Holiday hoops in the Cathedral of College Basketball 🎄🏀🆚 Saint Joseph's🕛 12PM ET📺 CBSSN🔗 https://t.co/Ypqs6c8sMc pic.twitter.com/Ulw1HLQCsU— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) December 21, 2024
Holiday Hoopfest
Virginia Tech (5-6)
at
St Joes (7-4)
12pm CBSSN
The Palestra
Philadelphia PA
TV | CBSSN
Rich Waltz, PxP
Michael O'Donnell, Analyst
RADIO | VT Sports Network
Zach Mackey, PxP
Mike Burnop, Analyst
VIDEO STREAM
@HokiesMBB CBSSports.com and app
LIVE STATS
stats.hokiesports.com
Espn.com
Holiday Hangover
These are the kind of games that always feel like trap games. Whichever team comes in motivated to be there wins.
Hokies are coming off a 80-72 win over Navy. They got another outstanding performance from the bench. Ben Burnham led all scorers with 17. The bench scored 46 of their 80 points.
BHam been hoopin' these last two games 😮💨🔥 14.0 ppg🔥 10-12 FG🔥 4-4 3FG🔥 3.5 apg🔥 3.5 spg pic.twitter.com/sP7U8jsZHO— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) December 17, 2024
It's probably time to have the conversation of Hammond over Rechsteiner at the point and may be time to talk about Rodney Brown over Johnson and Schutt.
The offense just flows so much better and Hammond is definitely the better defender. Hammond and Brown had four of the Hokies seven steals and eight of their ten fast break points. This is only the second time this season the Hokies had an advantage in fast break scoring.
Going into the Palestra to face a 7-4 St Joes team. The Red Hawks record is a little misleading. They also beat Navy by seven, beat a bad Villanova team, and a decent Texas Tech squad. Their other four wins are over American, Coppin State, Penn, and LaSalle. Their losses are to Texas, Charleston Southern, College of Charleston and got smoked by Princeton.
This team is led by a two guard/one forward trio. Fleming, Brown and Reynolds are scoring 47.4 of the Hawks 75.9 ppg. 62% of scoring from three guys.
Fleming and Haskins were high school teammates as were Brown and Finkley. All but two kids are from NJ or PA on this roster.
As a team, the Hawks excel at Free Throw shooting and blocks. Outside of those categories they are mostly mediocre.
The Hawks are going to play very fast and shoot a ton of threes. In terms of scheme, when they aren't scoring in transition they will run a lot of 5-out Motion or 4-around-1 with their post primarily acting as a ball screener. We want to make them shoot as many contested two-point shots with us between them and the basket as possible.
Coach Lange will play man-to-man defense and be very willing to switch 1-4 and even 1-5 especially when #23 Finkley is in at the 5. Opponents are shooting over 46% of their shots from deep against the Hawks which is one of the highest numbers in the country.
Vegas has St Joes as a 3.5 point favorite but I like the Hokies chances, especially if they play like they want to be there.
Hokies Starting Five
Toibu Lawal
1 JR F 6-8 200
10.8 Pts, 6.1 Reb, 0.5 Ast
Mylyjael Poteat
34 SR F 6-9 260
10.6 Pts, 4.6 Reb, 1.4 Ast
Jaden Schutt
2 SO G 6-5 185
9.6 Pts, 3.2 Reb, 2.0 Ast
Brandon Rechsteiner
7 SO G 6-1 185
7.7 Pts, 1.4 Reb, 3.5 Ast
Jaydon Young
3 SO G 6-4 205
7.5 Pts, 1.7 Reb, 1.5 Ast
Key Bench Players
Ben Burnham
13 SR F 6-7 200
6.5 Pts, 4.1 Reb, 1.2 Ast
Tyler Johnson
10 FR G 6-5 215
6.5 Pts, 5.1 Reb, 1.1 Ast
Ben Hammond
11 FR G 5-11 170
4.7 Pts, 1.0 Reb, 1.6 Ast
Patrick Wessler
5 SO C 7-0 245
4.2 Pts, 3.3 Reb, 0.1 Ast
Rodney Brown
4 SO G 6-6 180
4.3 Pts, 2.0 Reb, 1.0 Ast
Squad's been letting it fly 💦🏹 24-54 3FG in last 2 games🫡 https://t.co/KWGhxzoOqa pic.twitter.com/yj4TYJXRIc— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) December 17, 2024
Red Hawks Starting Five
Rasheer Fleming
13 JR F 6-9 220
16.4 Pts, 8.8 Reb, 1.2 Ast
Erik Reynolds
2 SR G 6-2 170
15.3 Pts, 3.4 Reb, 3.5 Ast
Xzayvier Brown
11 SO G 6-2 165
15.7 Pts, 4.8 Reb, 5.1 Ast
Derek Simpson
0 SO G 6-3 170
9.5 Pts, 4.0 Reb, 3.9 Ast
Justice Ajogbor
22 SR F 6-10 255
4.5 Pts, 2.9 Reb, 0.9 Ast
Key Bench Players
Dasear Haskins
7 SO F 6-8 185
6.5 Pts, 2.9 Reb, 0.5 Ast
Anthony Finkley
5 SO F 6-6 240
4.9 Pts, 2.7 Reb, 0.8 Ast
Comments
Hammond starting and St Joes missing one of their big three. Guard Xzayvier Brown out with an injury.
That was a terrible whistle on Poteat. Poteat was two feet away from anyone.
Ref just signaled a blocking foul on Hammond but announcer said it was an offensive foul. Guess we will see after the Timeout.
Wow they did call it on Hammond. Hammond had both feet set and the offensive player swung an elbow into his chest knocking him down.
It was just as bad in person!!!! No way that's a block.
I forgot to get a picture of me, nerf and Frosty's Dad in our Courtside seats. Great experience to see a game at the polestra front row despite the loss.
Not into basketball at all, but must say, it was an experience to sit with you feet on the court floor itself.
This is how good our seats were.
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Lawal with three turnovers already. His ball handling is atrocious.
Ugh that final possession with chance to tie or take the lead and just wasted is the sand in the gears this year.
I was watching and just like wtf is going on. No movement, no action, just hold the ball the final 20 seconds and never attempt offense
The biggest difference in this one is second chance scoring. St Joes scoring on theirs and Hokies not
Lawal's court awareness is almost as bad as his ball control. Had a teammate wide open for three and never looked his way, just frozen and put it back to Hammond way outside.
Announcers defending the St Joes guy who got tech for hanging on rim. The guy let go of the rim twice and grabbed it again while up there.
And nobody under him. No reason to miss it or hang on the rim...
It was directly in front of us which was cool to see all the St Joe's alum squirm.
I cringe every time Rechsteiner touches the ball on offense.
Lawal has tagged off his guy five times today and St Joes has hit 3 threes
Hokies had two of their patented scoring droughts in the second half putting them in a big hole.
Make that three. Three 3 minute+ periods of not scoring a basket. One of those they got a couple free throws.
They also played zero defense in second half around the perimeter. St Joes hit 15 of 32 three-pointers while the Hokies only managed 7 of 22 three-pointers. That's a 24 point spread on the perimeter.
I dont understand how every single team shoots lights out against us while it appears that our defense is really active.
They kept getting sucked off the perimeter trying to give help defense in the paint and St Joes was great at finding the open shooter. Another reason I think this squad would be better off using zone defense.
As mentioned above, was pretty nice sitting on the court. Team did have a run in the first half and got this shot.
I am glad I went to the women's game based on reading these comments.
First half went well...then they fell off a cliff
It was 32-30 at the half.
Got outscored 50-32 in the second half.
The loss to St Joes gave the Hokies their first non-con losing record in over 30 years.
not good bob, not good
IN their defense, St. Joes has always been pretty good. But still not a good sign for the rest of the season.
Not really the case this year. St Joes beat a bunch of no names and lost to everyone else of note. Villanova is terrible this season. Losing to Princeton should never happen.
Regardless, this loss was more about the Hokies than St Joes. They missed 18 uncontested shots. They also once again showed they can't manage to play man to man defense against any team with talent.
Was not able to watch or follow the game due to being on a long-distance drive. Sad to hear it was more of the same from the MBB program. Even sadder that we had one of the best moments in program history with the ACC championship win and we have completely squandered it away. This conference season is going to be ugly.