After a week off, the Virginia Tech men's basketball team hit the road for a crucial ACC game in Raleigh against North Carolina State. Badly in need of a road win over the Wolfpack to keep their NCAA Tournament realistic hopes alive, the Hokies failed to get the job done.
Virginia Tech dug itself another early hole that it was unable to climb out of. Trailing at the break by 12 points and despite cutting the deficit to three points in the second half, NC State recovered to post an 82-73 victory over the Hokies. Here are three discouraging observations from the Hokies' loss.
No life coming off the break
After a week off to recharge the batteries, you would have thought that Virginia Tech was going to come ready to go and make an early statement. That wasn't the case, and actually, it was the Wolfpack that did. The Hokies never recovered.
North Carolina State, which has won six straight games, jumped out to a 20-7 lead and kept Virginia Tech at bay the rest of the game. Every time Virginia Tech made any kind of a run, the Wolfpack answered it got the lead back up to double digits in the second half. It was a discouraging effort from Mike Young's team.
Virginia Tech's better players struggled in first half
I'm not sure the game plan was offensively for the Hokies, but whatever it was, it was a dismal first half. They were just 4-for-13 from behind the arc, and Amani Hansberry made just one of his nine field goal attempts. They shot 8-for-30 from the field, and if not for two Jailen Bedford 3-pointers, the 12-point deficit could have been a lot worse.
To their credit, they shot the ball better in the second half, but it was too little, too late. Hansberry finished with 19 points, going 8-for-10 from the field, and Tobi Lawal finished with 17 points. Freshman Neoklis Avdalas had 14 points, but he turned it over five times. It was an encouraging sign that he went 5-for-6 from the field.
NCAA Tournament hopes on life support
The loss was the Hokies' third in the last four games and dropped them to 5-6 in conference play and 16-8 overall. They next visit Clemson on Wednesday night, and they still have road games at Miami, North Carolina, and Virginia. They are quickly fading off the NCAA Tournament bubble unless they can pick up some big road wins. At this point, they might need to at least split those four games. If they are going to win some games away from Blacksburg, they need to have better starts. It's spiraling out of control and needs to be stopped quickly.