Eric Maynor has a scary sidekick at VCU

2009-03-16T10:23:46-04:00

2009-03-10T00:17:09-04:00

2009-03-16T10:23:46-04:00

http://img.fannation.com/upload/user_profile/image/222/490/thumb/wingsgroup3.jpg 368 US

I3usdriver

Hockey Town 222790

8 Come on I wanna see a picture of this freak of nature 4695185

2009-03-13T18:48:44-04:00

SPQRanTMan

King George 737314

7 Well GMU, ODU, W&M, VCU, and JMU are all in VA. So the tourney should be in VA for money reasons for the conference alone. And go figure Richmond is in the dead middle of all those schools. Ohhh and VA is in the middle of the conference that stretches from GA to MA well that seems to make sense. Yes it is a slight advantage for VCU, but then again where else would you put the tournament. And then someone else would complain it is too easy for Georgia State if it was in Atlanta. Well VCU has won the CAA season 3 years in a row, and the tournament 2 years in the past 3. If you are actually questioning they are not the best team in the CAA, you are very biased, or retarded. 4678556

2009-03-11T09:51:57-04:00

Mcbutterpants

Las Vegas 735502

6 The CAA in DC? Come on, The Tourney would be there and all the media outlets in DC would be concerned about Maryland's chances to get into the NCAA tournement. and the up coming ACC tournament a week later. As for the Richmond Coliseum being "home court" advantage, Mason had a big crowd and so did ODU. 4639752

2009-03-10T14:37:09-04:00

Burberry

Herndon 734204

5 Actually... the VCU athletic department bought the remaining tickets for their students who wanted to walk the few (3?) blocks to the coliseum. Thats closer than most students on a campus and their home venue. Its terrible and sad that Richmond is in the center of the CAA, approx 600 miles from NU and GSU. No one likes to go there (even vcu fans), the venue always has issues (condensation), RMC management has TERRIBLE staffing, the seats are disgusting, just to name a few things. I'm almost ashamed to bring family/friends to the tournament who have never been because the place is so gross. Maybe the CAA should ask the City of Richmond to update the place before they award another bid there.... at least do it for the respect of the league. A conference tournament held in a run down hole such as the RC is not acceptable. If Abe P reads this.... next time the bids go out for the tourney site (2012?), please please look in your heart to letting us use the Verizon Center for a substantial decrease in cost so DC can have a competitive bid with Richmond. I'd probably be a Wizards fan for life if it were to happen. Hey, then at least there would be some sort of competitive basketball at the VC in March....... 4631404

2009-03-10T13:16:42-04:00

The GMoney

Vienna 324059

4 Oh please...quit your crying. Good teams will find ways to win whether they're at home or on the road. If ODU won the tourney, you wouldn't here a word from Jamal25. However, I do think that VCU does have somewhat an advantage but this is not a guarantee for them to win. Look what happen last year when they lost to W&M in the semi's. Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge VCU fan...a fellow VCU grad and luv that they won. But the reality of the tourney being in Richmond is because of economics. Plain and simple. It won't be in Norfolk b/c not as many fans will come of it location. Richmond is easier to get to. 4629722

2009-03-10T12:33:20-04:00

survive

Chesterfield 734004

3 odu fans excell at excuses and early exits 4628795

2009-03-10T11:41:00-04:00

Mark08

Richmond 733962

2 To Jamal...Although VCU is located in Richmond, the Richmond Coliseum is not our home court. Tickets are available to fans of all teams,including ODU, and you are welcome to bring as many of your fans to our fair city as you like...its not that far a drive. 4627829

2009-03-10T10:03:53-04:00

Jamal25

Virginia Beach 83890

1 If the tournament wasn't always held in VCU's backyard, I wonder how far in the tournament they would go. It is grossly unfair to the rest of the CAA that every year VCU gets a home court advantage. Why can't they hold the tournament on a neutral court? 4625810

<div class="photo_container image_center" style="width: 615px;"> <div class="photo"><img src="http://img.fannation.com/upload/si_blog_post_images/27621/itp.sanders.si.jpg" alt="Itp" width="614" height="300" /></div> <div class="photo_attributes" style="text-align: left;">Eric Maynor has earned a lot of headlines, but VCU fans haven't forgotten about a developing 6-foot-10 sophomore.<br />Luke Winn/SI</div> </div> <p><strong><br />RICHMOND, Va. --</strong> When <strong>Larry Sanders</strong> was a freshman in high school, he was into art, obsessed with drawing cartoons like the ones he read in the Sunday papers. He was not into basketball. "I didn't feel like I was any good at it, and didn't like getting made fun of," he said, "so I just didn't play." When he was lured onto the JV team as a 10th-grader at Port St. Lucie (Fla.) High, he had an inauspicious debut, scoring on the wrong basket in his first game. He didn't play AAU until after his junior year, when he was 6-foot-6, and was contacted by just two schools -- Western Carolina and VCU -- before committing to the Rams. They liked him as an athletic project; he followed college hoops so sparingly that he was unsure what he was even committing to play. "I didn't know the CAA from the SEC," he said, "and when somebody asked me, are you going D-I, I was like, is that the highest division?"</p> <p>Sanders, now a 6-10 sophomore starter for VCU, no longer has much time for drawing -- especially not at present, with the Rams having clinched a trip to the NCAA tournament with a 71-50 win over George Mason in Monday's Colonial Athletic Association tournament final. VCU is dance-bound, in part, because Sanders has become quite good at basketball, almost in a cartoonish way. Against the Patriots he used his superhuman 7-7 wingspan to score 18 points, block seven shots and break a CAA tournament record with 20 rebounds. The previous record-holder was none other than The Admiral, <strong>David Robinson</strong>, who pulled down 19 for Navy in 1986.</p> <p>One NBA scout told me this week that "Sanders has the longest arms I've seen, anywhere," and this was not hyperbole: The wingspan of the NCAA's top shot-blocker, Mississippi State's <strong>Jarvis Varnado</strong>, is just 7-4, and Ohio State's <strong>Dallas Lauderdale</strong>, another sub-7-footer renowned for his swatting skills, checks in at 7-5. Sanders was a one-man wrecking crew in the post against the Patriots, out-blocking their entire team, out-rebounding their entire starting lineup, and helping hold them to just 30.5 percent shooting. "The team that executes on the defensive end normally controls the game," said Mason coach <strong>Jim Larranaga</strong>, "and they've got a guy in Larry Sanders that can eliminate a lot of easy buckets."</p> <p>When Sanders arrived on campus in the summer of 2007 -- the offseason after<strong> Eric Maynor</strong> stunned Duke in the first round of the NCAA tournament and made VCU a national story -- Maynor called his father, <strong>George</strong>, and told him about an unheralded post prospect that had just joined the team. George said, "I remember Eric telling me, "This kid has some serious talent, as long as he works at it. He can rebound like crazy.'"</p> <div class="photo_container image_center" style="width: 615px;"> <div class="photo"><img title="Larry Sanders" src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/2009_images/larry-sanders.jpg" alt="Larry Sanders" width="615" height="410" /></div> <div class="photo_attributes" style="text-align:right;">Fans appreciate that Larry Sanders played a key role in helping the Rams earn an automatic bid to the Dance/AP<br /></div> </div> <p>Sanders went from averaging 4.9 points and 5.2 boards as a freshman, when the Rams were upset in the second round of the CAA tournament and missed the NCAAs, to averaging 11.2 points and 8.0 boards as a sophomore, and was named the CAA's Defensive Player of the Year. He pulled down 12 of his 20 boards in the first half on Monday as VCU ran out to a 30-19 lead, and made emphatic statements with dunks on the offensive end. The jam he had at the 16:09 mark in the first half -- finished off with a nearly technical-worthy twist -- jarred the standard so much that it was still swaying by the time Mason brought the ball back over halfcourt.</p> <p>VCU's student section stormed the court at Richmond Coliseum with such a vengeance that there were kids beyond the top of the key before the buzzer even sounded, and the refereeing crew broke into a dead sprint for the dressing room. As students swarmed the entire team in the center of the floor, and signs acknowledging the CAA championship were plastered over each backboard, a man on the periphery of the mob held up a homemade banner that read, LARRY SANDERS HAS A POSSE.</p> <p>At the very least, in Sanders and Maynor, the team leader who had 25 points and eight assists to win MVP honors, the Rams have something that no other mid-major in the dance can offer: two legitimate first-round NBA prospects. And this should strike fear in the hearts of the Nos. 5 or 6 seeds (if our <a href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/andy_glockner/03/09/bracket/index.html" target="_blank">projected bracket</a> is correct) that VCU might be matched up with on Selection Sunday. When you're a major-conference team about to land a seed in the dangerous 4-5-6 territory -- otherwise known as Upsetville -- your hope is that the mid-major you're paired with doesn't have 1) substantive NCAA tournament experience or 2) guards who can get hot and create Cinderella moments. You're not expecting a scenario in which your mid-major opponent actually has tournament experience, a star guard <em>and</em> more pro-level talent than you do. But for all the teams on our No. 6 line -- LSU, Illinois, Cal and Marquette -- this would be the case.</p> <p>Maynor, who's projected to be a first-round pick in June, said he feels that Sanders, who's just now appearing on scouts' radar and might be draft-worthy in 2010 or '11, is only beginning to scrape the surface of his potential. The way Sanders has come on of late, with double-doubles in four of VCU's past six games, it's possible that he could be on the verge of joining Maynor as a household name in big dance lore.</p> <p>"I tell him all the time, he's special," Maynor said of Sanders. "I try to stay in his ear, and when I saw him start grabbing all those rebounds, I said, you're not going to get in trouble for grabbing 20 tonight." No one would ever make fun of Sanders for doing that.</p>

Luke Winn

New York 4563 56081 <div class="photo_container image_center" style="width: 615px;"> <div class="photo"><img src="http://img.fannation.com/upload/si_blog_post_images/27621/itp.sanders.si.jpg" alt="Itp" width="614" height="300" /></div> <div class="photo_attributes" style="text-align: left;">Eric Maynor has earned a lot of headlines, but VCU fans haven't forgotten about a developing 6-foot-10 sophomore.<br />Luke Winn/SI</div> </div> <p><strong><br />RICHMOND, Va. --</strong> When <strong>Larry Sanders</strong> was a freshman in high school, he was into art, obsessed with drawing cartoons like the ones he read in the Sunday papers. He was not into basketball. "I didn't feel like I was any good at it, and didn't like getting made fun of," he said, "so I just didn't play." When he was lured onto the JV team as a 10th-grader at Port St. Lucie (Fla.) High, he had an inauspicious debut, scoring on the wrong basket in his first game. He didn't play AAU until after his junior year, when he was 6-foot-6, and was contacted by just two schools -- Western Carolina and VCU -- before committing to the Rams. They liked him as an athletic project; he followed college hoops so sparingly that he was unsure what he was even committing to play. "I didn't know the CAA from the SEC," he said, "and when somebody asked me, are you going D-I, I was like, is that the highest division?"</p> <p>Sanders, now a sophomore starter for VCU, no longer has much time for drawing -- especially not at present, with the Rams having clinched a trip to the NCAA tournament with a 71-50 win over George Mason in the CAA tournament final on Monday night. VCU is dance-bound, in part, because Sanders has become quite good at basketball, almost in a cartoonish way; against the Patriots he used his 6-10 frame and 7-7 wingspan to grab 20 rebounds, block seven shots and score 18 points.</p> <p>One NBA scout told me this week that "Sanders has the longest arms I've seen anywhere," and this was not hyperbole: The wingspan of the NCAA's top shot-blocker, Mississippi State's <strong>Jarvis Varnado</strong>, is just 7-4, and Ohio State's <strong>Dallas Lauderdale</strong>, another sub-7-footer renowned for his swatting skills, checks in at 7-5. Sanders was a one-man wrecking crew in the post against the Patriots, out-blocking their entire team, out-rebounding their entire starting lineup, and helping hold them to just 30.5 percent shooting. "The team that executes on the defensive end normally controls the game," said Mason coach <strong>Jim Larranaga</strong>, "and they've got a guy in Larry Sanders that can eliminate a lot of easy buckets."</p>