people just say their opinion If they like the coach, it's not the coach, it's the area that's hard to recruit to, not the system or the coach or the recent results If not that, money, and now, in today's age, NIL money (same argument existed before NIL) If not those, it's the player or the team is toxic If not that, facilities If not that, recycle and or combine some of the others The long and short is, if a team is trending in a positive direction, people want to play there Yes, money, fame of the program or coach or whatever, city life, whatever, can check boxes for some, but if we were winning games and going to the NCAAT tournament every year, players would come. Then you'd ask, well how can we get to the NCAAT tournament without those things? Chicken and egg stuff. Probably, a new coach with a history of winning, like when Buzz Williams joined, it creates hype (I'm not saying this is going to happen, what I want to happen, or whatever, I'm saying if we keep getting worse each season, the harder it is to put lipstick on a pig).

Their defensive system limits things IMO

door. The real test for CMY is who he recruits from the portal to backfill these losses and how fast they pick up his system. Also, how well he re-recruits and retains key players. Recruiting, developing and retaining HS players who will stay also plays a big part as well. The transfer rules and portal have changed the game for how coaches will be successful and evaluated in the future. We are about to see how well CMY adapts.

We’ve played GW 72 times and the series is split 36-36. Were a much bigger school and ACC, but it shouldn’t be any surprise many basketball players would rather be I. Washington DC then Blacksburg VA We haven’t played Old Dominio. Nearly as much and lead that series 15-10. But again, ask a top basketball prospect if they rather be in the 757. Sure, ACC, VT. But whomever is coaching VT, they have to sell the benefits of being a Hokie. I get it, only a fool would leave VT to go to ODU. But if the coach you love does it, aren’t you going to follow. That’s not an MY issue, it’s the way 18-22 year olds think

Choosing to stay in the (DUCK!) Norfolk area would seem to conflict with that.

But some kids miss home and their friends

#1 the players you're mentioning, in reality, chose VT over every other school, including GW and ODU...they came to VT. It isn't as though VT is losing recruiting battles for a Top 100 kid to GW. #2 there is a difference between "VT is losing kids to GW and ODU" and "Player X decides he does not want to be at VT and THEN decides where their next stop should be"...when you decide to leave a school you are opening yourself up back to the market. If you don't have any game film to go off of and you were highly underrated in HS (Buchanan) then of course your options are going to be limited. He chose GW from a list of options available to him. It wasn't like Duke was beating down his door and VT was begging him to stay. #3 smaller programs can be more successful than bigger programs when you play in smaller ponds. I have long warned fans that VT has a ceiling when it comes to national success, but that does not mean they can't be more successful than their actual peers (Clemson, Iowa State, Notre Dame, etc). Someone HAS to win the Sun Belt. So if you're ODU and you play 18 Sun Belt teams, and you have some success that does not mean you're going to be better than a 9-11, 10-10 or 11-9 ACC team. Same for JMU in football. If VTs schedule next season were 9 Sun Belt teams, what is VTs final record? The players you're referring to that VT lost: 1) was not available to VT had they not hired a coach he was close with (Rice) 2) was not recruited by any major program when the same coach made a better evaluation and said he was worth a shot When the coach you hired to get those players leaves, you can't possibly be surprised when those players leave as well. And when they leave, it isnt because they find ODU or GW to be a higher caliber program, it is because those choices check some boxes they wanted (location, playing time, being with a trusted coach, etc) and because (and this is important) that's because those schools are what their options were. If Rodney Rice chooses ODU over Maryland, I'm not sure how that's a reflection on a bad evaluation by VT. Rice clearly values his relationship with Mike Jones (as evidenced by his picking VT in the first place). I'm also not sure how going from redshirting at VT to averaging 17ppg at GW makes it a missed evaluation either. Buchanan didn't leave VT because Mike Young told him he was bad at basketball. And he's clearly good at basketball. But Buchanan had a lot of things he needed to work on when he showed up on campus (he still does) but GW NEEDED him. They have to let him play through mistakes. VT simply wanted him. He could absolutely play through mistakes at VT, but VT would go 12-23 and MY would be fired. You simply don't have that kind of room at this level. With regards to VT vs SEC/Big Ten...there are going to be many SEC and Big Ten teams that VT is better than each year. Vanderbilt being in the SEC and getting their money doesn't make them a juggernaut. Missouri either. Michigan is 8-21. Ohio State is next to last in the Big Ten. Indiana is half a game above Ohio State. Is GW/ODU/JMU a better program than them because of 1 season? 2 seasons? Of course not. In most years, those programs and VT would beat GW, ODU and JMU and it wouldn't register much amongst the fan base outside of being thankful they didn't lose. VT is not falling behind GW, ODU or JMU...they simply had a pair of players who came to VT for one big reason and when that reason was no longer there, their tie to the school greatly diminished ** Edited by GCHokie34 at 3/2/2024, 12:03:43 PM

that Virginia's high school talent level is mediocre when compared with MD, GA and FLA. The private schools and the occasional superstar (Ralph and Moses) make the perception that VA is a good basketball state.

To stop at Ralph and Moses leaves out Iverson, JJ Redick, Dell, George Lynch, Grant Hill, Alonzo Mourning just off the top of my old head. Those are some double digit careers in the NBA. No, it's not a top state, but isn't chopped liver either.

number of players just below in talent than those you listed. Take out the players from out-of-state that play at private schools; then it looks worse.

Might be hard for some to accept. I'm on board with that dose of reality.

actually OK now (except having someone take your SAT lol), and it produced results.

It's interesting that so many fans insist that there's no way for VT to compete with B10 or SEC programs because they have so much more money and so many advantages from being in a P2 league... but those same fans are willing to make excuses when VT does worse than teams with far smaller budgets and far less attractive league affiliations. In the specific cases mentioned (Buchanan going to GW, Rice possibly going to ODU) it's not just a case of players leaving for an easier path at a lower level of competition. It's also a misalignment between the coach's eval of a player and the player's belief in himself. Many have pointed out that player movement is the standard these days, and that's correct. VT is no different, nor should we expect it to be. The problem comes when that revolving door is pushing out more-talented players than the guys who are coming in.

little bit of focus (and also money - which VT should have more of than GW or ODU) this could be improved. This team could still finish .500 in the ACC and they did have a LOT of bad luck with the roster, which can't always be prevented. The thing I've noticed down the stretch is that we seem to fade in the second half and that suggests that we might have a bigger deficiency with our role players than our starters. Beefing up the bench should be VERY EASY and LESS COSTLY than chasing down some stars. I think we all saw that writing on the wall when Rice bailed, but I think these guys played hard and Mike Young did a good job once again.

Joe Bamisile's colorful travels. He comes here, isn't willing to be a role player, transfers to GW, lights it up there, thinks he's better than he is, transfers to Oklahoma, basically fits in the same role at Oklahoma as he did it Virginia Tech, very limited minutes, transfers to VCU, goes back to being a more full-time player. When a guy's unwilling to accept a role on a team as a 6th or 7th player, there's no beefing up the bench. These guys are all about playing time over a 4-year period of time, or 5, and I don't care anything about being a part of a successful team, they just want playing time. I think that's exactly what you're seeing with Buchanan, and Maddox, both of whom could have added a lot to our roster, but there's only one ball to go around and five spots on the floor. Same goes for Rice. He didn't exactly light it up in his limited time his freshman year, and if he was that good, it would have shown through in the time that he got. ** Edited by UEMcGill at 3/2/2024, 12:40:41 PM

I have no clue how CMY overcomes this dynamic.

First off JMU is not better than us in football. Their record was better because they had a much easier schedule and conference. Good for them for winning. But that doesn’t mean their team is better. As for basketball, when we lose players to GW or ODU it is because they are going down a level where they can get more playing time and have a bigger impact. It’s going to the right level for them. The ACC is hard and lots of very good basketball players don’t make the cut for this level of play after they try for a year or two. ** Edited by HokieAl at 3/2/2024, 9:06:12 AM

JMU has had a better football team the last 3-4 years. That not only means they (currently) have a better team but also a better program. I am hopeful Pry can change that reality.

you can have better players trading up or non-performing players trading down. What you shouldn't see is effective players trading down. We seem to have more than our share of that and I think that needs to be fixed. Regarding your point about football, whether or not JMU was actually better than us last year is debatable. What is NOT debatable is that they have been a much better organized operation than VT was over the last 5 years and achieved closer to their full potential than we certainly did. They didn't give up fat yards per carry getting gashed by opposing RBs - we did. They did it with guys that we didn't bother to recruit. They had one of the top 5 compensated (for competition) rushing defenses last year and have had an excellent one for several years. I'm going to back to the 2018 Pitt game which was one of the worst performances in college football history. I hope this gets cleaned up and if it seems like I'm being overly critical, I think that facts justify it. We have fielded football teams that were outmanned, got bullied and were routinely injured and were historically bad. Football seems to be getting cleaned up. Maybe the hoops team had really bad luck this year. I just want them to be at the highest level they can. The players deserve this. I think we have some room to improve our operations in hoops as well, but football was the bigger underperformer.

Just to add, with regards to ODU.... they didn't reach 10 wins this year. Sure, some of that is due to Jeff Jones's health (hope he gets well), but in the years before that they are: 19-12, 13-19, 15-8, 13-9, with 0 NCAA births. GW, they're on their 2nd coach over that same time period. Mike Young, over that time is 15+ this year, 19-15, 23-13, 15-7, 16-16, with 2 NCAA births. What does all this mean? Virginia Tech is slightly above average in basketball. That is what we're getting from Mike Young, that is what we got with Seth Greenberg. We punched a little higher with Buzz, but not that much. We had a couple of dud hires in there (Rickey Stokes, James Johnson), but even going back... same thing with Bill Foster. Hokies will have years where everything gels and we're a formidable team. We'll have other years like this one. That is what we are and to be frank, unless someone has Phil Knight or T. Boone money they want to give, we're not getting much better (and how is that working out for Oregon and OSU). With our finances, we're better off going all in and fully investing in FB and WBB, with a competitive but MBB team that makes a killing with the diamonds in the rough.

Look at our finishes in the ACC under Young in a league with 15, soon to be larger.

considered, that they probably had a chance to play their way to improvement that they might not have gotten at VT. My guess is that we really could have used them this year. I'm talking about effective players that drop a level and weren't run off. It seems that compensating them might keep them around and might have gotten us 3-4 more wins this year.

So I'm not sure that's effective by any definition Maddox's dad got sick and he transferred to be closer to him. If those two instances are what's worrying you then it should be alleviated