonergan will enjoy the moment.
“It was nice to finally win here,” Lonergan said.
