The Key Play | serious and not so serious coverage of the virginia tech hokies

VT-Georgia Southern Recap

By mikey4vt on December 16, 2012, 9:07 AM | 21 comments

The Hokies were unable to stop Georgia Southern as they lost 78-73 and dropped to 8-2 on the season. This was the Hokies first home loss.

Quick thoughts: We looked flat to start the game, and the Eagles were the exact opposite. At one point in the second half I sensed our players almost giving up, but we made a couple shots to get out of that funk.

The entire first half we had wide open looks but couldn't get any of them to fall. It's not that we couldn't find a way to beat them, we found holes in their defense throughout the day, it was that we couldn't make the shots to beat them. We shot 9-31 in the first half (less than 30%!), and as a team shot 0-9 from deep.

Adventures on Whiskey Lane: Episode 13

By brianm11 on December 12, 2012, 9:18 AM | 16 comments

They're back. After too long of a break, Brian and Kevin talk about the UVA game, Mike London's coaching ability, and potential moves for Tech's coaching staff. They then dive headfirst into basketball talk as they chronicle the epic rise of Erick Green, the Hokies' hot start and whether or not to temper expectations.

All that and more on this week's episode of The Adventures on Whiskey Lane.

MP3 Download link: http://thekeyplay.podomatic.com/enclosure/2012-12-11T11_40_03-08_00.mp3

VT-WVU Recap

By mikey4vt on December 9, 2012, 10:39 AM | 20 comments

The Hokies suffered their first loss of the season tonight, 68-67, in a tough road test against the West Virginia Mountaineers.

Summary: The Hokies looked extremely unprepared for the Mountaineer’s defensive pressure. WVU extended their pressure way beyond the three point line and Tech had no answer. The Hokies were unable to penetrate inside the defense and were missing the open shots they did have. On top of everything, Jarell Eddie picked up his second foul only five minutes into the game.

Hoops Scoring Output Redux

By HokieV on December 3, 2012, 11:03 PM | 9 comments

Thanks to a suggestion by RiVAHokie, I'm taking this opportunity to do a quick follow-up on a post I made in the February about the drop in scoring output from the 2010-11 season (70.3ppg) to the 2011-12 season (65.1ppg). The TL;DR of that post is that team scoring was down, and that the contributions of the leading scorers were down.

I updated that spreadsheet with the end-of-season stats for 2011-12 and added a line for the 2012-13 stats.

What a difference a season makes.

Joe Dirt Phillips

By joe on December 3, 2012, 10:05 PM | 10 comments

Joey Phillips has been consistently good at fullback this season. He's delivered some bone-crushing blocks, and has shouldered the load since Riley Beiro was lost for the season. Through the magic of Twitter, we learned another thing about Phillips tonight. He has the best haircut of any player on the team. Tailback J.C. Coleman tweeted the following picture.

And if that wasn't enough, Phillips tweeted this picture of and himself starting masher (guard) Brent Benedict.

Yes, that is an American Flag tee shirt, and it is awesome. If Benedict and Phillips don't make it in the NFL, the better make a run at the WWE tag team championship.

Early National Recognition for Erick Green

By joe on December 3, 2012, 3:14 PM | 9 comments

Like much of HokieNation, I'm bummed we're not ranked. I think the team deserves to be. The 7-0 record, Tech's best start since best 1982-83, speaks for itself. The win over now #23 Oklahoma State, Tech's first win over a ranked non-conference opponent since 1995, will be a bullet point on the Hokies' resume come March. Naysayers will point out weak competition to start the season, and they would be correct. However, teams can only play their schedule, and Tech beat Iowa and Oklahoma State, their two biggest challenges to date, by double-digits.

The Hokies play an up-tempo, fun brand of team basketball, and their leader is receiving a lot of attention from the national media after his 7th game of putting up 20-plus points.

Rob Dauster of CollegeBasketballTalks named Erick Green his Player of the Week.

Virginia Tech to Play Rutgers in Russell Athletic Bowl

By joe on December 2, 2012, 1:01 PM | 28 comments

Update (8:30 PM): It's official.

Update (7:45 PM): It's all but official.

Excited about the Russell Athletic Bowl!Go Hokies!

— Beamer Ball (@Beamer_Ball) December 2, 2012

The Rutgers Scarlet Knights (@rfootball) will play in the 2012 Russell Athletic Bowl: ow.ly/fKPZS

— RussellAthleticBowl (@RussellAthBowl) December 2, 2012

Also, an interesting tidbit: Rutgers is on a five-game bowl win streak.

VT-Oklahoma State Recap

By mikey4vt on December 1, 2012, 9:00 PM | 18 comments

image via HokieSports.com

After today's game, I can officially say that James Johnson is the right man for this job. The Hokies upset #15 Oklahoma State 81-71 this afternoon in a crazy environment at Cassell Coliseum.

Summary:

Ten seconds into the game, Erick Green picked up his first foul. Physical play and missed shots by Oklahoma State helped the Hokies to an early 7-4 lead. A little more than 2 minutes into the game, Erick picked up his second foul. He was immediately subbed out. This got me worried. How would we play without Erick for the majority of the first half?

The ACC is the WCW

By sammyeanes on November 29, 2012, 8:45 AM | 26 comments

Reading Joe's tweet over the weekend comparing modern day ACC to WCW in its dying days really got me thinking. As someone who was (is) a huge wrestling fan, it made me realize that there are some pretty uncanny correlations in the paths of both organizations.

For those not familiar with WCW, World Championship Wrestling was a major league pro wrestling organization in business from the late 80s through early 2001, although its history extends much further back than that.

VT-Iowa Recap

By mikey4vt on November 28, 2012, 7:33 AM | 19 comments

The Hokies came out firing on all cylinders tonight in their first big win of the season. They took down the Iowa Hawkeyes in the ACC-B1G Challenge 95-79. Here are my thoughts on the game:

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