What's Wrong with the Hokies?

Since there aren't many games going on this week, that gives me a little time to devote to a topic near and dear to my heart: the Hokie basketball team. I have seen the team come a long way since I started following it in 2002. I really thought that the Hokies would never make the tournament again after their last appearance in 1996. But they managed to grow the program to where it has at least earned respectability.

All that being said, this season came in with as high expectations as I'd ever seen for the Hokies. And with a 4-4 record to date, there has been much groveling and complaining and jumping off the bandwagon. So it begs the question: what's wrong?

The main reason I can point to is chemistry. The guys on the floor don't seem to have the same level of trust that they had last year. And that is puzzling, considering it is the same five guys out there. They aren't moving the ball on offense and working together to generate turnovers on defense. On a 3 and 1 break, the ball handler will shoot a contested shot rather than pass to the open man. When guys are getting screened on defense, another defender is not helping out to pick up the open man. And I could go on and on. The team just doesn't look like it's playing together. It has in moments this season: like the last 5 minutes against Oklahoma State and the second half against UVA.

Another problem: the inability to come through down the stretch. The times that the Hokies have performed well in the past have been when they have been able to take over the last few minutes of a game to close out the other team. They did this nicely against Oklahoma State. But against Purdue, they had a four point lead and the Boilermakers on the ropes. But they didn't seem to know what to do with the ball in the last couple minutes and lost. Against UVA, they had chances to tie or take the lead and really deal a knockout blow, but didn't.

You can point to one player in one game and say "Well Malcolm played poorly" or "Dorenzo had a bad game." But good players are going to have bad games. It happens all the time. Good teams are able to win despite this. Their other players (who aren't slouches - they are scholarship athletes at an ACC school) pick up the slack. This has also been lacking.

The last reason I will point to is the sheer lack of manpower. Allan Chaney went out, then J.T. Thompson - both before the season. Cadarian Raines missed a significant amount of time. And just this week, Ben Boggs announced he will transfer. That leaves 10 scholarship players. If Raines has to miss a lot more time, that number is down to 9. Nine scholarship players is practically unheard of - a lot of teams have 13! It is very difficult to win with that lack of depth, and getting no spark off the bench.

One last point: there has been a lot of criticism of Seth Greenberg on Virginia Tech message boards. I don't know whether Seth is the problem or not. All I know is that his coaching move at the end of the Oklahoma State game single handedly won the game. He has talked about players needing to be more about the team than themselves - is that coaching? Maybe. Maybe Seth Greenberg has hit his ceiling as a coach and the Hokies need another coach to take that next step. But you better believe he is working his heart out to try to come up with a fix.

The good news is, there is plenty of time. The Hokies have 15 more conference games to play, many against teams with inferior talent. They can get out of their funk. But the road back starts with the next game.