My man Alan wrote to ask why there wasn’t a question about Malik Thomas sitting for an uncomfortable 13-minute stretch of Virginia’s three-OT loss at Virginia Tech yesterday.
Alan’s comment:
“Malik can play a little out of control at times, but it was criminal he sat that long. Naturally, no one asked.”
This is where I remind myself why I stopped doing the postgame pressers years ago.
Press conferences are performance art: the role of the people asking the questions is to tee up quotes about nothing of consequence, and the coaches (and politicians, on the conference calls that I gave up being a part of years ago) is to deliver the canned answer.
ICYMI
- UVA Basketball: Bully ball doesn’t work if you let the other guys be the bullies
- UVA Basketball: Hokies ride advantage at stripe to upset of #21 ‘Hoos
- UVA Basketball: Virginia Tech upsets #21 ‘Hoos in three OTs, 95-85
With respect to the Malik Thomas issue, how is it that there wasn’t even one question to Ryan Odom about why the guy who had 26 points in 29 minutes sat for the final 3:04 of regulation, the entirety of the first OT, and almost the entirety of the second OT?
Even the goofballs on the TV broadcast raised issue with whatever was going on there.
If postgame pressers were real Q&As, that should have been question #1 – and if Odom hemmed and hawed his way to a non-answer, questions #2 and #3 should have pressed him on the issue.
I ran the post-VT presser through an AI transcription program, and here’s what the scribes asked instead:
- Were you worried about Tech’s ability to offensive rebound?
- Did their defense do anything to make it a tough shooting day for you guys?
- Virginia Tech got into the bonus about five minutes into the second half. You know, what do you guys need to do to stay more disciplined going forward?
- You’ve been here before, served as an assistant under Seth Greenberg, what’s it like coming back here?
- I forget which overtime it was, the first or the second. You don’t have any timeouts left, and there’s like, three and a half seconds left, (Devin) Tillis throws the length of the court pass. I think it’s to (Thijs) de Ridder, yeah, as diagrammed, I know you’re not expecting an airball.
- What does a game like this say about the value of winning on the margins, or how the margins and the little things add up, particularly in conference play?
Nothing about Thomas, nothing about the discrepancy in fouls vis-à-vis the shooting zone numbers – Virginia had more shots at the rim and in the paint; Tech hoisted 15 midrange jumpers.
Nothing about his team being bullied by a team that needed OT to beat Elon at home a week ago.
Part of me thinks, I need to join in on these things, just to ask the obvious questions.
And then a bigger part of me thinks, meh, they don’t want to answer those questions.
Nobody, in my experience – and I write about high-level college sports and high-level state and national politics – wants to answer tough questions.
One other reader email, from Bryan:
“How good is Virginia Tech? Was Mike Young one of the coaches you don’t care for?”
First one is the tough one there: I don’t know how good Tech is. They’re better with Tobi Lawal, I know that.
The freshman center who had a double-double yesterday barely played until yesterday, maybe Young needs to give him more minutes going forward.
On Young: no, not a fan.
Listening to him from his interviews, he comes across to me as a know-it-all.
The guy always seems like he’s talking down to people.
I mean, now, actually, maybe I shouldn’t be critical there; the people he’s talking down to there are the same people asking the dumb questions that were thrown at Odom postgame yesterday.
It probably is annoying to have to have to spend time being queried by what’s left of our media corps – a motley crue of basement-dwellers and guys who should be collecting pensions, if only the private-equity firms hadn’t long since burned through them.
I digress.
I’ll give Mike Young this, though: he’s a good x’s and o’s coach.
Not a good CEO coach, which is what you need at an ACC school.
He’s been to two NCAA Tournaments in his seven seasons at Tech, both one-and-dones, the last one back in 2022, and he hasn’t been close since 2022.
That’s on his ability to recruit, though to be fair, it’s not like basketball coaches at Virginia Tech have a lot in terms of resources to be able to recruit with.
Virginia Tech has been invited to six NCAA Tournaments this century, and it’s not because of the guys they’ve had coaching – Greenberg somehow only got one invite; Buzz Williams got three.
Tech Athletics has been we do more with less forever now.
So, maybe me giving Young the business for not being a good CEO coach is harsh.
X’s and o’s, though, no question, the guy can coach basketball.
Virginia is next-lever better roster-wise than what he threw out there yesterday, and Young won because he coached circles around Ryan Odom.
I think I just talked myself into liking Mike Young, incidentally.
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Chris Graham
