RADFORD – Despite the economic crisis gripping the country, U.S. Senator Mark R. Warner encouraged nearly 250 Radford University business students on Tuesday to “stay in the fight” and insist that their elected officials take action to reform entitlement and defense spending, reduce the federal deficit and make meaningful investments in energy and healthcare.

“The best asset this country has got is you guys,” Warner told the audience.

After the class, Warner (pictured at right speaking to the class) put into action his basketball savvy, taking to the court inside the Dedmon Center for a pickup game with the Big South Conference championship RU men’s basketball team. Teamed up with star forward Joey Lynch-Flohr, Warner netted three baskets and served up several dishes and screens.

Warner’s staff said that the senator requested the game as a way to honor the squad, which earned its first bid in a decade to the NCAA Tournament only to lose to eventual champion North Carolina.

The RU visit is part of a 17-event southwest Virginia swing that gives the former governor – elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2008 – the opportunity to discuss his first 90 days in office, which included votes on an emergency stimulus package to jump-start the economy, and new investments in energy, health care and education.

“We’re dealing with the equivalent of a 100-year flood, the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression,” Warner said in defense of the $787 billion stimulus package and $700 investment in the nation’s financial system.

RU President Penelope W. Kyle (pictured at left with Senator Warner Tuesday) introduced the senator to the McGuffey Hall gathering of business students. She was a member of Warner’s administration when he was governor of Virginia. Kyle praised Warner as one of the best executives for whom she has ever worked.

Given his 20 years as a high-tech entrepreneur and business leader, Warner said that he is a strong advocate of free markets, but more regulations and better enforcement are needed to curtail increasingly complex and risky investments that led in part to the economic crisis. “We need to make banking boring again,” he said.

He also said that dramatic reforms are required in defense and entitlement spending, which together account for 80 to 85 percent of the federal budget. “That day of reckoning is coming,” he said.

Solutions to these massive issues will require bipartisanship, he said, akin to the compromise budget that he, as the state’s Democratic governor from 2002-2006, negotiated with a Republican-majority General Assembly.

“A lot of Congress is like a team sport where you’ve got either a D on your hat or an R,” he said. But Virginians are more practical than partisan, he said, and demand action over politics.

A co-founder of Nextel, Warner helped create the Virginia Health Care Foundation, which has provided health care to more than 600,000 under-served Virginians, and SeniorNavigator.com, a referral network for older Virginians and their caregivers. In 2004 during his tenure as Governor of Virginia, Warner chaired the National Governors Association, and in 2005, TIME Magazine named him one of "America's Five Best Governors."

In the photos: Senator Warner plays in a pickup game with members of the RU basketball Tuesday, then poses with members of the team, President Kyle and head coach Brad Greenberg.