you're going to have to play those early weekends on the road, likely in the south against SEC foes, because it's unlikely that they'll want to travel up and play in Virginia during the cold. Instead, Tech's gone down to play at Alabama three times under D'Amour, with two of those times coming in February and one in March. As far as the weather goes, here's a list of weekends in February and March, the Blacksburg weather and where VT played: - Feb. 5-7: Snow on ground in Blacksburg; VT played in Columbia, S.C. - Feb. 13-14: In the 40s, low 50s when baseball hosted W&M; VT played in Charlotte, N.C. - Feb. 20-22: Anywhere between 35 and 60 when baseball hosted Rutgers; VT played in Athens, Ga. - Feb. 27-March 1: Between 32 and 57; VT played in Auburn, Ala. - March 5-8: 60s and 70s; VT hosted tournament in Salem. First true warm weekend of the spring. In an ideal world, VT hosts a tournament one of those first few weekends and it's warm and an SEC team comes to play. But that's just not really how it goes. As you said, has to be decent competition — and you also have to get lucky. VT hosted Michigan at Salem, like UVa did in Charlottesville, and the Wolverines won the Big Ten last year. Just OK this year, though. Made NCAA Tournament but was 40th in RPI. If you're the Hokies, you're probably trying to play somewhere like Clearwater as much as you can to face the best competition as possible early in the season, because it's a huge résumé boost if you win. Even that can be somewhat of a crapshoot, though.