Virginia Tech played its fifth consecutive down-to-the-wire game on Saturday against Cal and escaped at the buzzer for a 78-75 win.
The Hokies (13-4, 2-2 ACC) trailed the Golden Bears (13-4, 1-3) for the majority of the contest but took the lead with 3:52 remaining and held on. It converted six of its eight foul shots down the stretch, received massive baskets from Neoklis Avdalas and Tobi Lawal and survived Justin Pippen’s potential game-tying 3-pointer at the buzzer.
“You’ve got to be able to play in pressure moments,” Tech head coach Mike Young said, “and that’s why that non-conference schedule and those moments, who’s going to respond? Who may not respond? You’ve got to step up and make foul shots. … We’re going to have a lot of these, and I wish it weren’t so, but it’s a really good league, good teams and we’re going to have to respond time in and time out.”
Tech needed overtime to fend off Elon on Dec. 20, then triple overtime to beat No. 21 Virginia on New Year’s Eve. It dropped the next two, though — at Wake Forest by three, on a last-second shot from Nate Calmese, and vs. Stanford by one, on a last-second shot from Ebuka Okorie (after blowing a 13-point lead in the final three minutes).
The Hokies got back in the win column this time around and closed it out the right way. Drawing 28 fouls over the two-hour, 22-minute game certainly helped, especially considering they attempted 31 free throws and made 27. For comparison, Cal was 19-for-21 from the line.
“We haven’t gotten to the line as much as I’d like for us to,” Young said, “but we have a physical team. David Jackson does a remarkable job with them. They’re men. One of our toughest kids, Tyler Johnson, obviously, is out of the lineup for the time being. We’re going to have him back soon, but very, very encouraged.”
“[The Hokies] made key plays when they needed to make them,” Cal head coach Mark Madsen said. “They were the aggressor.”
It was a physical and scrappy game from the jump, which dragged it out. Tech opened with a 16-10 lead before Cal quieted the Cassell Coliseum crowd with a 19-2 run over 7:12, which made it 29-18.
The Hokies’ lone points in that stretch were foul shots from Jaden Schutt. It wasn’t until Avdalas’ layup at the 6:21 mark that they ended the 8:33 field-goal drought. Yet, that jumpstarted a quick 11-0 run that tied the game at 29. They forced five consecutive turnovers from the Golden Bears to turn the tide.
“We just had grit when we needed it, and we didn’t feel sorry for ourselves,” Lawal said. “Like no matter what the score was, we understood what we had to do and we executed what the coaches told us to do. That’s really why the outcome came in our favor.”
It was neck-and-neck from that point on. The teams were deadlocked at 37 at halftime, and every time Cal pulled ahead, Virginia Tech answered.
It jumped out to a six-point lead through the first three minutes, but the Hokies responded with a foul shot from Avdalas, an Amani Hansberry layup and a Jailen Bedford trey to tie it at 45.
Knotted up at 58 with 8:21 remaining, three quick buckets from the Golden Bears — a Dai Dai Ames layup and two more from center Milos Ilic — forced Young to call timeout. His team punched back through Hansberry, who knocked down two free throws and a layup while Tobi Lawal added a dunk. Cal called a timeout in response.
Then Tech took its first lead since the 13:08 mark of the first half via Avdalas getting to the rim, but Ames carved his way to the rack at the other end and snatched it back with a three-point play.
However, Hansberry had a sweet dish to Christian Gurdak for a layup, and the Hokies went up 68-67 and were in control the rest of the way.
“Virginia Tech did an outstanding job late in the game,” Madsen said. “They did an outstanding job, and we couldn’t stop them when we needed to stop them. Am I upset the fouls? Yes, but don’t let that take away from anything Virginia Tech did, because they earned that game, they won that game.”
Moreover, unlike Wednesday’s late collapse against Stanford, the Hokies executed better in the final moments — and it was Cal who made the mistakes. The most critical of those errors came with 4.5 seconds left when forward John Camden, who spent his sophomore and junior seasons in Blacksburg, threw a pass out of bounds in the backcourt with Tech up two.
“We just understood the time and clock situation better,” Lawal said. “Just making sure that we don’t need to take any quick shots, and the time is with us because we’re up.”
The Hokies inbounded to Bedford, who went 1-for-2 from the stripe and pushed the lead to 78-75. Despite not having a timeout, Cal threw the ball up the floor and a got good 3-point look from Pippen on the wing, but it missed and Tech held on.
Cal’s final shot from Pippen, which missed: pic.twitter.com/J8AIIMwqTb
— David Cunningham (@therealdcunna) January 10, 2026
“Pip got a clean look and that’s all you can ask for,” Madsen said. “I thought it was a great shot from Pippen.”
“He got a pretty good shot, I thought it was pretty well contested,” Young said. “… Caught a break.”
It was a refreshing win for the Hokies, who pulled even in league play and have three of their next four games on the road. They needed a victory to get back on track and got that, even if it was a nail-biting finish.
“I feel like it just proves that what we work on in practice and the grit we have as a team, it just helps us know that no matter what the score is, we can always tough it out,” Lawal said.
Young played a short seven-man rotation against the Golden Bears, with just Hammond and Lawal coming off the bench. Six of them scored in double figures, paced by Hansberry’s 15 points and nine boards. Bedford had 13 points, Gurdak added 12 and Schutt chipped in 11.
Avdalas also posted 11 points to go with his six assists while Lawal, in his first game without a minute restriction after fracturing his foot (and having surgery on Dec. 4), recorded 10 points and seven boards.
“I don’t think it weighed on me mentally,” Lawal said. “The biggest part was just missing being on the court, like just wanting to be out there with my brothers, my teammates and help us win. But other than that, I feel like my spirit was high the whole time.”
Ames led Cal with 21 points while Chris Bell (12), Lee Dort (10), Pippen (11) and Ilic (10) were also in double figures. In his return to Blacksburg, Camden finished with just two points, both of which came from the foul line, on 0-for-5 shooting.
The glass was a pivotal part of the game. The Golden Bears entered the day as the conference’s worst team in rebounds per game, yet won that battle 31-28.
They actually went down 5-1 on the boards by the first media timeout but outrebounded the Hokies 18-3 over the remainder of the half and were up 19-8 at intermission. Then Tech flipped the script in the second half with a 20-12 margin. On top of that, it recorded 23 points off turnovers to Cal’s 10.
“Well, we flipped that on the glass,” Young said. “In the first half, we got our ass handed to us on the glass, and that’s hard to stomach. They don’t have a very big front line other than [Lee] Dort, and we thought that was a real advantage for our team, and I think it was 19-8 in the first half.
“Second half, we did a much better job, but they had seven more shots in the first half. That’s a big deal. They have seven more shots than your team has, it’s going to come back to your rebounds, it’s going to come back to your turnovers. We handled the ball, so obviously we didn’t rebound it well enough.”
The Hokies head to SMU (12-4, 1-2) on Wednesday, which will mark the program’s first trip to Dallas since the 1996 NCAA Tournament. They’ll return home for a noon tip against Notre Dame on Saturday before back-to-back excursions to Syracuse and Louisville.
“It’s such a balanced league and such a good league again that there are a lot of opportunities to compile good wins,” Young said. “Got to take care of home. You’ve got to go on the road, you’ve got to find ways to win, and we’ve got a haul on the road, but a quality win for the Hokies and to Dallas we go.”
Box Score: Virginia Tech 78, Cal 75