Boston College 76, Virginia Tech 61: THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS
by furrer4heisman on Mar 1, 2011 11:18 PM EST
in Virginia Tech Basketball
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PrintAfter its enormous victory over Duke Saturday, there was pretty much only one thing the Hokies had to do in order to not slip back onto the bubble: Lose by 15 on Senior Night Tuesday against Boston College in Cassell Coliseum.
Virginia Tech did exactly that against the Eagles and now find itself in a must-win game this weekend at Clemson. Odds are it's going to be a heartburn-inducing game down in South Carolina. All four of the Hokies' ACC regular season games at Littlejohn Coliseum have been decided by three points or fewer.
The Hokies find themselves in this spot because of another lackluster effort against Boston College this season. Tech shot poorly in its first game against the Eagles and repeated the performance Tuesday. The Hokies shot 42.9 percent from the floor, including 3-for-17 from behind the arc and were especially cold early on as BC built a big first-half lead.
The same things that have bitten the Hokies in almost all of their ACC losses. In addition to the poor three-point shooting, Tech had poor ballmovement with only six assists on 24 field goals and were out-battled on the offensive boards, pulling in only four of 26 available offensive rebounds.
Were the players tired? Probably. Like we said in the interview with BCI, the Hokies only had seven minutes from their bench only a couple of nights ago in an emotionally draining game against the nation's top-ranked team. They came out flat, were cold from the floor and dug a huge hole. Meanwhile, BC was hot from behind arc and Tech's big men combined for all of five rebounds. All in all, not a good effort.
Now the pressure is back on the Hokies with a big road trip looming. The last time the Hokies went to Clemson in early March with an NCAA Tournament bid on the line they choked down the stretch, watched Clemson win 70-69 and found themselves in the 2008 NIT. If we get a repeat of that game, the Hokies will absolutely have to win in the first round of the ACC tournament in order to secure an NCAA bid.
Nothing has ever come easy for this team and once again they've made things hard on themselves by laying an egg against Boston College. Just when we think they're in, they pull themselves back out. It's pretty much the opposite of The Godfather.
For the BC perspective, visit BC Interruption.
Next on Virginia Tech's basketball schedule: Noon EST Saturday at Clemson.
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eek
That was ugly…. but that BC team is good. They share the ball, have 2-3 shooters, and defend and rebound — they play the style of ball I wish the hokies would try to emulate more (and yet Greenberg always gets a Free Pass and doesn’t get any blame, but that’s a whole other story…….)
Assuming Clemson plays with as much urgency as BC did and gets the ‘W’ on Saturday, I think it’s unlikely that 1 ACC tourney win would get us in.
That probably puts us at maybe the best team of the ‘last 4 in’ category (or maybe just 1 ahead of the ‘last 4 in’) — but the problem is, based on how the at-large bids have disappeared quickly the last few years, 0 of those ‘last 4 in’ teams have any life left on selection sunday.
I think it’s gonna be a similar scenario to ’08 (or ’09?) where anything short of a run to the ACC tourney is just not gonna be good enough.
3's
Hard to win when a team connects on all those three’s. Discouraging when the team plays tough D, gets the shot clock all the way down, and then a guy connects on a deep three as the shot clock expires.
As a BC guy...
I can say that we live and die by the three. We’ve lost to opponents who are not nearly the quality team VT is, and it’s because our guys can’t seem to sink the long ball. Last night just happened to be a game where our shots were going in.
by polarbearbrother on Mar 2, 2011 1:13 PM EST up reply actions
Love it...
Great article title. “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice things…” My mom used to say those exact words when I was ramming around our house in my early teen years.
So fitting. Clemson is now a must win, and I’m thinking two games deep into the ACC tourney to have a legit chance on Selection Sunday.
by Leonard Thompson on Mar 2, 2011 12:12 PM EST reply actions
Bright Side
Look at the bright side…
Losing last night might have “helped” us to not get a first round bye in the ACC tourney. So, we might have a chance to pick up a relatively easier first round win in the ACC tourney.
Plus.. a road win vs Clemson helps our RPI more than a home win vs BC… (if my RPI understanding is correct). Of course, I’m not holding my breath that Tech will win at Clemson.
This Loss
is awful, just awful. How do we get swept by two teams at the bottom of the ACC, yet we sweep Maryland and beat Duke? Unbelievable, they looked like they had never played basketball before. We couldn’t switch off of people to cover the 3 ball. I mean that has killed us all year, do we not practice that? Free throws as well were a killer. Davila missed most of his free throws how do you miss free points? We need to start preparing for each team the same way, don’t slack off because we beat Duke and think we can just step all over BC. The best part of it all is that Seth Davis of CBS Sports tweeted “Major turnover committed by Va Tech fans last night. How do you leave so many seats empty on senior night w/ your team fighting for a bid?” about 8/10ths of the seats were full, but still no excuse for losing. We didn’t go inside enough, we took stupid 3’s and didn’t get the offensive rebounds. Maybe Malcolm and Jeff shouldn’t have gone downtown after the Duke game.
Not an unexpected disappointment!
I think we all sorta knew that there was a decent chance of us losing that game. Not only was there a natural emotional letdown after an all too satyisfying victory over Duke, but we frequently lose to medicore teams we should beat. We play down to so many teams each season. In my opinion, the worst thing about this loss is that it is not unexpected. I just hope we can beat Clemson and win a couple in the ACC tourney. I would be nice to get a glipse of the NCAA tournament.
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