HOKIES HOOPS CENTRAL: DELAWARE STATE (1-0) VS VIRGINIA TECH HOKIES (0-0) 9PM ACCNE
GAME INFORMATION
Date/Time: Nov 7th 2022 900 PM
Opponent: Delaware State
Site: Cassell Coliseum
TV Broadcast
ACC Network Extra
Play-by-Play: Evan Hughes
Analyst: Mack McCarthy
Local Radio
Virginia Tech Sports Network
Play-by-Play: Zach Mackey
Analyst: Mike Burnop
Spectracide start.....
The Hokies come into the 2022 season without a key player in the lineup but that should hardly matter. The Hokies are 2-0 against Delaware State going into their 3rd meeting. They are currently 40th in AP based on other votes and 35th in the Coaches Poll.
The Hornets are coached by Stan Waterman, who began his college coaching career at Wilmington as an assistant coach nearly 30 years ago before being a highly successful high school coach for 30 years. Delaware State is his first college head coaching job. He is in his second season after finishing 2021 with a 2-25 overall record guiding the Hornets. Last season the Hornets suffered 15 double digit losses primarily because they could not defend the perimeter.
The Hornets are 1-0 to start the season after an opening win over Gwynedd Mercy 77-39. In the opener it was Senior Guard O'Koye Parker leading the way with 13 points, joined by Khyrie Staten, Martaz Robinson and Brandon Stone in double figures
The Hornets come into this season with three new Freshman a graduate transfer and several other transfers. Kareem Ewell was a second team All Delaware Forward. Kyle Johnson is a graduate transfer forward from Cal State Monterey Bay. Aaron Lemon-Warren was the 5A Player of the Year in Pennsylvania as a guard and put up 5 points, 7 rebounds and an assist in his debut.
Defensively, they play a high pressure, high risk man-to-man defense, varying their levels of pressure depending on personnel and their opponent, in terms or how hard they guard, how far they extend the court. This is a really small sample size though with the change of personnel and level of opponent. The team very likely will be forced into a much different approach against the Hokies tonight. The roster does have size so wont be knocked around physically by the Hokies necessarily
Offensively, Coach Waterman so far has his team focused on outside shooting. The Hornets shot 26 of 57 shots from outside but only managed to connect on 31%. They shot 54% from the line on 24 attempts.
Hornets Backcourt
O'Koye Parker (#25, SR, G, 6-3, 194 lbs) 13 Pts, 4 Reb, 1 Ast.
Khyrie Staten (#11, SR, G, 6-1, 180 lbs) 12 Pts, 2 Reb, 4 Ast.
Martaz Robinson (#3, JR, G, 6-2, 185 lbs) 10 Pts, 5 Reb, 1 Ast
Jevinn Muniz (#5, FR, G, 6-6, 192 lbs) 8 Pts, 2 Reb, 1 Ast
Aaron Lemon-Warren (#15, FR, G, 6-5, 187 lbs) 5 Pts, 7 Reb, 1 Ast
Hornets Frontcourt
Brandon Stone (#23, SR, F, 6-11, 222 lbs) 10 Pts, 5 Reb, 1 Ast, 1 Blk
Kyle Johnson (#10, SR, F, 6-8, 215 lbs) 4 Pts, 5 Reb, 1 Blk
Cameron Stitt (#20, SO, F, 6-8, 201 lbs) 0 Pts, 5 Reb
What to expect from Delaware State?
As a team the Hornets are shooting an extremely low percentage despite winning by nearly 40 points. 31% from the perimeter on 26 attempts per game. Shot less than 50% from inside the perimeter.
Delaware State played most of their roster in the first game with 10 players getting 15 or more minutes. The roster runs to the larger side for such a small school. There will likely be three players on the floor 6'8 or taller for most of the game.
Delaware State must hope to create points off turnovers and are able to avoid significant foul trouble. They committed 16 fouls in the first game but forced 12 steals in the first game.
The Hokies
The Hokies will be able to shoot from outside almost at will but may use this contest as a developmental opportunity inside with Justyn Mutts suspended this first game. There is a good chance the Hokies will have at least 6 players finish n double digit scoring tonight.
The Hokies rotation with Mutts out will likely see John Camden and Lynn Kidd splitting starting time down low. We may get our first look at Rice transfer Mylyjael Poteat. We may also see some of Wright State transfer Grant Basile.
The guard rotation likely is Pedulla, Cattoor, Maddox and possibly a few freshman minutes. Rodney Rice is out with an ankle injury for now.
The Hokies need to ensure they have crisp passes, especially near the top of the key. Avoiding turnover transition baskets will cement the result of this contest pretty early.
This is the kind of game where the Hokies should be able to get everyone they want to some meaningful minutes.
Highlight of the Preseason
Coach Poppin
You know we had to ๐ฟ๐ฟ๐ฟSend us your elite costume pics โฌ๏ธ pic.twitter.com/77myQ8wHveโ Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) October 31, 2022
In Closing
The Hokies work the ball inside, win the rebounding battle and outscore the Hornets inside. The Hokies will hit some daggers from the perimeter. They should be able to add 20+ points at the free throw line.
There will be at least six Hokies in double figures. Cattoor gets in a groove and teases 30 points before they sit him.
Hokies push the pace and run away from the Hornets. Hokies don't have a lapse to start the season with Mutts out and win 79-48.
Comments
Great write-up! I'm hoping this one isn't blacked out in my area.
This one is kind of light on content. Not much history for the coach or team to draw much on.
I thought this was just about perfect. Was a good preview. I don't think you need to get all that much deeper if it takes a load off the time in writing these.
Honestly this one took as long as most only because my normal searches for info didn't return much. Less time writing, more time researching... kind of a wash.
Red Five reporting in. My crew is already downtown and we are hype for being back in Cassell! Also, I'm wearing my Mutts jersey in protest of the NCAA. Go Hokies!
He's back with his excellent previews. Thanks ltrepeter2000.
Cayla King setting Cassell on fire tonight. 33pts already.
Set the womens record. Tied Catoor's mens record.
Played a little ugly, too many turnovers, and yet still hit 101 and won by 56. This team is gonna make some noise.
They better because we replace 4/5 starters next year lol
It is really great to read your articles again.
We love you man.
Thanks for the content and time you put into it.
I am really glad Hokie basketball is back!
Shout out to the ladies for dominating 101-45.
Cayla King with 33 pts total and 9 threes.
Kitley 1 rebound away from a double-double, Amoor 1 assist away
BRING ON ALL THE FAM THREADS HOW I HAVE MISSED THEM
knock on wood!
Has anybody else noticed the watchespn schedule has us listed at 9pm, but if you load the event it says it's starting at 2am tomorrow morning? I really hope E$PN isn't fucking this up like they do so many times.
Edit- oops....somehow posted the same thing twice.
Glad you're back in the land of the living. Happy to read your CMYBall preview.
On a completely unrelated note, anyone else read ACCNE as acne?
ltrepeter is BAK
Great to see him back from his hibernation ready for some basketball!
especially great bc hes been pretty open about a lot of serious health stuff
Yup, agreed
For the out of state Hokies and gamblers. Hokies are 33 point favorites
I like 3 pointers
Accnx is hot trash I can hardly get it working.
Pedulla is going to be vastly improved this year. Excited to see Basile try to fill Keve's shoes.
I'm happy to see Lynn Kidd getting some minutes! I wonder where Mutts will slot into this starting lineup. Removing Kidd would make it a very small lineup. Maybe Basile comes off the bench?
Anybody else having ACCNX issues? Our game is "Temporarily unavailable" on multiple devices.
Mine is working fine through watchespn.com, although I had to move to my PC because my ps4 internet browser is apparently using Google safari and needs to be updated to google chrome or firefox?
ACCNX is working on the ESPN app
Don't use the ESPN+ one it was bugged but accnx one is working for now
I really like 3 pointers
Looking dapper, Justyn.
I like our 5 hitting 3s
We will live and die by the 3 this season lol
Isn't that the signature of CMY team?
Haha even more so this year! We are going to miss Aluma's inside scoring threat.
Hoping Poteat was just a little overexuberant for his debut, otherwise he'll play 2 minutes each half and get 2 fouls. Quickly.
Otherwise I'm curious to see who spells Pedulla, and how the freshmen rotate in these 4 games
Yeah he had big Ojiako energy with those two quick fouls lol I think he will be an upgrade though!
For being the world wide leader in sports, their streams are some trash (ESPN+)
Only weakness so far is interior defense. Some soft baskets inside.
HE'S ON FIRE
Basile looks legit.
MJ Collins shot/follow through is realllllly slow.... gonna need to work on speaking that up or he's gonna have a lot of his shots blocked. It almost seems like he's trying to shoot with the perfect form.
Freshman's literal first points at VT "yeah but he shoots slow!"
/s I kid I kid, you're right, we'll likely see those impacts later this year
Poteat is a big dude. Reminds me a bit of Jeff Allen.
Wonder what he's doing Saturday, and how he feels about defensive end?
Worth a try.
Gotta like the depth. With Rice coming along to provide some guard depth, we should have a stupid deep bench.
Forgot (shame on me) Rodney Rice is out with a bit of a nagging ankle injury. Better to rest that up now I suppose.
Maddox's defense leaves me wanting more effort, but he's just so good on offense
I don't know literally half these kids playing right now but they're looking pretty good.
Basile is THAT dude. Lynn Kidd looks awfully spotty on D
he's engaged and active on D but doesn't quite have that second nature feel for it yet
Offensive rebound into a dunk....love it
Basile with 20 before the break
I love coach young, always coaching them up.
-> Basile: make 3 off an offensive rebound
-> CMY: look, this thing from 2 plays ago, you gotta do [this], instead of [that]
yep, even at that halftime interview he was careful to only compliment Basile's offensive game when the reporter asked how good a first half he was having... and then when asked about the defensive success holding Delaware State to only 34 points, he complained we were giving up too many points to this bunch (Delaware State). I love it.
It's clear what the goal for this game is - play great team defense.. and it's clear that isn't quite happening
With healthy Mutts, is Basile the 5? So we have a center that can knock down 3s at will??
Gonna be a lot of centers in the ACC having to guard uncomfortably away from the rim
This x 1000^^^
Of course we start season giving up beyond half court bomb.....just happens way too often in Cassell for some reason...well good it was scratched but love Coach's take right there. 34 points WAS way too much.
yeah but let's get that out of way in a game it won't make a difference in lol
waved it off.
Yeah. Really hurts on a close game like this
Well at least it was taken off and can be a teaching lesson a year
MY with a classic half time interview. That guys a national treasure.
Guys I gotta go!
That was a very fun half of basketball! Glad to see them come out firing like that.
They can't give us a court top down view during breaks?
We've missed 12 shots.
We put back 6 of them.
That's a total of 6 empty possessions out of 31.
So that's pretty good.
Bonus: Frisbee dogs in the house! I. Can remember when we had that for FOOTBALL halftime shows!
Seth Greenberg interviewing Mike Young blows my mind
Haha I thought the same thing
I am happy for Greenberg. He has excelled as an analyst.
Why the fuck is the band in the nosebleeds??
hasn't the band always been up behind most of the Cassell Guard section?
Band platform is where it's always been? As someone that played in the pep band from the same spot in the 00's, the seats are actually pretty decent.
Maybe it was just the camera angle. They looked further away than I remember. Also used to womens game pep band and there was no one between us and the floor from 2010-2014.
In my days as a student(in the 80's), the band was high up just off half-court line om the east side; of course in those days 4500 of the 10,000 seats were student tickets(pretty much the entire east side). Which will understandably never be the case with us being in the ACC instead of the Metro.
Side note- I got to attend the Metro Conference tournament in Memphis one year. Rode a chartered bus trip to it and met up with seven other random students. We ate at the Rendezvous -after spending two hours in the basement bar cause we didn't have reservations(we taught the crowd there our fight song and learned and sang theirs as well). And did cartwheels down Beale Street!
Hokies lost in the first round but the Memphis home fans were so rude to us (and everyone else-they were yelling "Hattiesburg's a slum" to Southern Miss team and fans to which we replied "have you SEEN where Mid-South stadium(MSUs home court) is?") that we decided to vociferously yell against whoever they wanted in the rest of the games. We even had the Florida State cheerleaders come over to our patch of maroon in a sea of blue to lead us in cheers for FSU. MSU ultimately lost to Louisville which wasn't great but the lesser of two evils.
Pedulla Cattoor Mutts Basile is going to be lethal combo y'all. Add in Maddox or Rice and look out
Dang - 56 points with only one turnover is impressive no matter who you're playing.
never thought I'd see our PG posting up, drawing the double and kicking out to the C for a 3..
Do y'all like the new unis? Cauz at first I was hesitant but I'm really digging them now.
It's beautiful. Basile is as advertised and I'm liking our interior as well. Still much better teams to play but interior play from kidd in particular has stood out.
Rejection into a power slam
For posterity
DSU 35 - Basile 28....he needs to fix that
Hope Coach let's them keep playing at pace. I appreciate not running it up but rhythm is more important this early.
Has Pry met Poteat? Looks like he could be solid depth on the D line
I think Poteat might be a transfer...not sure...
That's right. He played 2 seasons at Rice in Houston. I think they said on the broadcast that CMY had recruited him previously when he was at Wofford so there's a connection there.
Do my eyes deceive me or did we go back to the correct maroon on the new uniform? (I'm watching on a tablet so I may be deceived lol)
I liked it
๐
I've seen enough. Build a statue of Basile in front of Cassell
Tangentially related: where did the huge statue of the Hokie bird go? The one in Cassell is just gone.
Starting the season off right.
Winning basketball games is nice and all, @whitbabcock, but we have homecoming weekend during football season for good reasons.
hoping it works out, Coach Pry.
Football thread is over there. Positive basketball vibes only over here.
Loved the play in the first half especially on offense some good movement and nice shot selection. Guys like Camden look like roll players who can be a big boost of the bench with the three ball. Basile looks like hes been here for 3 or 4 years and should be a heck of a weapon especially once Mutts is back in. Poteat has my curiosity his size is nice and he looks a good big but feels a bit raw on both ends probably someone who will play alot in non conference but I'm curious how much time Young gives him in ACC play. Overall second half play was a bit sloppy but some nice stuff from the Collins and Maddox as well. Mix in Rice and Mutts and this feels like a solid team.
Interestingly Young was pretty critical of Basile on the defensive end in his postgame, didn't pull any punches.
I expect poteat to be a more competent Ojiako who gets 10-15 a game fairly consistently, especially against teams like UNC and FSU.
And knowing how much Young demands good defence I could see why I felt he was passive at times inside and against ACC teams that would be an issue. Poteat looks like he could handle pretty much any big in the ACC size wise and if he can follow through he will be shooting alot of frees.
Defense is what kept Maddox from getting a lot more minutes early last year. I like the fact that Young stresses team D as much as he does and makes every player earn time on the court. It wouldn't shock me to see Basile's minutes dip slightly once Mutts is back in the lineup as a message to play better defense - particularly if the rest of the offense is still scoring at a pretty good clip.
Where do we anticipate Rice's minutes to be at when he's back? Think the Hokies will be pretty tough this year.
spelling either Pedulla and Cattoor. I hope he can run the offense from point. VT will need either Rice or Collins to give Pedulla breaks here and there and keep offense productive.
Cattoor is another option to run the point, but as we've seen the last two years, he plays much better off the ball. I guess Maddox could too, but not sure if that's the best way to use his skillset.
Is Wessler injured? I saw he did not log any minutes?
I saw on twitter that Young said in the post game presser that they plan to redshirt him and Buchannon this year.
Is there any allowance of playing time you can get in hoops while keeping your redshirt?
There is no playing time allowance currently for a standard redshirt. Medical redshirt allows for up to 20% participation before even that is not allowed.
The last three years there have been rule change proposals on redshirting but they have not been formalized at this point.
CMY said yesterday or the day before that both Big Pat Wessler and Darren Buchanan, Jr. would both be redshirting this year. Or at least that's the plan anyways.
I don't want to make too much of us beating up on a team that apparently won 2 games last year. But definitely a confidence a boosting start seeing the bench play like that.
They only brought back four players from last year. I think Delaware State is going to win a couple more this year.
Basile is definitely a threat around the basket and from the 3 pt line, but he got his pocket picked repeatedly last night and lost it a couple times while driving it to the basket. That was about the only real negative I noticed last night. They got sloppy in the last 9 minutes, but we were nursing a 40 point lead and swapping players in and out.
I'm not mad at the defense yet. Game 1 in real time, missing a key player in Mutts. Going to take some time for these guys to gel a bit. This isn't to be nonchalant but I trust Young is gonna get the defense right as the season goes on
Until that happens, I will be betting the OVER on every foreseeable VT game because your boys can shoot lights out
My thoughts on last night:
Keys to Victory:
First and foremost, Hokies out scored the opponent. That always helps!
So how did we do that? 55% FG shooting. This is good.
50% from 3pt range. Don't get much better than that!
75% free throw shooting. Above 70% is always a good thing.
Rebounds... Hokies out rebounded the opponent 42-24. Nice window cleaning there!
10 turnovers. Only 1 in the first half. That is super great! Got a little sloppy in the 2nd half with 9. Need to work on that. Anytime you can have 10 or fewer turnovers for the game, you are usually giving yourself a chance.
Attendance: 7899. Not a sellout, but considering the opponent not bad. Cassell Guard really showed out well. A full house in Cassell makes for an exciting atmosphere.
We were at 60% FG at the half. A lot of the drop in shooting and turnovers was likely cleaning the bench and trying new combinations. We did not look as smooth when Pedula was not at the point, and we became unsure of where people were going when we got deep on the bench and shifting positions. Getting a chance to do that is the only reason to play games like this.
Crazy fact. Both the men's and women's teams last night hit 14 of 28 from 3 pt range. Both hit 55% plus overall.
Both teams had at least 42/45 rebounds while giving up 24/23 rebounds. Both teams had at least 4 blocks and steals.
Image similarity intentional.
Biggest surprise obviously the shooting of Basile but the more important surprise was the improved floor vision of Catoor. His passing last night was the best on the floor. The defense he was able to draw to him before hitting a wide open big down low was phenomenal. He had at least three no look passes that hit his target in the perfect position to shoot without adjusting.
If he can maintain that it will take pressure off Pedulla and the entire team in Rice absence.