After hearing their names called last Sunday night during the NCAA Tournament selection show, the Virginia Tech women's basketball team was back in the 68-team field after missing it as the first team out last year.
The writing was on the wall leading into the selection show that the Hokies are going to fall in the 8-9 game of one of the regionals. That was the case when they drew Oregon in the Fort Worth 3 Regional. They traveled to Austin, Texas, the home of the top-seeded Longhorns, for a Friday afternoon tilt.
Oregon proved to be too much for Virginia Tech as they overwhelmed the Hokies at times in what was a 70-60 Ducks win. The loss ended the Hokies' season, the second under Megan Duffy, at 23-10. After the loss, the former Marquette coach made a guarantee for next season.
Virginia Tech coach Megan Duffy makes guarantee for the 2026-27 season
This year, Duffy started putting more of her fingerprints on the program after taking over for Kenny Brooks. He left the program a little bare when he bolted for Kentucky, but Duffy has got some key retention from Brooks' final roster in Blacksburg, mainly with Carys Baker and Carleigh Wenzel.
Duffy knows that the current state of college sports is different from when she played at Notre Dame. NIL and the Transfer Portal have taken over college sports, which makes it hard to retain players. Duffy knows it.
“This is a different time in college basketball. You have no guarantees the next year what your roster is going to look like, who’s going to be back,'' said Duffy. "I think we’ve got the right people in the room in the locker room. We’ve got the right leaders.
“We’re going to take the positive things that happened and keep that momentum, and then — I’ll guarantee you something from me — I’m going to try everything I can to fix the things that didn’t go well.”
There is no doubt that Duffy will do that. Hopefully, she does it while retaining a lot of key players from this year's team, starting with Wenzel, Baker, and Mackenzie Nelson. If she can do that and get some key portal pick-ups, then there is no reason that Hokies can't be back in the tournament next season and put together a nice run in March.