Wow, I haven't posted since the FSU game? That's pretty poor on my part. If you were a nun, I think I would hand you a ruler to slap my knuckles. The Hokies have won a close one against Boston College at home, won an extremely close one against UVA on the road, and lost a close one against Miami on the road. The loss moves Tech to 3-3 in the ACC, but the thing to note is that we have played 4 road games to only 2 home games. That means we have 6 home games left in the season compared to only 4 road games, and as you may well be aware, home games are usually easier to win. For one thing, the officiating tends to help out your cause. For whatever reason, ACC referees like to give the home team a BIG advantage in foul calls, which leads me to my first of many realizations during ACC play:
1) The ACC referees are simply terrible. When I say terrible, what I really mean is "uneven." In the case of the Miami game yesterday, both teams were using their hands and slapping a lot on defense, however the not-so-obvious calls were given to Miami and not to Virginia Tech. I realize that referees like to hear the roar of applause from the home crowd, but their goal should not be to please the crowd, it should be to call a fair game. Likewise, I thought the Hokies got lucky with a lot of calls when they played Miami at home, although the 'Canes still couldn't have won the game even with fair calls. When you have non-biased announcers wondering where calls are coming from (as was the case yesterday), you really need to wonder how good these referees really are.
2) Dorenzo Hudson is REALLY stepping up his game. Prior to ACC-play, watching Hudson shoots jump shots was like watching a bloody car crash. Now? It's still like watching a car wreck, except everyone is miraculously okay and $100 bills started showering down on them from the sky. I'm serious, his shot is UGLY, but lately it's been going in the hoop, so I really don't care what his form looks like. He's gained so much confidence this season, and is a legit scoring threat. A season ago, you could not depend on 'Zo to finish a fastbreak. The missed dunks reminded me of Deron Washington when he was a freshman. He would jump way too early and give himself no chance at either a layup or a dunk, resulting in a dunk clanging off the iron. This season, he's got to be one of the better finishers in the ACC. I think I can sum it all up best with an old Virginia Slims slogan; "You've come a long way, baby."
3) JT Thompson is really starting to assert himself on the offensive end. With the regression of Victor Davila's game, Thompson's emergence has been a breath of fresh air. You can kind of see his mind working and at some point during the game he just snaps and says to himself, "Okay, SOMEBODY has to take the ball strong to the hoop on this team." And then he does. In yesterday's game, Dwayne Collins was destroying us in the paint during the first half. Davila was too slow for him. Jeff Allen played too weak. In the second half, Thompson spent a lot of time guarding Collins, who bests him by 2 inches and 30 lbs, but Thompson (with the help of a double team) held his own. This might not seem like a big deal, but realize that the Hokies were double-teaming Collins when Allen and Davila were guarding him as well, and that didn't work at all. JT needs to be our high energy guy off the bench. Someone who can come into the game and light a spark under everyone's butt. In the last two games, he's really shown up.
4) When VT plays fast, active defense... we create turnovers and get buckets. When we are complacent and relegate ourselves to just defending the player and not the pass, then we get our butts handed to us. I thought that was the biggest reason for our loss last night. Tech allowed Miami to shoot 70% from the field in the first half and although the Hokies forced 8 turnovers, I don't think any of them led to a fastbreak basket. Most of them ended up with the Hokies inbounding the ball as Miami's defense was set and ready. Tech was down by 17 points at halftime. In the second half, the Hokies were jumping passes all over the place forcing steals that allowed for easy fastbreak buckets. Because of the turnovers and good offensive rebounding, Virginia Tech somehow climbed back into the game despite some scorching-hot 3-point shooting from the 'Canes. Tech's defense as of late is what has allowed us to stay in some games when our shooting has abandoned us.
5) That win over Virginia on Thursday was amazing. We were down by ten points with less than 3 minutes to play. You hardly ever see a team come out of a hole like that, but our guys battled their way to a win. As Seth Greenberg said, this team believes that they are going to win every time they get the game to overtime, so that back-breaking 3-pointer by Sammy Zeglinski to tie the game ended up being a moot point. In our team's mind, they had already won once the opening tip of overtime commenced. My brother, a UVA grad, was talking trash all game via text message. He got extremely quiet towards the end there. Also, I wanted to note Jeff Allen's ejection. I thought the ejection was ludicrous, but I thought the foul call was warranted. During the replay on TV, it definitely looked like Allen charged up that elbow and meant to throw it high. I don't think you can say that he meant to hit Jeff Jones in the head, but I think he realized that was a possibly when he did it. However, clear-out fouls like that happen all the time and I can't ever think of a time that they've resulted in an ejection. Just because Jones flopped harder than Deron Washington has ever flopped, that doesn't mean it's an eject-able offense. I think in this case, Jeff Allen's reputation hurt him more than the foul itself. Terrible decision, but it seemed to fire up our team, so thank you for being horrible, ACC refs!
6) VT is in a good place right now for making the NCAA tournament. We are 16-4 with 6 home games and 4 away games left (plus a shot at more wins in the ACC tournament). If we managed to win 4 of the 6 home games and 1 of the away games, that puts us at 21 wins... a good win total for the NCAA tournament. However, I think we will be sitting at home come Selection Sunday if we don't upset one of the high-RPI ACC teams. That means Duke, Georgia Tech, or Wake Forest. Unfortunately, we only get one shot at each of those teams. A win against Wake Forest would probably be the easiest since a) we play them at home and b) we beat them last season on the road, when they were arguably a better team. A win against Duke would be the best for us, but that win would have to come on the road. I could see it happening if Duke racks up a bunch of wins between now and then, but if they are coming off of a fresh loss, we can basically just punch their winning ticket right now. Georgia Tech will be an extremely tough opponent for us because their two best players are sizable post players. We'll probably have to double team Gani Lawal AND Derrick Favors, which will leave tons of space for Georgia Tech's other players to shoot and drive to the bucket. With the home-referee advantage, I am not looking forward to playing GT in that last game of the regular season. Anyway, did I get off point? Yeah I think I did. We need to win, but more importantly, for the selection committee to see that we belong in the NCAA tournament, we need to win against other teams that are expected to make it. It's that simple, and so far the Hokies have not been able to do that.
7) We play North Carolina this Thursday at 9:00. In a normal season, this would be a good chance to make a name for ourselves and get a high-caliber win on our resume. This season is different though... UNC has really struggled to beat anyone decent and they seem to have been really affected by the loss of Tyler Zeller (even though it doesn't really seem like he did too much). Don't let their name confuse you... the Tar Heels are a middle-of-the-pack ACC team at best. A win at home on Thursday would be great and is needed, but it's not the marquee win that will put our team over the top on Selection Sunday.
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