NIT First Round: Virginia Tech

Wednesday, March 15th, 2023
9:00 PM
Fifth Third Arena
ESPN2

The Bearcats (20-12 [11-7 AAC], NET #70, KenPom #54) will be making their first postseason tournament appearance since 2019 when they host Virginia Tech (19-14 [8-12 ACC], NET #76, KenPom #81) this Wednesday evening at Fifth Third.

After starting the season 11-1 and rising to #21 in the AP poll, the Hokies lost their first seven games of ACC play and would go on to finish 11th out of 15 teams in the conference.

Despite an impressive 4-6 record in Q1 games, Virginia Tech has only won two true road games all season - both against the two worst teams in the ACC: Notre Dame (93-87) and Louisville (71-54).

The Hokies are led by 5th-year grad transfer and 6'9 forward, Grant Basile, who averages 16.4 ppg and 5.3 rpg while shooting 39.3% from 3. Their second-leading scorer is 6'1 sophomore guard Sean Pedulla who averages 15.2 ppg, 3.8 apg, and 3.7 rpg while shooting 35.3% from 3.

Virginia Tech ranks 36th nationally in AdjO per KenPom and 136th in AdjD.

The winner of this game will take on the winner of #1 seed Rutgers and Hofstra who play tonight at 7 pm.

Landers Nolley spent his first two seasons at Virginia Tech under two coaches (Buzz Williams and current coach Mike Young). He redshirted in 18-19 on the Hokies' Sweet 16 team.

Nolley led a very young 16-16 team in scoring the following season (15.5 ppg) before transferring to Memphis.

This is a game we should win if we show up to play. Virginia Tech is #129 on Torvik over the last 10 games. They are good in several areas. They take care of the ball (top 15 nationally), and they also shoot it well and don't put opponents on the free throw line. But they have a bad defense overall, don't force turnovers, don't rebound well, and don't get to the line. In many ways they mirror us, but with slightly better shooting and much worse defense and rebounding.

A lot of their good shooting percentage is due to shot selection. They take 50% more shots at the rim than from midrange. We take only 8% more shots at the rim than midrange.

Based on the stats, they appear to use a point forward system. 6'7 forward Justyn Mutts leads the team in assists and is second in usage rate. He gets to the rim over 5 times per game and coverts 69%.

Mutts plays alongside 6'1, 6'3, and 6'4 guards, so they aren't a very big team. We should be able to control the boards and DDJ's size shouldn't pose much of an issue.

The over look like its easy money

Hofstra just took down Rutgers, so I think we would play Hofstra at home in the second round if we win tomorrow.

sedziobs said:

Hofstra just took down Rutgers, so I think we would play Hofstra at home in the second round if we win tomorrow.

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But apparently (according to Chad on his youtube show) building renovation timelines would prevent us from playing at Fifth Third in the second round. So who knows where it would be played. We'll have to beat VT to find out.

skyblade said:

But apparently (according to Chad on his youtube show) building renovation timelines would prevent us from playing at Fifth Third in the second round. So who knows where it would be played. We'll have to beat VT to find out.

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Would it be at Hofstra? I would be all for that honestly. Lower conference schools almost never get to host major conference teams. It would be cool for their fans.

sedziobs said:

Would it be at Hofstra? I would be all for that honestly. Lower conference schools almost never get to host major conference teams. It would be cool for their fans.

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It'd be my first time seeing UC in person since they beat Pitt 44-43 at MSG in Dec 2013.

Wes said its an honor to play in NIT. Its a slap in face to fan base to speak them words. Is it honor to make C's in school?

Queens_NYC said:

It'd be my first time seeing UC in person since they beat Pitt 44-43 at MSG in Dec 2013.

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Im hoping ride up also. Maybe last chance see us on East coast for couple years.

TheRealMick said:

Wes said its an honor to play in NIT. Its a slap in face to fan base to speak them words. Is it honor to make C's in school?

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I think it's better than UNC acting like they're too good for the NIT. That's a slap in the face to all of the conference champs like Hofstra. Other big name programs like Villanova, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Oklahoma St, and Oregon showed up.

sedziobs said:

I think it's better than UNC acting like they're too good for the NIT. That's a slap in the face to all of the conference champs like Hofstra. Other big name programs like Villanova, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Oklahoma St, and Oregon showed up.

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No its not. What donor seriously want to pay for NIT players? It championship or bust. If we accepting this why get rid of Mick?

-5.5

Way too many midrange looks. I guess that's what happens when posting Nolley is the gameplan. That's not the way to take advantage of our size. We should be going after the rebound after shooting threes or getting the ball to the block with PnR or high-low.

sedziobs said:

Way too many midrange looks. I guess that's what happens when posting Nolley is the gameplan. That's not the way to take advantage of our size. We should be going after the rebound after shooting threes or getting the ball to the block with PnR or high-low.

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Two turnovers and a TO on our inbounds plays under the offensive basket. Those should be for creating easy looks and UC can't even get the ball in bounds. Miller needs someone that can draw up sets.

Much better in the second half. We looked for threes and owned the glass. 52 second half points after just 29 in the first half.

VT showed glimpses of a team that won 4 Q1 games and made us really work on both ends of the court for large stretches.

Ultimately they stopped hitting shots and we hit our FTs down the stretch to see the game out.

Good win.

In the first half, we were 0-5 from three and only outrebounded them by 2. In the second half we were 6-14 from three and we outrebounded them by 11.

We took 27 midrange jumpers in this game compared to only 17 rim looks. The first half especially was midrange heavy. We've got to get away from that if we want to have a good offense. We were actually hitting a lot of midrange shots last night, but we ended up under 50% from there so it was still an inefficient shot. We put up 1.1 points per possession thanks to 13 offensive rebounds, only 10 turnovers, and 17-20 at the free throw line.