Our Hokies get their national TV chance inside the Cassell vs. Big-1o stalwart Whisky in the
first game of the so-called ACC Big-10 challenge.
Whisky is good, very good and has been very very good for several years now. 61 wins and a #1 ranking at one point in time over the last two seasons speaks rather eloquently to this fact.
But can we beat a 5-1 Badger hoops team who has been somewhat tamed by the fact that they have departed 6 high quality starters in the last two years? This Whisky basketball squad is very likely NC2A good; but are they good enough to beat us at Home in the Cassell?
Whisky has won all 5 games it was supposed to win; despite being taken to OT by 2-3 Iona team. Whisky has dropped the one game it was supposed to drop; to #2 ranked UConn by nearly 2o points.
So you’d have to say that 5-1 is exactly how good this Whisky team currently is. But lets quantify that a bit further.
Whisky at a glance:
- The Badgers are 59th best from downtown on offense.
- Whisky allows the 31st least points on defense in all of D-1.
- We/VT have about a 20 spot edge on the glass and nearly a 90 spot edge in defensive FG% allowed.
Whisky is a good, penurious and deliberate hoops team that prefers to play more of a halfcourt game
that caps things somewhere in the 60’s. Execution is the name of the game for these Badgers and they are lead by Queens New York high school phenom Trevon Hughes; who is more a a scoring point-guard; and by small-forward Marcus Landry on offense. These two are the only two Badgers scoring in double digits on the year; though the word balanced comes to mind when describing the Whisky offense this year. But the word deep does not ring a mental bell as Whiksy has a 7 man rotation that plays 18 minutes or more per game. Also, this years incarnation of Whisky is not quite the big, banging, slugging version of a Big-10 hoops team that one might imagine.
Hughes is the key to this game to me. Not only is he Whisky’s best one on one defender, he is a dribble-drive specialist who can either set himself up for point-blank scores or set the table for the aforementioned and athletic Landry or the other Forward Mr. Krabbenhoft. We must keep him out of the Key at all costs. If we do this we can control the offensive flow of the game.
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I have the feeling that we are due to finally play a good game and snap out of our Puerto Rico slump. Beating a quality Big 10 hoops team is nobodies sure thing; but I do ever so mildly give us the O&M nod on our homecourt on national TV in this one. Virginia Tech=67 Whisky=60.
b’street.