Make Your Case: Virginia Tech Hokies
Posted by jstevrtc on March 8th, 2010
As part of our ongoing quest to provide you with the best college basketball coverage in the nation, we have enlisted the help of some of the finest team-specific bloggers, campus newspaper scribes, and beat writers on the planet to help us. With the NCAA Selection Show coming up on March 14th there are still several teams on the proverbial “bubble.” We figured it might be interesting to see what kind of nonpartisan arguments these folks could make for their team deserving a spot in the NCAA Tournament. We welcome any discussion of their arguments and praise or criticism of their reasoning in the comment section. If your team is on the bubble and you would like to submit something, please contact us at rushthecourt@gmail.com.
Niemo, a senior writer for TechHoops.com, the authority for Virginia Tech basketball, now makes the case for the Virginia Tech Hokies:
These guys say Delaney and the VT boys are in.
At this point the Hokies shouldn’t have to do any selling to the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. They would have to be certifiably insane to overlook Virginia Tech this year. Yes, the Hokies had a legendarily soft out of conference schedule. But they went 13-1 in those games, including a winner over a Seton Hall team that is on the bubble. VT also won three true road games. Yes, the Hokies had a soft ACC schedule, playing the bottom five teams twice each. But VT went 3-3 against the other top seven ACC teams, all of which have serious shots at the NCAA Tournament. Virginia Tech got a nice win at Georgia Tech, a top 50 RPI team. The Hokies were 3-4 against teams in the RPI top 50 and 4-2 against teams 51 through 100 in the RPI. Tech finished the regular season with 23 wins and had just one loss to a team outside the RPI Top 100. Even with a loss in the ACC Tournament Quarterfinals, the Hokies are in the Big Dance. Period.
It wasn’t so long ago that Coach K. voted against Tech joining the ACC because, get this, he didn’t think they’d be competitive in “his” conference. Seems to me Tech is not only a lock to dance, but they’re fast becoming one of the best ACC teams, so much so that Duke didn’t dare travel to Blacksburg this year to match wits with Seth Greenberg. Probably a smart move on Duke’s part. The Hokies own them and they know it.
Um, of course the scheduling within the conference is not up to the individual coaches. The reason Duke didn’t go to VT this year was because that game wasn’t on the schedule.
When your marquee wins are at Georgia Tech and vs. Seton Hall and you are a lock for the tournament, you know it is a really, really down year.
Andrew, I think Mark was being somewhat rhetorical in that comment. The “own” Duke part gave it away for me.