Hokie Hoops Central:
Florida State (11-13)
at
Virginia Tech (17-8)
2pm ACCN
Virginia Tech -5.5
O/U: 154.5
ESPN Analytics: Hokies 73.7%
BROADCAST INFORMATION
TV | ACCN
Doug Sherman, PxP
Scott Williams, Color
RADIO | VT Sports Network
Zach Mackey, PxP
Mike Burnop, Analyst
VIDEO STREAM LIVE STATS
ESPN.com and ESPN app stats.hokiesports.com
Will plug stuff in a bit over next couple hours as I have time. Lots of kids stuff today.
Hokies cannot lose this game though.
FSU under Loucks has generally played at a moderate tempo. Definitely not a full-court, constant-transition team but willing to push off live-ball turnovers and long rebounds. Loucks prefers early offense if it creates paint pressure or rhythm threes.
Loucks has leaned into positional versatility, often playing lineups with only one true rim presence, but multiple 6'6"–6'9" wings who can dribble penetrate and pass. Expect to see shooters spaced in both corners to spread the defense out but also to shoot if the defense sags in. FSU will utilize slot-to-slot reversals to get defensive mismatches.
The goal is to create driving lanes, force closeouts and play to situational advantages instead of static isolation.
They will use high ball screens, particularly a spread out Pick-and-Roll, flat or angled screens at the top and their Guards are encouraged to attack downhill. Weak-side shooters will be spaced deep.
Reads typically include a rim roll or dunk-in big, weak-side tag kick-out or a pull-up jumper if defender goes under.
Loucks emphasizes paint touches over early contested threes. They generate paint touches using ball screens, dribble handoffs, backdoor cuts when defenders overplay passing lanes and bigs sealing in cross-match situations. They use the "fire and forget" when it comes to offensive rebounds versus being set in half court defense.
In conference play, the Noles are shooting 52% inside on 31 attempts, 30% from 3 on 29 attempts, and 72% from the line on 21 attempts. Putting up 73.8 ppg but allowing 79.4ppg, so expect a high scoring game.
Loucks has leaned primarily into half-court man-to-man rather than the extended pressure FSU was known for. They are more conservative in using full-court pressure. Loucks emphasizes keeping the ball in front, using gap help principles to clog driving lanes and prefers fewer gambling plays for steals.
The most common coverage is using a drop coverage where bigs stay below or at the level of the screen. Guards are expected to fight over the screen. Loucks prioritizes protecting the rim and limiting paint touches. FSU will occasionally hedge or show hard against opponents shooters, switch in late-clock situations to avoid open looks and try to ice side ball screens. Overall, the philosophy is to protect the paint first, contest threes second, and avoid rotations breaking down.
This season they are typically outrebounded by opponents. Currently its a 35-31 deficit average. Turnovers are essentially a net zero at 10.7 for vs 10.1 against. Fouling again is a net zero at 17.2 for versus 17.3 against. McCray and Jones are the most likely to get in foul trouble.
Noles Starters
Robert McCray
#6 SR G 6-4 185
14.6 Pts, 3.7 Reb, 6.1 Ast
Chauncey Wiggins
#7 SR F 6-10 205
12.4 Pts, 3.9 Reb, 0.9 Ast
Lajae Jones
#10 SO G 6-7 200
11.7 Pts, 5.9 Reb, 1.0 Ast
Kobe MaGee
#5 SR G 6-6 180
9.4 Pts, 3.3 Reb, 1.0 Ast
Alex Steen
#25 SR F 6-8 230
7.3 Pts, 5.9 Reb, 0.8 Ast
Thomas Bassong
#3 FR G 6-8 203
5.4 Pts, 3.4 Reb, 0.4 Ast
Noles Bench
Martin Somerville
#1 SO G 6-3 184
8.4 Pts, 3.2 Reb, 2.1 Ast
Cam Miles
#2 FR G 6-2 170
5.5 Pts, 1.1 Reb, 1.8 Ast
AJ Swinton
#19 SO F 6-6 200
4.2 Pts, 1.7 Reb, 0.4 Ast
Alier Maluk
#12 SO F 7-0 218
1.8 Pts, 1.9 Reb, 0.3 Ast
Shahid Muhammad
#4 SR F 6-11 205
2.3 Pts, 1.2 Reb, 0.2 Ast
The Hokies need to space the floor on offense with 5-out or pick-and-pop actions. The goal should be to get Wiggins and Steen to drift away from the basket and force them to defend ball screens above the arc.
Transition and high tempo offense has been a weakness for FSU on defense so Hokies need to increase the speed of the game.
Hitting threes especially early will force FSU to adjust farther from the basket which will create more paint touches.
Conversely, stopping FSU from getting to the paint and forcing them to the perimeter should be the intent on the defensive end.
Comments
LET'S GO.....
Hokies!
The only thing I want to know is if FSU still has an average height of like 6'10" or something across the starting lineup.
OK, I'll take care of it.....HOKIES!!!
As to your post, I'd say prolly. Seems to be a requirement, doesn't it?
Last game Starters: 6' 7 ', 6' 4 ', 6'10 ', 6' 9", 6' 8"
Others who played the last game: 6' 5", 6' 6", 6' 3", 6' 11"
Not as much a focus. Updated player stats above.
Updated offense
Updated defense
Updated Hokies priorities.
Hokies up 19-11 with 13 min left in the first half. Where the hell is everybody?
Get Pasha back on the bench he hasn't offered anything
Echo.......Echo........
Hokies by 3 with 3-1/2 to go in the first. Hokies shooting 59%/56%. F$U shooting 50%/43%. All other stats pretty even except 5 fouls for fsu and 2 for tech.
Just not a sharp, disciplined game so far. Dangerous to let the noles hang around
Need to play much better d in the second.
Split screen for second half and USA hockey
Hokies down 50-49 with 15 to go. Offense falling off and getting sloppy. Fsu starting some full court press.
Another turnover leads to an and 1.
Another turnover.
And a 3 on the other end. 13-0 run for free shoes.
FSU shooting 78% in the second half. Hope that does not last.
Another turnover.
We're playing like we're done 8 with two minutes left. Relax and run some freaking offense.
Operative words above, "We're Done".
Nice shot by Bedford. He needs to step up
Need to get some stops on d. They're scoring every time.
NEO completely out of control
Bedford.
When I went to the State game I called bricks on all of his shots. He got brought in as a shooter and he can't shoot a lick. Reminds me of a kid on our high school team, even looks exactly like him. Never saw a shot he didn't like and was pretty much an automatic miss
Bedford was less the problem than Hansberry with his 2/10 shooting.
None of it matters though when you let your opponent shoot 68% inside and 52% from 3
No idea what the foul on Gurdak was
Unbelievable
They're just draining 3s
Yet another turnover
Yet another turnover
Welp going back to family stuff. These guys are playing bad fundamental basketball so not worth getting my BP up
Travel much?
Yeah, he took about 4 steps. FSU 73%; Hokies 28%.
Their 8.4ppg guy is 8 for 10, 4 for 6 from three for 21 points and yet we refuse to get a hand in his face
Yeah maybe we should put a guy on Somerville
This is a flat out shit the bed bad bad loss. At home no less.
Classic for the CMY era.
If we aren't careful, we aren't going to just lose this game, we are going to get blown out by a very talented (/s) FSU team.
EDIT: no need to worry about it. It's done.
CMY and his crew doing CMY things.
Amazing to me, we never get fouled on a drive. And they get fouled on every drive.
To be fair, fouls are 12 each right now and both teams have shot 15 free throws.
I'd love to see the stat for our average of minutes without a FG and how many times a game we go 2+ minutes without a basket.
It's happened at least X3 this game. The last was almost 4.
CMY is typically good for one 4 minute stretch in each half
Watching the Clemson game after the fact allowed me to take out all the emotions. Just sat there and watched as unbiased as one could get.
Thank God Clemson returned in kind the same scoring drought for that 6-8 minute stretch in the latter part of the 2H. If Clemson didn't mimic us there, we probably would have lost that game.
CMY scoring droughts are chronic
FSU shooting 79% in the second half.
We've scored 20 fucking points in the second half with 3 min to go.
Not a fan of Mike Young bringing back The Greenberg Special, getting a resume boosting win and immediately blowing it the next game
Say Hello to the NIT unless we find 3 Quad 1 wins to counter this
Go lady hokies.
Lmao apparently the basketball team and football teams both studied the same play book on making adjustments.
Typical CMY stinker after a big win. Other than the magical ACC run I can't remember the last time this team strung together two solid conference wins.
Is it because he quit eating popcorn?
See ya Mike Young!
Dude is not that good of a coach, period. Ironically he's done by far his best coaching jobs with his worst rosters
We aren't firing him, we aren't paying a buyout for a basketball coach with the money we are spending on football.
Mike Young hit the jackpot. He can be awful as a coach and he's still got a job in the ACC making 7 figures a year for the next few years.
Mike Young is the kind of coach where you can give him a team without an ounce of talent and he'd punch of above their weight finishing 10th out of 18 teams.
You could give him Duke's roster and they'd finish 9th
So in other words, he's a pretty average coach. Career win pct of .555. Yep, that's the best way to describe the Mike Young era. Other than the miraculous ACC tourney run, pretty average.
Mike Young was a good coach under the old system of college basketball where players would be in his program for four years and he had the time to develop them. The transfer portal has made it difficult for Young to be successful due to only having players for a year or two before they leave. The style of offense that made his Wofford teams so difficult to stop takes time to learn.
Yep, I think he is vastly overrated as an offensive coach. You need a bucket after a time out, sure he'll run a play.. But general offensive flow the other 39 and 1/2 minutes. Not that great.
This program needs new energy. We need to bring someone in to juice things up. Put some nil in there there, coach them better and let's see what happens. As a long time ticket holder and donor I'm done with the mediocrity. .
Could be anecdotal but a lot folks where I sit seem to be ready to move on from Mike Young
So turns out the Clemson game WAS just Clemson playing bad after a trip to California
Put away the dancing shoes until next year. That was a bad loss at a bad time
Yup. It's incredibly frustrating to see this level of inconsistency.
I have to wonder... given the commitment and investment to football... how much of a leash does CMY have left?
I wonder if VT pulls back some bbal NIL and funnel back to football next season. I understand our record has improved, but the ROI isn't there with CMY at the helm. Not saying it's going to happen or even being considered, but if it did, no surprise here.
FTFY
I have no confidence in CMY being the coach who can get us back. Good wins are to consistently followed by bad losses. We sabotage ourselves far more often than we should. You remove the fluke ACC tournament win and his entire tenure has been incredibly underwhelming if not a pretty big step back from where we were under Buzz. Our in game fundamentals and basketball IQ are consistently poor
I miss Seth Greenberg. The more I think about it and his head butting with the administration, I realize he was just ahead of his time.
St Louis guy is a total no brainer to hire. Did great at Indiana State, replicating it at St Louis. Gonna be semi cheap, not sure we'd have much comp to get him
I thought the same thing. But if we can see it, so can every AD out there. He will be high on a lot of candidate lists which means bidding war which means not cheap anymore. The time for cheap was while he was "unproven" at Indy State
Just watched taped game. Jeesh, that was a huge let down.
Why do we NOT have the killer attitude? We look like a bunch of chumps.
Welcome to the NIT!
Our defense is just atrocious!
Okay, I was able to catch the first half, and then had to go do chores. Do I even want to know what happened in the second half? Complete breakdown?
Worse.
It will take years off your life.
We have enough data and the results are clear. As somebody else said, you take away the ACC Tournament win and he's gone by now. I understand funds are an issue and I would imagine that would be the only reason he stays after this year. If the finances allow it we should move on and thank him for keeping the program running after the Buzz defection and make a splash hire announcing that VT athletics are serious about results in sports beyond football.
The candidate pool we're looking at isn't all that good imo to guarantee a replacement that would be better than Mike Young if the funds aren't there because a lot of good candidates got hired up the last previous two years. So the candidates out there right now (like Tony Skinn) are going to be in high demand and I can guarantee our current level of spending for basketball won't get candidates like that. I'm going off memory from this past summer/early fall, but we're at like what, between 4 to 6 mil for roster salary (which was tripled from the previous year which was pathetic). That sounds good, but the blue bloods are 10 mil+. We need to be around 8 mil to field tournament quality teams most years. If the package doesn't include that, on top of coaching salary, most candidates aren't going to look our way. You're looking a multiple time retreads or taking a chance on a young guy from a school you never even heard of after 1 good season with what we have to offer.
I don't think we can afford to fire him with the money he's owed, but it would help if he would retire. But even then, without an increase in funds, we're in a limited spot. We're not too terribly off funding wise so theoretically the Athletic Department might be able to steer a couple extra mil into MBB with all the cash being infused, but I wouldn't bank on it. I'm still not convinced its fully there for football considering a good chunk of it is banking on donations that may or may not materialize. I think the most likely result is Mike Young stays for another year. The second most likely is Mike Young retires and VT goes relatively cheap by promoting Chester Frazier to HC (flashbacks to Greenberg -> James Johnson). I'd be fairly shocked if Mike Young leaves (fired or retired) and we pony up cash for a splash or even respectable hire
The St Louis coach easy hire, Whit get it done
OK terrible loss.
That said, Virginia Tech this year is thought to be 14th in the ACC in NIL. Operating budget is thought to be 11-15 in ACC. Facilities by poll of coaches are thought to be bottom 3rd and probably only that high because Cassell is tough to play in.
Barring a major infusion across at least NIL/Operating budget we wont get a top candidate or top assistants AND top players. We are talking a $12-$15M annually if we want to compete at the top.
Young has 3 assistants. Nine ACC programs have the full complement of 5 assistants. Top 4 teams (Duke, UNC, Louisville, and Miami) are thought to have between 5-10 personnel in their recruiting offices, UVA next year will join them if I understand some things Odom has said. Young has two, maybe three people for recruiting.
NIL kind of speaks for itself, as mentioned above, top programs are thought to be in the $10M. We aren't close.
So, its similar to the football situation as short as a year or two ago....
All those things are true and largely agree, but that doesn't explain losing games like yesterday's.
No one who is being even slightly realistic thinks we are going to be a top-3 ACC team or compete with them.
But this team showed it is talented enough to beat top 25 teams and then followed it by losing (and looking listless) against an inferior team in an absolute must-win.
That just isn't good enough at this point.
And the Neo experiment has been pretty much a total bust. We are never going to be near the top in basketball NIL dollars, so to attract better players, we're going to need to convince them we can develop them. That's going to be a very difficult sell after this.
I don't know, I don't necessarily think the firing Mike Young is the answer, because there's certainly no guarantee we get anyone better. And then there's the other question--do we really want someone better if we have to have a Nate Oats-style coach who has No Reservations about recruiting murderers and openly cheating?
But I do think the book is out at this point. Young is a guy who is best suited for mid-major basketball in the pre-NIL era where he could build a team over time. Those days are gone and I just don't see Young being able to completely re-wire himself to the NIL Hellscape of today.
Most years we are going to be bottom-half of ACC under Young with occasional ventures into the top 1/3. Probably reasonable for the resources he has, but also believe if he could prove that he could be a consistent winner, the university might also be willing to commit more resources.
Mike Young was probably who we needed to hire instead of James Johnson. That was likely a very good time to take a chance on him. And, to your point, I think he would have had a good 10-15 year run with the slow build and development of a roster.