back to work 🏰🔥🆚 Jacksonville🕖 7PM ET📺 ACCNX🎄 Christmas Store Night (bring a toy)🔗 https://t.co/Ypqs6c7UWE pic.twitter.com/LngGjHCgnP— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) November 20, 2024
Jacksonville (2-2)
at
Virginia Tech (3-1)
7pm
Cassell Colisuem
ESPN+/ACCNX
TV | ACCNX
Evan Hughes, PxP
Mack McCarthy, Analyst
RADIO | VT Sports Network
Zach Mackey, PxP
Mike Burnop, Analyst
LIVE STATS
ESPN.com and ESPN app stats.hokiesports.com
A Lull that may have Teeth
The Hokies are coming off a tough loss to Penn State but hopefully don't take Jacksonville lightly in the midst of exams and before a date with Michigan.
The Hokies nearly doubled their season turnover total against Penn State with 24 turnovers in the game. You can't expect to win many games when you give away a third of your possessions.
The team is still fun to watch but are not getting consistent scoring from the starting trio of guards. The three are averaging only 28.6 points combined.
Jacksonville comes in 2-2 with wins over South Carolina State and Trinity Baptist. Their losses are to Furman and #21 Florida.
Florida beat them by 21 and Vegas expects the Hokies to win by 14. The Dolphins are led by their starting guard duo of McCray and Bell, putting up 28.8 ppg.
Forwards Nwokeji and Munson appear to be splitting the starting role so not sure which we will see. Senior Guard Jakari Spence and Freshman Chris Arias also appear to be sharing starts.
This team does not shoot the three well at all. The leader in that area is Nwokeji at 35% on 3.5 attempts per game. The rest of the team is below 30% on the season. McCray and Bell are looking to drive to the rim every time they touch the ball. The Hokies have not dealt with this kind of drive to the basket ability yet this season which is the only reason I am concerned on how prepared the Hokies are mentally for this game.
Defensively the Dolphins employ a man-to-man defense that requires players to communicate effectively and switch when needed. There is a strong focus on getting defensive rebounds by keeping three players near the basket at all time.
One key piece missing for the Dolphins is Grad Guard Marcus Niblack. He has a weird history. He played at East Tennessee as a Freshman but did not play again until last season as a Senior at Jacksonville where he averaged double-digit scoring. I can't find a reason for his not playing so far this season as he was expected to start.
The Hokies should have a sizable advantage in the paint in this game but will need to be careful with fouls considering how much penetration the Dolphins attempt. This should be an easy W if the Hokies are mentally focused.
Hokies Starters
Mylyjael Poteat
34 SR F 6-9 260
13.3 Pts, 3.8 Reb, 2.5 Ast
Toibu Lawal
1 JR F 6-8 200
12.8 Pts, 8.8 Reb, 0.5 Ast
Jaden Schutt
2 SO G 6-5 185
11.0 Pts, 3.3 Reb, 2.3 Ast
Brandon Rechsteiner
7 SO G 6-1 185
8.8 Pts, 1.0 Reb, 3.5 Ast
Jaydon Young
3 SO G 6-4 205
8.8 Pts, 2.5 Reb, 2.5 Ast
Key Bench Players
Tyler Johnson
10 FR G 6-5 215
8.0 Pts, 6.5 Reb, 0.5 Ast
Ben Hammond
11 FR G 5-11 170
3.5 Pts, 0.8 Reb, 1.5 Ast
Ben Burnham
13 SR F 6-7 200
3.3 Pts, 3.5 Reb, 0.5 Ast
Patrick Wessler
5 SO C 7-0 245
3.3 Pts, 3.5 Reb, 0.0 Ast
Dolphins Starting Five
Robert McCray
13 JR G 6-4 185
16.0 Pts, 4.8 Reb, 4.3 Ast
Zach Bell
5 JR G 6-2 180
12.8 Pts, 3.0 Reb, 0.8 Ast
Stephon Payne
0 JR F 6-9 210
7.8 Pts, 8.0 Reb, 0.3 Ast
Jakari Spence
8 SR G 6-0 170
2.7 Pts, 3.7 Reb, 2.0 Ast
Zimi Nwokeji
16 SR F 6-7 220
7.5 Pts, 3.8 Reb, 0.5 Ast
Key Bench Players
Chris Arias
1 FR G 6-6 205
5.3 Pts, 2.8 Reb, 0.8 Ast
Kendall Munson
9 SR F 6-8 210
6.0 Pts, 3.8 Reb, 0.3 Ast
Enrico Borio
23 FR F 6-5 225
4.3 Pts, 3.7 Reb, 0.7 Ast
Had a HOFer in the building Friday night ✌️Appreciate the support @foe23 🦃🤝 pic.twitter.com/SPNjiYbEwm— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) November 17, 2024
Comments
LET'S GO...
Johnson starting is a surprise but a welcome one.
Wasn't tracking that this game was part of the Tip-Off event
Please everybody remember to thank the lieutenant for doing these all year long. I for one greatly appreciate it! Also, somebody please help me out with who the HOF'mer is in the picture....
NM...figured out it's MD 20/20
Lawal showing range
Burnham is not the guy to have shooting threes
Keeping my kids energy in check by having him do push ups for every point the Hokies score and situps for every point Jacksonville scores.
The drought to start the half is all my kids fault. He quit doing the push-ups and situps.
Caught some of the end of the half. We went dry for a bit, but Lawal and Young looked decent. Wessler looks so awkward at times. It's like he still hasn't figured out how his arms and legs work. I haven't followed his career much. I'm hoping he's just grown fast and is still playing catch-up.
For years, I've begged for Mike Young's teams to take the dunks and the short shots. We finally seem to have a team that actively seeks those, rather than taking them as a convenience. The threat of a drive will hopefully open up the rest of the usual Mike Young game.
Ugh. Giving a ten point lead away right off the bat.
Which has been completely erased and now down 4.
Jesus. Jacksonville can't miss right now and we can't hit shit.
Oof. We look like shit to start the 2nd.
Burnham is this years Robbie Beran...
4-16 from 3. Only 40% from the floor overall.
Getting worked by the Dolphins movement on offense....open lanes to the basket
This is embarrassing
Only been catching a little here and there. Not great
Team completely fell apart at half.
10 for 17 at the free throw line
Jacksonville shooting 65% in the 2nd half.
Not hard to do when every basket is a clear path to the rim. Hokies leaving the lane empty chasing instead of using a zone defense.
Missing freebies now.
Hokies needed to go to a 2-3 zone but Young won't even entertain it
Give up a wide open 3 and have NOBODY home for weakside rebound.
We may be lucky to win 2 ACC games...we could be Loserville 2022 bad.
We're going to lose to Jacksonville at home, aren't we?
Are you kidding me?
Dang!
I mean after the first few games this was probably due. Gonna be a long year.
Losing buy games at home in a dead Cassell. Love what you did to the place, Whit
Burnham should not be on the floor
Game Over. Not sure how much VT Basketball I'm gonna be able to stomach this year.
This is what it looks like when your Athletic Department gives up on a Program.
This has been a pathetic second half effort all around. Just fucking embarrassing.
That was like watching Pry manage clock
Welp I guess that's the best you can expect on a budget of Hardee's coupons, $50, and a couple cartons of Marlboros
Pretty clear Baine fouled Rechsteiner there not that it matters
The refs didn't care because it looked like we didn't care.
Loss to the Jacksonville Dolphins, a team that exists, apparently. Oof.
1st P5 win in 14 years.
You mean the 1970 NCAA basketball tournament runner ups Jacksonville University Dolphins!
Whoa I need to put some respect on their name!
Led by Artis Gilmore.
Pretty sure that was a Q4 loss.
At least we have a great football program after stripping basketball of all support
I could've lived with that. Unfortunately the gamble didn't pay off...
I feel bad for Mike Young. He is a good coach but the cupboard is bare, and with the NIL budget gone good luck getting transfers and recruits.
I understand this and agree when it comes to conference play, but we should not be losing to the Dolphins of Jacksonville.
We certainly have enough Hardee's coupons left over to beat Jacksonville and or buy games
No amount of Hardee's coupons will overcome bad coaching
Should have offered a pack of Lucky Strikes and a BJ.
I don't know what the coaches saw exactly, but we really sacrificed our offensive flow to play that small-ball defensive line-up. I guess they thought Poteat/Wessler couldn't keep up defensively? All I know is running that lineup was awful for us offensively lol.
Rough game. Reminds me of the time Buzz started off the year losing to like Southern Alabama or something like that. Hopefully we bounce back.
We got big-dolphined 😭
They wouldn't have needed to if Young would play Zone Defense. Absolutely drives me nuts he never adjusts. It's like watching Marve on defense.
Yeah they definitely should have gone to zone, especially with how Jacksonville shot from deep.
It was weird vibes from CMY tonight. There were a few critical timeouts where they were in the seated huddle and he was just like, staring at them not and saying anything lol. There didn't appear to be much coaching happening...
And unfortunately the teeth in my headline showed through. Young doesn't have the guys to play man defense against a motion offense that can really move.
The real killer though was being so sloppy we couldn't even dominate the paint on offense.
Oh. No.
Be nice if he just keeps on walking right out of Blacksburg.
Not a good look. It's not like he has any traffic to beat or anything.
It seems like our athletics are just irrelevant at the moment.
Can't wait to see the Lane Stadium version of this in a little under two weeks /s
Don't you even dare say that! /s or not, that's just evil talk.
Game is sold out. 50k plus people will be there regardless to watch us play and hopefully beat UVA.
My son and are going and we will be hanging with a fellow Hokie who puts on a huge tailgate with his group of regulars season in and season out. This guy bought a house in the Burg as he and his wife are gung-ho Hokies. He let me know that about 75% of his group are not coming to the game due to the following reasons:
1) 8pm game time and it's going to be cold and it might snow (or rain)
2) We suck
3) To further justify reasons, both 1 and 2 above now allow for the "It's Thanksgiving" bullshit excuse.
My son (26 years old) and I don't care about all that nonsense. Going to wear my hunting cloths, got a hotel room in Cburg for a decent rate, and we are going to have a blast hanging out together Friday and Saturday.
GO HOKIES BEAT LOLUVAin't
My friend and have had season tickets for 11 years now. This will be warmer than the 2016 UVA game (kickoff temp 26 F; end of game 20 F with 10-20mph winds).
My plans for the holiday weekend:
Thanksgiving dinner at a friend's house Thursday;
Christmastown at Busch Gardens Friday - from noon til 8pm ish; back to Richmond to go dancing at club from 11pm-2am Saturday morning.
. Friend picking me up from the club about 215 and driving directly to Blacksburg; arrive at lot 18 approx. 545 AM; tailgate til 6pm; leisurely walk to the stadium(including 30 minutes at the gate waiting in line lol);kickoff at 8pm; game over by 11-1145; walk back to car;
Drive back to Richmond arriving 3-330am; up by 830am for 10 and 1130 am church services. Nap and relax Sunday afternoon/evening...unless a different friend want to do Christmastown again in which case I'll go there Sunday after church.
do you sleep
For this weekend? Not from Friday morning til Sunday 3am. Same as did for the Clemson game and for the Labor Day weekend/Vandy game. This will be third time this year starting tailgating before 6am.
Usually? 4-5 hours per night max- usually in 45-75 min increments; wake up briefly-use restroom-might snack a bit then back to sleep (often to the same dream). I think I go almost instantly to REM sleep then almost instantly wake up at end of REM cycle. When I did sleep study years ago, they said after they said go to sleep, I was asleep in less than 15 seconds. Never have nightmares and never taken sleep meds; nor do I have any more caffeine than Coca Cola -- don't drink tea or coffee and never taken caffeine pills or energy drinks.
So we close with 2 prime time games? Duke and UVA? I hadn't heard the time for UVA yet. Mom will be staying home for that game then.
In airness, Kolby knew that tweet would hit a certain way, that's why he followed up with a second tweet for context that Whit meets the players in the tunnel after every game
this is so stupid and misleading. if you're going to follow up with a second tweet, just put the information in the first tweet. "Whit Babcock headed to the tunnel to meet the team" hits a lot different than "whit babcock leaving early" with a second tweet adding the context. it's intentional rage bait -- don't fall for it
Right?!
I saw the headline and thought that's not a good look and then I watched the clip and thought that doesn't look like he's leaving?
I think one of the more annoying things about the current state of college (maybe just VT) sports media is that the line between actual journalist and fan with a twitter account has become very blurry
There are no journalists anymore. Does Schefter ask a tough question? nope. Does Jay Glazier sniff jocks? yep investigate? nope. When teams started giving media credentials to blogs with no subscribers and message boards, sports journalism was over right then. HBO real sports had some of that- but it's gone too.
So there's a difference between investigative journalist and a reporter. Schefter doesn't ask tough questions but he sure does break news.
But when you throw fanhood into the mix, you get impassioned nonsense where someone "reporting" is also looking to shape discourse with selective framing. It's dumb, but it gets clicks and it gets eyeballs and it gets angry fans to repost on their other message boards which gets even more people even more angry.
this is not unique to sports coverage
Local news broadcasts are basically just a $300 haircut in a suit reading other people's tweets for an hour.
I can't show my hat or car in Duval for like a week now.
Oh, so we BAD bad. That's unfortunate.
Huey Lewis and the News dealt with that subject. Sometimes bad is BAD, no question.
"Bah-ip-hip-hip do-wop... wop."
And "Cool is a rule".
Oh well, it's all on Whit and the BOV for pulling the
NILPay-For-Play money#FireWhit
We gonna win any games in the ACC this year?
Yes.
Are there any other teams in the ACC completely lacking in point guard and paint presence and totally relying on the 3? I haven't researched the other teams in the ACC but man, it sure seems like ACC wins will be = 0.
This team actually relies on the bigs in the paint way more than the three ball. Hokies only attempted 18 threes last night out of 74 shots. They are on pace to shoot their lowest total under Mike Young if this continues. They shot 33% from three which isn't great but isn't terrible either.
The problem with this team is Ball Security and they don't have the guys to play Young's high pressure man-to-man defense against good passing/moving opponents.
Our whole team left due to NIL. Welcome to 2024
Well...at least rerouting all the NIL to football is providing results on the gridiron
VT was lucky to get a lead and more lucky that Jville didn't win by 20+. Jville missed a bunch of open looks a they made their run after the half. It was painful to see that three of Jville's starters would have played over anyone VT put on the floor. The program is in a bad way.
I mean we are bad by design. Outside of a fluke tournament run a few years ago this team had been incredibly mediocre to bad under Young and the administration shows no signs of caring about it, and have now diverted all funding to football and pulled the plug on any basketball facility enhancements, which are desperately needed just to bring the arena up to modern standards.
We deserve to be bad.
It seems like the administration knows that football drives the bus but they don't know how
Pre- Buzz we were the worst P5 hoops program. I don't think it's debatable- this was before expansion. Maybe northwestern or Penn state were comparable, but we were a bottom 3 program at best. We were a top 2 big east football school and they wouldn't even let us in for basketball. embarassing.
We have become what everyone with the elites of this league (UNC and Duke) thought we would be when they let us in.
Mediocre at football, terrible in basketball, a net drain on league resources
In other words- no dancing this year unless we win the ACC - this will kill any bubble resume
One bright note - our rapid decline has likely led to an improvement in my blood pressure because I am completely apathetic when it comes to VT sports at this point.
I didn't even realize we were playing last night, might watch a quarter of the Duke game Saturday, might not. Gone from die-hard to don't give a fuck in a matter of a few years.
amen. I've been pissed twice all season... the 2 number thing at Vandy, and the zero defense in the 4th Q against cuse. Other than that, meh.. I knew we weren't beating Clemson and Miami. In terms of hoops- I know we aren't a tourney team, and that's 85% of what I care about- gambling and watching March madness- most of the time that means no Hokies.
I used to care so much. I would go out of my way to watch VT sports and get really emotionally invested. If we lost it would tank my weekend and bleed into Monday. Wins would put a little extra pep in my step for the rest of the week. I really enjoyed watching other games, too. Especially knowing we had won already. Nowadays, I hardly make time for VT. Our schedule doesn't revolve around the football games as much as it once did because, frankly, it just hasn't been fun to watch for over a decade. Even some wins left me feeling a bit down. This year's GT game comes to mind. I've never felt more like we lost a game after a 2 score win. Like, yeah, it was great to win but my goodness was it hard to watch. And not fun, at all. The upside of all of it is that I'm so much less emotionally invested that when we do lose it doesn't ruin my weekend. And I can actually truly enjoy my time out doing whatever it is I'm doing while I'm missing a game. 5 years ago if I couldn't watch a game because of some event I couldn't get out of I just wasn't present. Half my mind was always on the game. Now, though. If I'm going to miss the game because I'm having dinner with friends, I don't care. I'll enjoy my time with friends and not even give the game a thought until I get home. That's nice.
This is so real.
Even during Buzz's first season when we really sucked I watched every game. Now half the time I don't even know when we're playing
Yeah I agree we've been bad under Young. He's definitely a top 50-60 coach in CBB, but I'm not sure he's top 40.
He recruits very well but they can't seem to develop guards or wings that aren't spot up shooters. Our best year came when Tyrese Radford and Mutts would drive the lane consistently, that combined with the 3 point threat, and Chester Frazier as our defensive coordinator made us damn good team. After Frazier left our defense has been shit. Mutts regressed later in his career as MY had him sitting beyond the arc shooting threes and he never again attacked the rim with the same intensity as his first year. Even Sean Pedulla was much better (at helping the team win) his freshman year when he was relying on pure basketball instinct rather than MY's coaching.
Bottom line is our best season has come playing a style of ball MY wouldn't usually play, with players he wouldn't choose to recruit and once he has got his guys in he can't retain the good ones AND more importantly any player that's not a pure shooter or athletic big playing the 5 has REGRESSED after being 'developed' by Mike Young
I miss Frazier so much. His defense was great but so was his energy with the players and he would interact with the fan base a ton on Twitter. Seeing him help the Cousins now is not fun.
Hokies aren't the only ones with an attendance problem. Penn State, who just crushed the Hokies had comical attendance
Wow, we had great attendance in comparison.
gone fishin'
Wish I could. Wind's howling, waves are 4-5', cold as a titch's witty...nope.
Just watched the second half. Rechsteiner is a real liability. Can't stay in front of his man on defense; and turnover machine against any kind of pressure.
Now I know why Mike Young has the facial expressions of Burglekutt.
Mike post-game.
1st: Lt Peterson, thanks for sharing all the great basketball content u provide us.
2nd: That was a depressing listen. Wow
2 is very true. At least he wasn't trying to gloss it though. I think the worst part was where he admitted practices haven't been good either.
This team is really missing Miller. Too bad the only reason we could afford him in the first place was the smoke from the point shaving thing...
Following this up, it came out today in long form that JU is tens of millions in debt, their plan to restructure and get commitments to help lower debt, raise tuition and enrollment fell through and they failed an audit. That money may be only thing keeping their basketball team alive after this season. (But seriously they should be cutting football and some other programs)
This also came out today
Hokies are the lowest rated P4 team in NET rankings and it's not close.
Makes sense from what I've watched so far and I've watched almost most. I would not feel good going against any of the four teams above us...which is not ideal.