Sometimes, all you can do is throw your hands up. That was the reaction from Virginia Tech after Charlie Moore's half-court buzzer-beater lifted Miami to a 78-75 victory in Blacksburg.
In the post-game press conference room, Mike Young banged his hands on the table in frustration. 10-10, 2-7 in the ACC isn't where the Hokies envisioned they would be in late January. Heck, you're kidding yourself if you thought their record would be this poor. Yet, here they are.
Wednesday was a story that has been all too frequent in this Virginia Tech program this season. Young's veteran group of three fifth-year seniors and two juniors was competitive and scrapped but came up just short. It didn't matter that they were 50% from both the floor and from three, shot 15 free throws or outrebounded the Hurricanes by six.
Miami's playmakers won the basketball game in the end, thanks to a little luck. With 1.8 seconds remaining, Moore caught the inbound pass, took two steps and leapt from the other side of mid-court, releasing the ball in the air with 1.0 on the clock.
Banks aren't usually open at 9 p.m., but the one in Cassell Coliseum was for Miami. Tech, on a high after playing so well, was immediately taken to such a low, Moore's shot the twisting of the knife in the Hokies' heart.
https://twitter.com/therealdcunna/status/1486518509517606921?s=20
"I’m very proud of you and I appreciate your effort and this thing’s going to turn," Young said, describing his message to his players after the loss. "We’ve got a really good basketball team. We have deserved better outcomes, but that’s the game, man. Doesn’t owe you a damn thing. You’ve got to suck it up and play better. You can’t have 12 turnovers in the first half. Everything matters.
"I'm very proud of my bunch and I'd like to hug each of them."
Both teams seemingly hit every shot in the game. It was a clean one, just 22 total fouls, and the two programs were a combined 54-of-103 (52.4%) from the floor. It was the Canes, though, who didn't miss down the stretch.
All season, late-game struggles have doomed the Hokies. Those demons were active again on Wednesday. After taking a five-point lead behind a Justyn Mutts layup with 2:24 left, Tech didn't score again. 0-of-3, including two three-point attempts in the final minute. Meanwhile, Miami went on an 8-0 run to close out the contest, courtesy of three free throws from Isaiah Wong and Miller's prayer.
Hunter Cattoor had the potential game-winner bounce off the back iron with four seconds to go, a look that Young, Cattoor and Mutts said was the one they wanted.
https://twitter.com/therealdcunna/status/1486548278632189954?s=20
"That was Lubbock," Young said of the play. "We had run that three times. That was kind of our… bread and butter. We’ve timed that out. We need ten seconds to come off that thing. ... The shot, because of the circumstances, situation, we’ve got to have the last shot there, I can’t fault Hunter.
"We could’ve handled that better, but I’ll take that shot from that kid any day of the week. He missed it, and we had something unfortunate happen to us."
Cattoor had made four of his seven 3-point attempts before that moment, and it's one he usually makes. Entering Wednesday, he was shooting 45.8% from behind the arc. Sometimes, the ball doesn't roll your way.
Miami received double-digit scoring from all five of its starters, led by Kameron McGusty's 19 points. Miller had 18, Charlie Moore dropped 13, while Wong and Sam Waardenburg added 12 each.
Cattoor did an excellent job defending Wong, who made just four-of-ten attempts and turned the ball over twice. As a team, Tech consistently had a hand in the face of the Canes' shooters. They just made their shots.
"Isaiah Wong is just an exceptional basketball player," Young said. "He can get by you and contort his body and get it up on the glass. Has a lethal shot fake, ... I thought Hunter Cattoor, yet again, did an exceptional job on their best player, a team with a lot of really good players."
Jim Larrañaga's bunch was 29-of-53 (54.7%). Not a season-high by any means against VT - Wake Forest's 63.5% is unlikely to be topped - but it's the third-highest percentage through 20 games, the most since Duke (53.7%) back in December.
Where the Hurricanes did kill the Hokies was from behind the arc. Before Wednesday, Tech hadn't allowed an opponent to shoot better than 50%, let alone 46% vs. Xavier. Miami? 11-of-18, 61.1%.
"They shot 54% on our team," Young said. "That’s not good enough. I thought that we contested shots pretty darn well, they just made contested shots and that happens sometimes."
Offensively, Tech was led by Keve Aluma, who had 14 points (5-8 FG), three rebounds, three assists and three blocks. Nahiem Alleyne and Cattoor each finished with 13 points on four-of-nine shooting (a combined 7-of-13 from 3-point range), while Justyn Mutts was extremely close to a triple-double. He finished with nine points, 10 rebounds and eight assists.
The Hokies got a spark off the bench for the first time recently, too. Darius Maddox dropped 13 points (4-of-6, 2-of-4 from three) - Young said he was "terrific" - while David N'Guessan added six (Young said he was "very good) and Sean Pedulla had four. 23 total points came off the bench, a season-high in ACC play.
However, Tech didn't take care of the basketball in the first half. Cattoor said the team just got stronger with the basketball after halftime, but 12 first half turnovers is atrocious. The Hurricanes' defense was troublesome - Young mentioned them rotating to Tech's pitch guy - but a lot of the turnovers were unforced.
"Sloppy basketball," Young said. "It disgusts me. It just irritates the fool out of me. To kick the doggone thing 12 times [in the first half] was infuriating."
That was one of a handful of problems for Virginia Tech on Wednesday night. Worse, Georgia Tech knocked off Florida State by 14, meaning the Hokies sit in last place of the ACC all by themselves. Miami is in first place alone with the Seminoles losing.
20 games in, last place in the ACC. No one ever would've guessed, and it's still puzzling why this team has struggled so much. "You're what your record says you are" is very accurate. At the same time, the Hokies appear to be better than this. They've hung around in every single league contest except the opener vs. Wake Forest. Six of the nine league games have had a single-digit margin, including four losses.
Ken Pomeroy's luck factor might have something to do with it. Tech is No. 356 out of 358 teams in Pomeroy's "luck" metric. That is calculated by "the deviation in winning percentage between a team’s actual record and their expected record using the correlated gaussian method."
To summarize, analytics love this Virginia Tech team and program, but those statistics aren't showing in the win-loss results.
Luck, poor play in the last five minutes of games and bad shooting nights have all factored in. This year, Virginia Tech hasn't won at least three games in the first nine league contests for the first time since 2014-15, Buzz Williams' first season. The last time Tech was 2-7 through nine? In 2012-13 under James Johnson.
This team has experience and has played in close contests, coming out on both sides. It features First Team All-ACC player Keve Aluma. But many times it doesn't run like a well-oiled machine on one end or the other, and that's a problem.
The Hokies have a few days of rest before traveling to Tallahassee to play Florida State on Saturday. Riding a three-game losing streak, they're trying to get back on the right track. Considering there's a good chance they have a very unlikely shot to make the NCAA Tournament, however, it seems as if all hopes lie with NIT.
"You've just got to block it out and keep moving forward," Mutts said. "Stay in the moment. Stay present. Like coach Young says, 'win the day.' We lost today, but tomorrow's a new day."