Virginia Tech men look for an NIT road win at Ohio State

In the middle of the NCAA Tournament Saturday night, the Virginia Tech men’s basketball team will play their second-round NIT game at Ohio State. Coming off a 74-58 first-round victory over Richmond Tuesday night at Cassell Coliseum, the Hokies head to Columbus to play a Buckeyes team that survived a scare from Cornell, 88-83, Tuesday night.

One issue that some Virginia Tech fans are going to have is watching the game. The will be broadcast on ESPN+ at 7 o’clock, the network’s streaming service. In this day and age, it’s not a great look that the game is basically behind a paywall. Yikes.

It was a rough start for the Hokies against Richmond as a Lynn Kidd elbow jumper was the only points they had after starting 1-for-15 from the field. As the opening half went along, they were able to start knocking shots down and getting stops on the defensive end. Virginia Tech took a 33-28 lead into halftime after scoring 31 points over the final 12 minutes.

If there is one thing we know about the 2023-24 Virginia Tech men’s basketball team is that they struggle mightly away from Blacksburg. True road games, neutral site games, it didn’t matter too much for Mike Young’s team as they failed to get the job done on a lot of nights. In the overall big picture, it was one of the reasons they failed to make the NCAA Tournament, instead settling for a second straight NIT bid.

A lot of teams that don’t get into the 68-team field of the NCAA Tournament sometimes don’t have the same emotion and compete that they would have had in the big tourney or even in the regular season or conference tournament. The Hokies get a chance to play another game and win a game on the road to get to the third round next week.