Nice, ugly road win for Virginia Tech
You’re not supposed to be impressed when a Top 10 team wins by three against a second-division team. And yet: I was duly impressed with Virginia Tech for what I viewed as a gritty 52-49 win at Georgia Tech on Wednesday night.
Yes, it was ugly: the Hokies shot 29.8 percent from the floor, were 5-for-27 from three-point range, and never could shake a team that lost by 10 at home to Gardner-Webb a month ago.
That all said, you can’t just win when you’re playing you’re a game.
The Hokies weren’t even playing their C- game.
The 52 points were a season low; the .852 points per possession more than three-tenths off their 1.169 points per possession season average.
Credit where credit is due: Virginia Tech won this one on the defensive end, holding Georgia Tech to a season-low 49, largely because the Hokies were able to force 18 turnovers.
This Virginia Tech team is now ranked 21st nationally by KenPom.com in defensive efficiency, up from 70th a year ago and 156th in 2016-2017.
Good teams can win when their offense isn’t clicking, and that’s what the Hokies did last night.
Side note: So, Cory doesn’t like numbers
I have to admit, not a big fan of Cory Alexander, and that’s hard, because he’s a UVA alum, and a Waynesboro native, and there aren’t a lot of us out there.
I really want to root for him, but he’s never offered up much, to me, in terms of analysis, and last night, I heard from him why.
He mentioned on the broadcast of Virginia Tech-Georgia Tech that he’s not a fan of advanced metrics, which is fine, but then he proceeded to make a big deal about how people who are don’t really know the game, and he can see with his eyes more than what people who see the game through metrics can ever see.
The only thing missing, in essence, was, get off my lawn.
So, Cory doesn’t like numbers. Got it.
Neither does he like providing anything resembling insight into strategy, or doing much of anything other than keeping the chair beside the play-by-play guy warm.
Not sure what value he brings, other than giving the play-by-play guy the opportunity to pretend that he was once some kind of a big deal.
That FSU win might not have been all that big a deal
UVA dismantled Florida State last weekend, to a point where you walked away from that game thinking, wow, UVA just did that to the #9 team?
And then the ‘Noles had to hold off a not-that-good Miami last night in a 68-62 home win that was a one-score game with 30 seconds to go.
The loss dropped Miami, which also has Ls to the likes of Rutgers, Yale and Penn, to 8-7 on the season.
Maybe FSU was overrated at #9.
(Maybe they’re overrated at #13.)
Column by Chris Graham
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