#63 R.P.I. Virginia Military Institute @ #3o4 R.P.I. Virginia Tech:

 

General Patton’s first military alma mater comes to down Saturday night down in the New River Valley after the farewell Frank Lane Stadium football game in hoops.

I know what the focus is here; rightfully so!
So do you.

Though we have a mini-me hoops preview to write concerning the Buzzing team that has attempted 70 FTA’s already this campaign to do with being +30 in rebounding margin! I like that, as both of these teams are 1-1 or even at .5oo.

However, hopefully this game does not stay even, for long.

V.M.I. at a glance:

Returning Starters=4
Injury(s) listed=o

V.M.I. Strengths:

• 2-headed mini-me scoring monster.
• Q.J. Peterson is back from his mid-season: “Medical Furlough”; whatever that meant. Q’ is a muscular almost Fs in football looking 6′ 185 lb. 3o4 native by way of Hedgesville, Wv. All-Southern Conference 1st-team pre-season average averaging 19.6 ppg as a super-soph. last year. Athletic combo G who fits the One better than anything else, and you’d better watch your wallet with Q’ in front of you as he comes with the defensive rep’ of a Pick. Although he has a rep’ as well for having never meet a shot he did not like or would not take. 33% tops for his collegiate career from the floor with only so-so range on his J.
• Julian Eleby is a 6’3” ‘tweener Swing who is part of V.M.I.’s 3-G starting rotation although he has logged front-line minutes in the past. Eleby can score both inside and out, plays a little bigger than his size. Physical strong baller for his metrics. FG shooting is up 15% from last year where he was a streaky hit-n-miss kinda scorer. Though he can suddenly go blow-torch hot and light your box-score up. 15+ right now as so far on ’15-16 he virtually can not miss.
• (that’s about it, until Marshall gets on this side of the bullet points)

Keydet Weaknesses:

• new coach, very near side of his system learning curve(s) and sorting thereof out; as it just 80 minutes beyond the debuting origin
• SIZE: as in I’d write about it if V.M.I. had, any. And I’m not making this up, I even double checked myself in triplicate… nobody north of 6’6” and nobody above 210 lbs.! (again, I’m not making that up!)
• Tim Marshall a senior 12 ppg off-G is way off thus far this year. Barely putting up 2 and change and this pure shooter needs to slump-bust in a hurry.
• very suspect looking rebounding team on paper. As I see zero true P/F’s –much less a true Five here.
• The 4 V.M.I. signees seem to be caught in a hopping Rat-Line, thus far. None of them living up to much of anything beyond Adrian Rich’s 5 ppg.

V.M.I. Bench: ( depth=3, 2 G’s 1 F )

Illation, conclusion (s) and OPT digits:

the takeaway:
The takeaway here is… this is a middle of the Southern Conference pack team, no matter which preview magazine you read; at best!

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As I was not quite seeing a mid-level mid-major So.Co. roundball team, at least not on pre-season paper. What I do see is a V.M.I. hoops team with a rookie coach (Dan Earl) at a-n-y level! So I’m not so sure you are gonna see the high flying 3 ring Cirque du Scorellie Offensive circus that you’ve seen incoming from Lexington before.

As Penn State just beat V.M.I. 62-50 in game one, and then V.M.I. offed little of Tusculum 88 to 76 in game no.2. Coach Earl has been harping about the lack of Lexington ball-movement in his motion offensive set in the first couple of games. And coach Earl was a dang fine Pt.G. in his own right for Penn State in the last 1990’s. Same as football where good Qb’s tend to make good offensive coaches, good Point-G’s tend to make good offensive hoops coaches.

***

The call… that being said, I only see a couple of Keydets (Q.J. and the Eleby kid) who would be in coach Buzz’s rotation at Tech. Maybe I’m too low vis-à-vis the pre-season wraps; although this Keydet squad just looks down to me, and they look easy to beat on the glass and in the paint beyond a sizzling hawt night from those 2 gunners at Guard.

(78% confidence interval)
Virginia Tech=82, V.M.I.=62

“LETS GO!”

“Hokies!”