Jan. 10, 2004

Salisbury, NC - The Winston-Salem State University Rams, who will go as deep as all 14 players on the bench, were without the services of guard Dontay Rollins (Jr./G/6'2"/170/Tallahassee, FL) on Saturday night as head coach Philip Stitt suspended the guard for "actions detrimental to the team" for the next three games.

The suspension did not seem to affect the Rams however, as they benefited from Audly Wehner's (Fr./6'5"/F/Fayetteville, NC) career-high 25 points and cruised to victory over the Livingstone College Blue Bears by the score of 78-50.

The win, the Rams second straight, and second straight CIAA victory as well, improves the Rams to 12-3 overall (3-2 CIAA, 1-1 Western Division).

The first half of play saw the Rams jump out to an early lead, one that they would carry throughout the entire first half of play. The lead swelled to as many as 14 points midway through the half, but stayed near the 11-point mark for the majority of the first 20 minutes.

The two teams played at a furious pace, one that may have favored the very-well conditioned Winston-Salem State University Rams, and Wehner took advantage of the tempo as he scored a team-high 12 points in the first half of play and helped the Rams to a 36-22 halftime advantage.

The second half of play was much like the first as the two teams continued to burn up and down the hardwood, but the Rams found the pace to their liking and came out of the locker room with an 8-2 scoring run, and found themselves up by as many as twenty points with 17 minutes remaining in the contest.

The Blue Bears would trim the lead back to 14 points with15:40 remaining, but the Rams would push the Blue Bear deficit to 24 points with only 11:15 remaining in the game when Wehner completed his second straight three-point play.

The Rams continued to roll and led by as many as 29 points in the contest en route to the victory. In addition to Wehner's 25 points the Rams got 11 from Alleggrie Guinn (So./G/6'3"/Charlotte, NC) and seven from Jay Maynard (Sr./G/6'1"/Jacksonville, NC) en route to their 13th win of the 2003-04 season.

The victory propels the Rams to 12-3 overall (3-2 CIAA, 1-1 Western Division) while the loss drops Livingstone to 1-10 overall and 0-2 in the CIAA, 0-2 Western Division).

The Rams will have Tuesday off and will return to action on Thursday, January 15th, 2004 when they travel to Raleigh, NC to take on CIAA arch-rival Shaw University at 7:30 pm.