Lynchburg College impressive in loss to VMI

LEXINGTON — Steven Echols could have played Division I basketball. A standout at the Carlisle School in Martinsville, Echols got looks from Norfolk State, UNC Greensboro, Hampton and UNC Wilmington. In the end, being able to play close to home was most important to him, so he chose Lynchburg College.

But he doesn’t consider himself just a Division III player.

“We’re basketball players, period,” Echols said.

Echols and his Lynchburg teammates don’t get many opportunities to prove that fact against Division I competition. The Hornets lost to cross-town foe Liberty in 2005 and hadn’t played a D1 school since. Second-year coach Hillary Scott scheduled two guarantee games this season, the first a 94-70 loss at Radford, an NCAA tournament team a year ago, and the second Monday night at Cameron Hall, where the Hornets lost 108-93 to VMI, the Division I scoring champion the last three years.

And there’s no doubt the Hornets had a little extra motivation in those two games.

“We work a lot harder,” Echols said, “just because we know it’s going to be on the bottom line on ESPN.”

Much like Big South schools play schools like Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina and Notre Dame looking for a paycheck and a chance to “shock the world,” as the cliché goes, D3 schools often find themselves on the schedules of lower-level Division I schools that struggle to fill home dates in the nonconference schedule.

LC acquitted itself well Monday. The Hornets (1-4) never had a legitimate chance to win the game, but they cut a 20-point lead to single digits in the final four minutes and gave the Keydets (3-2) a surprisingly tough battle.

So tough, in fact, that when Keydet players and coaches gathered at midcourt to sing the Institute’s Doxology — a postgame tradition win or lose — VMI coach Duggar Baucom had his hand over his face, his eyes closed as he let the game sink in.

“The only place we won was on the scoreboard,” he said. “It’s amazing what Hillary has done over there to get that thing turned around so quick. He’s got good players over there. I thought they out-played us and out-hustled us. We just made more 3s.”

That VMI did. The Keydets hit 18 of 47 from 3-point range, led by a barrage from Keith Gabriel, who hit 6 of 16 and tied a career high with 34 points, and Michael Sparks, who hit 7 of 10 from long range and scored a career-high 25 points.

VMI’s Ron Burks set a career high with 13 assists, but Baucom was as concerned with the sophomore’s seven turnovers as he was with Burks’ assist total.

The Keydets’ 22 turnovers helped keep the Hornets in the game. Lynchburg scored 24 points off VMI miscues, out-rebounded the Keydets 54-37 and outscored VMI 60-33 in the paint. The Hornets missed a ton of layups in the first half and shot 36.6 percent from the field, a big reason that VMI went into halftime with a 54-39 lead. In the second half, the Hornets fixed the layup issues, shot 55.3 percent and played the Keydets to a 54-all standstill.

“We know they want to try to get steals,” said Echols, who led LC with 20 points. “We just tried to attack and get the ball up the court and shoot layups. At the other end, they want to shoot 3s. So we had to rebound and get back. It would just play into their hands to go out and shoot 3s on the other end.”

A Brandan Connor layup with 3:21 left pulled LC within 97-88. Sparks responded with a 3, and after Jeff Langrock hit another quick layup, Gabriel hit the dagger, draining a 3 from the left wing with 1:59 left to push the lead back to 13 points.

Just by looking at LC’s recent history, Monday night’s result was somewhat surprising. In the last four-plus seasons, Lynchburg is a combined 20-89. A closer look at the Hornets’ four losses this season reveals progress, though. Two of the losses were to Division I teams, and the other two were by a combined nine points to DIII schools.

Baucom marveled at how hard Scott, an E.C. Glass grad, had the Hornets playing Monday, and added, “They’re going to give people fits in the ODAC.”

Lynchburg certainly would be a candidate to sneak up on people. No one will expect much from a school that is a combined 1-33 in league games the last two seasons.

Scott was optimistic following the defeat, but he added some perspective.

“The guys have done a really good job,” he said. “We’re miles ahead of where we were last year. The record really doesn’t show it right now. We have some young guys who are still kind of learning. I’m excited about our team and excited about our future. But at some point, we’ve got to start getting something done.”