RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – VCU point guard Joey Rodriguez was talking with Shaka Smart before the second round of the NCAA men’s tournament when he turned to his coach with a revelation.
“I whispered to him, I said, ‘Coach, you know we can win this whole thing, right?”’ Rodriguez said this week. “And he looked at me and was like, ‘You serious?’ And I said, `Yeah.’
“And he said, ‘I think so, too.”’
The Rams have done nothing to make that seem unrealistic through their first three rounds of the tournament with wins against Southern Cal, Georgetown and Purdue. The steady play of their senior floor leader has a lot to do with their success.
But he almost wasn’t around to be part of historic run.
Two years ago, when coach Anthony Grant left VCU to take the job at Alabama, Rodriguez was disillusioned and “just kind of bummed out because I thought coach Grant would be here.”
When Smart was hired and called Rodriguez at home in Florida, Rodriguez was still trying to get over his disappointment and not at all ready for a rah-rah chat with Grant’s replacement.
“I was around my family and I was like, ‘I feel more comfortable just being at home,”’ he recalled. “And I came back to campus and talked to coach Smart and he talked about having two feet in, and I said, ‘I don’t have two feet in right now,’ so I’m just going to go home.”
The school announced that Rodriguez was transferring.
Or so he thought.
“After a few weeks, I called coach and he said, ‘If you have two feet in, you’re welcome back.’ I came back and had to earn everybody’s respect, and now we’re here,” Rodriguez said, buttoning up the story as neatly as possible to get to the part about how it has turned out.
Hampered for much of this season by nagging injuries, Rodriguez was probably never better than in the last round, when the Rams stunned Purdue 94-76.
In 34 minutes, he scored 12 points, had 11 assists, no turnovers and never let his team let up for a moment. In three tournament games, he’s scored 37 points, had 23 assists and just three turnovers, and he’s hoping to be equally efficient when the Rams (26-11) play Florida State (23-10) on Friday in San Antonio.
Smart can’t imagine trying to do this without his fiery leader.
“He’s playing like a senior who knows that he’s as good as anyone on the floor,” Smart said, crediting Rodriguez’ play in the Colonial Athletic Association tournament as a huge boost.
“Sometimes, in a pressure situation, if you don’t have that belief, it can really handcuff you and get you out of your game,” he said. “But with Joey, his back’s against the wall, our back’s against the wall but he believes and we believe, so it’s made that urgency a good thing.”
The Rams went into the CAA tournament feeling like they had to win the title to make it to the NCAA tournament, and Rodriguez suddenly sensed that the end for him could be near, too.
“I just didn’t want it to end. I just want this to keep going and going as long as it can,” he said. “Now, it’s win or go home and I just want to keep winning, so it’s just me being a leader and trying to communicate with the guys and trying to keep everybody’s hopes up.”
He does it best, teammate Branden Rozzell said, when it counts most.
“He’s the general of this team, the heartbeat,” Rozzell said. “He carries us. He plays his best on the big stage and when everyone’s against him, that’s when he’s at his best. We feed off Joey. It’s not just offensively. He’s out there diving in the floor, fouling big guys, doing all the little things as well. When we see him playing that hard, we have to do the same thing.”
Rodriguez, who has the names of his sister and mother tattooed on his wrists and kisses them before checking into a game, was eager to get to Texas to see if the Rams can keep it going.
“We really have nothing to lose,” he said. “We’re just out here having a good time.”
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