The Hokies Men's BBall team plays Xavier today at 7PM in the consolation round of the NIT Tip Off. The game will be on ESPNU. Well this is the game we expected to have if we won against Memphis; so I guess we should be happy. We've been asking for a competitive game for a while now and we get two top 25 teams back to back. Maybe the refs will call a closer game tonight. Xavier is 4-1 with only loss to Iowa State in the first round of this tournament; they did beat Ohio State on Nov 18.
The Hokies will again face a taller team; but again our bench could provide some help:
#1 Paul Scruggs 6'5 Sr. G 30.2 MPG:13.2 PPG: 4.6 RPG: 3.8 APG: 3.6 TOPG
Led the BIG EAST and was 20th in the nation in assists at 5.7 apg last year
#3 Colby Jones 6'6 So. G 32 MPG:12.6 PPG: 10 RPG: 2.6 APG: 2.4 TOPG
BIG EAST All-Freshman Team last year
#10 Nate Johnson 6'4 Sr. G 21.2 MPG:12.6 PPG: 6.6 RPG: 0.4 APG: 2 TOPG
Second in the BIG EAST Conference and fourth in the nation in 3-point percentage (.452) last year
#21 Jerome Hunter 6'8 Jr. F 24.3 MPG:11.3 PPG: 2.8 RPG: 2.5 APG: 2.25 TOPG
#22 Dieonte Miles 6'11 So. F 27.8 MPG:9.6 PPG: 4.2 RPG: 1.4 APG: 0.6 TOPG
CMY had a day to do some coaching after the loss in the first round. As someone pointed out in the comments during the Memphis game, Aluma need to go up stronger on the inside and dunk through the defense or force the refs to call the foul. Xavier has the length to cause the Hokies problems underneath; but the bodies are not as massive. Duren is 20 lbs heavier than Xavier's big man Miles.
Average stats for Xavier:
Individual stats:
Hokies are going to have to tighten up the passing, make their 3's and be better under the basket on offense to win this on. That's all I have time for; the contractor is here and the grandkids are awake; and the dog wants to go for a walk.
Go Hokies!
Comments
LET'S GO...
HOKIES!!
What a stretch for this team... the easy games are road vs Dayton and home vs Cornell team that looks tough. Hot take- VT SOS will be top 5 by end of December.
Easy game?!?
Hey Fam, the game has been changed to ESPN2
Three starters out due to illness for Xavier
Three Xavier starters out for non-covid illness. One is their big man.
and what do we do... 6 of the first 8 shots are from 3 point range. need to go inside.
Lots of good looks from deep early, but we need to not abandon the inside either. Defense alright so far
Aluma looking much stronger in the post so far than he did vs Memphis. Need that trend to continue.
Love the way we defend so far, hope we can keep up intensity on that end of the floor throughout the season!
Mutts needs to improve his handles
Did y'all know Xavier doesn't have any 17 year olds? Wonder if Fran will bring it up.
Our legs just look dead.
Memphis and Xavier are just showing the blueprint on how to beat us.
ice cold shooting
Yikes we have got to get an inside the 3 point line game against taller teams or it's gonna be a rough year. This is Xaviers backups sheesh
33% from the field and from three. Still feeling the effects of the Memphis game.
I feel like we are trying to out do ourselves from the last 4 minutes in
last nightsgame.Edit: Wednesday night's game
Storm having a rough tourney
Feels like a regression to the mean after last year 😔
The ball handling on this team was questionable last year, but has been downright terrible this season. Defense has been fantastic, but the offense as a whole is hard to watch. Hopefully they can get it going before ACC play or this season might get ugly.
Man wtf is with Aluma this year? It's like he's been bodysnatched and replaced with a clone
He had a lot of terrible games last season as well. Especially when we played against good competition. Tons of missed layups and poor ball handling.
Keve not finishing...again
Two games in a row where we are beating ourselves.
Nah zebras lost us last game. We're definitely playing cold in this one though.
Lucky its only 8. Hopefully we can bang down low and score/draws fouls, then open up the outside shot
/\ this. we've only had 4 points in the paint. need more paint touches to open up the kick out three.
Looks like we're still trying to figure out how to assert ourselves on offense against good teams. I would like to see more sinking open or point blank shots, and pushing the ball hard to try and get some fast break opportunities.
I'm really missing that Tyrece Radford playmaking ability right now
It's so collldd in New York!
yes! 32.3% cold!!!
At least X has cooled off too.
or 29.4% cold from 3. Brrrrrrrr.
What was the offensive foul?
I think a charge on Maddox
Murphy is not looking like an ACC level point. His shot is not been good enough, he's turned it over too much against pressure defenses, and his size is killing us on defense.
Yeah everytime hes in the game Xavier starts putting it on us
Our sloppy play is infuriating
Murphy is not looking like an ACC level point. His shot is not been good enough, he's turned it over too much against pressure defenses, and his size is killing us on defense.
You can say that again!
I see what you u did there.
The dream and cattoor doing everything they can to keep us in the game.
Paging Justin Mutts, paging Justin Mutts
Going back to the UF game in the tourney and Wednesday's game against Memphis, Alleyne has been the most consistent offense we've had.
Good draw of a charge by Padulla, but I'd still like Maddux in there. He has better length on defense and is a better shooter.
OLD TAKES EXPOSED
Love that Padulla is making me eat my words with his shooting.
He's not even coaching in this game and they have to go talk about Larry Brown.
Pedulla > Storm ?
Hot take?
Get it frosh!
BOOOOOM SHAKALAKA!
LET'S GO!
Peduuuuuuuuuuuooooouuuuulla!
Pedulla is a vibeeeee
Pedulla for starter
Pedulla and Rodney Rice gonna terrorize the ACC next year
Ahhhh yeaaaaasss
Pedulla playing some good D there. That's how you make the most of your minutes. Color me impressed.
Playing some confident dribbling, passing, no showman shit
It's nice to finally see us a play our game thanks to Pedulla sparking it off on both ends. But, it is still concerning 4 of their active players are out and we have struggled.
Struggled mightily with Storm playing
I think he gets too worn out from the pressure they're putting on him bringing the ball out, then the rest of his game falters.
Props for staying with Pedulla as the hot hand in a big game. Let's close this out
Pedulla is a baller
Gotta score on this inbounds
This guy talking 2 for 1 is an idiot. Based on the shot clock, it has to be..
DAMN IT MUTTS, THAT WAS A MAN PASS
Blatant travel before that last 3
Glad I'm not the only one that saw that.
Aluma has been so off.
How do you let that happen....again???
Just make a free throw. Geez.
Unphucking believable. Johnson with 7 tre's.
No matter who the coach, it seems like VT always lets a guy go molten lava hot when they play against us
I was having that exact conversation with my dad. Too many times it seems we give a kid a career high night that is our death knell.
Love how the ESPN replay clearly showed the travel before the three
Ball watching and leaving the shooter again. Cardinal sins.
I hate that whole game
Well that sucks donkey shit
lol that ended about as poorly as it could have.
Oh well, not a great trip to Brooklyn.
JFC. Unbelievable.
Why was Catoor the last shot? I really love Mike Young, but definitely miss Buzz on those EOG situations.
Oof that hurt
Brutal
FUCK
Missed FT's. Kill ya in a close game.
Two extremely winnable games. This shouldn't happen.
No doubt. So infuriating. But this has been the Hokie way far more than not for many years in both major sports.
against who? WV and ND? opps... wrong sport!
Why was Murphy back in. Pedulla was playing well.
Pedulla did give up the game winning 3. Probably experience.
Probably was a scripted play that was drilled in practice
Sorry, but up 2 with a guy who has literally scored half their teams points, you take your best defender and man him up tight.
Letting yourself get beat on a slow closeout is awful strategy.
I dont think we are a good team
God, I hate to say it, so thanks for saying first. I have a sick feeling in the bottom of my gut that agrees with you. Imagine if it was us who had 4 active players out of the game.
I have had similar thoughts, but aren't there yet. I think we're at worst average(no ncaa), maybe slightly above average (need right wins to make ncaa).
It might really just come down to us being one contributor short. Our three best scorers all scored in double digits and we couldn't break 60? Ojiako didn't get a single minute? Murphy couldn't score?
I think this season might come down to if Murphy can score or not on a given night. Alleyne/Cattoor/Aluma/Mutts are likely to more often than not probably get us a combined 40-50 points a game - the question is, where do the remaining 20-30 we need come from?
I think we are a pretty good (but not great) team. We went to the big city, and got punched in the face by a top-10 Memphis team with a bunch of NBA talent. Then we let one player score 30 against us while our point guard essentially had zeros across the board on the stat sheet. No one is winning that game.
It sucked. But the big picture is that we lost 2 games against 2 ranked teams by a combined 9 points. We're going to go home and lick our wounds and hopefully fix some of our problems. We still have a lot of talent, and I'm sure Mike Young will get this team ready to play.
We overachieved last year being near the top of that ACC and in the Tourney so lots of people probably have expectations set high (nothing wrong with that, just saying). We lost some depth via transfers and didn't really replace it so I'm not entirely surprised the team looks different. But its incredibly early still. Get a couple of guys to step their game up and this is a team that can still be a tournament team. It won't be a safe in like last year, but there's enough talent and know how to get it done. But if one of Alleyne, Mutts, Aluma, or Cattoor misses any time at all, even just a couple of games, we could be screwed.
Regardless of the results of this weekend, VT will be a better team out of this weekend than they were going into it. Hopefully these tough losses against good OOC teams translates to wins against good In conference teams.
Important to rebound from this and not have any bad losses in December. Not getting a game there is gonna hurt our NET I imagine, the St. Bonnie game in Charlotte is huge now. However, think I'd rather lose two tough like this now instead of have some fools gold wins early like in 2019. Still haven't been super impressed by the rest of the ACC yet
Got beat twice in three days in two games making mistakes that veteran teams shouldn't make. Especially to an Xavier team missing half their team.
Side note- this is the first time this season where I'm thinking to myself that this team is really gonna wish we could have hung onto Radford & Cone.
I'm amazed that anyone wouldn't think we'd miss Radford and Cone.
Not directed at you personally, but what is it with TKP rationalizing that losing players to the portal isn't a big deal. Every single loss sucks.
Radford yes. Cone was a good player but a defensive liability because of his size - if be wasn't scoring, he didn't bring much to the floor.
There was a lot of sloppy ball-control all around, but if we have PG play like that all year, we'll be lucky to even be .500 on the season. Storm Murphy was 0-5 from the field, 0-3 from 3-pt, 0 points, 0 assists, 1 rebound, 4 fouls. He doesn't seem to have the handle to play point guard at an ACC level.
Radford was the first team to identify this weakness, Memphis absolutely shredded it, and you can bet your ass every team we play for the rest of the year will press Murphy full court all game long.
He's a very good shooter, so I think he can contribute as an off-the-bench scorer. But you either have to go with Pedulla to bring the ball up, or go with a point-forward with Mutts or Cattoor to get the ball to the half court.
Agreed. We're gonna need better PG play and better bench play. We've faced two good teams, lost to both, and in both games really struggled to get offense going because of those weaknesses. Right now its a 4 man team of Alleyne, Cattoor, Mutts, and Aluma. It's going to be a struggle in conference play if those 4 are having to carry the load on offense and defense while all playing 36 to 39 mins each. They will burn out. Definitely missing Radford and Bamisle's presence. I think we can be ok if N'Guessan and Maddox really step up. They looked good against lesser opponents earlier but vanished in this NIT against quality opponents. Maybe its the taste they need to step their game up.
To quote Aaron Rodgers, "Relax, y'all" (surely not an exact quote). We'll be fine, unless we start losing players to injury. So we've been off at the PG position for a few games, but I think Murphy will find himself as he makes the adjustment from SoCon, and Pedulla is a good, young talent. Sometimes, you need losses like these to get better and figure out your weaknesses so they can be addressed before the conference schedule starts. Hey, can't expect to knock off a Top 10 team early every season.
Sure, we miss Radford's presence, and it would have been nice to still have Bamisle around, but I think in time N'Guessan and Maddox will be more effective. The added depth would have also been nice if we still had Radford and Bamisle, but that only means N'Guessan and Maddox will get more PT and hopefully develop a little sooner.
It really fucking sucks being a fan of VT athletics sometimes.
a few thoughts...
we needed one more made FT (would have put us at 70%)
we needed one more made 3-pointer (would have put us right at 40%)
Murphy, I think will be OK. but this ain't the SoCon.
most of all... give Xavier credit, their coach had them ready to play and they stepped up. plain and simple. (and it hurts me to say that)
Yeah imo pedulla just earned a couple more minutes a game. Not scared to take shots and some good defense outside of not getting to the shooter in time on the "game" winner
Well that sucked, two games that should be wins and two games where the offense looked lost. That was incredibly frustrating, might be time to slam the breaks on the expectations for this team as they just folded under the first pressure of the season.
Had the last shot. Had at least two opportunities and it didn't go. Saw only the last five minutes of this game. Ah well.
This is looking like early Buzz and MY teams... you're cold from three and you lose... Aluma needs to figure it out against better players in the post, shoot 40% from 3 (he's like 1-10) or use Mutts in the post. Heck if Aluma can't finish we may as well play Ojiako in there as he has the length to finish plus defend in the post. And athletically, defensively and shooting wise you have to get Pedulla on the floor 20 min+ . Bottom line is Storm and Aluma need to figure it out and quickly.
It's really infuriating that with the size of Aluma, Mutts, and Ojiako, we STILL can't get a big man to learn how to play strong and confident under the rim. Every other team, it seems, has at least one big guy who knows how to get in position to get easy rebounds, use their body to get closer to the rim to make an easy put-back, layup, dunk, etc. They also don't take five extra dribbles under the rim when they get fed under the post...they just turn and lay it up or dunk it.
Our guys spend so much time either flailing to the floor or looking at the refs like "Where is the foul?"
It's like our coaching staff have usually been great at coaching the backcourt, but everyone is clueless on how to coach up a 4/5.