Virginia Commonwealth University was down, bloodied and just about out of the Colonial Athletic Association championship game when coach Shaka Smart was forced to call a timeout with 17½ minutes left.
Old Dominion was up by 18, its fans were celebrating, and you could sense that just about everybody in the sold-out Coliseum thought the game was over.
Except VCU. The Rams nearly pulled off a remarkable comeback. They closed the gap to one with 4:26 remaining and had the VCU crowd standing before a game-long trend bit them again.
Two crucial tip-ins by ODU's Chris Cooper and Kent Bazemore - part of the Monarchs' 38-23 rebounding advantage - stopped VCU's momentum, and ODU went on to claim its second consecutive title with a 70-65 victory that earned the Monarchs the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
VCU (23-11), which saw its RPI climb to 49 after its tournament victories over Drexel and George Mason, was left to ponder its postseason fate and a comeback that would have been talked about for a while.
"It'll be one of those games you never forget," VCU senior guard Joey Rodriguez said.
Said VCU coach Shaka Smart: "There are a lot of plays we'll look back at and wish we had back."
ODU built a 39-26 halftime lead behind hot shooting, a zone that left VCU trying to score from the perimeter and another dominating effort on the boards. The Monarchs went into intermission with a 20-6 rebounding margin.
"They were doing whatever they wanted, and we didn't do much against their zone," said VCU's Bradford Burgess, who had 19 points and eight rebounds. "They were killing us on the glass in the first half. You can't do that against a team like that. That's their strong suit.
"We did good in the second half, but we didn't have enough time. We just let them off the hook."
Five unanswered points to start the second half gave ODU a 44-26 pad. The Rams had to burn a timeout.
"There was no giving up," Smart said. "We knew we had to fight and battle. Ed Nixon had been elbowed and bloodied [by ODU's Frank Hassell, requiring several stitches in his upper gum], and I thought that was a good point to use with our guys. They were taking it to us. Not saying it was an intentional move by the Old Dominion player, but we've got to fight back in a figurative sense. I thought we did that in the second half."
VCU got the game into a more desperate pace and went on an 11-0 run. By the 4:26 mark, the Rams had cut the deficit to one on Burgess' 3-pointer from the corner.
The tip-ins, though, were killers.
"I'm really proud of our team," ODU coach Blaine Taylor said. "It's so difficult to go back to back. The first half . . . we played like champions. You've got to give VCU credit. They came at us in the second half. They were very physical. It was a credit to our guys that they absorbed the run and were able to finish the job."
Hassell, the tournament MVP, finished with 22 points and nine rebounds. Kent Bazemore added 14 points and six assists.
Jamie Skeen, limited by foul trouble, had two points in the first half. He finished with 18.
"Any time you have a good defensive team like them, being down 18, it's almost like an impossible task," Skeen said. "You can't let a team get up like that. We fought back, battled, played with fire. But it was just a little bit too late."
Notes: Hassell was joined on the all-tournament team by Skeen, Burgess, Bazemore, George Mason's Cam Long and Hofstra's Charles Jenkins. ... The four-day tournament drew a record 46,544.
tpearrell@timesdispatch.com (804) 649-6965
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