Consistency: Richmond's Revenge Comes Over Forty Solid Minutes

Keri Soppe ran a maestro performance Wednesday night as the Richmond Spiders exacted revenge for an earlier heartbreaking loss to cross-town rival VCU, defeating the Rams 73-60 at the Robins Center.

Soppe was perfect: 3 of 3 from the field, two from three-point land, and 2 of 2 at the line for 10 points. She had nine assists, and spent the evening dissecting VCU's zone defense, finding teammates on the baseline for jumpers, and down low to Genevieve Okoro, who led the Spiders with 17 points.

"This was Keri Soppe's best game as a Spider", Richmond head coach Michael Shafer said after the game.

"It's my job as point guard to control the tempo as best I can," Soppe explained. "They were scoring 80, 85 points per game, so we had to limit that. If that means walking up the ball, then we do it."

In the end, the Rams gave the Spiders a gift that aided their desire to control tempo: cold shooting. After shooting 33 percent in the first half, VCU was just 12-for-37, 32.4 percent, after intermission. Their three-point game was missing, finishing the night with just four treys in 26 attempts.

"We were flat to start the game, and you can't be that way against anybody in this league," VCU head coach Marlene Stollings said.

Her team is finished for the regular season, done at 9-7 in Atlantic 10 play, 21-8 overall, and a La Salle loss away from being the #7 seed in next week's Atlantic 10 Women's Basketball Tournament at the Richmond Coliseum.  Stollings has nine freshmen on the roster and plans to take some of the down time to allow them to rest up, and bring fresh legs to downtown, just blocks from their Siegel Center home.

But she also wishes she could bring something more.

"You hate to finish with a loss like this, I'd rather be able to play it up tomorrow," Stollings noted. "But we'll take the bye time to rest and to scout, for sure."

Robyn Parks will rest up for her final Atlantic 10 Tournament tilt, hoping to lead the Rams to a special weekend at home. She led all scorers with 27 points and added 10 rebounds. Parks shot 10-of-16 from the field. The rest of Rams shot 13-of-54, perhaps the most stark statistic of the night that showed how Fury , save a brief time in the second half where the Rams cut a 23-point margin to ten, didn't make the 15-minute trip west.

For Richmond now, a trip up I-95 North to George Mason, who took the Spiders to overtime January 15th before falling. The Spiders come off a satisfying win ("we were extremely irritated, to say the least, at how the last VCU game ended", noted Genevieve Okoro) but mindful of just how limited they are in personnel.

"We're gonna shoot and walk through Mason tomorrow at practice," Shafer noted. "As for the Tournament? Man, I'll just take them one game at a time."