HOKIES HOOPS CENTRAL: Virginia Tech (5-2) at Auburn (4-1) vs 915PM ESPN2
Fun Fact 👀CMY's first game as a college head coach was at Auburn on Nov. 22, 2002.He'll lead us into the jungle tonight 🫡#StoneByStone pic.twitter.com/jozyGWUOFU— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) November 29, 2023
Virginia Tech (5-2)
at Auburn (4-1)
November 29, 2023
Neville Arena
Auburn, AL
915 p.m. ET
ESPN2
Virginia Tech Sports Network
ESPN2
Play-by-Play: John Schriffen
Analyst: Daymeon Fishback
Local Radio
Virginia Tech Sports Network
Play-by-Play: Zach Mackey
Analyst: Mike Burnop
Current Spread: Tigers -9.5
Over/Under: -150.5
✅ Set VT 3FG record🏆 All-Tournament TeamMore to come from @CattoorHunter 🦃💪 pic.twitter.com/9xHAjjxMyR— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) November 27, 2023
First Road Game
The Hokies play in the inaugural ACC/SEC Challenge at Auburn. The Hokies face the Tigers after a forgettable 84-50 loss to FAU. The Hokies were holding steady for much of the first half but the beginning of the second half was a complete shooting drought that quickly got out of hand.
Huge opportunity on The Plains‼️＠ Auburn🕘 9:15 p.m. ET📺 ESPN2#StoneByStone pic.twitter.com/MJt3BN8lg6— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) November 29, 2023
The Auburn Tigers squad comes in 4-1. This will be the ninth meeting between the Hokies and Auburn. The Hokies are 2-6 with the last meeting a 73-63 loss in Puerto Rico in 1999.
The Tigers are coached by Bruce Pearl, who is in his tenth season at Auburn. The Tigers are 191-112 under Pearl. Auburn is his fourth head coaching job with assistant stops at Iowa and Stanford. He coached Southern Indiana, Milwaukee and Tennessee prior to Auburn. He received a three-year show cause ban after an NCAA investigation that started in 2008 but had additional violations in 2010. That ruling came down in 2011.
Auburn has been to the postseason in five seasons under Pearl but were also deemed ineligible for post season play in 2021. The Tigers opened their season with a loss to Baylor and then wins over SE Louisiana, Notre Dame, St Bonaventure and Alabama A&M.
Auburn had two transfers come in this season in SG Denver Jones and G/F Chaney Johnson. Jones is starting and Johnson comes off the bench for about 16 mpg. They signed two freshmen, including Aden Holloway, the 16th recruit in the class. He is their starting point guard and the second leading scorer.
The Tigers have only five players averaging more than 20 mpg but ten average at least 15 mpg. Auburn does not appear to have any injuries coming into this game. The starting five are Broome, Williams, Moore, Jones and either Holloway or Donaldson as the fifth starter. Pearl will sub early and often with the bench playing nearly 42% of total minutes.
Auburn under Pearl historically had played a 1-2-2 diamond full court press defense but changes in how fouls are called have forced him to relook that. Auburn will still use the press, just not constantly. They will, however, meet the Hokies at mid-court nearly every play. This will be very similar to how FAU defended against the Hokies which obviously did not go well. Auburn rebounds well defensively and creates around thirteen turnovers per contest.
Offensively, the Tigers rely on either a four out, one in or five out style of positionless motion basketball. Similar to FAU, the Tigers biggest threat is the players moving that do not have the ball as the Tigers use a variety of screens and shifts to get players open to receive lob passes underneath. Johni Broome leads the Tigers in scoring and rebounding. They also have intricate rotations to create mismatches in the paint. In their lone loss, the Tigers got caught up in a back-and-forth affair with Baylor where the free throw line determined the final result with Baylor going 27-34 at the line.
Tigers Backcourt
Aden Holloway
1 FR G 6-1 178
13.2 Pts, 1.0 Reb, 3.8 Ast
Jaylin Williams
2 SR F 6-8 230
9.0 Pts, 6.4 Reb, 1.4 Ast
Denver Jones
12 JR G 6-4 195
8.6 Pts, 1.8 Reb, 2.0 Ast
K.D. Johnson
0 SR G 6-1 190
8.4 Pts, 1.4 Reb, 1.4 Ast
Chad Baker-Mazara
10 JR G 6-7 180
7.2 Pts, 3.4 Reb, 2.0 Ast
Tre Donaldson
3 SO G 6-2 190
5.6 Pts, 2.0 Reb, 3.2 Ast
Chaney Johnson
31 JR G 6-7 220
5.0 Pts, 5.4 Reb, 0.6 Ast
Tigers Frontcourt
Johni Broome
4 JR F 6-10 235
15.4 Pts, 7.6 Reb, 2.2 Ast
Dylan Cardwell
44 SR C 6-11 250
5.4 Pts, 4.4 Reb, 1.8 Ast
Chris Moore
5 SR F 6-6 240
3.8 Pts, 3.2 Reb, 1.6 Ast
What to expect from Auburns?
The Tigers will look to move the ball and rely on all five players being able to take the open shot. Focus is on Broome and Holloway. The pair account for a third of total scoring and Broome is adept at taking the inside pass, drawing in the defense, and passing out to the open shooter. Broome is averaging 3.8 fouls so that could be a factor.
Auburn has not really faced a significant offense outside of Baylor at this point but similar to the Owls they allow an extremely low number of assists. Opponents are only averaging around nine assists per game. Auburn on the opposite side averages just over 20 assists per game
Rebounding appears on the surface to be an advantage for the Tigers. They currently enjoy a seven rebound per game edge but a +20 edge over Alabama A&M and a +14 edge over SE Louisiana covers a +/- 5 in their other three games.
Auburn very much like the Hokies seem to be hit or miss on perimeter shooting and perimeter defense. They allowed Baylor to shoot 47.4% but held Noper Dome to 7.7% from outside. On offense they shot as high as 47% against Baylor and a low of 25% against Alabama A&M.
The Hokies
The Hokies could not have written a more complete collapse than what they delivered against FAU. In their 84-50 dismantling, the Hokies shot 12% from outside that only wasn't 0% due to a couple garbage time makes after the game was decided. FAU shot 41% from outside and 57% from the floor. The game started well and was as close as 25-24 with less than three minutes remaining in the first half. The second half was a completely different story, with FAU expanding the 32-24 halftime lead to 44-24 before the Hokies scored again. Hopefully they got it out of their system and are focused going into this game.
The biggest concern was that once the Hokies got down, they just seemed to be unable to execute their half court offense with any consistency. The small change of them pushing too hard carried over to the defensive end, as they allowed FAU quite a few odd man breaks.
MJ Collins continued to be a black hole shooting wise with a 1-6 night before injuring his knee in the second half. There has been no word on his status for this game. If he is unable to go, I would expect Nickel to start in his place.
The Hokies only had Pedulla and Cattoor finish in double digits but even they struggled significantly, shooting a combined 9-29 from the floor and 0-12 from outside.
In the final moments of the loss, the Hokies finally saw Patrick Wessler get on the floor. He was fouled on his only shot and went 1-2 at the line.
In Closing
Expect a fast-paced game which does not necessarily lend itself to the Hokies favor. They struggled to get the ball up the court against FAU's press and will likely see a better press defense employed for a good part of the game by the Tigers.
This paragraph applies to Auburn every bit as much as it did against FAU. Can the Hokies shut down the perimeter? Are the Hokies able to hit their outside shots? Neither team is strictly reliant on the outside, but the difference here goes a long way to deciding this contest. We got the extreme version here against FAU. I can't imagine we will see that same level of struggle again, but this is a road game in a well-attended SEC school. We will get to see how the Hokies handle the road environment.
Can the Hokies get Auburn in early foul trouble? The longer Auburn starters are forced to sit, the bigger the impact to this game. I am not sure the Hokies offense lends itself to this unless the Hokies can get the ball consistently inside to Kidd and Poteat.
Comments
Good thing this game is in at 930pm for two south east based teams....I'll have to rely on looking at the final score in the morning and rewatch if it's a win
Yea, that's criminal.
It's actually an 815pm start in Alabama as you cross the time zone there so it's fine for the SEC which is all E$PN cares about.
LET'S GO
HOKIES
Still nothing on Collins so far. Hopefully that's a sign it wasn't serious but it sure looked ugly in game.
I am still surprised that Nickel is coming off the bench. I think he has been outplaying both Collins and Beran in what I have been able to watch.
Yah the whole "getting a spark off the bench" mentality I don't quite understand. If you get in a 10 point hole it seems much more mentally straining than getting a 10 point lead and then being in your defender off the bench and rest the shooter.
He may not be starting but he is getting more minutes than Collins, Beran and Long. Collins has 3 more minutes played but Nickel sat out the Coppin State game. Nickel is getting the fourth most minutes behind Cattoor, Pedulla and Kidd.
The bigger outlier for me is which of Poteat or Beran do we want more of. Beran currently getting 21MPG to Poteats 14MPG. Both struggle with foul trouble but Poteat is much more efficient shooting (5.9pts on 76% vs 3.7pts on 35%) and also provides more effective screening. I also really would like to see Kidd and Poteat in to compliment each other around the rim.
The Collins conversation comes second and honestly I think it should be whether he or Long are next off the bench behind Nickel. Long shoots better and rebounds better while Collins plays better defense and is slightly better in assists/facilitating shots. The significant disparity in shooting (41% vs. 18%) makes me lean Long on this one.
Stretching the floor and depending on 3's only works when you have players hitting the 3's. I think the hope was that Beran could do that, but I have not seen it. Collins certainly ain't. I think the issue with Kidd and Poteat is who do have guarding outside if they have four that can handle the ball. It's not like we are going to play zone. The pieces don't fit what MY wants to do. I hope he figures out something fairly quickly.
Well they have figured out they can feed Kidd all day long. I just wish Pedulla and Catoor would drive the basket more. They both do at times, but not enough to really get the opposing team in foul trouble.
Teams though have figured out they can double Kidd and he struggles unless he is directly underneath. Having short bursts where they have to account for both increases Kidd getting isolated possessions. One other piece that the Hokies significantly underutilize is pick and roll at the corner with a complimentary slasher on opposite side of the lane.
Auburn is going to press the whole game and make someone other than Pedulla beat them off the dribble.
I wish I could say I felt good about this game.
But we're facing a team tonight that has arguably the
dirtiestbest coach in the SEC. And you know that's saying something!Might be the scratch in all of college basketball. Definitely Top 3.
Probably not the right thread for this since it relates to WBB, but not sure I wanted to start a new one so just thought I would post it here.
Angel Reese, after a mysterious absence for the LSU team, returns and will be available against VT tomorrow night.
Shocker /s
Is there a more root-against-able player-coach combo than Angel Reese and Kim Mulkey?
Mulkey and Van Lith are pretty equal for me compared to Reese.
I wanna punch JonBenet Ramsey in the neck.
I feel like she's been through enough
I have no idea why this made me laugh out loud. I'm not even sure I get it.
The LSU coach dresses like an adult version of JonBenet Ramsey.
She is a clown, that's for sure.
Unless some shots fall and Pedulla stops playing hero ball we are likely in for another long night.
Game time
Nickel starting over Collins
LETS GOOOOOOO!
HOKIES!
3's not dropping and getting handled on the boards.
Not encouraging.
Here we go with the ice cold shooting and turnovers again.
Still can't make a basket.
Turnover a minute
Ya think Auburn's logo could be any bigger?
Second Verse
Same as the First
This is about how I expected this game to go. Might be uglier than the other night. I love CMY, but he's built a competitive G5 program in Blacksburg. We simply don't have the athletes to compete with quality P5 programs on a nightly basis.
Auburn win % already up to 88+%
91%... I wasn't fast enough
Be nice if they called a foul on Auburn considering they're way more aggressive right now than we are with hand slaps
Finally they listened
there's one
They heard you
This season ended with the departure of Rodney Rice. This roster construction is brutally bad.
It's definitely not like the Justin Fuente tenure, but somehow CMY has failed to build, and keep, a cohesive roster.
Can't even make FTs right now what happened to this team
When we're getting foul calls like this....we need take the freebies.
Doesn't help if you miss the freebies
And now Nickel with 3 fouls.
Goodnight.
This is too late a start to stay up for this.
These calls on flopping Auburn played are getting out of hand
Dumb play by Nickel. This is going off the rails fast
Nickel never touched the guy. Was a flop and the refs screwed up the call.
Soooo not as good as last year?
Nickel did not touch that guy ...not even his feet. Second one today like that.
Yeah we can't even inbound the ball properly. We may lose this one by 40+
What is with these refs? Auburn already has a huge advantage. You don't need to help them.
That call on Nickel was crazy. The guy kicks his legs to catch him on the way down and they call the foul. Should have been a T on Auburn. Couple plays earlier, Catoor gets forearmed in the face (grabs his nose and steps out of the play). Ref just looks at him and shrugs.
The leg kick is something they practice. Auburn and Pearl teams in general have done that historically
And it's illegal.
We look like dog shit and like we did zero preparation to deal with auburns defense. Mike young really not impressing against good competition so far
Jesus..we look like a mid-major team that's completely shell-shocked.
Young is a wonderful guy but this train has been going in the wrong direction for a while now.
This announcer has some serious wood for Albarn basketball and Bruce Pearl.
Even has the woody for the officials
Kidd lost that ball due to the forearm shiver in his back
Watch the replay. The official just watches it and looked at Kidd to call it out of bounds.
It's hard to physical and agressive when you're getting jobbed by the refs.
Meanwhile kidd getting pounded over the back and no call. These refs are making zero sense to me. We're getting pushed across the board trying to get the ball in bounds and nothing. Auburn shoots a three and falls down and it's a foul
$EC officials on an $EC floor. Pretty simple equation.
Pearl complaining about a flop.
Insert spiderman.gif
Bruce Pearl putting off some serious Pat Nnarduzzi vibes.
Nardouche actually took classes on douchery from Pearl. Pearl been doing it a whole lot longer.
Could punch this Broome guy in the face
Did this announcer go to Auburn?
The color analyst did
Poteat with position inside and wins ball....over the back
Poteat under the basket contorts himself away from the basket to throw up a shot!?
Poteat getting farther from the basket is just bad basketball
Don't know how much more of this came my bp can take Rob. Dumb silly errors by our guys, one sided officiating, and no one can make a shot.
If I had come into the night expecting it to be close I might be there with you. Unfortunately came in expecting bad so a little worse isn't breaking me
I'm gonna fucking flip; no foul while players re getting pulled down on the rebound yet the dude spins in front of Cattor and gets a foul call!? wtf 🤬
Broome took like seven steps
How many times has Kidd hit the floor already?
Now they're stumbling over their own feet and it's foul on us. Getting clocked every time in the paint and no foul
I hate basketball I don't get this sport
Dude runs into his own player and Cattoor gets called for the foul. LOL
How many guys have 3 fouls each? 3, 4, more?
Finally a 3
Of course it's an "excellent call" when the defender is moving his feet with a hand on Pedullas off arm
For the entire first half this announcer has been busting his nut on this Albarn roster, now that VT has made a little run he is downplaying the roster... "You know, the most important position in basketball is PG and these guys with Auburn are young."
So our guys aren't playing great, but it sure doesn't help when refs are calling a game like this. Holy crap are these refs terrible....
How many layups has Pedulla missed this year sheesh
Can't make it any easier for them there
Broome loses the ball so foul on Kidd
RB is trash on defense; just clobbering the guy every time underneath this game
Can we please put Poteat and Kidd down low together. Broome is eating them up one on one
Please! Remove beran. Give me the main three pieces of poteat, kidd, Pedulla
Have beran spell the bigs, and then a combo of young nickel cattor long
Brech spells Pedulla
May solve itself since he already has 3 fouls
Both teams shooting 2-18 from outside combined....just dumb numbers.
What the hell was that? Nickel gets his arm bent back as ball goes out but meh sideline out.
Wessler may end up having to play as people foul out
No a single foul called when we drive but one every time for them
Pedulla with the situational awareness of a turtle lately; Camden getting run lol but I've seen him make more shots than beran so honestly not too upset
Pedulla had too much time
And of course that goes down...just that kind of season
This is painful
The UVA LED Lights during timeouts don't help
Pedulla not the guy right now what's going on with him
They are in his head
Pedulla needs to sit a bit
Sit Pedulla please.
Jones wasn't set and contact came during the shot
Broome couldn't have held that rim longer
These refs are comical. Auburn guy is too close, bodies and gets an offensive foul drawn. Refs go to his side and coddle him to make sure he's okay. Review to make sure we don't elbow him. Rather than overturn give them the ball.
Meanwhile Catoor takes another blow tot he face. Ref looks at him and shakes his head.
Between having a Mid-Major squad and some awful officiating, there's no chance we could ever keep this close.
I'm ready for some changes. Not with CMY specifically, but with the approach to our program. I hate that we can't keep quality athletes in this program. I hate that we rely so heavily on the 3 that when we aren't hitting them we get run out of the gym.
Mid-major team that won the Acc. Check your logic.
You're right... catching lighting in a bottle one time following an average season makes all the difference in the world. Check your vacuum.
4 of 5 starters were G5 transfers. Checkmate
How many ACC championships didn't any other Vt coach win? Zero.
You literally just proved my point...
In any event, we don't have P5 athletes on this team. If you don't recognize that you aren't watching. Additionally, CMY's system (the 3-ball, rigid system on both ends, etc.) is a mid-major system. CMY has built a mid-major program in Blacksburg.
How does winning the acc with his players prove your point? You say we built a G5 roster. Yet precious Buzz didn't win the ACC with his players.
Beamer caught lighting in a bottle with MV7. And he's in the hall of fame.
CMY is a good coach. He made more NCAA tournaments while coaching Wofford than we did prior to coming here.
CMY caught lighting in a bottle with a miracle shot, following an average season, and a weak ACC. He lost two key assistants and everything has gone downhill since (defense, offensive chemistry, roster cohesiveness). Not very many of these guys would be starters on quality P5 rosters. We have some good shooters, a good defender or two, and a quality PG, but we do not have athletes that can play on a nightly basis with Quality P5 teams.
Additionally, and to your point, CFB followed up that 1999 season with 15 years of success. Only time will tell if CMY will do that, but the trend is telling us a different story. I hope CMY is the guy, but I have serious doubts.
Miracle shot? We should have won that game by 10. Then we beat the shit out of UNC and Duke. Hardly luck.
We did. Amazing run. But my point remains.
The trend is not a good one.
Beran fouls out on bump after Poteat is mauled underneath by two guys
CMY should walk to half court. Order a T and call them out for cheating. Just give them the 3 points. Refs are going to give to them anyway.
For Fs sake....put two bigs underneath for the love of ....
I'd put two reserves in with no fouls. Instruct them to not allow a shot without a foul (LSU strategy in the final four). Make them hit some foul shots to score.
We still cannot play against a physical team. The lack of an interior is being exposed badly tonight. Switching to Bourbon for the rest of this one.
Correct because our coaching staff REFUSES to adjust and counter. Auburn has Johnson and Broome crushing the inside yet Young keeps using four guards....instant mismatch underneath.
Yup. You have to go into the bag of tricks when playing a team like this. You have to flop. You have to get them in the air and go into them. You have to bitch. You can't just let them play more physical the entire game and end up with the same amount of fouls.
The lack of adjustment from Young and his staff is ridiculous. Auburn has ONE offensive play right now and you are doing nothing to counter it.
So sloppy on offense. Absolutely piss poor defense. Lazy movement. No hustle.
It's hard to walk away from these last two games and think we are anything better than absolutely awful.
So we get two good teams in a row and get destroyed. I think the worst part of the last two games had been the dismal offense. Effort is making up for talent on defense, but not seeing what is making up for the lack of talent on offense. Scheme is not making up for it.
Easy way to run the Hokies out of the gym: lock up Pedulla and Cattoor and you'll win by 20+
Hokies should have had 4 free throws throws and the ball Right?
Football school.
MIKE YOUNG SUCKS.
And you wonder why we can't get high level recruits.
Cattoor did not want to come out....Young taking him by the arm to sit him
"Kid is tougher than a pine knot."
Where was the foul there?
$EC
Not that we have much of a chance now, but any time we do anything remotely good we've immediately thrown the ball away multiple times. Got it down to single digits a couple times and just beefed the next couple possessions. At least Camden and Young have looked pretty decent
Auburn has three guys in from the show Southern Charm.
Fitting end there with ball stuck on rim
Welp, another stinker by this squad. They look absolutely lost on both ends of the court. Pedulla needs his minutes limited to 30 for a few games (let his legs rest a bit) and we need to learn how to work down low. Once again, we are far too finesse to compete with any physicality and if we aren't hitting 3's we aren't even close to winning.
I'd love to see some adjustments.
Don't count on seeing them. Young seems die on his sword stuck on his singular approach. I am over it. Keep doing the same thing over and over again with the same results.
I think I'm right there with you.
Additionally, I like our players, but they just aren't quite there athletically. They run ragged the entire game to keep up with superior athletes, on both ends of the court, and I wonder if it wears on the guys.
The year we won the ACC, after an abysmal mid season slump, we made some significant adjustments on defense that really catapulted us to finish strong. After that, it's been mostly average.
When CMY started the 2nd half with 10 at PG I thought he was finally seeing the light... Pedulla has unfortunately taken a large leap backwards this season and is just an absolute mess out there. He had a couple lucky shots against ISU but otherwise has been very very poor. His point guard play is absolutely the start of the mess for this team. Just taking him off the floor is a plus so that he can't hurt you on offense. His +/- in this game is crazy negative.
If only we had a taller highly athletic and highly recruited guard out of DeMatha to drive the basketball and not get swallowed up by bigger more athletic teams
Sure. But runners, agents, etc. are undefeated in college hoops since 1970 or so. Undefeated. They have a better record than Bobby Knight and Coach K combined. Can't hold onto the Rodney Rice or Nolley or countless other scenarios. They don't listen to their college head coach who barks at them for not setting a screen. They listen to literally everyone else around them. Undefeated. Best to let it go.
If you "create your own offense" in this mike young system, you inevitably hit the portal.
Losing Rodney was the last straw.
I heard other reasons for his departure that have nothing to do with being pushed out for being a "create your own shot" guy.
And to establish some semblance of credibility to my claim, my brother regularly hung out with the team all summer so I trust his input to a certain extent regarding the reasons he shared.
Look at the guys who have hit the portal in Young's era. It's no coincidence.
It's more about doing whatever you need to - to keep a guy- like Rodney Rice- rather than letting him walk out the door. As soon as he walked out the door, the season was over. And the staff should have known that.
1. How do you know the staff didn't do everything they could to keep him? and 2. Rice did not look like Scotty Pippen when he did play. Was he going to make some huge leap this year?
Rice would be our most talented player on this roster- and it's not even really close. He is going to be able to pick from just about any program he wants, in the portal.
The fact that he didn't leave when Mike Jones left tells you everything you need to know about him trying to stick it out here.
Fair. CMY has been doing this a long time and beat UNC and Duke in back to back ACCT games. He's not an idiot, he's not dumb, hes not senile. So if Jones wasn't tied to the hip with Rice, WTF is young doing? he doesn't want a kid that would be his best player? I don't get it.
Read what harrinpa dropped below. Reading that it doesn't sound so much a Young thing as a Rice just wasn't enjoying it. If that was the case probably not much Young could have changed.
That said, if most of those that have left the last three years are leaving for the same reason then maybe there are things that need to change in the out of the lights areas of the program.
I don't think it's a pushed out thing as much as a frustrated because it's difficult to shine if your strength is getting to the rim but the staff doesn't utilize that enough. I was surprised last night at the number of dribble penetration attempts. Majority of the time Young uses perimeter screening rather than interior or top of the key screens to allow drives to the rim. I also think Rice prefers to have the ball in his hands more than what was going to happen with Cattoor and Pedulla still here. There is also the heavy influence of his father on the whole situation. His dad spends more time on where he should be then I think even Rice did.
The unfortunate thing is that it's become a trend though. Some of it is on the coaches, most of it though is "outside forces" with some player preference thrown in.
Rice, Alleyne,
Darren Buchanan 13.4ppg, 5.4rpg, 1.3apg. .6 bpg, 1.1 spg. Shooting 62% from floor but couldn't even get on the floor under Young last season. GW is 6-1 and Buchanan is only 4th on team in scoring.
Maddox (13ppg, 3.6RPG, 2.1APG for 6-1 Mason this season),
Jalen Haynes (last year with 14.6ppg, 6.4rpg, 1.5apg at ETSU, transferred to Mason but has to sit out),
N'Guessan (giving KState 7.1ppg, 8.3rpg),
Radford(13ppg, 5rpg, 2.2apg at A&M),
Bamisile (on his 4th school sitting out at VCU after waiver denied),
Cone (also on 4th school, 14.9 ppg, 2.9rpg, 2apg at Cal.)
It just seems that Young's style of offensive play does not lend itself to creative ball handlers and I would also point to his heavy preference on defense first type players (see Collins this season) that it doesn't mesh with the players ingrained in what I would call AAU style basketball. It is however extremely frustrating to see how these players have flourished away from Young and his staff. It says they are good at identifying the talent and even getting them committed but poor at utilizing them enough to keep them.
Totally- at some point there is a very "low ceiling" to a team that does not have enough guys that can create their own offense off of the dribble. As you seen with the FAU, Auburn games, (two tournament teams) - when it comes down to playing really good teams - in tournament situations - you NEED guys who can go get you a bucket with 10 seconds on the shot clock.
Those guys are just not seemed to be "wanted" in the Mike Young system- and that's truly a shame. Blending his offensive expertise with actual guys who can take people off the dribble would be ideal- but Young doesn't seem to want to do that.
you can't leave us hanging like that - what were those reasons your brother shared?
I feel an analogy might be better to maintain at least some veil of vagueness.
If I don't really like where my jobs located, don't like being at my job, considered whether I even want to work at all anymore, and don't want to put in the effort when at my job because of all other factors; it is not solely on my boss to convince me to stay when I decide to find a new job, because there might be factors he can't control in my decision .
Maybe it's my boss I don't like maybe it's just me? Sometimes it's on me to take a risk and find a new job in a new location to figure out whether it was the previous place of employment or maybe the job is just not for me anymore.
Didn't watch the game.
Fouls called on VT/Barn - 25 to 22. Perception may have seemed different but based on the comments I thought I would see a 25 to 18 type count.
Both teams shooting percentages were poor. They simply shot more shots
TO's: Got Damn (Pedula with 7 alone). Barn had 8 total. Explains the massive FG differential. 14 to 24. I mean, 14 FG's total. That's Phucking ridiculous
For the love of God, we phucking out-rebounded them.
Three things stick out:
1. Pedula shouldn't play anymore than ~ 27 minutes. After that the law of diminishing returns is too great. He's too fatigued during the latter half of the current game and doesn't recover enough to be effective for the next when he plays 30 minutes plus per game.
2. Our Offense is the most inept factor out there. As Rob has pointed out exhaustively, CMY best be making some adjustments or this season is more of this. And, that will set this program back big time. Based on what we have seen thus far this season, I may have an idea as to why Rodney decided not to play this season and had no interest staying in BBurg.
3. TO's: When this happens, teams lose. This is a ridiculous stat from last nights game.
There was a lot of slapping, shoving, and straight out tripping that caused a lot of those turnovers. They also called a large number of traveling calls after one step every time we got a good line on the basket. At one point Auburn had shot like 13 times and the Hokies had only shot 4. But they had called a turnover or offensive foul on us 5 straight trips to our side. Hard to make shots when the refs were interfering.
We might have been cold but the number of players getting clubbed in the face for no fouls repeatedly was enough that these refs should be fired by any competent conference.
The fouls were close in number but the type of fouls and contact to actually get fouls called was more the issue last night. Nickel was called for two phantom shooting fouls early which changed how he had to approach the other 35 minutes. The Hokies only needed to breathe funny on a guy to get a whistle.
There were plenty of times the Hokies went to the rim (surprising amount of drives to the rim last night) and got knocked to the floor and contacted while shooting with no whistle. Saw the officials shrug at Cattoor at least twice. The perimeter shooting has been abysmal the last two games. I do think a big part of that is over use of Cattoor and Pedulla. That gets worse with Collins missing time due to his knee.
Honestly my biggest issue isn't the offense. It's the refusal of the coaching staff to make adjustments on defense to account for an obvious flaw. Leaving our lone big 1v1 against Broome for Auburn, Goldin for FAU and even Mack for SCAR has proven time and again to be ineffective.
The staff needs to take a real hard look in the mirror and admit that we either have the wrong lineup consistently on the floor or our man-to-man is ineffective because we flat out don't have the athletic talent to do it so we may need to look at some zone defenses. I think against the dominant bigs Young and his staff have to find a way to double in the paint and risk the open shooter. It doesn't even have to be for the entire game, just enough to disrupt the rhythm of the opponents offense.
Can you imagine what Filipowski is going to do if they don't make some changes?
Great insight from the both of you. I appreciate it. My curiosity is piqued. I think I'm gonna watch it and FF through all the mumbo jumbo.
I somewhat remember us dropping back into either a soft 1-3-1 or a 2-3 for like a minute and a half and Auburn immediately got the ball to the guy in the middle and kicked out for a three and then an easy layup and we switched back out...I feel like it's pretty clear we don't have the horses to run man against more athletic teams so the ability to drop into a well disciplined zone here and there would be crucial. Any thoughts on if CMY can coach that up to a point where it's effective? Is that a Giltner job? I'm with you, I think it could definitely help us in ACC play and some kind of adjustments definitely need to change. That and running press break drills in practice for hours.
It would fall to Giltner but I have no faith it will happen
Refs know foul counts, look at them at half time and try to call BS/inconsequential fouls to even things out in the end. The Duke rule- circa ACC hoops in the 90s. They would go 5 games without calling a foul on Sheldon Williams, etc. They know the foul count.
Auburn should have been called for twice the amount of fouls as VT last night. "Called evenly" but watching the game while our guys were getting called for breathing on their shooter and we would get bodied to the floor, elbowed in the face, etc.. and nothing but a shrug was ridiculous. Granted, we also couldn't make our FTs last night. When we did get open shots, no one wanted to make them. This team has a lot of problems right now and it's not good that they're all happening simultaneously.
Beran is borderline "a warm body" right now.
Pedulla is a jumbled mess; not making shots, poor decision making, bad passing, over dribbling, missing wide open layups.
Cattor and Kidd are all of a sudden ice cold on shots they made the first 5 games. I have a feeling Cattor will work through it but we haven't seen if Kidd has the ability to yet.
Nickel, tough situation last night. Early phantom foul calls, missing threes he has typically made, driving the rim with a bit of timidness as he kept getting tackled out of the air with no call.
Surprised when we couldn't inbound the ball that Mike hadn't drawn up any screens to get the ball in bounds. We lost about 5 turnovers early just trying to get the ball in against pushing and holding from their full court press
I'm not sure what should be realistic expectations for this team right now. Plenty of games remaining for CMY to get things worked out but I think we are a football school again. Much like our beloved football, I'm just looking for steady improvement and some fight to keep me optimistic. Post season participation seems very optimistic right now
My thought last night was that if this had been football, we would have been calling for Marve's head on a stick. Hokies defense in the paint was like watching Marve make zero adjustments against Armstrong Run.
I believe Mike Young is a top 50 active head coach, but we're seeing there's a world of difference between that and a top 30 guy (then even more difference between them and the top 15).
He is good but if he ever wants to compete for national championships he needs to address the areas that top programs objectively perform better at than VT has during his time here. If he doesn't do that we will forever be a bubble team that can beat good teams on a really good shooting night but will lose vast the majority of games against teams in the top 30
Last night the announcers were praising Pearl for taking Auburn to 4 NCAA tournaments in 10 years. CMY is on track to beat that performance. Now if he could manage a Final Four...
It's 4 in 9 but that counts 2020 so essentially 4-8.
They are looking like they will make it again this season which would be five times since 2017-2018.
Is he? We're about to have been to 2 tournaments in 5 years. Auburn was trash his first 3 years there and while they have been successful recently, Tech is and should be shooting higher
Auburn wasn't trash the third year, just not good enough to make the tournament at 18-14. Pearl had to overhaul the entire program. I don't like the man but he walked into a much worse situation than even Pry faced replacing Cornfu and back then the Portal wasn't what it is now. Guys had to sit a season to play.
It took a couple years to convince recruits to come as well. 2016 class he landed two top 100 recruits and had two more transfers that were Top 100 eligible to play. After that they have consistently been in the tournament.
Yeah you're right, I wasn't saying that to take away from what Pearl's done but to point out his record on making tournaments is skewed by those first three rebuilding years.
He's actually more successful than his record suggests, which makes comparison to Mike Young less accurate
Pearl will get caught eventually, and Auburn will vacate wins etc. Cheating is what he does.
Harder to prove cheating when you can legally pay players to play now.
Well technically you can't pay for play. But Pearl and Mulkey are among others.
Yeah this was my same thought. Most of Pearl's earlier cheating was tied to shoe companies paying out cash. Now those companies can start handing out cash and influencing in high school in most states let alone colleges.