Hokiestud

.,. we’re simply not quick enough on the perimeter. Rodney Rice would have helped a lot with that.

…. to us this year, I think we’d have been at least two games better. That would put us at 20-11 overall and 12-8 in the ACC, probably good enough for an NCAA bid.

… large and passionate fan bases that travel well. Duke, BC, and Wake Forest are prime examples of programs that will ultimately be left on the outside looking in.

…. not so much because we lost but because we were run out of the gym in both games. But both are very good teams and I doubt that those losses will hurt us much when selection day rolls around in Msrch.

Yes, we dropped a turd in the punch bowl today. But almost every team in the nation is going to lay an egg at least once or twice during the course of a 30+ game season. Hopefully, tonight was ours.

... most of them seemed to me to be good looks at the basket that we just missed. I didn't think that FAU's defense was nearly as good as Iowa State's on Friday night. We just couldn't put it in the basket today. Everybody had an "off night" at the same time.

.... we sure do seem to have a lot of long stretches where nobody can hit an open shot.

... then this past week's work will look VERU good on our NCAA tournament resume when March rolls around. We've beaten two good, borderline Quad 1 teams already in Iowa State and Boise State. Adding FAU to that list would be really sweet.

... when he has a good look at the basket. The law of averages will kick in sooner or later and he'll go on a tear.

Every VT possession was a root canal. This was a very good win for us. This kind of ball pressure is what we're going to see in the ACC and we need to learn to handle it better than we did last night.

If it doesn’t improve, we’re going to be shredded in ACC games.

***

.... that we were going to be "really good" this year. So in that sense, the season has to be considered a disappointment on the whole. True, we had injuries that hurt us. Had we not been without both Cattoor and Rice for an extended stretch of the season, we likely would have won at least 3 or 4 of the close games we lost. That might have been enough to put us in the NCAAs. But our shooting let us down this year. We're supposed to be a team that can really ring the bell from outside, and at times we did. But we also had quite a few games where we simply couldn't do it well enough. Last night was a good example. Our team can't shoot 25% from 3-point range and win. We need to be at least in the upper 30's. We're a team that's built to score from outside and we don't do anything else well enough to be able to make up for not hitting enough of our outside shots. But even so, we were in a post-season tournament for the 7th straight season, which is something we've never done before. The program is in solid shape and I'm already looking forward to what we can do next season.

I just re-watched it. Pedilla had clearly established defensive position. He is entitled to maintain his space on the floor. In addition to giving him an elbow in the mouth, ND’s Zona literally ran over him. Maybe the rules state that the call couldn’t be overturned on replay. That’s the only reason I can see for letting it stand. It almost cost us the game.

... I can't believe that anyone would seriously want Mike Young to be fired. Our record would probably be at least three games better had Hunter Cattoor not been injured and both Rodney Rice and Darius Maddox had been available for the entire season. At 21-10, we'd be squarely in the mix for an NCAA tournament bid. ** Edited by Hokiestud at 3/4/2023, 6:27:15 PM

... that the Duke player was standing right behind him. It was an accident. The no-call was correct.

... for a medical redshirt? The poor kid has really been snakebit and has played a grand total of maybe 30 minutes this season. It just doesn't seem fair that he should have to lose a year of his college eligibility for that. What are the rules re: medical redshirts in basketball? TIA.

We're not quick, we're a decent rebounding team but not dominant, and we usually play good defense but it's not suffocating. Our calling cards are the fact that we have a lot of guys who can hit the three and we don't turn the ball over much. So if we shoot in the 30s we really don't have much else to fall back on. We've gotta be hitting in the mid-to-upper 40s from the floor and in the mid-to-upper 30s from three, at the minimum, for us to stand a good chance of winning. During the losing streak, we simply weren't doing that. We did on Monday night. Let's hope it continues.

... we just haven't been hitting enough of our shots. It's that simple. When we start hitting shots again, we'll start winning again.

I had written Cattoor off for the next six weeks. So apparently his injury wasn't as serious as initially feared.

... he already played in some of our games? I don't remember seeing him.

So he should be able to give us some depth there when he's available. I'm not too worried about Pedulla burning out from too many minutes now because a) it's early in the season, and b) we have some extended breaks between games at this time of year. But once the ACC schedule gets rolling in earnest and we're playing games every 3-4 days, I'd definitely like to see us cut back his minutes a bit.

As you say, he brings some beef off the bench that is very valuable against a team like Oklahoma State. He’s also money at the free throw line, which is something I didn’t expect, and which is incredibly important in close games.

Can’t wait to see what this team looks like when Rodney Rice finally gets on the floor. Not expecting miracles from him, but I do think he will add something to the mix.

... for the most part, making them shoot from outside, which isn't their strength. We need to shoot a bit better ourselves. Only 41% in the 1st half.

.... which is better than any VT big man in a long time, IMHO. He does get lost on his rotations every now and then, but he's also playing in a new defensive system for the first time. Those lapses will become fewer. I'm doing well! Hope you are too!

.... last year's team, which was one of the best squads VT has ever fielded. Yes, we lost Keve Aluma. But we've replaced him with Grant Basile, who I think is just as good offensively and is probably a bit better defensively. But then we've added Lynn Kidd in the low post, who is improving with every game. We also have no less than five guys who have the potential to take over a game from outside at any time (Cattoor, Maddox, Basile, Pedulla, and Rodney Rice, who hasn't played yet but is reputed to be an excellent outside shooter as well.) Of course, the crown jewel is Justin Mutts, an all-ACC player who simply does everything well. We play excellent defense, we're rebounding well, and we're not turning the ball over much at all. Of course, it also has to be remembered that we have one of the best coaching staffs in all of college basketball. Add all that together and, barring injury, the sky's the limit for this team. The one weakness that I can see being a problem is ball handling. Teams that aggressively press the ball seems to give us trouble. If I were playing VT, I would press as much as I could.

... a few weeks ago. Before the game, I wandered into Cassell Coliseum and the team was on the floor with some of the grad assistants just shooting around and doing drills. (No coaches.) Anyway, there was this one tall kid who I'd never seen before who was just draining them from 3-point range. He had a grad assistant corraling the rebounds for him and feeding the ball back to him outside the arc. The kid was hitting on at least 75% of his attempts and made it look easy. Well, that kid was Basile. The dude can flat-out shoot it, I assure you. You don't want to take shots away from him from beyond the arc. He needs to keep shooting them. ** Edited by Hokiestud at 12/5/2022, 4:48:00 PM ** Edited by Hokiestud at 12/5/2022, 4:48:29 PM

... block/charge calls and the foul call on Basile on his clean blocked shot down low was a bad one. But all in all, they were OK. I've certainly seen much worse.

He’s obviously added some weight and gotten stronger, and 7’0” has a quality all its iwn. But what I like is that he looks like he knows what he’s doing when he gets the ball down low. He doesn’t panic or tense up. He looks a lot more like a natural basketball player than some of the bigs we’ve had recently. He’s also a good rim protector and rebounder. Finally, he’s money at the foul line. There’s a lot here to like. If he can consistently give us 15-20 minutes and 6-8 ppg, we’ll be golden.

We have too many good shooters to stay in this kind of slump forever. Soon we’re gonna have a few games in a row where we shoot 45-50%

They played a very good game. They shot the ball well, sometimes making super-athletic shots right over VT defenders who were almost in their jerseys. They played good defense with very few breakdowns leading to easy VT buckets and they didn't have many turnovers or commit a lot of fouls. Just from glancing at the box score, one might be tempted to think that VT didn't play very well against an over-matched opponent. But that's not the case at all. I thought VT, except for some cold shooting in the second half, played pretty well. Charleston Southern just played well too. It was a very entertaining game to watch. If they keep playing like they did last night, they'll win a lot of games this year.

***

... possible lineups and working on specific situations while trying to get new guys acclimated.

Despite that, he won a lot of games for us including our first ACC championship game. He may not have been an All-American, but he was NOT a "bad QB".