B-Ball Practices Underway

The Virginia Tech Hokies have finally taken to the court... for practice.  Their first practice was one week ago on the 14th, so after a week of practice Seth Greenberg has done nothing but praise freshman Dorian Finney-Smith.  You can tell that Greenberg has a gigantic man-crush on this kid.  "Doe-Doe" is coachable, works hard, and can do just about everything you want from a small forward.  There will be a learning curve for him like there is for all freshmen, but he does seem like the kind of player who makes everyone around him better.  After watching some film of him (whole game tape so you see the good and the bad), you get a feeling for how he might fit into the team.  I watched two of his games, the state AAA semi-final and the state AAA final, which his team won, and this is what I saw:

• He is an excellent rebounder, but especially on the offensive end.  He has a knack for tipping up his own misses.  One negative thing is that he seems to need to do that pretty often.  He misses more "bunnies" than you would like for a player of his caliber.
• He is a good on-ball defender who gets up to challenge shots.  His length at his position (kid has a 7'2" wingspan) helps him to block shots and change shots even when he's not able to block them.  He's not great at offering weakside help at this point... needs to get better at the next level.
• Doe-Doe can handle the rock.  I anticipate that he's already the 3rd best ballhandler on our team next to Erick Green and Marquis Rankin, so Coach Greenberg could potentially use him as a point-forward if he wants to do that.  This ability also helps Finney-Smith to create his own shot or draw multiple defenders, leaving a teammate open for a shot.
• He's probably too unselfish for his own good.  At the high school level he liked to defer to his teammates even though he was often the better option for the shot.  He does pass well though.
• He has a good shot from the outside that I think will translate to him being at least a 33% 3-point shooter.  His motion is quick and smooth with a good high release.

So as you can see, there's a lot to be excited about with Dorian Finney-Smith... no wonder Seth Greenberg is all about him.  He's not just a recruit with a high pedigree (the highest that Greenberg has ever recruited), but it's pretty easy to see how that will translate to the next level.

In other news, I decided to do a little research concerning Malcolm Delaney.  See, I think there is huge Ewing Theory potential for the Hokies this season.  I'm going to go ahead and make the outlandish prediction that Virginia Tech will make the NCAA tournament this season, and that the lack of Malcolm Delaney and Jeff Allen will be part of the reason why that happens.  For any VT fan who watched Delaney's last two years at VT, you started to see some real negativity coming from him.  He was getting all over his teammates when they made mistakes, but not in an encouraging way.  Post-game quotes showed that he didn't have a lot of faith in any of the other players on the team.  When he was down the rest of the team followed him down.  Mix that in with his historic "unclutchness", and you start to see why maybe the team will function better without him.  I could only go back a little more than two seasons with the data available to me, but in that time Malcolm Delaney had 7 chances in VT's last possesion of regulation to either tie a game when the Hokies were down, or win a game when the team was either losing or tied.  In those 7 chances, he made 1 shot.  That shot sent the game into overtime where VT eventually lost.  So VT never won a game where Malcolm Delaney took the last shot, or at least as far back as I could research.  Too add to that, I'm pretty sure Jeff Allen was 0-2 in those situations, and his bone-headed plays probably cost the team more than we know.  If you're wondering, Dorenzo Hudson is 2-4 in these situations, or if you prefer, 50%.  Erick Green is 1-2, again 50%.  I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready for a new regime.