NEW YORK. They made some noise, ate New York-style pizza, drank a few bottles of Heineken, and showed a movie about Duke on a projector screen in the hotel conference room. Mike Young took off his shoes and slapped him on the chair next to him. He went to work.
“Shut the door and let’s lock ourselves up, boys,” Young told his staff.
The Virginia Tech coach and his guys continued to work until about 4:30 am Saturday. They slept for three hours, then got up and met again.
And again after that. They searched the lanes, nooks and crannies of the Duke’s defenses. Where could you use an elite player like Duke center Mark Williams? Yang’s employees found a way out. They also found evidence in Miami’s tape of how the Hurricanes did a good job of “tagging” Wendell Moore Jr. There was clearly a chance to get Duke to switch to the switches.
I had to accept a lot. But this game can mean anything.
“There is a stream of consciousness,” Young told CBS Sports in the hallways of the Barclays Center just before midnight on Saturday. “Things are flying everywhere. Some of them are really bad. But you’re just trying to get down. We got back there this morning at 8:30 and you’re closing in. We had three shooting sessions with our team. , 15 minutes, 20 minutes. I don’t hit them.”
Was the fate of Virginia Tech’s NCAA tournament hanging in the balance from Saturday night’s ACC championship game? We will never know. The Hokies ended all speculation with the spectacle of a win over Duke, running away 82–67, giving the program the first ACC Tournament championship in its history and the first conference tournament championship in over 40 years.
The team knew about 12 hours before the country saw what Virginia Tech was capable of on Saturday night. The tape told a story. The preparation was correct. Duke was there for the taking. The elder Storm Murphy acknowledged this.
“I think it started even on the way here to Brooklyn and even this morning,” he said. “I think a lot of the guys just had no doubt that we (won’t) lose and we fully realized that we had already won the game. We just had to do our job.”
Brackets are here! Receive back to your pools and join our Male and female calls for the chance to win a new truck and dream college basketball ride!
A confident but devastating quote. Virginia Tech did its best, saw the weaknesses, and spent hours anticipating victory. When the ball was knocked over, there were no surprises.
Four days ago it was a 19-12 team that was far from the bubble. It took him a crushing second-round ACC Tournament win against Clemson on Wednesday to survive overtime and keep his chances at the Big Dance. Young called the win “lucky as hell”. In the case of Young and the Hokies, it’s hard to see just how much of a role luck plays. This team ranked well in predictive metrics throughout the season, but lacked a characteristic win. At the last possible place on the schedule, it brought a decisive victory. One of the most unexpected and impressive ACC Championships in recent times. With a seventh-place finish, Virginia Tech became only the second team in ACC tournament history to record four wins in four days. Hunter Cattor scored a career-high 31 points to upset Duke as the Virginia Tech crowd was beside themselves with what was happening in front of them.
“He had an evening with Clay Thompson,” Duke coach Mike Krzyszewski said.
What a twist. These Hokies were once 2-7 on the ACC ledger. January was coming to an end and everything was gloomy.
“It was a dark place, we didn’t want to be there, we didn’t expect to be there,” Murphy said of the mid-season faint.
Since then, Virginia Tech has lost twice. He won 13 times. This would be the fifth consecutive NCAA Tournament because Young never let his team feel like they weren’t good enough.
“There is an inherent pressure,” Young told CBS Sports. “I don’t respond well to people who tear my ass. I want to encourage them. I have some really good guys.”
Nobody’s kicking Mike Krzyzewsi’s ass, but a loss like this would make Duke perform in the NCAA tournament in a different light. Winning a conference tournament is not a requirement for winning a national championship; many teams do not win the first without winning the second. But it is clear that Duke is not at the peak of popularity.
“We couldn’t stop them,” Krzyszewski said.
As coach K. said on Saturday evening, this team has achieved success by most indicators. They’re 28-6, the ACC regular season champions, and they’ll be awarded a quality seed on Sunday. It looked like number 2 before Virginia Tech put it in a blender. Now the Blue Devils could be number three, as Krzyzewski hinted at.
It is clear that the problem is in the defense. Yes, Young is a fantastic coach who is respected across the country for his style and insight. True, Virginia Tech may have been a bad match for Duke.
“They were like a well-oiled machine,” Krzyzewski said. “This is a team where you need two or three days of preparation to develop a defensive game plan and it still might not work. I think this is the team they thought they were at the beginning of the year.”
But that doesn’t mean the Hokies caught the Devils on a bad day. Duke has been slipping more defensively lately. K said this after losing to UNC to close out the season and the players know it all too well.
“I think our communication was a little off,” said Wendell Moore Jr. “I definitely feel like all of our guys put in the effort. I feel like we’re a little late on the negotiations, a little late on the switches. So, again, it’s all the little things that we can take away.”
His talent (this Devils team could have five NBA players on its roster) would be wasted if it couldn’t be used on both sides. Duke is ranked 44th in protection effectiveness on KenPom.com. The great Duke teams of the 80s, 90s, 2000s and 10s were very ferocious, fearless and defensively united. Meeting them was hell. These teams were the embodiment of Krzhizhevsky’s passion.
Can this team raise their ceiling? Duke’s had 34 games to show their will and desire. At this point, it’s been proven that he can’t be elite, and now he’s just good at this end of the floor sometimes. Krzhizhevsky did this for almost five decades. He knows that it is almost impossible to switch protection in the middle of March. Breaking bad habits is difficult. But he said it was doable. After the defeat of UNC, the team did almost no real training. This is important for a young team.
Krzyzewski said he was “very confident” that Duke would be able to change his defensive reputation “because we can practice.”
But, as he repeatedly admitted on Saturday, this is a young team of three freshmen, two of whom are still 18, and this imposes certain restrictions.
“An older team is better at coping with fatigue,” he said.
There is still a lot to learn, but not much time to get there. How much more can this team grow, now that there are no more losses without consequences?
“We’re 0-0,” Krzyzewski said. “I think we will be a pretty good seed and we need to move on and learn from that. But playing this game helps us because it’s the level of team and execution that you will need to beat. order to advance.”
This title game was a clash between two teams coming from different directions. They’ve ricocheted off each other, and now who’s to say which of them – either both or neither – will still be playing by the end of next weekend.
Young was taken aback by the idea that Virginia Tech could go all the way to the ACC title game and still possibly miss out on it. But this was not discussed.
“To hell with this stuff,” he said. “Our name will be called tomorrow and we will be happy wherever we go.”
Young, Murphy, Kattur, and Keve Aluma sat together on the dais, drenched in celebration. Now they are hoki, but once they were all wofford terriers. This is where Young coached, Aluma and Murphy played, and Cattur was in high school.
On Saturday night, they became ACC Champions. They beat Duke, becoming either the last or penultimate team to defeat Krzyzewski. Virginia Tech will be called “Sunday” and will enter the NCAA Tournament feeling as confident and free as any other club in this group of 68 teams.
Duke will enter with a target on his back, which is the biggest draw in this tournament despite not being the top seed, and is even unlikely to finish in the top six or seven in the overall selection committee order. Krzyzewski is arguably the greatest coach in college basketball history, and with only weeks left in his career, he now needs one of the best coaching maneuvers of his life to make sure this season ends the way he and his players hope. I will.