The Hokies non-conference schedule was announced:
Mon Nov. 6 Coppin State
Fri Nov. 10 South Carolina in Charlotte
Wed Nov. 15 Campbell
Sun Nov. 19 Wofford
Thu Nov. 23 Boise State in Orlando, Fla.
Fri Nov. 24 Iowa State/VCU Orlando, Fla.
Sun Nov. 26 TBD Orlando, Fla.
Wed Nov. 29 at Auburn SEC/ACC Chlnge
Sat Dec. 9 Valparaiso
Sat Dec. 16 Vermont
Thu Dec. 21 American
Hokies only go on the road for the Hall of Fame game in Charlotte, the ESPN Events Invitational tournament in Orlando and the SEC/ACC Challenge at Auburn.
That gives the Hokies six home games in the first eleven games. They will play three games at the ESPN Event Invitational taking on Boise State and then either VCU or Iowa State depending on the outcome of the first games. The last game will also depend on results.
The Hokies likely go 9-2 or 8-3 over this stretch. I don't like the matchup against Iowa State or Auburn for the Hokies, especially with how many new faces that will be in the rotation.
I expect the starting five to be Cattoor, Pedulla, Beran, Long and Rice. Nickel and Collins will be the first subs on the guard positions. Kidd and Poteat will likely be the first off the bench for the bigs. Big questions for me are what do we see out of Wessler and Camden.
What does everyone else expect?
Comments
To Win!
Let's win the whole thing!
I am not sure about the rest, but you can absolutely lock it in that VT will win on December 16th
That was turrible. Have my up-leg.
Come on Mike, lets challenge ourselves a little here?
Auburn is the game I want to win most this season. More than UVA, Duke, UNC etc. Would absolutely hate to lose that one. Otherwise, take care of business and hope the metrics fall into place.
Sidenote, I'm finding the regular season for hoops harder and harder to follow consistently, and I don't think I'm alone here. I used to be a hoops stats junkie. Now there are too many unimportant games early, not enough teams challenging themselves and not enough interesting storylines. The networks and their main shows have opted to cover NFL, NBA, and even NHL at the expense of CBB (which used to be one of the nation's most popular sports both in the regular season and tournament, and would even compete with football). It's unfortunate but it's turned into a sport where almost all fans only loosely follow their own team, and the national picture is only relevant to a niche group of experts/junkies. Most 'regular' fans opt to turn their attention elsewhere until the big tournament. I can't pinpoint whats exactly causing the decline but I wish it could be reversed and the product be promoted and loved universally as it once was. It would also greatly help the ACC's current position. Thoughts? Am I alone here?
To each their own but that's not me or my friends/family group at all. We are at Cassell as much as we can, pending on if we can make it on week nights considering how far of a drive it is. If we're not there in person there's usually a chat thread where we are keeping up with the games that we can. Yes, even those weekday snoozers against Coppin State. If that doesn't make me a 'regular' fan then so be it.
Also, since VT athletics is primarily geared toward football (for better or for worse) I find that most people that I've interacted with who care at all about VT hoops put in some effort to keep up with how the team is doing during the the season and not just during the conf / national tournament.
Last year I made it to 95% of the football, men's' basketball AND women's basketball game. The wife put her foot down and I could only maintain season tickets to two of three. Football and women's basketball were my choice. I have a good chance of being able to catch most of Men's BB streaming.
That said there are a lot of regulars for both. I will see you there.
I just don't get everyone hating on the schedule and calling it soft. It's not like VT will get into elite non-conference tournaments or that the top P5 out of conference schools will schedule them for a home and home. What do you expect them to do?! Boise State out of the MWC which is an above average basketball conference, VCU out of the A10 is always strong, Iowa State out of the Big12 and Auburn in the ACC/SEC challenge. The ESPN tournament in Orlando is not a bad one to be in. It's not Maui or Atlantis but it's solid with a possible matchup with Buzz and a Texas A&M team that went to the tournament last year. It's certainly enough if the ACC is better. Not sure how everyone else in the conference looks. Again, what do you expect them to do? Given where we are as a program, I think it's a solid schedule. The bottom line is that you have to take care of business out of conference and go above .500 in conference. Do that and you make the tourney.
Prayers to those affected, i doubt Maui does this tourney this year.
Holy shit the devastation is incredible (and sounds like it could have been better managed).
Dry grass lands, sparks, and an 80 mile an hour winds driving the fire inland. Not sure what could have been done to slow it.
Going to derail this thread but that's TKP:
Very few states outside California even attempt much less have success in wildfire mitigation. Hawaii barely tried. Fire budget has gotten smaller despite more risks. No mitigation such as defendable spaces or undergrowth removal or even spot burns occurred. The state and county emergency operations plans for wildland and urban interface fires were less than a paragraph. Agreements with private companies, federal and states resources were not setup ahead of time. No public education on the risks.
It also doesn't help that the remoteness of the islands reduces response time if an when aid was asked for. California can get response assistance from Arizona, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, etc in an emergency. Not to mention they have a much higher population to draw fire fighters and volunteers from.
Wasn't aware they were quite that disorganized in Hawaii. You would think on a volcanic island chain they would have more fire preparation.
That would be part of contingency planning. Use resources at hand, for example over 40,000 permanently stationed active duty military members, not to mention hundreds or thousands more temporarily there for training each year. The coast guard also has a large presence and actually made the first rescues using a helo and cutter.
Around here the coast guard uses helicopters...
Just messing with ya
Holy cow- how did you catch that? A cutter is specifically a Coast Guard vessel and still makes sense in that sentence.
I'm guessing he meant helo and cutter. Not just helicopter
Yep.
We have the Orlando tournament and the Big Ten challenge (now SEC of course). Those are built in every year. This is a soft as hell schedule. Ideally you want at least one, probably two more challenging noncon games
Very curious how you come to that conclusion. (Neither statement is 100% true but the second definitely less so). You can schedule good teams in the nonconference without them being blue bloods.
The strongest P5 basketball teams simply don't schedule home and home series against other strong P5 teams. The blue bloods may do it, but that's generally where it stops. Most teams reserve those spots in the non-conference schedule for neutral site tournaments and one-off matchups. Since you said my statement is not true, name the last time VT had a home game against a strong P5 opponent that wasn't part of the ACC/B10 challenge? For comparison, the strongest home games of comparable ACC teams this year outside of their preset challenge matchups: NC State hosts St. Louis, Wake Forest hosts Rutgers, Clemson hosts Boise State (they host SC as part of that rotating series), Syracuse hosts Colgate and Cornell. Outside of the blue bloods, it just doesn't happen. Want to consider those? UVA's strongest home game is mighty Northeastern, UNC's is Lehigh. Duke breaks the mold with a matchup against Arizona, a matchup that they only can garner as a basketball powerhouse. Most teams, like VT's schedule this year, challenge themselves in the neutral site events. And due to our lack of traditional basketball success, we're limited as to which of those events we will get invited to and the level of competition that the event will obtain. That's why I pointed out that the schedule has solid opponents on it. Boise State has been to the NCAA tournament the last two years and plays in arguably the strongest mid-major basketball conference in the Mountain West. VCU has been to the tournament 2 of the last 3 years. Our P5 opponents Iowa State and Auburn have both been to the NCAA tournament the last 2 years. And there is a possible matchup against a Texas A&M team that went to the tournament last year. What more would you have them do for the schedule? Would we like multiple P5 opponents ? Of course we would. But the reality across college basketball is that those are rare. We're punching in our weight class with this schedule. Win your out of conference games and play well in the ACC, and you can change that narrative. But it won't be a windfall of P5 home and home series. The most it will garner is invites to more prestigious neutral site tournaments and one-off showcase games.
Clemson is playing at Alabama and Memphis, and they have an ongoing home and home vs South Carolina. It can be done. We don't have our main rival out of conference like that but we could probably get something similar with West Virginia or Maryland (WVU in particular would probably jump at the chance).
VCU is a solid one but that's in an early tournament. The early tourney's are baked in. We aren't going to Maui sure but we get solid opponents on those, played Memphis Nova and Xavier (and even NC State goes to Atlantis occasionally we definitely could be in the running for the odd invite to those).
We also don't have to play multiple P5's, Big East and half the American and A10 are perfectly fine as challenging tune up games. But there's not even anything remotely close to the Dayton home and home or St Bonaventure one off on this year's schedule.
You do know that the head coach doesn't schedule the games, right?
He has to be the tip of every spear!
Kinda expecting a Pedulla, Rice, Cattoor, Long, Kidd starting five with Kidd's minutes dependent on his continued development. If he's roughly the same as last year, he starts and gets 18-25 minutes a game based on matchups. If he makes some strides in pick and roll defense, conditioning, and an even somewhat reliable 10-15 foot jumper, he's getting much more run in the same vein as Pedulla/Cattoor. Hoping Rice has a big year and can stay healthy. Not entirely sure what to expect from Long or Beran, but if they can both be steady contributors and defenders, I like that balance with the firepower from Pedulla - Cattoor - Rice with some Nickel sprinkles.
Cautiously optimistic that Wessler can come out this year and show some glimpses of being an anchor for us over the next few seasons. We desperately need some improved athleticism in the front court a la Sir Mohammed to break through moving forward. Dudes who can run, switch 1-4, and get Cassell going with some ridiculous dunks/chase down blocks and such. MY will get them in the right spots, just need a little more juice to get past that first round tourney exit malaise.
This is the first time I have seen your name and I must say I laughed out loud. Well done!
Cheers from the trough urinal my friend!
I assume we were graded after we redid the bathrooms in the football stadium. Or is this just our horrible BB bathrooms.
There likely wasn't much thought put into it. Boomer just posts this crap to get clicks. Most of his shit doesn't make sense. Just thought this time it was appropriate for the trough comment.
Cuse and Pitt are the only good ones I've been too (UM was at the orange bowl) and Pitt is a pro stadium and cuse wasn't that good.
On the bad side I've been to 9 of them, so I guess I'm attracted to bad shitters
Port-a- johns at ODU and Duke the last times I went to games there.(football not basketball obviously)
If we can get good minutes out of Wessler and Rechsteiner that will go a long way. I think the reason we faltered a little at the end of games closing out the season was because Pedulla and other guards were dead-legged. Getting quality minutes from the bench would help a lot with that.
As someone who grew up in Valpo I'm pretty pumped about this matchup even if our OOC schedule looks pretty soft.
I don't exactly like the size of lineup, but in college guard-heavy lineups are the norm and this is the "book" lineup. Long and Beran wouldn't transfer here to not start, right?
Guard Pedulla 6-1 ~30 min
Guard Rice 6-4 ~30 min
Guard Cattoor 6-3 ~30 min
Forward Long 6-7 ?? min
Forward Beran 6-9 ~20 min
- bench rotation -
Guard Collins 6-4 ~20min
Wing Nickel 6-7 ~20min
Forward Kidd 6-10 ~20min
- bench matchup dependent -
Wing Camden 6-9
Forward Poteat 6-9
- depth -
Guard Reichsteiner
Guard Young
Center Wessler
On the plus side all three starting guards run point against ball pressure. On the minus side we start all three of our top PG. Someone is going to get subbed out quickly quickly to start a rotation. It would make more sense for one of them to come off the bench, but which one? Having each of them on the court is critical to the success of the team. Maybe we roll with Pedulla off the bench
/// alternative lineup ///
I would love to see this work out. Because it means Kidd and Nickel have taken really big steps forward
Guard Rice 6-4
Guard Cattoor 6-3
Wing Nickel 6-7
Forward Beran/Long 6-9
Forward Kidd 6-10
- bench rotation -
Guard Pedulla 6-1
Guard Collins 6-4
Forward Long/Beran 6-7
See yall there.
Hoping we play VCU as my wife is an alum and we're only 1.5 hours away.
I'll be there as well!
Going to drop wife and kid off at a park and head to Disney sports I think.