TDVick

organization and management structure. If you are in an athletic department that is run worth a piece of crap, then if there are some landscape changes and perhaps people aren't the best fit, then you'd expect upper management (Whit) to see it coming or make the slightest contribution to fix things. My take is that Mike Young is a great coach whose one possible shortcoming is recruiting or being a slick salesman. Whenever there is a change or where a slight bit of help from a competent organization would really help, they certainly can't count on it from Whit. He is just a useless piece of garbage, that just can't be counted on to figure anything out or be the least bit helpful. Whit been caught behind the curve and dancing around like a yo-yo for at least six years now. Maybe some of this is on Mike Young, but it is COMPLETE BULL**** to see GMU and VCU playing for their tournament title with VT castoffs. The one bright spot in the past six years has been Mike Young miraculously cobbling together a team of Wofford 2 star transfers and winning an ACC tourney. He is miles ahead or Whit, Pry or Sands in this whole screwed up system and has a lot of goodwill with me. None of these other three clowns do.

UVA. They want to win.

the coach and they were like a pro team and almost made the Final Eight. This kind of reminds me of that.

*****ing about then getting in (on metrics), but we all know that team is pretty loaded.

That was the big game changer that turned previous thought process about expansion on its head. I originally thought, VT needs to part of the next tranche, but the viability of addition candidates turned worse once Texas was added and that cohort shrunk. It makes me wonder if any teams other than FSU and UNC are desired, now that the baseline revenue bar has been set so high.

and you're the only one with the forum to do it. It's not your m.o. and attacking the administrators isn't your play either. The only one that could have jump-started a bolt to the SEC in 2012 was this website. If you take the view that not bailing in 2012 was a huge mistake - which is my view that I made repeatedly at the time, watching this VT situation has been like watching someone drown in a storm and not being able to do anything about it. VT's path since 2012 has been like watching a ship captain, who could have easily gone to port at a tropical location with chicks and drinks, turning out to sea and repeatedly ramming an iceberg until everyone dies. It looks like such a SH*T show that was entirely avoidable that is really looking bad and it hasn't gotten any better since. Hence, the tone of my posts.

more so than in our football program? I am!

Getting a manicure? Great job by coach Mike Young to keep grinding and coaching these guys up.

UNLIKELY to change. That is certainly NOT the case for Whit or Pry. Let's hope that Whit can raise his level to minimal competence and get some pieces for Mike Young to elevate his results. I think this season has been another excellent coaching job by Mike Young. Hopefully the administration will cease to be an anchor around his neck.

against the BC. He wasn't really available and we are very limited without him. ** Edited by TDVick at 2/24/2025, 3:48:39 AM

is screwed up and these guys do nothing. In most cases a decent President would have lit a fire under the AD's rear, but Sands just seems like an odd guy. What is he paying attention to? He looks like he never played a sport in his life or went outside his house, while growing up. This has gone on way too long. ** Edited by TDVick at 2/17/2025, 12:22:05 PM

tied to the school, and maybe VT is outgunned financially, but Virginia is a very wealthy state and I often read on these boards how people's kids are on "pins and needles" waiting to get into VT, who would be more likely to contribute. I am just sick of places like WVU, Kansas State, etc. appearing to be better-resourced and better managed. That shouldn't be happening. My guess is that 1) Whit needs to communicate what the shortfall is and 2) maybe a lot of people just don't trust giving him the money because there is no transparency and they doubt his effectiveness. Which begs 3) "How do you get people to trust the collective as well?" However it just seems like many other schools with a tougher hand are managing things much better than VT is? Am I right? How does this get fixed?

minimally competent in getting a decent roster for Mike Young. My guess that Mike Young would immediately be welcomed many places if he left VT. Let's hope the Whit gets his act together. It amazes that our fans tolerate him and no one ever hears a peep about what Sands is doing to fix this. ** Edited by TDVick at 2/17/2025, 6:57:22 AM

haven't had and specifics on this matter articulated by the athletic department? It looks like NC State and Clemson have left VT in the dust, basketball resource-wise. Should that be happening?

someone unambiguously better available? If Whit can figure that out and not screw something up.

somehow gets left with the crumbs of the cupboard due to Whit's lack of vision and Pry's rollercoaster coaching staff. They are anchors around his neck.

guessed this? I wonder if our AD could? Without the injury, Jones would be pretty high as well. We all suspected that Tyler Johnson was another, effective, under-the-radar Mike Young recruit.

Because Whit's good ole days weren't very good. If MY isn't getting love or people that can't figure out that he is an extremely excellent coach, it just seems blind or not very smart. The guy took a school of 1600 students to the NCAA tourney 4 times, won the ACC tourney at VT with 2 and 3 star recruits, beat a final 8 and final 4 team last year. These results aren't "because" of VT, they are "in-spite" of the operation that he has to overcome. VT won't find a better coaching fit than MY. Whit just needs his rear kicked into line and not be a complete hindrance. ** Edited by TDVick at 2/10/2025, 3:43:13 PM

VT or the collective had some retention leverage (i.e. buyout clause or retention option). But given how things are run at VT, I wonder what that answer might be? But yes, pretty much every one on this board that follows the team was really excited to have a presence like Lawal on our roster. Let's wait for the "no one saw this coming" and "stop being so negative about Whit" posts. Maybe Lawal will be retained and it won't be an issue. If not, it will be par for the course.

but I've moved on. Plus, when was that? 2005. Not like 1973 or anything.

wasn't so glaring. In fact, I think Brownell had slightly better teams than Mike Young, but that Mike Young is the better coach. Now there is such a talent gulf that Brownell has pulled away. This illustrates the difference between Clemson's priorities and ours and well as the difference between their AD and Whit, who has completely failed with respect to men's basketball.

Not much.

to be an ACC contender went 6-7 in a down year for the league. You can blame it on injuries or whatever but football hasn't met objectives. Maybe they don't get screwed in the Miami game and have more confidence and win 8 or 9, but football looks shaky.

going on. Perhaps he is aware, but if so, you'd think he'd try to communicate and emphasize this and some people would kick in money to close the gap and get us competitive. Is he not going "retail" and only hitting up big donors? That wouldn't make much sense. If he isn't conveying urgency or ringing the alarm bells, then it suggests he is not that displeased with the product - which is mind-boggling. He just scratches his worthless butt while the ship sinks. It sort of seems to me that he knows he got caught really short last year - quite likely because he had to dump money into football, and now if he expresses how much of a hole VT is in MBB-wise, it makes him look bad, but everyone knows its a mess and his silence makes him look like a bigger weasel. He's just a gutless head-in-the-sand type guy. Just lay the cards on the table and call it out and tell us the money target to get this fixed. Does anyone have a better explanation for his sorry conduct? Whit is just dirt. I can't believe we keep him around. Please communicate what the gap is and what is being done to close it. If not, he is utterly worthless. ** Edited by TDVick at 1/26/2025, 5:32:04 AM

level basketball roster. Some people make the point that VT can't actually pay people. While this might technically be true, this response is either based on some degree of ignorance, or it is some apologists doing a sneaky, deceitful word dance. I will concede that it might be true the VT can't pay basketball players directly. However, schools all over the place have figured out some way to coordinate with the NIL parties and compile a much better team than VT currently has. A LOT of schools figured out how operate and coordinate more effectively than VT is. Why can't Whit get off his ass and do the same? Has he even publicly made and announcement how much money it would take? Or if he can't, have the collective get to work on this? NO. That is what is so infuriating. We all know this is being bungled, but what is worse is having to sit in some fog without any potential fix in sight. Is he too scared to communicate what is needed? That isn't a way to get things fixed. He is absolutely TERRIBLE. ** Edited by TDVick at 1/25/2025, 2:05:19 PM

a QB? What's the round trip cash burn going to be on Pry and Whit's latest screwup?

in the process of sanding off the corners of a square-shaped object. It might be getting rounder but it still a far cry from looking like a wheel, so don't hold your breath. We didn't try to go to the SEC in 2012, and now what's even worse is that you have nerdy brainiac schools that used to be college football whipping boys, but that have lots of investment banker alums or VC alums and now even those schools are whipping our our ass or soon will be: Vandy, Duke, Stanford, probably UVA, etc. I hate private equity, but at this point, some kind a outside force with a shred of competence is our to take over the whole operation is our best hope. I don't see a lot of improvement on the horizon. I hope I'm wrong. Go Norfolk State. Maybe that will be fun to watch.1999-2003 VT football might have been two centuries ago.

portal opened, our hoops roster got cleaned out faster than a Walgreens in San Francisco. He whiffed on Matt Campbell and went into fire drill mode and overpaid 2-3X above market for a poorly configured football staff. For hoops, it goes back prior to what you where saying. He had very little in place to lock in last year's guys. You can say that we can't outbid Ole Miss or Miami for Pedulla or Kidd, but we can't keep decent reserves around - like M J Collins or Buchanan? Whether or not the NIL guys can officially work with the schools, it seems to work that way at a lot of other places. People on this board who seem to know what's going on, said that hoops money got shifted to football. Well, too much of it did. You can say that Mike Young might not be eager to sell or recruit, but we all knew that might be his one deficiency. If so, isn't it the AD's job to look at an otherwise fine parking lot with one pothole and fill it in? But no, he didn't. The obvious place where anyone who have been following this suspected there might be a problem Whit didn't step up. If I asked anyone on this board the same question four years ago, you could have anticipated this. It is sure seems like bad management. NIL should be an opportunity for VT to elevate its bball program, since we don't usually have a lot of talent, instead it is going backwards. If your worried your house might have a fire, should you focus on the kitchen or the backyard?

year's team get pirated away and we asked ourselves, "Is this part of a coherent plan? or did Whit get caught watching the paint dry once again. Maybe Ryan Jones getting healthy would help, but this roster situation looked really bad to most of us once the portal opened last year and it seems to have turned out worse than we expected. Can you see how this sort of looks bad to a lot us and this looks like par for the course with VT for the last decade - and we are sick of it. If it is not a Whit problem, then it is a broader VT problem. ** Edited by TDVick at 12/9/2024, 7:39:37 AM

strides compared to previous games. I just want us to get off the bottom in NIL. I'm not worried about Mike Young, and I will read GC34's post. I just want to see things fixed and us to have a good product. I just see us being behind the curve in so many areas. We should have a bunch of computer science kids paper trade fantasy sports and they would get better results. Lawal is a badass but he is still pretty raw. But yes, a guy like him is a really good addition. Your words... VT has the smallest NIL for basketball in the ACC. Miami's NIL is 2-3 times that of VT and their record so far is gasp!! 3-6. Look back at some of GC34's answers to questions and you will learn some of what is actually happening within the VT men's basketball program. The man knows hoops and esp. VT hoops. I've learned a great deal from his posts!! ** Edited by TDVick at 12/9/2024, 12:20:03 AM

be done to shrink the gap. But he doesn't do that. And this last part isn't a rant. Is it because Blacksburg is such a small market relative to Boston and Pittsburgh? Is it because the fans donate less? There are problems that are hard to fix, but twiddling your thumbs, watching Field of Dreams reruns because you played baseball once or focusing on low payback women's sports isn't the smart course of action. If there is a problem to fix, he needs to articulate it. People are left to blindly speculate and use conjecture. If he owned up to the situation, people would have more respect for him. ** Edited by TDVick at 12/9/2024, 12:18:53 AM

ok and aren't bricking it like VT. So maybe to your point it is a broad problem, but it is being handled much better elsewhere that Whit isn't the AD.

decision maker?

No, we do not. Should we? Is that too high a bar to reach (middle of the pack)? No it should not. If we are short on money, then by how much? The ass-scratching and the dodging of hard questions needs to end - NOW! If any team in the ACC had upside from the new NIL framework it should be VT. We have typically had less talented rosters. We should be able to grab a couple guys that are #6-10 at FSU or some other school that has ballers and that would be a talent upgrade. I just want us to get to a middle tier roster, but we probably have the least talented roster in the conference.

smacked UGA and SCAR. Both of them squandered games against LSU that they had no business losing.

constraint. I don't doubt that we are out-funded by other schools, but we just make SO MANY terrible decisions. Stupid roster decisions with all the RBs when Fuente was here. Stacking this team with receivers when the QB's strength isn't downfield passing. Using the wrong players. Putting double unis on the field. The WORST clock management in D1. Overpaying for unproven assistants. Jumping the trigger and giving them extensions after a mediocre 7-6 year. There is some old basketball coach that has a network and can find gems. Either that our build an in-house recruiting and evaluation team (that Whit certainly can't do). Why did Hysier Miller end up here? Most likely because we don't know what the hell we're doing. Savvy coaches probably knew he might be trouble so he fell to us. It is hard to overstate just how bad our internal operations suck. That's what it looks like to me. That is even worse than the money situation. Just a dumbass fire drill operation. The one we keep seeing over ... and over. ** Edited by TDVick at 11/22/2024, 1:37:41 PM

basis, Creighton and Marquette raise a lot more money that is earmarked for hoops than VT? Moreover, a lot of CAA teams seem to have roster talent pretty close to or better than we do. Should that be happening? I don't think so. I'd say that VT talent roster this year might be at the bottom of the ACC. Jacksonville probably had players pretty close to our level, no? I'm confident that they will improve in the turnover category, but we shouldn't have this high of a hill to climb.

of other peer ACC schools? I look at the MBB situation. I have a very strong belief that coaching is not the problem. Perhaps with recruiting, but MY is not some abusive guy. This really comes down to resources, which is not so much his responsibility - at least it shouldn't be. If this keeps up, you are going to have get the NIL and school administration aligned. There needs to be some accountability and people aren't marching to the same drum. Can we not get to the level of Creighton and Marquette? If not, why not? What is their magic? ** Edited by TDVick at 11/22/2024, 9:41:35 AM

talented rosters in MBB. My thought is that if we get to the middle of the pack or slightly below it talent-wise, MY would get these guys in the top half or 40% of the league. We should be somewhere between #6 and #8 in the MBB if we just were minimally competent with funding. Something just looks very wrong. If not, that admit that we are outgunned by BC, Pitt, Syr, GT, etc. and join the Sun Belt. Things seemed very screwed up operationally. Miami is basically the new US financial capital and seem to have money to burn. I'd say that the natural order of ACC basketball is Duke, UNC, then LOU/UVA/MIA FSU. We should be able to creep up and challenge FSU for that 6th spot and UVa isn't always that good.

$130 million to put a decent MBB team together. What is this idiot thinking? I wonder what might be important to spend money on? What on earth is this guy doing? I hate posting this, but I hate having to look at this even more. What am I missing here? Fire away. What is the revenue of VT athletics? Among the public schools, based on the data provided, VT is the 7th best for overall athletic department balance sheet. For 2022-2023, VT was $12.5m in the black ($129.5m revenue vs $116.9m expenses). Above VT are Florida, Nebraska, Clemson, Georgia, Texas, Texas A&M.Sep 4, 2024

changes with NIL look like very similar situations. My take is that Whit was asleep at the wheel, scratching his butt and got steamrolled by both situations. He is about the WORST possible fit we could have in this environment. Oh gee, USC and LSU paid over $10 million a year for coaches. Wow. Oh gee, Duke and Miami in basketball pay backups multiples of what we pay for starters. He is weak and got this far by overpaying non-revenue coaches. He has no ability to find bargains, use strategy or craft a portfolio and now we are failing at both football and basketball. Instead of copying schools with lower budgets that are effective, he tries to outspend the big boys, but does it on non-revenue sports. This approach is about as misguided as it could possible be. ** Edited by TDVick at 11/22/2024, 3:08:13 AM

this team was undersized, not that talented and their three leading scorers, Pedulla, Cattor and Kidd left. If this is puzzling, you might want to put the board game, "Clue" on your Christmas list and keep playing it until this mystery becomes less mysterious. I still think Mike Young is an excellent coach. Maybe he bears some responsibility for the roster limitations, but this should be a VERY EASY thing to fix with a reasonable amount of resources. Mike Young can take most team's bench in the ACC and hang. This is due to some bad luck, but mostly due to the rudderless, idiotic, mismanaged SH*T show of an athletic department that Whit runs. I keep posting this and the situation gets worse and worse and I get pissed off more and more. Mike Young's teams typically have some of the best assist to turnover ratios in college basketball. Did he forget how to coach? No? Would bringing in anyone make this better? No Would kicking the AD's butt to the curb help? It sure couldn't hurt! Please tell me how I'm wrong?

created cupcake scheduling which will squeeze out a 3 loss SEC team. Does anyone NOT think that Texas, Bama, UGA, Miss aren't top 8-level teams? I'd put Tenn top 10. I think South Carolina is top 12.

the basketball program's food and rent money to cover up his terrible management of the football program. That is what a lot of people suspect - including me. To your point: NIL money doesn't reallocate itself from basketball to football by itself. Doesn't that piece of wood in the fireplace look like our front door? No, we just lent our front door to the neighbors for a while. ** Edited by TDVick at 11/18/2024, 12:21:13 AM

crippling blow when your first option at guard leaves right before the season - like last year. I think VT is a difficult place for recruiting basketball players. The way to overcome it is with NIL money. I also suspect the MY's allocation isn't that great compared to peer schools. Yet his players seem to always improve. He has effective clock management and in-game strategy adjustments. Last year he beat much more talented teams such as Clemson and NC State that made the final 8 and 4, respectively. Might we have a bad season? Well, we are EXPECTED to. We are 15/18 teams in preseason rankings - and that was before Miller bailed. https://theacc.com/news/2024/10/15/duke-selected-as-prese...

compared to his ACC peers. I wish the talent and effectiveness of Mike Young was exhibited in football, but I sure haven't seen it yet.

is an absolute force. Lynn Kidd got much better with Young's coaching. We just keep seeing it all the time. It makes you wonder what MY could have done in his tenure if he had some better pieces to work with. It sure would be nice to see him have more resources and it sure would be nice to see the rest of the athletic department use its resources with the excellence that Mike Young does. I've always said that if you gave Mike Young a solid guard and a bench guy from a team like FSU or some other team that has rangy athletes, he'd probably get in the tourney. Its so refreshing to see effective coaching and know-how on the sidelines rather than learning by doing and frantic fire drill routines. Mike Young is about as good a basketball coach as there is and really knows what he is doing.