Biggest win was over UT in the Sugar bowl '95 cause it dynamically changed the percepton of this small mountain school and put us on the map of the modern football landscape. This ACCT win might turn out to be #2 if it reaps the rewards i hope it will for the basketball program.
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I'd say the 95 Sugar Bowl is still #1. But winning the ACC Tournament is up there with clinching the undefeated season and natty birth in 99 for either 2nd or 3rd. It's a program defining moment for sure, the kind that will shape you for years to come
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The other ones mentioned above are absolutely important. VT football and, by extension, our school as an athletic brand never would have happened if we hadn't beaten Texas in the Sugar and Morgantown put MV7 in the MNC so both are super important.
But we just won the ACC. In BASKETBALL. After beating UNC and Duke in consecutive games and by wide margins.
Those other two started the brand but this win? It's bigger. Why?
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This. Stuck it in Coach K's face to boot. Winning the ACC men's basketball Championship by crushing UNC and Duke back to back. Could you ever imagine that? We don't have the hindsight to know if this changes the MBB team's trajectory.
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at the very least, it gives CMY (and Whit by extension) a long leash with the fanbase -- i think that only helps with turning this acct run into trajectory-changing momentum moving forward
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I mean he kind of had a long leash with the fans to begin with. Two upsets of #3, tourney bid in 2nd year after having to cobble together a team. Maybe it's the adrenaline from saturday but right now Mike seems more unfirable than Frank Beamer was at any point.
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Yet there was a rowdy portion of the fanbase this year that concluded in January that whit whiffed on the bb hire bc CMY was a wofford-level coach who filled out his roster with wofford-level players and wasn't playing Pedulla or Maddox enough and that we should move on 🤷♂️
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Could it be that a large portion of said fan base is part of the twitter cesspool of misery that makes alot of us stay off that platform though? I've seen mike young refer to it a few times talking about storm murphy and the effect it had on him. I get the vitriol sometimes but hokie twitter can be fun like right now but it can also be a very overractive and negative place at times. I personally wasnt thrilled at his stuff early in the season but never got to the man we messed up hiring him.
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So '95 win really gave us the '99 team which propelled VT football for 10 years. Without that statement win I dont think there is a '99 team like what we had.
After the '73 NIT we didn't have a losing season in basketball until '87 so along the same time line of 14 years, which football was 16 years.
We had one preseason ranking in basketball and zero postseason rankings in that time. It's really tough to say that the 73 team helped us since we joined the metro conference afew years later and not a power conference. Recruiting was way different so hard to compare.
I would say that '95 vs UT is the largest/best victory.
Winning the ACC was big for this team, it might be big for the donors, it could put us into another level if we build off it.
The one way to look at it is we just beat the king of basketball. Beat Texas at football isn't bad, but they aren't mount Rushmore. In that sense we beat two, and should be asking for UCLA and Kansas next.
EDIT: Rushmore in basketball is hard, technically should be Kentucky not UCLA, but it feels wrong leaving them off.
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Unless we turn this win into a stretch like we did with football, we cannot compare this game to any of the possible football games we have to chose from. Does it have the potential to be the biggest win? Absolutely.
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The 1995 Sugar Bowl might be the top, but this ACC championship in basketball is definitely up there close. Also the 2004 football win over Miami to win the ACC outright in our first season is up there, along with the 2003 Miami win and 2014 OSU win in a vacuum. Beating number 1 Duke at Cassell with Gameday there in 2011 was also pretty huge too.
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1995 sugar bowl doesn't happen without the Miami game that year. The sugar bowl confirmed we had arrived. But beating Miami was that first moment where the glimpse of hope was there. edit to add some context for the youts around here. The 1995 season started with tech ranked #20. We were beaten, at home, by boston college (4-8 on the season) 14-20. Then skunked, at home again, by Cincinnati (6 and 5 on the season)... a team that had just lost to Kansas and Kansas State. The end of the prior season featured three loses in four games.
One each to Miami, UVA, and a trouncing by Tennessee in the Gator bowl. Then, we beat Miami for the first time ever. That was part of a 13 game winning streak. We only lost 2 of the 26 games that followed the Miami game. Granted, after that 26th game, we had a rough 1997.
Beating Syracuse 62-0 was a big win. Beating WVU on a last second field goal was a big win.
The ACC championship may end up being our biggest win. But we lack the context of what's to come. Is this a one off event? Or is it the signal that our program has altered course?
My dad still talks about Bristow and the 70's teams. But ultimately, that trend didn't stick. In the mid nineties, we won the NIT and followed it with an NCAA appearance. Then, petered out.
Ultimately, a big win needs to be a defining moment. Not a flash in the pan. I hope someday we can say this championship was a defining moment. Until we have that context, I'm sticking the with Miami game.
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My answer is not, NOT YET. However, if with the benefit of hindsight we look back on this win as a propelling moment that leads to final four(s) or even (gasp) a natty at some point over the next decade, we will say this was that moment.
The 95 Sugar Bowl was amazing, but it also has that historical context now that tends to influence people's perception of it's significance.
Here is to hoping it climbs the mountain to #1!!
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I think the Women also made the College Cup in 2013 and lost to either FSU or WF. They have continued to succeed since then.
The men took a step back when Oliver Weiss resigned a couple of years (2009) after that College Cup for NCAA violations (that probably led to that success.) They are playing well now, though.
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I would rank the 1995 Sugar Bowl win as #1. That was the beginning of everything Virginia Tech football has been and is expected to be today.
Gonna skip to #3 here. I'd rank the 2004 ACC championship at third. I feel like people tend to forget how frustrating VT football was from 2001 to 2003. Late season collapses, locker room issues, wasted talent, etc. Tech joined the ACC which was supposed to be a better conference. No one had any expectations for them after losing some talent from a 2003 team that went 8-5. They went out 2-2 and everyone thought "yep, exactly what we thought." Then they won eight straight and clinched the ACC in the Orange Bowl against Miami, who the conference was supposed to run through with Florida State. This righted the ship for VT as seven more 10-win seasons and three more ACC championships followed.
#2 would have to be the ACC championship in basketball. When we announced we were joining the ACC back in 2003, we were a joke of a basketball program. I don't even think we made the Big East tournament until our last year in the conference (correct me if I'm wrong). We made one NCAA tournament in 2006-07, then four straight NITs, then four straight nothings. Even when Buzz was hired and we started seeing more success, I never thought an ACC championship was possible. For Virginia Tech, a team a little over a decade ago worried about whether or not they would even make their conference tournament, to go through the likes of UNC, Duke, UVA, Notre Dame, etc. etc. etc. and come out on top? Utterly preposterous. Not to mention, we weren't making the NCAA tournament without winning it. Just ask Texas A&M. This team beat UNC and Duke by double digit points in back-to-back nights. 'Nuff said.
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I was also going to say the 2004 game at Miami to clinch the ACC Championship. A lot of people said we didn't belong in a big boy football conference after the 2001-2003 teams, especially being in the Big Easy conference. But that showed we could battle and beat the big boys.
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Biggest singular win is the 1995 Sugar Bowl. That one game put VT on the national radar and, if you want to talk about the brand, that's where it started.
The biggest series of wins was the 1999 regular season. That is where the Virginia Tech brand anchored itself in the national scene and made VT a household name from coast to coast.
This tournament run is the biggest comprehensive moment for the Virginia Tech brand in any sport that isn't football, and its a pretty significant gap to 2nd place. This win rose the VT brand to being something bigger than 'just football', and if we play this right this could very easily be a launching point to carry VT hoops for the next 10-15 years, especially with Duke and UNC going through a coaching change off legendary head coaches and UVa looking like they're potentially losing steam off their pre-covid title.
And then you consider we announced plans for a $75m renovation of Cassell less than a year ago, and the timing couldn't be more perfect. Our coaching staff, largely regarded as elite recruiters in their own right, are going to be heading to recruits with an ACC Tournament Champions trophy in tow flashing the Cassell renovation plans with the legitimacy that winning the ACC gives you. You cannot overstate the potential that this past week gives us.
I mean we just accomplished something that NC State hasn't been able to do in 35 years.
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All I know is this Championship feels reaaaalllllly niceeee. The void of championshp-ness culture and wins surrounding Hokie football somehow is filled partially by this win. I once again feel proud of my Hokies. Thank you MBB, CMY and Whit.
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95 Sugar Bowl. We don't get into the ACC without the rise of the football program. That being said, I value this ACC basketball championship over any of the individual football ACC titles we won. We beat some mediocre teams in a weak football conference for ACC titles. Last week we beat the football equivalent of OSU, BAMA, LSU on consecutive nights as underdogs. Recall when we first played Duke in bball in the ACC and Coach K left his starters in and beat us by 40 points. After the game he said he left the starters in to prove the point that we didn't belong in the ACC. It's only fitting we spoiled his swan song.
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We don't get into the ACC without the rise of the football program.
We didn't even get an invite until Mark Warner got involved. Our football program had nothing to do with ACC expansion until Syracuse waffled at their invite. My memory is hazy, but I recall ACC wanted some combo of BC, Miami, Notre Dame, and UConn.
Had we stayed in the Big Least, there's a real possibility we would have accepted the SEC invite, or even gotten a BigXII invite, during the 09-11 expansion.
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If you have watched the series on the ACC tournament on the ACCN, there is no wonder why they didn't want an outsider like VT in the conference. This is the league that was integrated by Dean Smith- who also coached Vince Carter.... lol. The league was all white until 1970. Not 1950.
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Miami forced the hand of the ACC to bring in BC. Basically, Miami said fuck no to UConn because they brought literally nothing in terms of football (as I think they were still FCS at the time), and they demanded BC instead. We got in over Syracuse because our state lawmakers realized that neither UNC nor Duke would vote to expand for anything that didn't explicitly include basketball only intentions, and realized that UVa would effectively be the swing vote, and they financially squeezed their nuts until they voted us in. The rest of the ACC obliged because they just wanted to expand, and that's how it all happened.
Its still horseshit that we got stuck with BC as the permanent cross divisional rival when it was Miami that forced them in.
At the end of the day, if Duke and UNC had their way from the start, the conference would have invited in Miami, UConn, and Syracuse. Given where the landscape of college athletics went, the ACC would have been picked apart and ceased operations by 2015. Its very likely, in that scenario, that we do end up in the SEC by 2010, or at least a part of the desperate 2nd round of ACC expansion around that time.
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99 against BC and it's not close. The most under pressure game for a VT team in history outside of the actual MNC game. Lose that game, and the trajectory for the next 20 years changes.
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It is probably the most impressive win, but I can't say its the biggest. It was a meaningless game in terms of records or tourneys and I am not sure how much it helped us grow the program.
Still its a very nice line on VT Athletics' resume.
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I think "biggest win" always requires context and it's too soon to have any meaningful context. If/when VT win a natty with CMY, then this absolutely jumps to #2 ahead of any of the football wins because of that. But for now, it's behind the '95 sugar bowl and '99 season.
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First two that jump to my mind are '95 Sugar Bowl and Miracle at Morgantown.
Biggest win was over UT in the Sugar bowl '95 cause it dynamically changed the percepton of this small mountain school and put us on the map of the modern football landscape. This ACCT win might turn out to be #2 if it reaps the rewards i hope it will for the basketball program.
I'd say the 95 Sugar Bowl is still #1. But winning the ACC Tournament is up there with clinching the undefeated season and natty birth in 99 for either 2nd or 3rd. It's a program defining moment for sure, the kind that will shape you for years to come
I think it's this one.
The other ones mentioned above are absolutely important. VT football and, by extension, our school as an athletic brand never would have happened if we hadn't beaten Texas in the Sugar and Morgantown put MV7 in the MNC so both are super important.
But we just won the ACC. In BASKETBALL. After beating UNC and Duke in consecutive games and by wide margins.
Those other two started the brand but this win? It's bigger. Why?
This. Stuck it in Coach K's face to boot. Winning the ACC men's basketball Championship by crushing UNC and Duke back to back. Could you ever imagine that? We don't have the hindsight to know if this changes the MBB team's trajectory.
at the very least, it gives CMY (and Whit by extension) a long leash with the fanbase -- i think that only helps with turning this acct run into trajectory-changing momentum moving forward
I mean he kind of had a long leash with the fans to begin with. Two upsets of #3, tourney bid in 2nd year after having to cobble together a team. Maybe it's the adrenaline from saturday but right now Mike seems more unfirable than Frank Beamer was at any point.
Yet there was a rowdy portion of the fanbase this year that concluded in January that whit whiffed on the bb hire bc CMY was a wofford-level coach who filled out his roster with wofford-level players and wasn't playing Pedulla or Maddox enough and that we should move on 🤷♂️
Could it be that a large portion of said fan base is part of the twitter cesspool of misery that makes alot of us stay off that platform though? I've seen mike young refer to it a few times talking about storm murphy and the effect it had on him. I get the vitriol sometimes but hokie twitter can be fun like right now but it can also be a very overractive and negative place at times. I personally wasnt thrilled at his stuff early in the season but never got to the man we messed up hiring him.
I mean, he still should've played M&P more. But the rest is off the mark
So '95 win really gave us the '99 team which propelled VT football for 10 years. Without that statement win I dont think there is a '99 team like what we had.
After the '73 NIT we didn't have a losing season in basketball until '87 so along the same time line of 14 years, which football was 16 years.
We had one preseason ranking in basketball and zero postseason rankings in that time. It's really tough to say that the 73 team helped us since we joined the metro conference afew years later and not a power conference. Recruiting was way different so hard to compare.
I would say that '95 vs UT is the largest/best victory.
Winning the ACC was big for this team, it might be big for the donors, it could put us into another level if we build off it.
The one way to look at it is we just beat the king of basketball. Beat Texas at football isn't bad, but they aren't mount Rushmore. In that sense we beat two, and should be asking for UCLA and Kansas next.
EDIT: Rushmore in basketball is hard, technically should be Kentucky not UCLA, but it feels wrong leaving them off.
Unless we turn this win into a stretch like we did with football, we cannot compare this game to any of the possible football games we have to chose from. Does it have the potential to be the biggest win? Absolutely.
The 1995 Sugar Bowl might be the top, but this ACC championship in basketball is definitely up there close. Also the 2004 football win over Miami to win the ACC outright in our first season is up there, along with the 2003 Miami win and 2014 OSU win in a vacuum. Beating number 1 Duke at Cassell with Gameday there in 2011 was also pretty huge too.
Mekhi Lewis national championship 2019
1995 sugar bowl doesn't happen without the Miami game that year. The sugar bowl confirmed we had arrived. But beating Miami was that first moment where the glimpse of hope was there. edit to add some context for the youts around here. The 1995 season started with tech ranked #20. We were beaten, at home, by boston college (4-8 on the season) 14-20. Then skunked, at home again, by Cincinnati (6 and 5 on the season)... a team that had just lost to Kansas and Kansas State. The end of the prior season featured three loses in four games.
One each to Miami, UVA, and a trouncing by Tennessee in the Gator bowl. Then, we beat Miami for the first time ever. That was part of a 13 game winning streak. We only lost 2 of the 26 games that followed the Miami game. Granted, after that 26th game, we had a rough 1997.
Beating Syracuse 62-0 was a big win. Beating WVU on a last second field goal was a big win.
The ACC championship may end up being our biggest win. But we lack the context of what's to come. Is this a one off event? Or is it the signal that our program has altered course?
My dad still talks about Bristow and the 70's teams. But ultimately, that trend didn't stick. In the mid nineties, we won the NIT and followed it with an NCAA appearance. Then, petered out.
Ultimately, a big win needs to be a defining moment. Not a flash in the pan. I hope someday we can say this championship was a defining moment. Until we have that context, I'm sticking the with Miami game.
My answer is not, NOT YET. However, if with the benefit of hindsight we look back on this win as a propelling moment that leads to final four(s) or even (gasp) a natty at some point over the next decade, we will say this was that moment.
The 95 Sugar Bowl was amazing, but it also has that historical context now that tends to influence people's perception of it's significance.
Here is to hoping it climbs the mountain to #1!!
Shame the men's soccer team's run in 2007 was over shadowed by the football team coming back from losing to BC.
We made the College Cup, the men's soccer final four. Patrick Nyarko led the way, and Chase Harrison was in goal.
That was the closest we've gotten to a team title, up until the wrestling team finished 3rd a several years back.
I think the Women also made the College Cup in 2013 and lost to either FSU or WF. They have continued to succeed since then.
The men took a step back when Oliver Weiss resigned a couple of years (2009) after that College Cup for NCAA violations (that probably led to that success.) They are playing well now, though.
Nyarko was a unit back in the day.
I would rank the 1995 Sugar Bowl win as #1. That was the beginning of everything Virginia Tech football has been and is expected to be today.
Gonna skip to #3 here. I'd rank the 2004 ACC championship at third. I feel like people tend to forget how frustrating VT football was from 2001 to 2003. Late season collapses, locker room issues, wasted talent, etc. Tech joined the ACC which was supposed to be a better conference. No one had any expectations for them after losing some talent from a 2003 team that went 8-5. They went out 2-2 and everyone thought "yep, exactly what we thought." Then they won eight straight and clinched the ACC in the Orange Bowl against Miami, who the conference was supposed to run through with Florida State. This righted the ship for VT as seven more 10-win seasons and three more ACC championships followed.
#2 would have to be the ACC championship in basketball. When we announced we were joining the ACC back in 2003, we were a joke of a basketball program. I don't even think we made the Big East tournament until our last year in the conference (correct me if I'm wrong). We made one NCAA tournament in 2006-07, then four straight NITs, then four straight nothings. Even when Buzz was hired and we started seeing more success, I never thought an ACC championship was possible. For Virginia Tech, a team a little over a decade ago worried about whether or not they would even make their conference tournament, to go through the likes of UNC, Duke, UVA, Notre Dame, etc. etc. etc. and come out on top? Utterly preposterous. Not to mention, we weren't making the NCAA tournament without winning it. Just ask Texas A&M. This team beat UNC and Duke by double digit points in back-to-back nights. 'Nuff said.
I was also going to say the 2004 game at Miami to clinch the ACC Championship. A lot of people said we didn't belong in a big boy football conference after the 2001-2003 teams, especially being in the Big Easy conference. But that showed we could battle and beat the big boys.
Well, the biggest win by far in VT history was the 1999 Sugar Bowl, though I still don't know to this day why they never played the fourth quarter.
Biggest singular win is the 1995 Sugar Bowl. That one game put VT on the national radar and, if you want to talk about the brand, that's where it started.
The biggest series of wins was the 1999 regular season. That is where the Virginia Tech brand anchored itself in the national scene and made VT a household name from coast to coast.
This tournament run is the biggest comprehensive moment for the Virginia Tech brand in any sport that isn't football, and its a pretty significant gap to 2nd place. This win rose the VT brand to being something bigger than 'just football', and if we play this right this could very easily be a launching point to carry VT hoops for the next 10-15 years, especially with Duke and UNC going through a coaching change off legendary head coaches and UVa looking like they're potentially losing steam off their pre-covid title.
And then you consider we announced plans for a $75m renovation of Cassell less than a year ago, and the timing couldn't be more perfect. Our coaching staff, largely regarded as elite recruiters in their own right, are going to be heading to recruits with an ACC Tournament Champions trophy in tow flashing the Cassell renovation plans with the legitimacy that winning the ACC gives you. You cannot overstate the potential that this past week gives us.
I mean we just accomplished something that NC State hasn't been able to do in 35 years.
All I know is this Championship feels reaaaalllllly niceeee. The void of championshp-ness culture and wins surrounding Hokie football somehow is filled partially by this win. I once again feel proud of my Hokies. Thank you MBB, CMY and Whit.
95 Sugar Bowl. We don't get into the ACC without the rise of the football program. That being said, I value this ACC basketball championship over any of the individual football ACC titles we won. We beat some mediocre teams in a weak football conference for ACC titles. Last week we beat the football equivalent of OSU, BAMA, LSU on consecutive nights as underdogs. Recall when we first played Duke in bball in the ACC and Coach K left his starters in and beat us by 40 points. After the game he said he left the starters in to prove the point that we didn't belong in the ACC. It's only fitting we spoiled his swan song.
We didn't even get an invite until Mark Warner got involved. Our football program had nothing to do with ACC expansion until Syracuse waffled at their invite. My memory is hazy, but I recall ACC wanted some combo of BC, Miami, Notre Dame, and UConn.
Had we stayed in the Big Least, there's a real possibility we would have accepted the SEC invite, or even gotten a BigXII invite, during the 09-11 expansion.
If you have watched the series on the ACC tournament on the ACCN, there is no wonder why they didn't want an outsider like VT in the conference. This is the league that was integrated by Dean Smith- who also coached Vince Carter.... lol. The league was all white until 1970. Not 1950.
Miami forced the hand of the ACC to bring in BC. Basically, Miami said fuck no to UConn because they brought literally nothing in terms of football (as I think they were still FCS at the time), and they demanded BC instead. We got in over Syracuse because our state lawmakers realized that neither UNC nor Duke would vote to expand for anything that didn't explicitly include basketball only intentions, and realized that UVa would effectively be the swing vote, and they financially squeezed their nuts until they voted us in. The rest of the ACC obliged because they just wanted to expand, and that's how it all happened.
Its still horseshit that we got stuck with BC as the permanent cross divisional rival when it was Miami that forced them in.
At the end of the day, if Duke and UNC had their way from the start, the conference would have invited in Miami, UConn, and Syracuse. Given where the landscape of college athletics went, the ACC would have been picked apart and ceased operations by 2015. Its very likely, in that scenario, that we do end up in the SEC by 2010, or at least a part of the desperate 2nd round of ACC expansion around that time.
BC and Miami's penance is never getting to win the conference
99 against BC and it's not close. The most under pressure game for a VT team in history outside of the actual MNC game. Lose that game, and the trajectory for the next 20 years changes.
This topic is silly. We're just going to have to create a new thread in three weeks.
[mod edit: reduced size of gif, ye gods]
That's the context I need!!!
Y'all are all sleeping on VT vs USA softball. Just sayin.
Does it have big picture implications? No. Is it the single greatest victory a VT team has ever had? Yes.
This is what I was coming here to say, they took down the best team in the world, not college, the whole freaking planet.
And didn't just take them down. Tinch threw a no hitter. Most impressive single win by a wide wide margin.
Not sure what metric we're measuring biggest by though. If it is biggest impact on VT sports as a whole, the softball win falls pretty far down.
Definitely the most impressive win I can think of.
It is probably the most impressive win, but I can't say its the biggest. It was a meaningless game in terms of records or tourneys and I am not sure how much it helped us grow the program.
Still its a very nice line on VT Athletics' resume.
I think "biggest win" always requires context and it's too soon to have any meaningful context. If/when VT win a natty with CMY, then this absolutely jumps to #2 ahead of any of the football wins because of that. But for now, it's behind the '95 sugar bowl and '99 season.
Guys - it's March.
Obviously we do a bracket and vote on it to settle this (subjectively) once and for all