Photos by Marcus Yam | The Roanoke Times

VMI's Travis Holmes (left), Austin Kenon (10) and Chavis Holmes (right) are lethal from the perimeter for the high-scoring Keydets. The trio combined to make 180 3-pointers last season.

Coach Duggar Baucom (center) has a complete team of his own recruits for the first time at VMI.

LEXINGTON -- The milestones have come and gone for VMI basketball coach Duggar Baucom. Now arrives another first for the Baucom regime.

This is the first season the fourth-year coach has a roster of players that are all his recruits.

"I like the freshmen we recruited a lot," he said. "The others who were already here have really made this a fun group to coach."

Fun is watching good athletes score points so rapidly that it sometimes seems as if they're being chased by hornets.

The past two seasons, the Keydets have led the NCAA in scoring and have won a total of 28 games, the most there in a two-year stretch in over a decade.

Plenty of firepower returns in senior twin brothers Chavis and Travis Holmes (composite 2,600 career points), junior point guard Adam Lonon (3.5 assists per game), and sophomore Austin Kenon (12.2 points per game in the first half of last season).

The question is, is it enough to replace the departed production of Reggie Williams, the most prolific scorer in VMI and state Division I history (2,556 points)?

Assuming all stay well, Baucom thinks so. The real question is whether they'll be able to replace Williams' 9.7 rebounds per game.

The twins, who do everything well, will be good for some rebounds. So too should 6-foot-7 sophomore Quinn Brownfield and recruits Wayne Whiting Jr., and Michael Sparks.

Whiting, 6-7, comes from Benedictine, the top-ranked high school program in the Richmond area for most of the past season. Sparks, a 6-4 guard, averaged 19.1 points and 8.5 rebounds as a senior in Lexington, Ky. An early signee, he was invited to play in the Kentucky-Indiana all-star game.

The real key to the backboards for VMI could be senior forward Willie Bell, who showed what kind of athletic ability he had when he played both basketball and football for the Keydets during his first two years there.

Never known as a big scorer, Bell nevertheless had a stretch of six Big South Conference games in which he averaged 15.3 points and 7.3 rebounds last year.

"My strong suit is rebounding and I plan to get my hands on every one I can this year," he said. "The thing is, a lot of guys are going to rebound for us this year. A lot of guys are going to score. We'll replace Reggie by playing as a team."

One quality the coaches admire particularly about Bell is his defense.

"The thing about Willie is he's so multi-dimensional," Baucom said. "We've played him on a 6-10 guy before and he did great. He's too quick for big guys and too strong for small ones. He's the player who I feel has to be on the floor the most for our team."

The Keydets have adopted a philosophy credited to the Boston Celtics: team as family.

"A team can fall apart," Bell said. "A family never falls apart."

You couldn't separate the Holmes brothers with a crowbar. The two of them now stand fourth all time on the NCAA's scoring list for twins. They look alike, they play alike, they do so many different good things that VMI simply cannot do without them, not that it has had to. The two of them have been as durable and unflappable as anybody who has played here.

"The type of season they have will determine the type of season our team will have," Baucom said. "They know that."

Junior Carl Josey and sophomore Hunter Houston add depth at forward. Other inside help could come from Stephen Sargent, VMI's first 7-footer who had limited duty as a freshman because of health issues. Joey Cantafio, son of former Keydets coach Joe Cantafio, is an off-the-bench spark at the point.

The freshman class is rounded out by guard Keith Gabriel and forwards Ron Burks and Aaron Blosser.