Kenny Brooks paused and looked up at the crowd, perhaps with a few tears in his eyes. A few Virginia Tech players had already gone back to the locker room in Cassell Coliseum, all through a sea of maroon and orange that was hollering for them. To which, most of them offered a wave after running to high-five the crowd. The head coach stopped and offered praise to the fans that watched him build the women’s basketball program from bottom dwellers to title contenders.
He pointed up at the crowd and clapped for them. It’s a group that’s been so kind to him after his teams started playing winning basketball. It wasn’t easy to fill Cassell at the beginning of Brooks’s tenure in 2016, mainly because of the hole Dennis Wolff left him to dig out of.
But Friday night’s first round game in the NCAA Tournament vs. Chattanooga was the first time Cassell had sold out in the Kenny Brooks era and was the highest-attended game with 8,925 fans, the fourth-largest in program history. That crowd witnessed a Virginia Tech victory, 58-33, over the Mocs.
“It was fantastic, I thought they were loud,” Brooks told reporters postgame. “I’m really proud of where we've come, and for my kids to be able to experience this – that is tremendous.”
Blacksburg knew exactly what to do for the first time postseason basketball returned to Cassell since 2019, when Brooks’s team hosted the WNIT, though only 781 fans showed up.
This time, however, the mass was much larger and much rowdier, and one that might have amped Elizabeth Kitley up a little too much. As the fans bellowed the lyrics to Enter Sandman moments before tip-off, the Hokies’ All-American center jumped a second too early as she lunged for the basketball that had yet to leave the referee’s hand. She also fired the basketball into Chattanooga's bench 15 seconds into the game.
“I wish they would let us play Enter Sandman,” Brooks said. “I think the roof would have blown off.”
But none of Kitley’s blunders mattered by the end because, in a result most expected, the No. 1-seeded Hokies blew out the No. 16-seeded Mocs in the first NCAA Tournament game that Cassell Coliseum hosted since 2004. And no, Tech didn’t beat Chattanooga by nearly as many as a No. 1 seed often does. But there's a good reason for that.
Friday marked former VT associate head coach Shawn Poppie’s return to Blacksburg for the first time since he took the Mocs’ head coaching job at the end of last season. While no players from Tech went with him, he knew just how to stop the Hokies’ offense – something he helped coach during his time with Brooks.
“Shawn wore many hats here, which was great for me,” Brooks said on Thursday. “Later on in his career, I gave him more and more responsibilities that were going to help prepare him for his next opportunity. And that's how much I relied on him, but it's how much I trusted him.”
In fact, the play that was drawn up for Kitley’s game-winner against North Carolina this season was a Poppie-designed play, one that he calls “VT” at Chattanooga.
But everything else, outside of Poppie’s knowledge to limit Tech, played into the Hokies’ favor, including the crowd.
“That was awesome, that means everything to us,” Kitley said. “Just the way that [the fans] showed out at the end of the regular season, I knew it was going to be great energy in here.”
Early on, Cassell Guard, Tech’s student section, was so deafening that it drove the Mocs to a pair of shot clock violations in the first half. On one occasion, Chattanooga was still passing and dribbling the basketball around on its end of the floor once the shot clock buzzer went off, unaware that it even sounded. On another, a few of Chattanooga's players complained to one another that they couldn’t communicate with each other or their coaches.
“We struggled getting play calls to all be on the same page,” Poppie said. “There were a lot of possessions where four of our kids were in something, and the fifth kid [didn’t hear], and how we play, we need all five. So, that would throw us out of rhythm.”
And it went on like that for all 40 minutes until the final horn sounded. It was then Virginia Tech took a victory lap around its home venue, high-fiving and hugging fans, before heading back to the locker room. And it was then that Brooks rose up and pointed to those in maroon and orange above the Cassell Coliseum tunnel before walking back to talk to his team and to begin game-planning for his next opponent on Sunday.
“It's not like they just filled the seats,” Tech point guard Georgia Amoore said. “It was really loud. It honestly makes a difference to the game, like free throws and everything like that. The stadium was literally shaking.”
Box Score: No. 1 Virginia Tech 58, No. 16 Chattanooga 33
Transcript: Kenny Brooks, Elizabeth Kitley, Georgia Amoore
Transcript: Shawn Poppie, Yazz Wazeerud-Din, Abbey Cornelius