This was new.
In a season that has been full of firsts for both Buzz Williams and his youthful team, Wednesday night against Miami checked another box off the list. By losing 52-76, this was now the first time that Virginia Tech has been blown out in back to back games.
It was nip and tuck in Coral Gables through the first twenty minutes. The Hokies and Hurricanes traded shots in the first half and Tech went into intermission down just three. That was the moment when things stopped going right for the men in maroon.
The second half proved to be a merciless onslaught at the hands of Jim "please add the accent mark" Larranaga and his Canes. The Miami defense clamped down on Tech's shooters, contesting every shot and forcing a number of mistakes.
We all know the deal by now. Tech has to hit their jumpers, rebound as well as possible on the defensive end and not shoot themselves in the foot, just in order to compete on a daily basis. If they only do two of those, it won't be particularly close. If they do one or less? Say hello to what happened against Miami and Clemson.
Statistically speaking, it was only a matter of time before Tech strung together two horrendous performances. The ACC doesn't hold many favorable matchups, and as I highlighted above, Williams' squad has to be practically perfect in order to have a chance down the stretch. In fact, it's a small miracle that the team has been able to bounce back from the bad losses as well as they had (West Virginia and Notre Dame, anyone?).
There's not much more to say about this game specifically. The Hokies didn't shoot well, and had to shoot a lot of threes (fine) and long range twos (not fine) for the majority of the night. In fact, other than a few nifty little Devin Wilson post ups the team wasn't able to take it to the hoop at all.
Tech came out quite aggressive on defense, trapping, pressing and hedging on ball screens a ton. While it went well at times, it also lead to a number of uncontested dunks for Hurricane big men due to late, or non-existent, rotations.
Though it lead to mixed results, I liked the strategy by Buzz and company. It caught Miami off guard right from the jump, and kept them on their toes for much of the first half. It ran out of gas later on, especially when their shots stopped falling, but it was a creative attempt to produce an advantage.
Pierson and I were talking last week about the curious case of Justin Bibbs. If you remember, Bibbs missed two weeks in January due to a concussion he suffered in practice. Pre-concussion, his numbers in conference play looked like this:
vs Syracuse: 22 points, 11 rebounds, 50% shooting in 39 minutes
at Florida State: 25 points, 3 rebounds, 47% shooting in 38 minutes
at Louisville: 15 points, 4 rebounds, 55% shooting in 30 minutes
That's nice, right? After those three performances he was thought to be far and away the best freshman on the team, and could quite possibly be considered the best overall player.
He then missed four games with a concussion, and made his next appearance in Winston Salem against Wake Forest. Since then, the freshman has averaged 8.4 points on 29.5% shooting in 23 minutes. If you take out his 19 points against Syracuse, his scoring numbers plummet even further.
Now, the natural question to ask is 'what happened?' Was the concussion really bad enough to impact his play this much, especially on the offensive end?
I'm not a doctor, so I'm not going to waste everyone's time pretending like I know what I'm talking about in the medical department (even though I thought it was a good decision for Buzz to sit him as long as he did). So instead of playing neurologist, can't we look at a much simpler explanation?
Can't it just be a combination of Bibbs hitting the freshman wall, totally plausible three quarters of the way through the season, and other offensive options emerging? Since UVA came to Blacksburg, Adam Smith has averaged 16 points and reached double digit shot attempts each time out. Malik Müller who has been an interesting topic of conversation recently, averaged 13 points in the same stretch.
Before Wednesday night, even Jalen Hudson had seen his minutes increase this month. If Hudson, Ahmed Hill, Bibbs, Smith and Wilson are splitting time at the three guard spots, someone will always see their minutes drop. If Bibbs is hitting that mythical wall, forcing shots and just generally playing below average basketball, Buzz doesn't have to keep running him out there.
In the big picture, it's a good thing for Tech. Don't get me wrong, none of the guys that I listed should be an ACC team's number one option right now. They're all limited in some way, be it size, athleticism or age. But their development is essential to the way the team both finishes down the stretch this season and heads into next year.
If a Bibbs funk means that Hudson, Hill and Müller come into the 2015-2016 season with a little more seasoned confidence, I'd chalk it up as a win. I know that Buzz and his staff would never see it that way, and that's fine. But just because they can't look forward to next year doesn't mean I won't.
Comments
All we need is one competent big man at the 5 and we'll be FAR better off. A lot of issues come from the fact that we have to take longer shots and can't work down low. Without any sort of threat in the paint we become very one dimensional. On the defensive side of the game without a 5 to lock down the paint and provide some height, our guys are susceptible to any easy layups since we have no one that can essentially guard anyone taller than 6-9 AND we have to double team to make up for height which leaves someone open. Not to mention contesting shots with players lacking size means that opponents are bound to shoot better... which is what we see.
It's not a lack of heart or the fact that our players aren't coached well, we need size to be able to open up different areas of our game and be able to shut down parts of the oppositions game. Beyer is a true 4 and Henry is far too light to tackle bigger 5s so for now we gotta ride this season out and recruit a true center.
There was one play that stuck out to me as indicative of Buzzketball's shortcomings this season. The Umlaut missed a three and Satchel Pierce came down with the offensive board (shocking.) Then Tonye Jekiri immediately, and quite easily, took the ball out of Satchel's hands (not shocking.)
My father always says that there are no freshmen in March. I would say that applies to mid-February as well. However this team is just so young. Both in terms of actual age but more so in terms of as a team. They have not played very many games together and are clearly still learning how to do so. So many times tonight a Miami big man was lost coming off of a screen and got the ball by himself underneath the basket.
I was glad that the announcers kept mentioning that there comes a point in a coach's first season where this season doesn't matter as much for this season anymore and begins to matter a lot more for next season. They also pointed out that building blocks are not to be measured in results at this stage in a team/coach's time together.
Another instance stuck out to me as indicative of the promise Buzzketball has. Very late in the game, with no hope for a respectable final score, there was a loose ball. Two Hokies dove for the ball. There was minimal benefit for doing so, in fact it'd be safe to say there was more to lose than to gain in that instance. When Devin Wilson remained on the floor for a few seconds afterwards I caught myself thinking, "Come on guys it's over, just chill."
But what that moment represented was far more than what it was. This team has bought in to Coach Williams' mentality and that means more than any number of wins and losses. They are doing what they can that is not limited by size,skill level, experience level, or chemistry. I'm excited to see what they can accomplish with growth in all these areas. Go Hokies
That Jekiri play was absolutely cringe worthy. You're right though, they don't quit. That's about the only positive a relative basketball novice like myself can take from these blowout games. Many announcers who've done our games this year have been very complimentary of the effort and the positions Buzz has put the kids in. We're just not an ACC caliber squad. . . for now.
The minor part you left out on the Jekiri play is that after taking the ball away from Pierce, as soon as they got to the other end of the court, Pierce picked up a really bad foul, doubling down on his mistakes.
At a certain point, its going to be more efficient to list the possessions where he doesn't pick up a terrible horrible no good very bad foul as opposed to the ones where he does.
Surprisingly, Pierce only had two fouls last night.
well for whatever reason I can't upload images on my computer anymore. The normal button to display gifs and such isn't doing anything.....but what I was going to put was Jon Belushi from animal house.
"Over??? Nothing is over until we say it's over! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor??"
i have the same issue?? maybe TPKs IT guy can look into this since now im know im not the only one.
I updated the button code and it seems to have broke IE 9, and possibly other versions of IE. My suggestion(s) are to upgrade to the latest version of IE, Chrome or Firefox, type the html in by hand or wait for a fix.
Follow the community guidelines, people ;)
Forget it, he's rolling.
Once again, I think we all need to send a note of thanks to Tom Gabbard and Jim Weaver for this wonderful display of Tech basketball on national TV. I was hoping that this would continue for one more year, however, I am afraid their insightful leadership may linger for even more years to come.
When you have as much manure on your shoe as Jim Weaver created, it is hard to scrape it all off quickly.
But think of all the money we saved.... by paying 3 head basketball coaches at the same time.
The best part was how we waited til April 24th to fire Seth Greenberg. By that time, the coaching carousel had been picked bare leaving us with no attractive candidates, and even worse, made us look incredibly petty in 1, acting the way we did when we fired him, by calling the presser before he was informed of his dismissal, and then going through the thorough character assassination of Seth that Weaver himself performed during said press conference, and 2, even worse than that, firing Seth at such a time when there were no legitimate landing spots for him going forward, essentially sabotaging his career in the short term, forcing him to the media side of the table. That circus legitimately eliminated any hope we were going to hire another good coach in any sport through the remainder of Jim Weaver's tenure. It was a selfish, petty move from our Athletic Department that made us look awful in the national scene. We got taken to task over it from all angles in the media, and we deserved every second of it.
Contrast that to what Whit did. Last game was played March 12th. By March 17th, James Johnson is dismissed. March 21st, Buzz Williams is hired as our head coach. 9 days pass between last game and the hiring of a new coach. For Seth, last game was played March 9th, and May 1st James Johnson is hired. 53 days pass between last game and the hiring of a new coach. That right there is the difference between a good, competent AD who has a plan, and an AD who doesn't have a clue.
Two different firing context. Johnson was fired because of performance. You do that asap. Seth was fired because he was being an indignant ass in the Athletic Department. He wasn't fired because of performance. We would have gladly kept his performance.
Its not like Seth just started to be an ass in April. If you're going to fire the guy, fire him ASAP. Jim held out for too long and then pulled the trigger out of spite and made the whole school look like a bunch of petty ignoramuses in the process. That circus is the direct reason Buzz has such a tough hill to climb to get us out of the dregs.
That and James Johnson had little to no connections in terms of AAU basketball, let alone the top AAU programs. Buzz fixed that immediately.
Which is telling considering James was probably the best (only?) candidate available when we fired Seth. Shows just how poor the thought process was going into that decision. Weaver burnt the program to the ground for the extreme short term advantage of getting rid of a guy he personally didn't like. That kind of short-sighted decision making is inexcusable for someone in the kind of position as an Athletic Director.
Thankfully, Buzz is fixing things, and doing so relatively quickly, but its infuriating to realize we were a team knocking off #1 Duke in the last week of the season the day we hosted ESPN GameDay only 4 years ago and we literally had to hire one of the best coaches in the game to come in and build the program from the ground up because it was allowed to deteriorate so fast. Its also telling that we were able to get Buzz in here at the first possible moment after Whit was hired after hearing so many excuses for so long about how we could never hire anyone decent because of x or y or z...
No, but what did happen in April was all his coaches left. Once you have to literally rebuild an entire staff, you need to question whether the HC is your guy or not. It didn't make sense to keep him to let him try to rebuild the staff. You know all this. You just put it on Weaver and I put it on Seth. At least 85% on Seth. He was an ass to everyone around him and ran all his coaches off. We were against a barrel at that point.
Here's why that assessment is wrong - Greenberg's personality never changed in the nine years that he was at VT. The 'family gathering' was a strawman argument by Weaver. Weaver refused Greenberg money to acquire and retain assistant coaches on a repeated basis. Weaver also waited to fire Greenberg so that he could submarine Greenberg having a shot at any other school. Of course, that showed Weaver's myopia, because he still had to pay Greenberg and it allowed Greenberg to get a media job where Weaver would still have to pay his full buyout.
Also, Weaver never planned on doing anything except get the cheapest possible replacement for Greenberg. I still have questions about Johnson's complicity in the whole 'leave, then return' scenario. Weaver never interviewed anybody but Johnson. Sure he 'talked with Jay Wright' about the job, but that has no connection to interviewing him FOR the job. He merely talked to him about needing to hire somebody.
It's revisionist to say that people were happy with Greenberg's performance. They 'should' have been, but far too many disliked him on a personal level and lost all objectivity. The entire onus of blame is and deserves to be on Jim Weaver.
Apart from firing Seth Greenberg (which I think we all can agree was probably the right move), absolutely zero things were done correctly in that firing. The timing, the structure (did you hear, he... wait, nevermind), the replacement, none of it was done correctly. Nothing changed about the program or how it was supported (except fewer people went to games) after JJ was hired.
Enter Whit: quick, clean, excellent replacement, move on, support the new guy and rebuild the program.
#Whitness
Agree wholeheartedly. It sometimes seems odd to praise Whit for some of the actions he has taken since arriving here, because so many of them are just common sense actions that every AD 'should' take. The thing is, though, we went so many years with an AD that was so incompetent in so many ways (Sugar cookies, really? THAT is a focus?) that Whit had a very low bar to step over.
Even with all that, Whit is an excellent AD by any standards, not just VT's very low ones. He will erase the deficit we constantly operated in, in terms of being so far behind the times. I just can't praise the guy enough. He will lead us out of the wilderness!
To be fair to Weaver, as has been pointed out numerous times, the only reason Whit has been able to be Whit is because of the financial state of the department when he showed up. Had Weaver done everything he did wrong with personnel decisions and left the athletic department in a Tennessee-like financial state, Whit's hands would have been tied and things might have taken a few years to really get rolling like they we've seen.
Except that praising Weaver for his financial acuity is like praising your financial analyst for investing your retirement savings in a bank savings account garnering 1% annual interest. Weaver didn't lose us money, but he also ignored myriad ways to make us more money. Whit is a guy who can get us a 10-15% return on our investment consistently, while Weaver would get us that 1%. That lost opportunity cost is immeasurable.
The thing is, a more aggressive AD could have easily put us massively in the hole (again, see Tennessee), making our AD job much less sought-after when he retired. That 10-15% return can go south real quickly in the world of college athletics.
Weaver was an outstanding AD for the time in which he was hired. He helped get us into the ACC, got our facilities up to date, managed the books, and build a rock-solid foundation for the next AD to come in and take things to the next level. Whit is having success, and will continue to do so, in no small part because of the foundation that Weaver laid. It was time for JW to go, and he may have even overstayed his welcome by a couple years, but that should in no way discredit what he did to get VT athletics to where they are now - which is a heck of a lot better than where they were when he took over.
The Tenn AD is an extremist example of SEC hubris combined with irrelevance & a recession. There are hundreds of examples of ADs that are not ultra conservative like Weaver was, yet manage to be excellent ADs who never endanger their departments.
As for the timing of Weaver's exit, it was at least 4-5 years too late. He hurt VT athletics a lot by going cheap every time possible, and despite our joining the ACC, ignored a lot of the programs because he couldn't understand the non-monetary return on them.
Men's basketball, and baseball were both severely hurt because decisions were made by a part time AD with (at the time) no sense of long term planning in recent years.
it was botched all around. I agree that Weaver sought the cheapest replacement, but Weaver is cheap and he knows how to read contracts. He wasn't firing Seth (and continuing to pay him) if he didn't have to. If Seth needed to go for performance reasons, Weaver honestly didn't care how the basketball program "performed."
Honestly, I think that Seth disrespected Weaver. Guys like Weaver just can't handle that. Once Seth pushed one step too far, Weaver fired him out of spite. It was unprofessional on both their parts.
Leg up for the Blink-182 reference alone. Come for the music references, stay for the analysis!
I still cringe when I think about the way Weaver treated Seth's firing. Timing could not have been worse and really sent our program in a fast downward spiral. Thankfully Buzz is just the kind of guy to right this ship!!!
Haven't heard anything on JvZ in awhile, any word on if/when he'll be back?? Some girth down low would be really nice right now...
JVZ will NOT be back on the team. Period. He is looking at 2-3 options for other schools where he can play immediately once he graduates from Tech. They are all more in the mid-major or lower range. JVZ will not be back on the basketball team at Tech.
That's definitely a bummer. I'm really curious as to what he actually did to draw Buzz's ire. Obviously, whatever he did was pretty serious, or he'd be back in action. Definitely wish him the best of luck elsewhere!
I thought I read in the paper, either the Roanoke or the Richmond Times, that Joey had transferred to Northwestern.
Edit: Sorry, head up rear end. Just realized this was the other Miami game. Duh. Everyone knows already.
A bit OT, and I don't mean to be rude, but Miami's coach seriously looks a bit crazy in that picture. It's creeping me out more than a little.
I assure you he is not crazy. At least not nearly as much as most of the other ACC coaches. When he was at Mason, he was always out and about on campus, so I had a few chances to sit down with him the first year of my masters program there before he left for the check that the U represented. Surprisingly quiet for a basketball head coach, comes off more southern gentleman, especially for someone that grew up in the Bronx. Crazy to think he has been a coach at the college level for almost 44 years now. Always had insightful things to say when it came to basketball, thats why I was never surprised when he could get underdogs to overachieve like he did at Mason. Was really surprised to see him lose it and get that technical foul in yesterdays game. Pretty out of character for him but it worked to fire up his guys. Thats when they really turned it on against us, especially on perimeter defense.
The only issue I have with Jim L is that he's building Miami seemingly purely through transfers, and has even come out and said that is how he is going to do it from now on. Not sure I like that process, and I'm not sure they're going to have any staying power whatsoever once he retires.
Yeah, he had done a bit of that at Mason but no where near what he has done at Miami. Four of Miami's starters are transfers apparently. I had thought it was only two. If things dont change though in how transfers are so prevalent in college basketball today, he will always have an ample pool of people waiting because not many D1 schools are looking to take in that many transfers. It is a two edged sword though if he has a couple bad seasons of transfers falling through. I think alot of it has to do with the U as a whole. Difficult to sell kids on the culture or the fan base when you see what their arena looks like at game time. We get more of a crowd for a game against Eastern Shore than Miami had last night. Top that with the scrutiny the NCAA has been putting on the school, including the mens program. Just hard to get top recruits to commit to that.
Yea I met him many times when he was still at Mason, and he was far from crazy. I know you didn't say he was, but I just wanted to say that he is one of the nicest coaches I have interacted with.
Oh, I'm sure he's a quality guy, but that picture at the top of the article doesn't exactly give me warm fuzzies.
You should understand his look from that picture, just look in the mirror when you think about ACC referees this season. Thats what caused that look on his face. I know I have had that look at least a dozen times this season because of the ACC officials.
Oh gosh... ACC refs. It all makes sense and I am so sorry for my insensitive comment. I had an intramural game tonight and got really confused when we were allowed to go 5 or 6 possessions at a time without a foul. Guys, IM refs call fewer fouls than ACC officials. Let that one sink in for a second.
I cannot resist defending Larranaga for the quality person and coach that he is. I work at George Mason University, and I had the opportunity to hear him speak and had many personal conversations with him. Brion's Grill, across the road from GMU, is the place where the team eats it meals before the games, and is where the fans hang out before and after games. He was often there and would come over to our table and talk with us.
He is an excellent speaker, and President Merten used him constantly as a speaker and fund raiser.
He is a lot like Coach Beamer with his character and ways of dealing with players. He told a story about his son which demonstrates this. At his coaching job before GMU, his son would always hang out at the practices and catch balls, etc. Once when he returned from a trip and went into the gym, his son was there in the afternoon. Knowing that there was a big game that night and that his son would want to attend, he asked if he had finished his homework. When his son said that he hadn't, he said that he would do it during the game that night.
My favorite story and the one that tells the most about his character happened during the run for the final four. They were moving up quickly and the next game was a big one, as they were playing UNC. During the game before, one of his best players, Skins, bumped a ref. or something. He did not know about it during the game and Skins was not called for anything. While watching film of the game, Larranaga saw what Skins had done and suspended him from the UNC game.
The run for the final four was a magical time at GMU. We had many pep rallies in the Johnson Center. Everyone came. You would see a normally grumpy professor smiling, clapping his hands and cheering. Everyone in the country was cheering for GMU except the team they were playing. The bookstore could not keep up with the orders for GMU shirts from everywhere.
In a private conversation I asked Larranaga what he thought caused the final four run. He said that it was because all of the players had played together for so long.
Before this GMU was mostly an unknown, and even the media did not know much about the school. In the beginning, they called GMU the small commuter school in Fairfax. At that time, GMU had taken over as the largest school in VA from VT. It was also ranked the number one most diverse school in the country that year, the first year of that category ranking. As Tom Davis said, that if you are the most diverse university in the U,S,, you are the most diverse university in the world.
Because of GMJ's subsequent actions, the basketball program is in a grim state. With all of Larranaga's success, other programs were trying to hire his assistants. He asked GMU to increase their pay to keep them. GMU refused.
At this time, the Miami job was open, and he was offered the job. His family was located in FL, and it was felt that he planned to retire there.
GMU then compounded its poor decisions by hiring a coach who had just been fired by Georgia Tech. and paying him a huge salary.
It will be interesting to see what they do in the next year with a new AD in place and the coach's contract expiring.