The first ten minutes of the game involved some of the worst offensive basketball played by the Hokies in recent memory. Reffing notwithstanding, the Hokies missed many opportunities to score and only managed one point through the first 8 minutes of the game, virtue of starting the game 0-16 on field goals. But the Hokies battled back to get the deficit down to 2 before getting down by 4 at the break.
The second half featured a couple different Hokie teams on the court, ones that started to pull away, got down by 6, and then played even with a BYU team that they should have dominated. The last five minutes of the game were as close as two teams can play each other. Each basket scored was answered; both teams competing to the very end. With 10 seconds to go, the Hokies got a quick layup to cut the lead to 2. When the Cougars went to inbound the ball, the pass got deflected off of another Cougar and landed out of bounds; the Hokies got the ball back down by 2. The ball got passed out to Green, who drove it in for a lay-up that rimmed out. With only a second left, Brown took a very long 3 for the win, which also bounced off the rim. The final score was BYU 70, VT 68.
This team can’t make any excuses about losing this game. It was one that they easily could have won, despite the questionable calls by the refs. The team blew it in the opening eight minutes of the game; here’s to the Hokies winning the next one at Maryland on Saturday, January 28th at 2:30 pm.
