Buzzketball Disappoints Against Boston College, Loses 59-66

New coach, new players, same struggles against a familiar opponent.

After two consecutive tough losses to potential one seeds, the Virginia Tech men's basketball team was supposed to right the ship on Monday. The game was in Cassell Coliseum, where the Hokies have played their best basketball all year. The opponent was Boston College, one of the worst squads in the conference.

Never a group to adhere to conventional thinking, Tech lost another one. This time they fell to the Eagles 59-66.

It looked like it wasn't going to be Buzz Williams' night early on. His guys couldn't hit a bucket in the first half, while Jim Christian's team was doing things like draining threes with their seven-footer. The Eagles lead ballooned to 22 before the home squad could mount any type of comeback.

That doesn't mean Buzz's bunch didn't try. The Hokies cut the deficit to six thanks to an Adam Smith triple in the final two minutes, but simply couldn't pull themselves over the top.

What has to be frustrating for the coaching staff is that they did many of the things one would think they needed to do to win. Tech won the rebounding battle, had the better turnover margin and held a surefire All-ACC player in Olivier Hanlan to 15 points on 13 shots. Checking all of those boxes are nice, but if the opponent shoots like the Eagles did early on it makes everything else moot.

"[Boston College] scored 11 consecutive baskets," Williams said. "We gave up more points in transition in the first half than we have averaged for a game. No energy, no fight, non-competitive, quiet, no good."

Though Smith got it going and finished with 22 points, no other Hokie had more than eight. After seeing great performances from the young fellas over the last five days, the freshman started to look again like, well, freshmen.

Justin Bibbs' jumper seemed flat for the second game in a row and it showed in his box score. The forward hit his first two jumpers but missed his last four, continuing a concerning mini-slump that started in Charlottesville.

Jalen Hudson has had a tough go of it after his super hero performance against Duke. In his last two outings the youngster has gone 0-5 from the field for a grand total of one point. This continues the maddening trend we hear Buzz talk about all the time, showing flashes of the talent that makes him so electrifying and then disappearing for long stretches.

I know this loss is disappointing to everyone, especially because things were just starting to look favorable. If anything, it simply confirms much of what our eyes and brains tell us about this group. If we're just looking at a talent comparison, the Hokies were much more impressive than Boston College. But as we all know, it goes beyond perceived advantages on paper.

They're young, talented and inconsistent. Those three things combined can result in a near-stunner against the Blue Devils on Wednesday, but then follow it up with this absolute stinker of a performance on Monday.

Now, the Hokies have sunk to their all-too-familiar place at the bottom of the conference. It may not be what our hearts want us to think, but right now Virginia Tech is the worst team in the ACC. They've won the race to last place and are sitting exactly where many fans thought they'd be in November.

This one was a bad one, and it's easy to get caught in the idea of finishing dead last four years running. But anyone who watched many of those games over that timeframe can tell you the difference between 2015 and any of the seasons prior.

There's talent in Blacksburg. There's also growing to do, evolving to happen and new players to bring into the fold. But for the first time in the last four years, I have more positive things to say about the season than negative.

There are just a few more games left in Buzzketball year one, and I can't wait for each and every one of them. Sure, this was another bad result in a season full of moral victories. But for whatever reason, I just can't stop coming back.

Is it the talent? The promise of a program that's still in its infancy?

Maybe it's just that my heart keeps telling me that things will go right, and I can tune in every game knowing two things. This team will play hard, and we have no idea what's going to happen.