Writeup is abbreviated as I am doing it from my phone.
Gameday in Upstate NY‼️🆚 Syracuse🕖 7PM📺 ESPNU pic.twitter.com/vfvwZM9qPu— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) February 27, 2024
Hokies (15-12)
At Orangemen (18-10)
JMA Wireless Dome
7pm ESPNU
Line: Syracuse -1.5
Over/Under: 153.5
Orange Backcourt
Judah Mintz
3 SO G 6-3 172
18.3 Pts, 3.2 Reb, 4.4 Ast
JJ Starling
2 SO G 6-4 200
13.7 Pts, 3.3 Reb, 1.8 Ast
Quadir Copeland
24 SO G 6-6 203
9.3 Pts, 4.9 Reb, 2.8 Ast
Justin Taylor
5 SO G 6-6 205
5.0 Pts, 3.9 Reb, 1.0 Ast
Orange Frontcourt
Chris Bell
4 SO F 6-7 180
12.0 Pts, 2.3 Reb, 0.7 Ast
Maliq Brown
1 SO F 6-8 213
9.3 Pts, 6.8 Reb, 1.8 Ast
Benny Williams
13 JR F 6-8 215
5.4 Pts, 3.9 Reb, 1.2 Ast
What to expect from the Orange
Every Orange win has depended on Starling and Mintz having good games. Where they struggle is against teams that can limit either of them if not both.
They do it almost exclusively by getting to the rim. As a team they score 55 points in the paint or at the line (15.3ppg at the line in ACC play) and ACC teams are whistled for 16.5 PF per contest.
Small Forward Chris Bell is the only real outside threat and takes almost a third of the teams attempts. He is shooting 43% from outside on 6.4 attempts per game.
They run a two guard, three forward and most games a seven player rotation. The primary ballhandlers are Mintz and Starling.
Copeland is a slasher that moves off ball when Mintz/Starling drive and gets several put back buckets on rebounds or is free to receive a pass across the lane if the defense flexes to the driving guard.
Bell is more a wing than a true forward preferring to set up for an outlet pass in the corner to shoot threes. Brown and Williams in the frontcourt alternate the fifth spot.
Four of the seven Orange contributors are from the Virginia/Maryland area, although three of them were recruited out of IMG Academy as a group.
This game unfortunately looks to play out very similar to Notre Dame, where the athleticism is too much at the guard spots for the Hokies to handle cleanly.
💯 Mentality pic.twitter.com/9nUyNjTe5n— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) February 27, 2024
This is another game where the Hokies should have a decided advantage in the paint on offense considering the tallest Orange player is 6'8. The lingering question is will they be able to take advantage of it.
The final result comes down to whether the Hokies can avoid foul trouble guarding Mintz and Starling and can they avoid the dreaded scoring droughts they seem prone to on the road.
It's going to be tough with several factors working against them.
Shout out to incoming recruit Ryan Jones on winning a state championship in Florida.
SIAA 2024 State Champsss!🏆🏆🏆Jesus in topppp❤️🙏🏾 #statechamp #Champion #Florida pic.twitter.com/7PBY9nge06— Ryan Jones JR. (@RyanJonesJR1) February 25, 2024
Comments
Let's Go!
Hokies!!
need to get more paint touches before jacking an outside shot. kidd and poteat can score inside.
3:30 scoring drought finally ended by Poteat. Then can't get a defensive rebound. We make it look so difficult on the road.
Not sure why but they seem to do it every road game. Just go away from what's working and make really dumb decisions with the ball. Four turnovers in last five minutes. It's the little things that costs them.
Letting too much straight penetration ...this is ugly. Lucky to not be down by ten or more already.
Was just thinking your preview was spot on - too much athleticism at the guard spots. They're penetrating the lane at will and either getting to the basket untouched or the help is too late or doesn't do any good.
Strange how we can't seem to do that.
Poteat with 2 fouls is not ideal.
Guys blowing past the guards leaves him in awkward position trying to give help defense.
Poteat 2 fouls. Kidd 2 turnovers. SMH
Lazy.
That was really stupid by Beran. If you are going to foul you can't let him get the basket
And Why the fuck was beran at the point?
It's sad that Cattoor dunks better than our bigs
Our bigs have been butter fingers tonight.
This is embarrassing. You know what they prefer to do on offense and are just letting them do it again and again.
Emphasis on embarrassing
They're making everything. 60% from the floor to 45% for us. And we are 1-4 from 3.
That's what happens when you gives them easy layups or wide open looks. Not sure why they even got on the plane.
Great action out of the timeout and Cattoor misses an open 3. Then give up a basket on the other end. Just can't get out of our own way
Jesus Christ pedulla misses layup kid misses bunny.... dunk on the other end
We suck so bad. This is embarrassingly pathetic.
Ugh. Goodnight folks.
Too slow... Not enough athleticism... Zero defense... Embarrassing is likely not the right word...
Worst performance I think I've seen all season. We are getting bodied over and over and over and over
By smaller players no less
I just said to my wife this is the worst half I've seen the Hokies play that I can remember. I mean how is this team we are seeing on the floor tonight in the ACC.
my eyes
at this point just get guys reps and get ready for acct and next year
May be time for a Mike young conversation...
This is the type of team that you go to a box and 1 zone defense against .....
But Young refuses to adjust. It's one of the huge differences between him and Kenny.
Perhaps a Whit conversation too: https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/salaries/mens-basketball/coach/2604
So we try to press but then let them have an easy entry pass for a layup
Should have been an offensive foul for running over Cattoor but turns into shooting two for Orange
I was wondering what the hell, and then I realized TV Teddy was there.
Lazy one handed rebound attempt on offense and then gets turned in a circle under the rim to give up easy bucket. Epitome of the season.
Ok....I never really checked out....hard to believe we are back within 7.
What an awful sequence....DUNK THE MF BALL
No doubt. Why take Kidd out. A huge momentum change and we shit the bed in the first 30 seconds and go down by 11 from 7.
Can we please just pack the lane on defense? There is a reason UVA beat them by 22
Belive it or not....the difference in this game is now free throws. Both teams shooting 100% but 3-3 for us and 11-11 for them. All the other stats are virtually even including fouls.....thers were shooting fouls though.
And there's another one.
There is nobody on this Syracuse team that scares me from more than 12 ft. from the basket....yet we continue to led them spread us out and get to the basket.
Also, no newsflash her but the lack of athleticism on this team is staggering. You can't win at the P5 level with a team with this makeup.
Except Tony Bennett does it on the regular... by beating teams like this by forcing them to that 12+ foot shots like you said. They put 4 defenders in the paint and dare a team like this to score other ways. Young refuses to use anything but man-to-man even when it's clearly not working.
Point well-made.
I guess that's the particularly worrisome and frustrating thing with CMY.
The Roster certainly has limitations, but it also doesn't seem that CMY has a good feel for adjusting and maximizing the players he has. Getting really hard to see what the long-term vision is here for improvement.
Young not in the same class as Bennett. That's why Young is playing a week before Bennett in the ACC tourney this year.
So, we called at T/O with 44 Sec left to let them dribble it out???
I was begging for a 2-3 zone all night
Wake me up when MY is gone.
This roster construction is BRUTAL.
Can't retain talent and can't make any adjustments when the "MY system" isn't working.
This isn't Wofford.
When looking at next year's roster, I can't help but put my hands over my eyes and open them just enough between my middle and ring finger to see the senior attrition and what's left of it for next season.
If this team is this inconsistent (being polite here) then I will definitely not be watching any live games on the TV next season.
It's going to get worse from here unless he pulls a miracle from the portal and I'm not counting on that. I will pray for him to do so, but being a realist is my nature.
Most concerning is how we make mediocre teams look great. A theme under Young. Teams/players have career games etc. Cuse is a bubble team- not as good as we made them look. They shot 62% in the first half last night- lol- you aren't going to win games with that defense. We just aren't very good period- and we make mid teams look great- thats lacking toughness and consistency.
I wonder if Whit could convince CMY to pull a "NIL/transfer portal age is not for me, want to focus on family by retiring". Let him go with respect of not being fired AND before more long-term damage is done to the recruiting appeal of VT.
CMY has done nothing wrong that warrants being fired, but he also has done nothing to make me believe that he can swim with even the top half of the league on a consistent basis (and I'm not talking about just wins & losses). I am not going to be happy with 5-7 great wins a season, while the rest are expected wins or head-scratching losses. I have come to terms with the fact that VT will never truly be able to compete at the top level of football, but basketball is still very much within reach. We're just kind of stuck in 2nd gear with our trusty old Challenger that was our first car, the car we lost our virginity in, and the car we have the warm & fuzzies for and don't want to let go. I'm ready to say thanks for the memories, but we need to move on.
The issue is that Young is a good basketball coach. He's great with X and O's etc. He's great with fans and the media. His issue is that his teams have to shoot lights out from distance to over come their piss poor transition and post defense- because he hasn't recruited those type of athletes. He needs to hire a legit ace recruiter- meaning better than Mike Jones- who couldn't keep the recruits he signed.
To both your and HokieAlum6144's comments: is CMY a guy, at his point down his very long road as a HC, who will change key parts of how he runs his program and/or philosophy? Where would the external pressure come from? I don't see Whit being a guy to say "Mike, you gotta start recruiting these types of athletes or switch up your defensive strategies." I don't see big time donors either a) understanding those intricacies and being willing to lean into CMY about them, or b) being enough of a groundswell to make an impact.
I do see CMY making minor changes to the program and having some positive success with it. But I think we have seen most ACC opponents able and willing to react to the in-court result. No changes significant enough to position the program to make the top third consistently.
It is a very tough situation to be in. I want the Hokies to be the very best that they can be. Unfortunately I am seeing more often and more clearly that VT will need to make tough decisions and bold moves that say flirting with 0.500 is not OK for our program. Curb-stomping your arrival at home but then falling flat on your asses the next two games is not OK for our program. Sorry CMY, you're the kind of guy that we want as the person behind our HC, but the direction the program is going in is not acceptable.
There is something that gives me pause, and that is the cost of chasing full-time success. I have heard the athletics department is in a very bad financial situation right now, so affordability is an issue. If we are near the cliff, or making such a ballsy move would put us near the cliff, then I would be fine with holding on to what we have and hope CMY makes the right changes/moves.
It's interesting... If the Mike Young tenure happened right after Seth Greenburg, we'd probably be okay enough with these results. But Buzz showed how high the ceiling in Blacksburg can be. If Chris Clark keeps his hands to himself, we are a final four team.
I don't know enough about basketball to say if the issue is CMY's scheme, culture, recruiting, assistants, etc, but it's clear that running it back won't fix the issue.
I honestly think if CMY comes out and says I am rethinking some of my schemes and Tech will introduce some Zone defense concepts next year that collectively we sigh and give him another year without any problems. The biggest issue has been the lack of change to certain situations. There are many games where our adherence to man defense has flummoxed our opposition, but like last night our lack of zone killed us against Syracuse.
This. Football we used to crucify Cornfu for not making in game adjustments. Young approaches defense on the court this same way. I understand wanting to use man-to-man as a base but in games its not working there is ZERO flexibility to try other options. It's like banging your head against a brick wall...stopping...and proceed to bang your head some more and wonder why it still hurts.
"I think that's a common misconception is the halftime adjustments. I think that's the most overrated thing I've ever heard in athletics."
This comment made by CMY on the 1 Feb Tech Talk Live show did not make me feel real comfortable with his attitude toward making adjustments in game.
Wow. So what do they do in the locker room? Drink Gatorade and discuss their favorite plays of the 1st half?!?
Here is the whole segment
" What is halftime like? What's going on in there at halftime and what's the goal? How does that all go?
We come off the floor. I go in immediately. We all come in, staff, everyone. And I don't say very much at all. I'll address them briefly. And then we head across the hall to the women's locker room where we will meet until the 10-minute mark on the game clock, which is in both of our locker rooms so we can monitor that. I go back in and we'll watch some film, which is legal now, not a lot, maybe five to eight clips of things we saw in that half and something that we may have made a mistake on. Typically it's a ball-screen coverage, tweak that a little bit. But there's not wholesale changes.
I think that's a common misconception is the halftime adjustments. I think that's the most overrated thing I've ever heard in athletics. Football or basketball, someone makes some outstanding halftime adjustments where you don't have time to breathe. You only truly get six minutes from the 10-minute mark to the four-minute mark or the 10-minute mark to the five-minute mark. You want to get them back on the floor and get them going again. So you're really refining, if you will, you're really just emphasizing again, how you want to guard something, or maybe an action that you saw offensively that you want to go to early in the half and see if they've made any adjustments. So that's kind of how it rolls out."
Ouch...not really confidence inspiring.
The end of the statement almost makes the entire thing an Oxymoron. You "refine" and part of the process is identifying Offensive opportunities and seeing if they have adjusted, yet adjustments are overrated?
For a 100% Man Defensive scheme to be consistently successful you need 2 things:
( 1 ) Really good athletes (absolute must at at least 1, 2, and 3 spots)
( 2) Depth - ready to spell guys that need a blow or guys in foul trouble.
This VT team doesn't have either and last years didn't either---to not even consider adjusting is really confounding.
Meh, in college hoops the assistants put in the game plan and coach each side in practice. The head coach works the refs, recruits, and makes decisions on timeouts etc. Most of the "coaching" is done before the game and by the assistants. Big time guys like Coach K, Calipari, Self don't even attend practice some days. After haltime, the team that makes their shots gets the momentum. Most games is simple as that vs. some iconic "adjustment" made by the head coach. VT blew out cuse in blacksburg a couple years ago and Beoheim was asked about defensive adjustments on Catoor and Storm- his response was "I didn't think they would keep hitting their shots like that". lol. At the end of the day its who puts the ball in the hoop.
Yep so here is where I think it shows that between games the evaluation of opponents is seriously lacking or as I suspect Young just flat out refuses to consider using zone even if other opponents have been successful using it against your next opponent. Zone doesn't work in every game but it's not hard to scout an opponent, especially their losses or close contests and see how those teams beat them or kept it close.
Off the top of my head if I had to pick the teams to play zone against it is:
Zone
Syracuse
Notre Dame
Georgia Tech
Miami (a 2-3 zone with guards stretching to the perimeter)
NC State (same as Miami)
Pitt
Man to Man
Virginia
Boston College
Wake Forest
Clemson
Louisville
Hybrid
North Carolina
Duke
Florida State
This would vary slightly year to year and subject to change if coaching change but based on current coaches styles of play I really wish Young would approach these teams this way.
So by your analysis, two-thirds of our conference schedule should be played with some version of zone defense - and we got nothin'. Nice....
Based on our athleticism, pretty much. If Young improved that significantly then he might be able to take a few teams back to man-to-man although it still might be ideal to flex a zone to keep opponents honest. Most of the zone games are teams utilizing heavy dribble penetration.
Starting to get some very Fuente vibes from CMY. Fu and Corn were famous for inability to make adjustments from game to game or during the half. Some players even came out saying they didn't really game plan for specific opponents, they just tried the same stuff and worked on what they didn't execute well during the week.
Basketball isn't something that has to be adjusted at half time. You practice during the week, and the coach yells out "Zebra Three" or something and the players know to adjust from man to a Zone 3-2 or something like that. Four minutes later, you might get a call to go back to Man. You can make on the fly adjustments in basketball with practice.
I laughed at this calipari interview answer given our own frustrations about a lack of zone defense (granted kentucky has 5 stars playing defense)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3i2bkWRjky/?igsh=NGp1eDFwbnc3ZnJq