Leading Syracuse by nine points with just over a minute left, it seemed like the Virginia Tech men's basketball team was going to close out a huge road win without any problems on Wednesday night. Guess again. It's not in the 2025-26 Hokies' DNA to win a game comfortably. It's just not.
Instead of hitting free throws, taking care of the basketball, and making good decisions, Virginia Tech let the Orange into the game. How? Well, in an all-too-familiar way. Aside from the missed free throws, maybe the two biggest mistakes happened on the defensive end of the floor.
First, inbounding the ball, they kept throwing the ball into the corner, creating an easy trap for Syracuse. They got out of it once, but couldn't do so a second time, which led to a turnover. Then, seconds later, an Orange layup cut the deficit to a one-possession game. Before that, Ben Hammond, who scored a game-high 24 points, fouled a 3-point shooter and allowed three free Orange points with the clock stopped.
After the game and joining the Virginia Tech Sports Network broadcast, head coach Mike Young didn't beat around the bush on the mistakes his team made in the 76-74 victory.
“I’ve got really smart people,” said Young. “I’ve got a really high-IQ basketball team, and we do some of the dumbest daggone things. That just infuriates me. We had a godawful shot over there from Ben Hammond, who was such a great player, and man, he played good basketball tonight. (A) Terrible turnover there, just sloppy. Ben fouls a 3-point shooter. You can’t do things like that.
“And we’ve been in enough of those situations through (20) total games now that that’s got to be cleaned up, and that is as much coaching as it is anything, so I’ve got to do a better job with it as well.”
Look, the JMA Wireless Dome has been a house of horrors for not only Young and the Hokies' men's basketball team, but all sports. The women went there earlier this month and picked up a huge win, and now they collected a huge win for their tournament résumé.
They almost went down a road that was going to lead to nothing but something bad, but they were able to grind out a win. Now it's back to the gym and working on free-throw shooting and other areas that need to be cleaned up ahead of a massive showdown at Louisville on Saturday.