Road trips are hard on college basketball players. It’s still a tepid excuse for playing half a basketball game against a team that should have been beaten. The Hokies didn’t show up on the court against Miami until five minutes into the second half. By that time the damage was done, and the game was well out of reach, even though Tech dominated the 2nd half scoring. There was just not enough clock or momentum to get closer than 7 points.

There is no reason to panic or get sour on the basketball team, folks. Everyone needs to remember what the realistic expectations for this brand new team were at the beginning of the season. I sure did. I remembered that I predicted a “good solid” season would be a winning 2019 non-conference stretch combined with a .500 ACC record combined with some nice surprise upset wins.

So far we have seen the Hokies pretty much run to that form. So, though disappointed in the two road half game performances (it would have been better to melt down completely for one game, and win the other, frankly) this team is doing much better than most folks expected.

The benefit is that the Hokies are coming home to the Cassell for most of the games in the critical month of February. Florida State is visiting this weekend (tough game and they’ll be sore they just lost to UVA which is struggling a bit of late). There’ll be a trip to Atlanta for Georgia Tech on Tuesday, but then 3 in a row at the Cassell. Tech could win all of those games, but realistic hopes are for a 4 and 1 split.

Stats from Yahoo Sports.

Tyrece Radford led the Hokies’ scoring with 22. Landers Nolley II filled in some with 14 and a couple of rebounds. But the lid was on the bucket for the Hokies for most of the game, and that really drags a short team down. The 2 point, inside game was nearly non-existant for 2/3rds of the game. That will not win basketball contests in the long run. Yes, 3 pointers can make a huge difference, but hitting those 12 footers and layups consistently, along with draining opportunities from the charity stripe are what wins basketball games.

Nate will hit us up with the takeaways soon. Podcast coming up this weekend.

GO HOKIES!!!!