Virginia Tech is coming off a painful loss to LOLUVA, 57-53. A game that exposed the basic weaknesses of the roster , failure to keep the opponent off the offensive glass, poor free throw shooting and a lack of scoring from key players down the stretch. They will need all of their players to at least put up average performances to stay in the game. They cant afford anyone to go 1 for 5,6,7, or 8 from the field.
NC State comes in on a two game skid as well. They lost a heartbreaker to Syracuse 56-55, with Syracuse scoring the final bucket with 6.7 seconds remaining. They then fell flat on their face against Clemson, losing 73-56. NC State if they can right their ship might sneak into the bubble conversation, so I am sure their coaching staff has them ready to go today. They are led by their sophomore Power Forward T.J. Warren, who is averaging 23 PPG and 7.2 RPG. He has a tendency to get in foul trouble so hopefully JJ works the offense in to try to get him out of the game. His nearest teammate in scoring is junior Guard, Ralston Turner, who is only putting up 10.4 PPG, so a significant drop off if you can limit Warren's scoring.
Hopefully we get the win, but lets hope the competitive trend continues regardless. I would look for a big game from Devin and Joey again if JJ focuses on getting Warren in trouble. I will likely not be able to watch the game so that seems to be key in them winning ACC games, so hopefully the rest of you enjoy seeing a Hokie win.
Game is on TV here:
http://www.theacc.com/#!/news-detail/RSN-Affiliates-for-ACCMBB-NC-State-...
Radio here:
http://www.hokiesports.com/radio/stations.html
Comments
GO HOKIES!!!
16-12, apparently JJ didn't read my writeup about Warren, as he has 10 of NCStates 16 points so far
35-25 at the half. Warren had 17 points in the first half for NC State. Too many turnovers by the big men in the lane is the big difference in this one so far
36-30 NC State. Nice alley-oop from Wilson to JVZ.
Blackout agreements in todays mobile technology world are some bs. Not able to watch on espn3 now that I am in the car because its blacked out in nova for csn broadcast
Devin Wilson makes me smile.
Technical on JVZ. Was a bad call.
66-61 less than a minute left. Too many missed free throws and blown open shots in the lane or under the basket by the big men. Competitive but frustrating.
71-64 the final. I was impressed when Devin drove to the basket and our bigs definitely need work at the charity stripe. Also, TJ Warren is a monster.
71-64 loss, Tech goes 22-37 from the free throw line today. Devin Wilson was a solid 9-11 but the rest of his teammates seemed to have netfear from the freebie stripe. Tech shot significantly better from the field in the second half, at almost 55% but the first half woes made it a 40% day. Way too many of those misses were from inside five feet of the basket, many of them without a defender on them. Devin and Jarell had solid games today scoring 14 points a piece. Tech again had serious problems holding on to the ball, turning it over 17 times today compared to only 7 from the Wolfpack. The turnovers led to 14 points for NC State on the day. Tech did manage to draw quite a few fouls today, unfortunately in running the offense to do this they didnt seem to focus on T.J. Warren while doing it. They did however foul out two of the Wolfpack big men.
For NC State, T.J. Warren goes for 31 of his teams 71 points. Tech had no answer for his floating jumper all day. NC State had 13 offensive rebounds on the day, which led to 9 points. While not as bad as the previous game, still a fairly high number of rebounds to give up on this end. The issue here is that Tech seems unable to crash the basket from its 2-3 zone defensive allignment, which allows the opposing team to slip between the center and the forwards on the baseline to get position for the rebounds. Tough game to lose, but we just didnt seem to have that final push to be able to overcome the early 10 point lead we spotted them.
Can anyone tell me what JVZ got the technical for? The ref was the only one that pushed the NC State player. Also, Wilson continues to get better. Look forward to seeing him next year with a well deserved rest after this season - 39 minutes today. He has improved his free throw shooting, no one can stop him one on one when he is driving to the basket and his confidence is growing with his outside shooting. Most of his turnovers are the result of his teammates not moving or catching the ball. He shut Warren down to 1 point in the last 10 minutes of play...or Warren was worn out from scoring so much in the first half.
I think he was going for the ball after the whistle blew, which qualifies as a technical.
I didn't fully understand it, either. The commentators said it was a "contact technical foul," and they assumed it was because his arm brushed against the NC St player when the ref got tangled between both and pushed the NC St guy back. JVZ looked as confused as anyone. Homerism aside, there was nothing that went on there that merited a technical unless someone threw out some nasty trash talk about someone else's mother.
This was my understanding as well. The ref was getting him for "purposely striking or kicking the ball after the whistle" See link below.
http://www.basketballhow.com/information/rules/violations/fouls/technica...
Pretty weak for that to be the call but what can you do? At least it wasn't the Duke/Syracuse debacle.
I've been happy with our performance the last few games, there's clearly effort and JJ is coaching like his job is on the line (because, well, it is). Hopefully we can keep it up, but Duke is a different challenge altogether.
One a side note I didn't want to start a new thread for this but this has really been bugging me. Do people actually believe UVA is a top 15 team? To me they're no better than 23 or 24. Their best win this year is probably SMU (who dropped out of the top 25), and they have no wins against the current top 25. They're 14-1 in conference, but the ACC isn't that good this year. Pitt is gonna be fighting just to get us 5 teams in the tournament. I just don't see it when I watch them play, just wanted to know if anyone else is noticing that.
I agree with you that UVA's best win is probably SMU. They have only played three other ranked teams this season, VCU (Lost by 3 on a 3 with 1.1 seconds left), Wisconsin (Lost by 10, shot 23%, 48-38 final) and Duke (Lost by 4, Duke hit a three with 18 seconds left, UVA fouled on inbounds, guy hit both free throws, end of game). They haven't had what you would call a signature win, but they have Syracuse looming which may decide if UVA wins the regular season crown or if Duke sneaks in to take it away with a UVA loss. As for the rankings, at this point in the season, any team from 10-30 could be interchangeable. All have somewhere between 4 and 7 losses on the season thus far, and about 19-22 wins. UVA benefits from being in the ACC(perception) and being an east coast team that garners more coverage from writers and television so right now they are higher in that fluid group of twenty teams. If they beat Syracuse, even with its recent losses, than I have no problem with their ranking whatsoever.
That said, their average margin of victory, even factoring in the losses, is over 13 points. They have gone out and won the games they were supposed to and been in the games against top competition other than Wisconsin. I don't put as much stock in the AP or USA Today Polls (14th/13th) but I do usually put stock in the RPI and BPI(15th/15th) as they are less biased by people's opinions and more numbers based.
Even in a down year, we are looking at five teams from the ACC going to the tournament (Pitt is in at 20-6 unless they go on a hot losing streak; five games left, no ranked opponents) We have the potential for a sixth or seventh team in if Clemson (17-9) and NC State (17-10) can win out their regular season games. Clemson is currently 68 RPI and 53 in the BPI. NC State is 54 RPI and 71 in the BPI. They both likely need to crack into the high 40s by seasons end to get in the tournament due to automatic qualifiers.
I agree with the rankings, it was just one of the ways to look at teams. UVA is 3-3 against the RPI top 50, that's nothing special. Margin of victory can be important, but when you play nobody out of conference it makes that number look way better than it should be. I also agree that the Syracuse game will give everyone a good look at how good UVA actually is, but honestly if they lose that I could see them being a 5 or 6 seed in the tournament unless they make a run in the ACC tournament. The committee has made it clear that you will be punished for weak OOC scheduling, and they might have one of the weakest I've seen. They lost to the good teams they played.
According to RPI, their overall Strength of Schedule is 46th but their Non Conference Strength of Schedule is 29th overall. This says to me that the committee will actually see a better non conference schedule than an actual conference record. Their Road and Neutral game RPI, another key factor that the committee usually takes into account is 14th overall. BPI has their overall strength of schedule at 70, but doesn't use Conf/Non Conf SOS like the RPI.