Dorenzo Hudson had his best shooting effort of the season going 3-4, but he missed his lone 3-point attempt. I was psyched to see that he hit both of his free throw attempts. He also played well defensively. Ben Boggs continues to give us a spark off the bench, going 2-2 from the 3-point line for the second game in a row. Not only that, but Boggs is proving to be a useful defender.
Malcolm Delaney finally looked like his old self driving to the basket. He was able to pick up fouls AND complete shots, the latter of which had been a problem for him early in the season. He still isn't shooting particularly well from the 3-point line, but I think that will come. Jeff Allen managed to pick up 4 fouls despite starting both halves on the bench. It seems like Greenberg knows what he is doing, and you can probably guess that Allen would have fouled out otherwise. I am of the thinking that players need to get rest, but for people as athletic as college basketball players, it doesn't really matter if that rest comes early or late. My final point from this game is that Victor Davila continues to impress in the post, and in this game, he really established himself on the boards against bigger guys. He had 9 rebounds, and 5 of those were offensive. That's by far his best rebounding performance of his college career and I am hoping he can continue with that instead of falling away. As a team, VT average close to a rebound for every 2 of our misses on offense... that's freaking sweet. For all of Chieck Diakite's defensive accolades, he had terrible hands and was a poor rebounder, and we're starting to see the benefits of having guys who hit the boards hard and can actually corral the loose balls.
Other thoughts at this point of the season:
- Your mom looks fantastic in that orange and maroon bikini I bought her
- Something stinks about VT playing in the Philly Hoops Group Classic. Tech played against both Temple and Delaware in that competition on what was supposedly a neutral floor, but it really wasn't. Temple is in Philly, so that was basically a home game for them. The University of Delaware is 45 minutes from Philly, so that was close to being a home game for them as well. Maybe that's why VT was dominated by Temple and somehow escaped with an embarrassing win over a poor Delaware squad. If Tech had offers from anyone else... Madison Square Garden, Anchorage, Maui, Puerto Rico, etc, then we should have accepted them. It's moronic to schedule supposedly neutral games when they aren't really neutral. If VT had no other decent offers, then I apologize and recant on what I just said, but I find it hard to believe we couldn't find more favorable games early in the season.
- I want to see a game where VT blows up from the 3-point line. If that happens against VMI, then that is fine, but I find it difficult to believe that our team is really so poor from that spot on the floor. I promise I will rhyme no more.
- We're in a good spot right now, but a lot of our success this season will depend on the next two games. We can't afford to drop a game at home against VMI, and that's definitely a possible outcome. VMI runs the fastest offense in the NCAA ranks, leading them to score an average of 92 points per game, but it also leads them to give up 98 points per game. However, that doesn't fit in well with VT's style of play... we like to limit possessions and slow the game down. If our players get too excited at the prospect of playing a running-the-floor type of game, we could end up losing. If our players stay disciplined and work for open shots, we will win by a landslide. And there's also the possibility of our players looking ahead to our biggest away game of the year against Penn State on Saturday. That would be a mistake. But I believe the Hokies will not do that, and I think we come out with a win against VMI and a loss against Penn State. I think that will be our only loss going into ACC play where we will most likely lose our opener to UNC in Chapel Hill.
- Our ACC schedule for this season is very favorable. We match up well with 4 of the 5 teams that we have to play twice (and consequently, we don't match up nearly as well with 5 of the 6 teams that we only play once). We are going to have a tough time matching the size of the other teams in the ACC, particularly Duke, UNC, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Clemson, and Florida State. We match up very well with UVA, NC State, Miami, Maryland, and Boston College. If there was ever a season for Seth Greenberg and the Hokies to make a surprising run towards the top of the ACC, it's this year as the Hokies have a favorable ACC schedule, a junior-heavy roster, and they're being overlooked by many both in the ACC and in the media. We could really give everyone a gigantic poop-burger to eat, and it'd be oh so satisfying.
- Our team seems to be turning around their offensive woes. The 3-pointers aren't dropping for a lot of our starters, but we're getting great production out there from Ben Boggs, Manny Atkins, and Erick Green. The 2-pointers are definitely starting to fall and so are the foul shots. Davila was 5-5 in free throws against Georgia, showing that I might have known what I was talking about when I said his form is better than what his stats at the line indicate (this was maybe two games into the season where I said that, I think).
- I love Hokie basketball, but you knew that.
2 comments:
Poop-burger.
I thought I made it clear last time that I don't want you buying my mother bikinis!!
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