I love what Buzz is doing with the Hokies this season. You can see players getting better week-to-week (Robinson, Blackshear, Hudson etc), they give it their damndest each week and play tough (with a few exceptions). The one thing that haunts me when I look back at the season, are the losses to ND and Syracuse. Both of those games I believe that VT was the better team. The Syracuse one stings the most because the first time Syracuse had a lead was the first basket of overtime. Even throw in the L-Ville game in which VT was in it right until the end despite the final score.
Looking back at those two games and wondering what might have been had they pulled those out is going to sting. Win those, we get into the NCAA tourney instead of fighting for an NIT birth.
Thoughts?
Also, IF we beat Miami, are we sneaking in to the NCAA with one ACC tourney win? Two ACC Tourney wins?
Comments
I know ppl lament about our opening loss to Alabama State, but even if we won that I don't know if it would've gotten us a lock-in to the NIT.
I don't think so. Win the tourney? Yes. Tourney finals? Probably. But I don't think 2 tourney Ws will do anymore for us other than improving our NIT seeding. Plus, aren't the same dudes that shit-blocked us EVERY OTHER TIME we attained MORE than enough qualifications for the dance still around??
Win the tourney is an automatic bid.
Also, Mayor of Bubble-ville Greenburg is gone, and I know the selection committee probably didn't like him and his annual lamenting of being left out. Eventually I think he personally cost us a tourney bid himself.
Yeah, but at the same time no. I feel like they (committee) were against us regardless.
They absolutely were. We were left out for objectively less qualified teams and my saltiness hasn't diminished in the slightest. In fact, my saltiness has turned into a cured meat, settled in for the long haul.
bacon
I'm pretty sure we had 24 wins one of those years we got left out. I was not a happy camper.
If the Hokies win out, and win two games in the ACC tournament, they're dancing. The committee is not leaving out a 20 win team that made it to the ACC semifinal.
However, SPOILER ALERT!!!
Hokies are not beating Miami. It's just a terrible matchup this year for this team. They can't match Miami's scoring threats.
Care to expound on that thought?
Never has being so, so wrong, felt so right.
Shit I could care less, we are young and had some hiccups but it could be the other way as well. I'm damn proud of these boys and this team. 9 wins in the ACC, winning record! Who had that at the beginning of the year!! Nobody!
Clearly the first sentence at the top was lost on you.
Personally I think our OOC performance killed us. We beat alabama st and NW then I think we're having a more realistic talk about the tournament. You can't lose to those two teams at home and hope to make the tournament if you don't beat anyone of note. UAB being our best OOC win is not good. But if we win those two, with our current conference record we're at least on the bubble.
Agreed. Beating Alabama St. would have helped if only because the loss looks so bad. Northwestern at home would've been a decent major conference victory. Winning at ND and Cuse would've put our record at 21-9 (11-6 ACC). That's a tourney resume if you finish with one ACC tourney win. We had the lead against UNC with only about 3 minutes remaining, that would've been huge. Overall its a missed opportunity, but you can't be too mad, or mad at all, this has been a GREAT season and I'm loving every second of it.
agreed, we win the two mentioned OOC games, and one of the two between ND and SU and we're almost definitely in, probably in a similar scenario to pitt and su
unfortunately, i don't think so (RPI; unless we win the ACC championship...).
that said, still happy if we make the NIT (or any post-season tourney for that matter).
remember those Wake, GT and UVA wins in January? Each of them probably feels like we do about ND and SU.
I know if we pick apart the close wins and close losses we could flip W's into L's and L's into W's and be back at square one. My only thought was that we should have beat Syracuse, the place was dead quiet and we should have closed the door on them and left with a quality road win. ND too in my opinion. Even with the OOC losses imagine how much stronger the resume looks with 11-6 ACC record is all.
The SU loss was painful, up 7 with 2:24 left. But we did get the last possession in regulation and had a ball in the air to win it. Same with ND, we had a ball in the air that would have won the game, no matter how painful losing command of that game felt.
to me, it's the evolution of the team. this year was all about playing competitively, bringing consistent effort. Then Allen hits a 3 in regulation that ties it up with NCSU and we found a way to win in OT. We played a month of close games after that. In late February, we have learned to take those 5 point leads and make them 10, to hold on to games late. The two WF games are great examples of how we are learning to win. At one point, we had played 11 one-possession games (or OT games) whereas UVA had played 2. Good teams extend leads, get stops, make FT's, don't give up painful 3's (like we did the first Wake game).
Even last night, we gave up a big cushion but I didn't feel particularly concerned about losing the game. And the fact that we had a 10-12 point lead allows for those inevitable runs to fall a few points short. We need to take from last night that you can't clam up at the line and you can't make stupid turnovers on back-to-back possessions in the last 2 mins. But the fact that we won the game, and that we were up by a dozen that helped us withstand the charge, is a significant marker of improvement.
I was kind of perplexed having attended the Syracuse game in person; the entire Dome was on its feet and clapping from the national anthem through the tip. I thought "this is a great atmosphere", then we took our 6-0 lead or whatever, but they were all -to a person- still on their feet.
As soon as they made their first basket, errrbody sat down and were never into it again (outside the student section) until the run for overtime.
Is standing until your first basket and then clamming up and sitting on your hands a tradition that I don't know about? Let's just say MrsEMC and I were very confused when the home team scored and then we were the only ones standing.
Standing until your offense scores their first basket is very much a tradition for 'Cuse. The clamming up and sitting on their hands after that - used to be folks would sit down but still be actively cheering (standing when things got close) but I haven't been to the dome in a while.
I thought this was gonna be another Steph Curry thread.
IKR!? Very first thought when seeing it!
Hold on, I think I saw that horse carcass somewhere around here, get your clubs ready....
I was expecting to hear about some of our former players that transferred to other schools. I still watch Trevor Thompson at Ohio State and imagine what could have been. He was one of my favorite recent Hokies and had (has) unbelievable upside. Incredibly nice guy too, he would always say hello when I passed him on campus.
He and Buzz never really got along, dating back to his Marquette days during Thompson's recruitment.
I get the reasoning, and I don't fault Trevor for walking away, but he was so exciting to watch.
We're early in the process. Appreciate what the players and coaches have achieved and the hard work they have put into building the foundation, instead of focusing on what didn't go right. No one is ever happy focusing on past missteps. I couldn't be prouder of this team for what they have accomplished this season.
Yea and it could have gone the other way too. A lot of our wins have been less than 5-10 points, so those wins could've easily been losses too.
let's not play the "WHAT IF WE DID/DIDNT DO THIS?!?!?" game. We do it too much for football and it goes both ways for all teams. Our record is our record, and I am damn proud of the improvement I have see from over the past couple years.
Enjoy the moment, the ACC tourney could be a fun one to watch
Found an RPI calculator (link) last night to see if we had the possibility of getting an at large at all based on RPI. The TL;DR version is almost certainly no, even if we make it to the ACC championship game and lose we're only looking at an RPI around 69 which is not nearly good enough.
Our current RPI is 98 and with wins instead of losses against Notre Dame, and Syracuse that gets bumped up to 74. Throw in the Louisville game and our RPI is 64. Even 64 would not be right side of the bubble as auto bid teams would likely push us out. However, that would actually get us into the range people think we're in of being able to make noise in the ACC tournament and making the big dance.
Honestly it's nice to think we're in a better position then we are, but once you take off those sweet maroon and orange shades you realize our SOS sucks, especially out of conference. Our only big win was against LOLUVA, and our second best win happened last night. That doesn't make for a very good resume especially once some of our earlier losses are factored for as well.
With all that being said this team has had an exceptional season and we're are much farther along rebuilding than any sane person thought we would be back in the beginning of November. We need to take a step back and remember that the NIT was considered the absolute ceiling for this team at the beginning of the season and temper our expectations. We're making a run at the NIT and this is the most excited I've ever been for a basketball team, that is no small feat.
We played 6 games against >300 RPI opponents. You can't do that if you want to get in the tournament. We thought it was more important to get wins and confidence than RPI brownie points early on. It appears to have worked.
I'm not the least bit upset about not even being on the bubble. We may be good enough now, but we weren't until January. We scheduled like we were a rebuilding program, which we are. We don't have a case for the tourney, but that's okay.
sounds pretty good to me
That would be 69 in the Men's group. Just make sure you're considering that when you decide if it's your kind of thing.
Just win the ACCT and we are in! No committee needed!
If only we had hired the greatest basketball coach and recruiter of all time before I was born, had won 10 consecutive national titles before I went to VT, and had created such a legacy we got to pick which 5 star players came to play for us, and who would have the privilege of coaching in Blacksburg. Then we would be a basketball school, would have been the ACC much sooner, and UNC and Duke would be talking fondly of the few times they beat us on their court, and I would be blowing $$$ on NCAA tickets every year. I'll take that saved $$$, buy some bourbon, relax in my chair, and dream with the rest of you, but not about what might have been, but what lies ahead.
Yeah. I guess.
I was talking about 2 specific wins in a solid basketball campaign that might have pushed us closer to stronger post-season footing. Guess your comment kinda sums up most peoples feeling: say anything that is not effusive praise (praise being earned with the job Buzz' done this season) and all the lemmings start jumping off the cliff together going overboard.
Just part of my philosophy that the past is the past, the only reason to look at it is learn from it. We would have had to have won the ISU and WVU games OOC to be in NCAA discussions this year, or been top 5 in conference. Yes we choked against the Q's, but did that help us beat Pitt? We may not be ready for the Big Dance, but what we did this year makes me think we are getting ready. I'd rather dream about the future then rue the past, but that's just my opinion, not meant to ruffle tail feathers.
reductio ad absurdum to a T here. The guy was simply saying it would've been cool if two other games had gone differently, and you decide go on a tangent about changing the course of history. Lol I guess I get your point?
Shoot, might as well toss the UNC game in there too. Down by 20, take the lead, then end up losing by 5
Yeah, I thought about that and the L-ville game too, but specifically wanted to focus on those games where we were the better team (regardless of the score, again just my opinion)
Gotcha, good point
I disagree that we were anywhere near the better team in the LVille game. They shot the lights out and their backcourt combined for over 50 points. The better team won that game. We had absolutely no answer for Lee or Lewis.
Ok. Definitely not the L-Ville game. Lee balled out and just was red hot , but we scraped and fought. But the other two I thought we were the more complete team.
I was waiting for the what if Ahmed Hill, Ty Outlaw and Chris Clarke had been healthy all season....all of those games surely would have been wins as we would have ascended to the ACC throne both regular and tournament wise.....there would have been no stopping the Hype Train if those guys had only played.
I for one am enjoying the fact that I was dead wrong about this team. I pegged them at a 13-18 type record, with few if any conference wins when we started. I picked most of these wins in conference by the time we got to the game to game evaluation but thats with knowledge in hand. Hats off to these kids for accomplishing way more than I thought was possible, health factors or not.
Clarke is going to be a fun watch next year. There are some plays that he makes in the game where I wonder how a man that size is able to move so damn quick.
For every close loss you say what if there's also that two, three or four point win that we pull it off like against UVA. We are who we are basically a 500 team
FTFY
I kept saying throughout the season that this team was going to be so good once it all started to click.
Well, boy did it start to click towards the end. We're most certainly a NIT-at-best team this year, but that's ok. I'd much rather this team have the experience of a potential long run in the NIT than a likely 1-and-done NCAA bid. We're still very young and that experience would pay off big in the coming years where we should be a NCAA caliber team.
Disagree that it would be a "likely 1-and-done ncaa bid". Would likely be in the play in game, so that would be against another 12 seed. A team very similar to us, but probably not playing as well. Then we would be going up against a beatable 5 seed.