New coach, new players, same struggles against a familiar opponent.
After two consecutive tough losses to potential one seeds, the Virginia Tech men's basketball team was supposed to right the ship on Monday. The game was in Cassell Coliseum, where the Hokies have played their best basketball all year. The opponent was Boston College, one of the worst squads in the conference.
Never a group to adhere to conventional thinking, Tech lost another one. This time they fell to the Eagles 59-66.
It looked like it wasn't going to be Buzz Williams' night early on. His guys couldn't hit a bucket in the first half, while Jim Christian's team was doing things like draining threes with their seven-footer. The Eagles lead ballooned to 22 before the home squad could mount any type of comeback.
That doesn't mean Buzz's bunch didn't try. The Hokies cut the deficit to six thanks to an Adam Smith triple in the final two minutes, but simply couldn't pull themselves over the top.
What has to be frustrating for the coaching staff is that they did many of the things one would think they needed to do to win. Tech won the rebounding battle, had the better turnover margin and held a surefire All-ACC player in Olivier Hanlan to 15 points on 13 shots. Checking all of those boxes are nice, but if the opponent shoots like the Eagles did early on it makes everything else moot.
"[Boston College] scored 11 consecutive baskets," Williams said. "We gave up more points in transition in the first half than we have averaged for a game. No energy, no fight, non-competitive, quiet, no good."
Though Smith got it going and finished with 22 points, no other Hokie had more than eight. After seeing great performances from the young fellas over the last five days, the freshman started to look again like, well, freshmen.
Justin Bibbs' jumper seemed flat for the second game in a row and it showed in his box score. The forward hit his first two jumpers but missed his last four, continuing a concerning mini-slump that started in Charlottesville.
Jalen Hudson has had a tough go of it after his super hero performance against Duke. In his last two outings the youngster has gone 0-5 from the field for a grand total of one point. This continues the maddening trend we hear Buzz talk about all the time, showing flashes of the talent that makes him so electrifying and then disappearing for long stretches.
I know this loss is disappointing to everyone, especially because things were just starting to look favorable. If anything, it simply confirms much of what our eyes and brains tell us about this group. If we're just looking at a talent comparison, the Hokies were much more impressive than Boston College. But as we all know, it goes beyond perceived advantages on paper.
They're young, talented and inconsistent. Those three things combined can result in a near-stunner against the Blue Devils on Wednesday, but then follow it up with this absolute stinker of a performance on Monday.
Now, the Hokies have sunk to their all-too-familiar place at the bottom of the conference. It may not be what our hearts want us to think, but right now Virginia Tech is the worst team in the ACC. They've won the race to last place and are sitting exactly where many fans thought they'd be in November.
This one was a bad one, and it's easy to get caught in the idea of finishing dead last four years running. But anyone who watched many of those games over that timeframe can tell you the difference between 2015 and any of the seasons prior.
There's talent in Blacksburg. There's also growing to do, evolving to happen and new players to bring into the fold. But for the first time in the last four years, I have more positive things to say about the season than negative.
There are just a few more games left in Buzzketball year one, and I can't wait for each and every one of them. Sure, this was another bad result in a season full of moral victories. But for whatever reason, I just can't stop coming back.
Is it the talent? The promise of a program that's still in its infancy?
Maybe it's just that my heart keeps telling me that things will go right, and I can tune in every game knowing two things. This team will play hard, and we have no idea what's going to happen.
Comments
I'm starting to worry that this team is showing the same trends that held back the Seth Greenberg teams. That is, it pays to the level of its opponent. So it'll fight tooth and nail with the top teams but it'll also inexplicably drop a home game against the worst team in the conference. Hopefully this is just a sign of an immature team and it'll improve, but yeah... Been down that road before, and it leads to a lot of frustration and disappointment.
Nah, BC is just the bestest, nothing to be done about it...
FACT!!!!
Ah, yes, a Hokie favorite: applying trends from previous regimes to the current one simply because the uniform is the same. Buzz has been on the job for less than one calendar year. He's in year one of a complete overhaul in terms of a culture shift (more of a demolition and rebuild than a shift, actually). If Buzz can't right the ship, then I'll agree that the uniform is cursed and we'll forever have to deal with playing up or down to our opponent. But I'm willing to give him and his glorified high school all-star team (seriously, half of the guys eligible to play this year are freshmen) the benefit of the doubt. Last night sucked. A lot. But I'm still willing to bet and believe that good things are coming.
smh... nice overreaction there. I didn't say Buzz is the same as Seth, just that I'm starting to see some of the same trends we have seen in the past. This style of up and down play, where you play to the level of the opponent is also something that Marquette fans were warning us about prior to this season, and its starting to show a bit. As I said, I hope this is just the sign of an immature team (something Seth could never break us from, showing his inability to truly develop a team) and not the sign of things to come. If you have paid even the smallest bit of attention to anything I have said about Buzz over the last year, you will find that I truly do think that we will be a very good, potentially dominant program in short order. But ya know, keep on keepin on with keepin the critics in line.
And you expected people to take... what, from that statement?
I was just saying I hope we're not going down that path because we have experienced it before and it kinda sucked.
And all I'm saying is that expecting to see something under one coach just cause we've seen it under Greenberg is just dumb.
....Because that's exactly what I was saying....
Sure seems like it. Actually, seems like that's exactly what you're saying.
I tend to agree, after watching that hot mess last night. Its disheartening and I hope its just youth.
You have to admire BC for the way they responded to their last-place challenge; It's a shame we don't have their grit and determination to avoid the cellar. I see a 25 point loss to Miami coming on Saturday.
Nah, I see a huge upset on Saturday. We knock off Miami to ruin their bubble bid and stay tied with BC for last place.
After last night I did not wake up in the best of moods and am definitely not prepared for this type of optimism
But based on this team I have no freaking idea what to expect. For all I know Buzz could come out on a Unicorn farting rainbows, leading his team of diaper dependent munchkins, wearing only a Maroon and Burnt Orange Banana Hammock and painted on handlebar mustache to a huge Victory and reminding "The U" that they are indeed not back with celebratory recreation on NSYNC's Song "Dirty Pop" after the game.
It may be not happen but based on how this season has gone there is always hope.
After a season of being out manned, out heighted and loaded with young players, the wheels just came off the wagon completely. This team has given everything they had this year, but I really thought that they took this BC team too lightly and they didn't show up to play. They may be playing hard, but the standings don't lie. Next year will be better, but I think we are still 2 years away before this team is ready to challenge night after night in the ACC.
i went heres my assessment. the future may be bright but the present is dark. that game was hard to watch especially at 9pm on a worknite. but ill keep goin and rooting them on. one day it will be better. i hope
Let's see, we are at home playing the worst team (except guess who) in the ACC with a chance to avoid another last-place finish. And we managed to play so miserably that even Bill Roth and Mike Burnop had a hard time announcing. Thanks again to Tom Gabbard and Bill Weaver for another reminder of just how an administration can literally destroy a sport for years and years. You have to admire BC for the way they responded to their last-place challenge; It's a shame we don't have their grit and determination to avoid the cellar.
Who is Bill Weaver?
Whoever he is, I bet he doesn't have grit or determination. And that's a real shame.
At least we get the number 1 draft pick
That's how you do it. I like the cut of your jib son.
does that mean okafor plays for us next year?
I think we have to give BC and their coach more credit. We have no inside game except driving guards. BC ignored the inside and kept pressure on the 3 pt line. Tech did not respond well. We need a big man threat to open up the outside shooting and we don't have one. The drive and pass outside game did not work against the BC defense last night.
Well, I think we're all a little testy after that game last night. I applaud the fans who attended, we could have used several thousand more voices in the coliseum. I'm sure they couldn't hear me from five and a half hours away. I watched because I am a Hokie and I care, even when we suck, and last night, we sucked. Most of us see what we think is the light at the end of the tunnel, and will continue to focus on the bright future we envision, but it doesn't surprise me that disappointment was on the menu today, and I share it.
As for Buzz's doings at Marquette, I think I'll worry about trends when he's been with us long enough to establish them here. When I look at what he did there, I see the NCAA tourney resume and am inclined to overlook some of the "warnings" about Buzz until we see how he shakes out at VT. I have a sneaky feeling that in a couple of years, we'll have a Buzzwagon load of fans, the Cassell will rock regularly, and March Madness will mean what it should in Blacksburg, instead of just we fans being mad in March like we have been for far too long.
100% agreed.... I'll go so far as to say, you give Buzz one more competent big man to pair with a Satchel Pierce consistently playing at the level he did against Duke and we're a team that will contend for ACC titles and high NCAA seeds. We have shown we have some really, really good pure shooters on this team who can knock down a shot if you give them space. By far, our biggest weakness is some legitimate strength down low. Get us some legitimate offensive threats around the rim who can guard smartly without fouling on the defensive side of the game, and this is a team that will play at a higher level than we have seen in 30 years. We're so close to being so good right now that the losses like this are just excruciating, because we've seen the potential.
This is how you sum up yesterdays game: 11-0, 11-0, 8-0....as in the runs that BC was allowed to go on during the game. Completely ridiculous to let a team that came in averaging 44% from the field to shoot over 50% last night. Just seems that we have extreme difficulty making first half adjustments, which ends up digging us into a hole too deep to come out of. Way to many wide open looks from outside to be much of a contest unfortunately.
BC theyll get after ya
Gotdangit, Matt Ryan did it again.
I will never understand how a team that almost beat Duke, Syracuse and Virginia flounder so hard against much worse teams. Extremely disappointing.
Insert (any team) vs. (any better team) in (any college sport) and this statement is still true. That's just the thing with college sports, unless you're one of the elites with tons of depth and talent everywhere, this happens. It happens to VT football annually.
You can remove "almost" and replace "Duke, Syracuse, and Virginia" with "anOSU" and the statement is true about our 2014 football team, too (though it turns out ECU and GT were pretty good this past year, VT still should have won those games).
Pro athletes can condition and train constantly, so they can perform more consistently. College athletes can't do that, so unless the team is stacked everywhere, fatigue happens, guys have bad nights, etc.
With a team like ours, it seems to be the crash after the high in most cases.
This season reminds me of Tony Bennett's first season in Hooville.
5 conference wins and under .500 for the season, and UVA has basketball pedigree.
Builds his team, Gets "his guys", and then BOOM, 2 straight ACC regular season championships.
Jus sayin. Keep the faith Hokies.
This team is young, not tall, fairly green, and still finding its groove. One thing is that this team does not suck. They may lose, even get blown out. But Suck? No way. They dive on the floor for loose balls with a minute left in the game, down by 10. Teams that suck do not do that. They Fight back from huge deficits, teams that suck pack it in.
Lots of things can be taught, but two can not. One is hustle/heart. This team has it.
The other is height.
Buzz is working on that.
Lets go!!!
Hokies!!!
Well written post. Leg!
Here, here! Well said!
Since I'm the one who used the word, I'll own it, but I'd like to at least respond to your post after thinking about it for a day. My first reaction was to post a flip response, something along the lines of "If it walks like a suck, and talks like a suck....", but going for a laugh seemed less than respectful of your heartfelt post.
Perhaps, in my disappointment with the game, I overstated my feelings somewhat. Perhaps, I should have said that to me, the game sucked. The atmosphere in the half empty venue sucked. The perplexing runs by BC and lapses by VT sucked to me, and the outcome sucked. Do I think this team, our fans, the Cassell or Buzz generally suck? No, I don't, and for all of the reasons you gave. I have watched every game this year that has been televised, listened on the radio to the ones that weren't, and I don't give up and quit watching before the end of the game. I love the Hokies and am emotionally invested in every game and every player on our team, believe our future is bright and think I tried to give that impression in my original post, as well.
In future, I'll try to be more careful with my words when I express my frustration.
I was not referring to you in particular, so respect and a leg for the "man up" response. I am just like you. Watch to the end. I call it taking my medicine, win or lose. I do not become emotionally invested in the team, because they have so much work to do that I can't go there yet. It like becoming emotionally invested in a new home when all you see is the foundation. I just watch, see whose game I like and dont. See who gives effort and who doesnt.
I just think that people refuse to see what this team has overcome to get through this season.
Imagine if Montrezl and Trevor Thompson, and JVZ were still here? Then I would be more down than I am. I may be optimistic, but this team will be fantastic in the coming years.
Thank you for your response. I was the only one who said "sucked", so I did take it personally. There is always time to reflect on one's attitude, responses, declarations, and I guess I felt bad about mine in light of your post. The last thing I would want is for our team to feel bad about themselves. As far as being emotionally invested in our team, I guess that bus left the station in 1968, when I first began my matriculation at VT. I love 'em all, unless they do something incredibly harmful to themselves and our University. The foundation I view is VT, and I am absolutely invested in, well, in US. Notice when I used the term sucked, I said "we sucked". I mean it that way, I am VT and they are me. I am all in.
You can trust me to say that I do not refuse to see what this team has overcome, what we have actually accomplished this season and I am, again I say, very enthusiastic about our future. So thanks, nubinile, and I would love to sit next to you at the ACC tourney championship in a couple of years.
It's exchanges like these that make me love TKP. Legs all around.
Respect due and
Trust me, you are NOT the only TKP user to use the word suck. It just got to me. I apologize if I offended you or made you feel personally attacked.
No, no, not at all. We cool!
We are 2-17 in conference and 10-21 overall. Even in Bennett's first season, they won 5 conference games and 15 overall. It's a notch below that.
To be fair, Buzz started with crumbs, Bennett had much more to work with in the beginning.
A very brief look at the 2009-2010 'hoos roster suggests that Bennett's cupboard wasn't as what Buzz inherited.
It depends on what you consider inherited. Buzz had a ton of options, albeit not Buzz like players when he got here. If you look at that roster and we moved forward into this season with it, I have to think Buzz would have surpassed Bennett's five wins, but it would have been more painful as people would have been weeded out midseason or other points, similar to JVZ. Our biggest complaint this season is that we lacked height, but the one area where we lost the majority of our players preseason was in the post positions.
Maurice Kirby, 6'9, 215 lbs
Marshall Wood, 6'8, 210 lbs
CJ Barksdale, 6'8, 235 lbs
Trevor Thompson, 6'11, 210 lbs
Dont get me wrong, Buzz needed them to go and I fully support it but if we had that size under Buzz this year we certainly win more than five games in conference.
The only weird note of all of the above is that I can find no record of Barksdale transferring to play basketball elsewhere. Wonder if he is still at Tech this year or if he did go somewhere else.
Barksdale signed with TYCO Rapla of Estonia in January....
http://basketball.eurobasket.com/team/Estonia/TYCO_Rapla/6891?Page=1
Probably for the best rather than sitting a year to play a year, get paid for two years instead.
They definitely played down to their competition mentally and nearly got run out of the gym in the first half. I won't say they have quit on this season as I think Buzz would bench any player he thought wasn't giving his all. They climbed back in it and had a chance with as much as 8 minutes to go, but couldn't hold off BCs scoring all night. After giving up 41 in the first half, the team kept BC to just 25 points in the second. BC helped by slowing their game down, but Tech simply couldn't dig out of the lackadaisical start. Have to be ready every night, this isn't like high school where they could win on athleticism alone.
One other thing of note, something is still not right with Bibbs. He not only was having trouble shooting again but he also had a hitch in his dribble. He had been one of the smoothest ball handlers out there but yesterday it was like he was trying to dribble with his knees. Hopefully after the season ends they can reevaluate him regarding the concussion symptoms because he just doesnt seem fully recovered.
I noticed that as well. And his jump shot looks really off as well. Not a lot of lift on it. You think something more than concussion symptoms, like a loss of confidence?
Not really a confidence thing, I am more concerned about neurological and what not. Concussion symptoms are so hit or miss that a change in physical ability could be related to something deeper rooted. I just hope that they really focus on getting him healthy rather than basketball if thats the case. Just seems odd that a kid that looked smoother than Jello pudding through the first two thirds of the season all of a sudden cant dribble or shoot.
Women's team beats NC State 57-56 in 1st round of ACC tournament. Go ladies!
Apparently in dramatic fashion, as well...
Well done, ladies! Go Hokies!
That would help Wolff's case to stick for another year. I think Whit will give him some more time. He's not the greatest, but the team has somewhat stabilized and will hopefully improve.
Now if we could just get the men to follow this up with a good win in the tournament.