First, here’s the lead to tomorrow’s game story that will appear in the News & Advance:

BY CHRIS LANG

(434) 385-5529

LEXINGTON—Dale Layer stood in front of his team in the visitor’s locker room at Cameron Hall minutes before Liberty was set to tip off against VMI Saturday afternoon. The point of Saturday’s speech was simple. When the calendar turns from December to January, the fun and games are over. All of the painstaking preparation for conference season must come to fruition. Freshmen—and Liberty has a lot of them—can no longer use “we’re too young” as an excuse for failure.

“I told them it’s time to grow up and be sophomores,” Layer said. “It’s January. You’ve played more minutes than anybody. That investment needs to pay off.

“Of course, 10 minutes after that rousing speech, we’re down 18 points. So I don’t know if that helped.”

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Pretty impressive performance by Liberty, which looked really shaky early on but seemed to stabilize about midway through the first half. The key, as always, is to break VMI’s initial press and beat the Keydets in transition with layups. And that’s exactly what the Flames did. After falling behind 33-15, Liberty outscored VMI 95-69 the rest of the way. Some extra notes and quotes that didn’t make the print story:

* VMI’s Keith Gabriel (27 points) was pretty candid after the game.

“We were being selfish. We were up 18 points. Even if we’re not making shots, we’ve got to play good defense. That second half, I give credit to Liberty. The defense they played they did a good job.“

“When you drive, and they sag, somebody’s got to be open. We just didn’t kick it out.“

“The inside looks—Jesse Sanders is a good player, but he’s not going to shoot. When he drives, we were helping off on him, and my man Burrus is just sitting down there getting easy buckets. That’s how they came back. We’ve got to play better than that.“

On trying to develop defensive nastiness:
“The twins (Chavis and Travis Holmes) were good leaders. Everybody here is trying to be a good leader, but we’re doing something wrong. We’ve got to find something that’s going to work and just stick with it.“

* Interesting plays at the end of the game, the sort of stuff that sticks with you as a player the next time you see a team. Liberty misses a free throw with less than 10 seconds left up 11 points. Chris Perez grabs the rebound and tries to stick it back. I’m sure it’s just instinct to try to score in that situation, but the game was well in hand. If he holds the ball, the clock runs out and the game is over. Instead, he misses and Gabriel rebounds it and tries to score at the other end, and Jeremy Anderson fouls him with about two seconds left. The fans in the stands booed a bit, understandably. Afterward, as the Roanoke Times’ Doug Doughty and I were speaking to VMI coach Duggar Baucom, Liberty coach Dale Layer apologized to Baucom for the incident, and Baucom said he was just as upset at Gabriel for taking the shot.

* More from Baucom:

“The first 12 minutes were about as good as we could play. The last 28 minutes was not very pretty. I thought Liberty played very well. Any time you give up a triple-double to somebody, that’s not a good thing.“

Liberty’s Kyle Ohman finished with 16 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists.

“We limited his scoring in the first half. But Gordon had 10. And Burrus had 10. The guys you don’t expect to beat you, beat you. So credit them. Guys stepped up and made plays. Dale had a good game plan.“

On Jeremy Anderson, who hit three straight 3-pointers to give LU the lead for good.
“He’s a Catch 3 shooter. That’s what it says on the scouting report. That’s his game.“

“We were very selfish, I thought, and that’s not the way we play. We’ve led the league in assists since I’ve been here, because we’re unselfish. That’s something that will get corrected in the morning.“

* Some extra quotes from Layer:

“I thought Chris Perez’s defense on Gabriel was very instrumental in trying to stop the being. He was on fire, and I thought Chris bothered him, kept him out of rhythm and that really helped us. It gave us a chance to get some stops and attack.“

“Most of these guys have never played a team that plays a style like this, so we had to adjust on the fly. We tried three or four things, and thankfully it was enough to help us win.“

On Bill Weaver, who had six points, two rebounds and a block in 13 minutes:
“With 11 freshmen and sophomores, we experience every moment of every day. They’re not the same from day to day or game to game. They work hard, but they’re not the same because they’re young. Now we’re starting to settle down a little bit. Bill was a little overmatched with some of our non-conference opponents but he’s not overmatched in a game like this. I thought he gave us great energy. You’ve got to give him credit because he shows up every day and gets better. Typically, when you’re not playing, you sulk and shut down.“

* More from Jesse Sanders, who had 13 points and 11 rebounds:

“Kyle deserves all the accolades he can get. Really big game for him and a really big game for our team. ... Coach was really trying to push us on control with the ball and being patient on offense. I think Kyle did that as well anybody. He wasn’t over-driving and wasn’t trying to do too much. He just let the game come to him, and you saw the results.“

“It was just a well-rounded game. I’m looking at the stat sheet, and you have scoring from different guys, rebounding from different guys. Chris Perez changed the game with his defense. Antwan was hedging hard on screens, being physical and finishing down there. Jeremy hit some 3s. It was a big-time team win.“

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Last note, on playing time. It was clear Layer found a rotation he was comfortable with for this game. Carter McMasters started, played three minutes and was done after that. David Minaya only played two minutes. Patrick Konan scored five points but missed some early layups and only played nine minutes. The lineup of Ohman, Gordon, Sanders, Perez and Anderson/Burrus/Weaver really seemed to get the Flames back in the game, and that’s who Layer stuck with. Who knows, though, it could change Thursday at Presbyterian. Maybe Konan gets off to a hot start and stays in. We shall see.

That’s all for tonight.