The Randolph-Macon men’s basketball team took a different approach coming into Wednesday night’s ODAC matchup against Lynchburg. Though the Yellow Jackets were on a 10-game winning streak, head coach Nathan Davis felt his squad was still lacking.

  “I don’t think we’ve played as well as we’re capable of the last few weeks,” he said.

  Therefore in the days leading up to the contest, Davis put an emphasis on his team concentrating on themselves rather than their opponent and simply playing well.

  “We’re just trying to concentrate now on trying to play a 40 minute game,” said senior forward Brandon Braxton. “Not have any mental lapses, mistakes and just try to get better every day.”

  The efforts paid off as No. 10 R-MC (15-2 / 8-1 ODAC) picked up their 11th win in a row, running off to an early lead to rout visiting Lynchburg (6-11 / 2-7 ODAC) 83-44.

  Senior guard Eric Pugh led a group of four Yellow Jackets in double figures. Pugh scored 19 points on 5-of-9 shooting, was 3-for-5 beyond the arc, had four rebounds, two steals, dished out three assists and had no turnovers in 23 minutes of play. Matching Pugh’s output, Calvin Croskey chipped in 13 points on 5-of-9, 3-for-6 beyond the arc, dished out three assists and had no turnovers in 25 minutes of action.

  Coming off his second ODAC Player of the Week performance this season, Danny Jones was 5-of-8 from the floor for 13 points with five rebounds and no turnovers. Braxton tallied 11 points and seven rebounds for the Jackets.

  “Coming into tonight it was more about us, not what they (Lynchburg) were wanting to do,” Croskey said. “It was more about executing our stuff. We’ve been winning but we haven’t played too well; what we’re capable of the last couple of games, so we just wanted to come down here tonight and execute our game plan, step it up on defense, because our defense hasn’t been too good. We just want to come out and do our thing. We didn’t want to worry about Lynchburg it was all about us tonight.”

  Even though R-MC shot 50 percent for the game, defense was the key. The Yellow Jackets held Lynchburg to 25 percent shooting in the first half and 28 percent for the game including 15.4 percent from three point range.

  “Defense is our key the last two practices, it was defense, defense, defense, so when we came out here it was just natural to come out and want to play defense,” Croskey said. “We just wanted to get after it. Lynchburg can play so we just wanted to show it was all about defense when it comes to us.”

  “I thought we gave up too much penetration the last couple of weeks,” Davis said. “On our matchup we weren’t flying around, we were too passive and we wanted to get back to being aggressive and play the defense we’re capable of playing. I was still disappointed. We gave up too much in transition in the first half. Nine of their 15 points came in transition so we’re going to have to clean that up the next couple of days.”

  It took exactly three and a half minutes for that R-MC defense to show itself. With 16:30 left to play in the first half, the Hornets’ Nate Campbell (18 points, 11 rebounds) hit a short jumper that tied the game at six.
  But from there it was all R-MC.

  The Yellow Jackets defense tightened to hold Lynchburg to nine points over the remainder of the half. Meanwhile the offense went on a 24-2 run over the next 9:32 to break the game open.

  R-MC finished the half shooting 60 percent from the floor including 6-of-10 threes.

  “Last game I know we shot a lot of threes and we were making it there so we knew they were probably going try to be tight on our shooters,” Braxton said. “We just tried to concentrate on getting it inside and get some decent touches there and when they doubled we’d be able to kick it out, move the ball back and forth and they’d have to play defense.”

  The big lead gave Davis a change to play everyone on his bench, and most of the little-used players logged substantial minutes. Former Hanover standout Dylan Cole was scoreless and pulled down two rebounds in seven minutes of action. And though former Lee-Davis standout Chris Cook logged only three minutes, he made the most of his time, drilling a three moments into the game and pulling down two rebounds.

  Most impressive was the powerful inside play of freshman Jamaal Powell. In seven minutes of action, Powell slammed home a dunk and was 3-of-4 from the floor for six points and three rebounds.

  Davis was glad that he was able to get all of them into the game. “We’ve got a very deep team and I feel bad at times for guys like Dylan Cole and Jamie Robinson, Jamal Powell, Andre Simon just to name a few, that really compete in practice well but you look at the guys with it’s hard to give them time,” he said. “So any time you get the opportunity to get them on the floor it’s something that we’re going to do.”

On Wednesday, R-MC hosts Roanoke at 7 p.m. then travels to Guilford for a 3 p.m. match up on Saturday. This past Saturday, Guilford handed No. 3 Va. Wesleyan their first loss of the season.