Hampden-Sydney men sting Hornets at home

Things went wrong for the Lynchburg College men’s basketball team right from tip as visiting Hampden-Sydney College crushed the Hornets 92-59 in Old Dominion Athletic Conference action Wednesday night at Turner Gym.

The Tigers improve to 16-3 overall and 8-2 in the conference and keep pace with the rest of the ODAC leaders. Virginia Wesleyan is　at the top of the ODAC standings　with an 8-1 conference record. Randolph-Macon is second at 9-2 and Hampden-Sydney and Guilford are both 8-2. Lynchburg is fifth at 6-5 in the conference and 11-8 overall.

"This was definitely our best effort on the road all season," Tigers coach Dee Vick said. "We have gotten some good wins on the road before, but we hadn’t played with the energy that we did tonight. We came out ready to play on defense. Lynchburg was 7-1 in this building and we really prepared hard for this game. It was a big game. We lost over here last year and our kids remembered that."

LC lined up improperly on the tip-off and when H-SC won the tap, Ru White waltzed in for an uncontested dunk as the confused Hornets watched from the other end of the court.

"They just out-played us in every facet of the game," Lynchburg coach Hilliary Scott said. "They just played harder. It’s disappointing because they got us pretty good at their place earlier (a 90-67 LC loss on Jan. 11) so you would have thought we would have had something to prove, but we didn’t play with the urgency we needed to play. You are going to lose games and get beat in this league. You have to hang your hat on being able to compete."

H-SC never trailed in the game and a little over 11 minutes into the first half had their double-digit lead at 23-12. The Tigers largest lead in the first was 42-20 and they went into the locker room up 42-24.

LC’s Lucas Tucker opened up the second half with a 3-pointer to cut the deficit to 15, but that was as close as the Hornets got as H-SC continued to build on its lead throughout the second half and led by as many as 34 points.

The Tigers had a substantial height advantage and used it to dominate the boards and push　the Hornets out of the paint. H-SC played seven players listed at 6-foot-4 or taller in the first half. Lynchburg has just three players on its roster listed over 6-3.

Complicating matters was the fact that the Hornets were playing without starting center Austin Chillemi, who is 6-7. Chillemi, who is leading LC in scoring at 14.3 points per game and was tied for fourth in the conference in 7.1 rebounds per game, suffered an undisclosed injury in last Wednesday’s game against Randolph-Macon.　He missed Saturday’s win over Emory & Henry and　didn’t dress for the Wednesday’s game.

"We don’t know when Austin is coming back, but we’ve got to assume it’s going to be a while," Scott said. "We can’t sit around and wait for him to be the guy to get us through. We have to keep competing, find ways to get better and when he comes back it will be a plus."

The Tigers had as many offensive rebounds (10) as Lynchburg had defensive rebounds in the first half. The　Hornets also attempted more 3-pointers (16) than 2-point shots (13) and neither were falling as LC shot just 27.6 percent from the field in the first half and 33.3 percent for the game. Hampden-Sydney shot 54.7 percent from the field.

White led all scorers with 15 points. Greg Lewis and Ben Jessee both had 11 points for H-SC. Andrew Simmons led Lynchburg with eight points.

"Coming into the game we knew they bigger than us and we had to make shots and keep them off the glass and we didn’t do either and you see the result you get," Scott said.