ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Monday, December 16, 1996              TAG: 9612160144
SECTION: SPORTS                   PAGE: B-1  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DANIEL UTHMAN STAFF WRITER
LEXINGTON

VMI HOPES GO BY THE BOARDS

No. 11 NORTH CAROLINA outrebounds and outscores the Keydets in a 105-61 rout at Cameron Hall.

It was no surprise VMI lost 105-61 to 11th-ranked North Carolina on Sunday.

Forget the rankings, forget the Tar Heels' height advantage, even if the Keydets couldn't. ``They've got guards bigger than our big men,'' said VMI guard Bryan Taueg.

VMI didn't have a chance because for every time coach Bart Bellairs cited the movie ``Hoosiers,'' trying to get his basketball team to treat Carolina's visit as any other game, there was the loudspeaker in the VMI barracks blaring, ``Carolina's coming! Carolina's coming!''

``All we heard last week was Carolina this and Carolina that,'' said Keydets forward B.J. Grinage.

Grinage knew what to expect from the Tar Heels. He played with former Carolina players Pearce Landry and Clyde Lynn as a youngster at Greensboro (N.C.) Day School. It also was his third time playing against North Carolina as a Keydet.

But no VMI player could have been prepared for the assault the Tar Heels waged on the backboards. North Carolina outrebounded VMI 68-32. It made VMI's rebounding performance against Wake Forest and Tim Duncan (49-37 Deacons) look tall.

``They're much stronger than Wake inside,'' said Grinage, who had 10 points, three off a career high set his sophomore season. ``Wake has a lot of finesse players. These guys hit you and they'll go up.''

With North Carolina's 7-foot-2 Serge Zwikker, 6-9 Antawn Jamison and 6-9 Ademola Okulaja in the lane, it was the most dense concentration of males on a college campus since stuffing phone booths was the thing to do. That trio, with Makhtar Ndiaye and Vasco Evtimov occasionally joining them, got first dibs on almost every ball as it came off the rim.

``Our game plan was to make them shoot the ball from outside. Look,'' Bellairs said, final statistics in hand, ``they didn't shoot well from the outside.''

The Tar Heels didn't shoot often from the outside, either. They had three baskets from outside the lane in the first half, and in the second half, they didn't take a shot from outside the lane until more than five minutes had expired.

North Carolina shot 46.9 percent from the field.

``I wish we would have shot a better percentage,'' said Dean Smith , the Tar Heels' coach. ``Of course, missing a layup, getting it back and making the next one is the same as making the first one.''

Jamison and Zwikker had the most action in the lane. Each grabbed a game-high 11 rebounds, and Jamison scored 21 points and Zwikker had 19. Carolina's 44-point victory margin was its largest lead of the game.

Sophomore guard Vince Carter added 18 points and spent much of his afternoon smiling at the crowd of 4,950, the largest in Cameron Hall history. ``They had a lot to say,'' he said.

VMI would have had more to say about the outcome if it had been able to play more of its roster. Freshmen Eric Mann (stress fracture in foot) and Chris DiNunzio (broken foot) are out for at least another week, and Jason Bell and Warren Johnson won't be academically eligible until Dec.18.

``If this game was 10 days later, you'd see four [more] potential starters out there,'' Bellairs said.

Instead, the Keydets have had makeshift practices for the past two weeks. Compounding the problem is that VMI is in the midst of its exam period, so Bellairs and his staff don't know who will show up to practice from day to day.

Bellairs one day last week called for his players to line up for their layup drill, a madcap routine in which the team must combine for 96 made layups in two minutes. Then seeing he only had eight players lined up to run it, he said, ``Aw, geez, let's do something else.''

There were no alternatives once this game tipped off.

``We like going to a Kentucky Derby style,'' Bellairs said. ``It was like I was looking in the back of a truck for a thoroughbred and what I found was a pony.''

And that pony didn't have a chance.

NOTE: Please see microfilm for scores.

LENGTH: Medium:   85 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  ERIC BRADY/Staff. Mike Spinelli and the Keydets were 
          outnumbered and outmanned inside all day by (left to right) Makhtar 
          Ndiaye, Vince Carter, Vasco Evtimov and the rest of the Tar Heels. 
          color.