virginia tech survives vmi's upset bid 64-57

Chris Hirons

December 4, 2020

BLACKSBURG, Va. — No. 16 Virginia Tech’s matchup with Virginia Military Institute shouldn’t have come down to head coach Mike Young deciding on whether or not to sit the team’s top rebounder because of late foul trouble. Or building a lead only as much as 10 points against a substantially weaker Keydet team. Or only shooting 4-of-27 from behind the three-point line against VMI’s 2-3 zone defense.

But that’s what happened on Thursday night’s meeting between the Hokies and Keydets, arguably one of the worst teams in the Southern Conference. VMI’s Myles Lewis brought his team to within four points with three minutes left after spinning around Keve Aluma in the low post to lay his shot into the hoop.

With just under four minutes remaining and VMI on the comeback trail, Mutts — the team’s leading rebounder — had just committed his fourth foul. Young took a calculated risk and left him in the game, knowing that Mutts could foul out at any moment.

For Young and his team, the move panned out in the Hokies’ favor as Mutts then contributed two key assists, a rebound and a key dunk that iced Virginia Tech’s (4-0) win, as it staved off an upset-minded VMI (2-2) for a second consecutive year.

“VMI fought and scraped, they had me turned inside out as they did a year ago,” Young said after the win. “I’ve been doing [this] a long time, there’s going to be one or two of these nights. Anytime I have one of these nights and I leave the building with a win, sign me up.”

Still, despite a night where the team only converted 21 of its 60 field goals and was 4-of-27 from deep, it was still good enough to give the Hokies their 94th all-time win against the Keydets in 137 tries.

Coming off a weekend sweep in ‘Bubbleville’ against No. 12 Villanova and South Florida, where the team shot 41.7% from beyond the arc, it wasn’t unreasonable, by any means, to think that Virginia Tech would take advantage of the 2-3 zone that head coach Dan Earl religiously runs in Lexington, Va.

With the widely-known weakness of the 2-3 zone being the three-point line, Virginia Tech didn't hesitate and attempted 27 three-pointers — many of which were wide open.

However, for whatever reason, on 23 of those attempts, a loud clunk was heard as the ball hit the rim and bounced into the arms of a rebounder. In what seemed to be a dose of voodoo magic or simply pure bad luck, two of Virginia Tech’s top shooters, Nahiem Allyene and Aluma, attempted 11 combined three-pointers.

None of those shots found the bottom of the net.

After not being able to open the lid on the basket from three-point range, the Hokies went into the teeth of the 2-3 defense and turned their attention to an older, but more reliant strategy: Moving the ball into the paint for close looks at the basket and drawing contact to create free throws.

It’s an older style of basketball, but it worked. Tech scored half its points — 32 of them — in the paint and added another 18 at the charity stripe.

“Sometimes you’re going to have nights like that where the shots aren’t falling and you have to rely on something else,” Mutts said after scoring 10 points and grabbing nine rebounds. “I think we did a good job in attacking the paint, getting the ball inside and doing other things. Not just relying on that ‘Live by the three, die by the three.’ I think this team is special and we don’t just have to shoot threes to be a good basketball team.”

To say the game started out slow for both teams is an understatement. Neither team had reached double digits on the scoreboard until Mutts hit a jumper around the 10 minute mark to give the Hokies their first lead of the day.

It didn’t get a whole lot better for the rest of the half, either. Sure, VT went into halftime with a 30-23 lead, but that was after Virginia Tech shot an abysmal 9-for-30 from the floor and only converted three of its 15 three-pointers.

Though, on a positive note, the Hokies held the Keydets to a 10-for-29 shooting line in the first half and didn’t allow VMI to attempt a free throw. On top of that, Virginia Tech bullied the Keydets on the boards, picking up 25 rebounds compared to VMI’s 13.

To start the second half, the Keydets came out of the locker room strong and were determined to pull off the upset. A 17-9 run early in the second half gave VMI a 45-41 lead with eight minutes to play and a chance to beat Tech for the first time since 2004.

Out of nowhere, a switch flipped and Virginia Tech caught fire as it stormed back with a run of its own. A 23-12 run that began in the last eight minutes of the game gave the Hokies the spark it needed to avoid a dreaded, Liberty-like loss to VMI.

“At no point in the game did we feel like it was over,” said Tyrece Radford, who scored in double figures for the third time this season. “It was just playing down to the jersey and we had to lean on each other to keep that energy going. If we did that, It was going to take care of itself, and that’s what we did.”

With 11 turnovers and only 11 assists all game, it was obvious that Tech was missing Cartier Diarra’s playmaking ability. The graduate transfer ranks second on the team with three assists-per-game.

Less than an hour before tip-off and in a blindsided surprise, 3304 Sports’ own David Cunningham tweeted that Diarra wouldn’t appear in Thursday’s game. The reason was unknown at the time, but after the game, Young revealed that Diarra overslept a covid test on Wednesday morning. By the rules established by Virginia Tech’s Athletic Department, any player in any sport that misses a covid test isn’t allowed to play in the next game.

“It was nothing out of the ordinary,” Young said. “[Diarra] was contrite, he felt awful. I wasn’t gonna contest that. That’s the school’s rule. The same thing applies to me, so get your hiney out of bed, get where you’re supposed to be and get tested.”

In Diarra’s place, Jalen Cone appeared for the first time since an offseason foot injury limited his mobility. Initially, Cone was set to return against Radford last Wednesday until Young held him out; then after the Radford game, Young announced that he would be ready for Tech’s weekend in Bubbleville — which he never appeared in.

Now, finally healthy, Cone knocked some rust off after playing 14 minutes and converting one of his four shots that he attempted, all from behind the three-point line.

“Rust, it’s the reason I didn't want to throw him in the fire during Villanova and South Florida,” Young said. “I wanted to give him some time. He’ll round into shape really quick and y’all know that.”

Against a team like VMI, Virginia Tech can get away with shooting as poorly as it did on Thursday. Against the tougher competition coming up like Penn State in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge and Clemson to kick off ACC play, the Hokies will have to bring their A-Game night-in-and-night-out if they want to compete with the best that the conference has to offer.

“I think our team really stepped up and did what we had to do as a unit,” Mutts said. “It wasn’t just one person taking over the game, it was all five of us on the floor and every single person on the bench because without their energy, we’re anything as a team, so everyone came together and did what they had to do.”