And you think this season might be bad, could be worse...

[Spotcheck Billy]

BLACKSBURG —Virginia Tech pulled off quite a coup when it hired Buzz Williams as its men’s basketball coach, but his first season with the Hokies could be a rough one.
  
The Hokies have been picked to finish 14th in the 15-team ACC by both The Sporting News and Athlon Sports preview magazines. Tech was picked 12th by Lindy’s Sports, although that magazine was written before Ben Emelogu and C.J. Barksdale left the Hokies.
 
“We are undersized. We are the underdog,” Williams said this month. “We have to play hard. We have to be the first to the floor. We have to take charges. We have to be the first team ready. … Our ball pressure has to be elite level. All of the little things that we can control that have nothing to do with size, that have nothing to do with points per possession, that have nothing to do with what you were ranked when you were recruited, we have to be incredibly, incredibly good [at] — not on game day, every day.”

Emelogu and Barksdale were the last two of five players who chose to exit the team after Williams was hired in March. Two other members of last year’s team graduated. Only four of the 10 active scholarship players on this season’s roster saw action for Virginia Tech last season.

Virginia Tech has finished in the ACC cellar the past three seasons — in Seth Greenberg’s final season as coach (2011-12) and in both of James Johnson’s seasons as coach.

Williams is not distancing himself from recent history.

“You can’t just ignore the past,” Williams said. “We have finished last the last three years. Not some other people — if you’re here, it’s us. So we, the Hokies, have finished last. So we don’t need to ignore that. But we need to figure out how we can continue to get better.”

The long-term outlook for the Williams era could be promising. The only seniors on the roster are walk-on Christian Beyer and former walk-on Will Johnston.

Half of the team’s 10 active scholarship players are freshmen, including redshirt freshman Malik Mueller. Two other members of the team, transfers Seth Allen and Zach LeDay, must sit out this season — but each has two seasons of eligibility left.

So in a few years, the preseason expectations for the Hokies could be much higher than they are this year.

“If those five freshmen can grow and improve and mature and their bodies change and their games change, … two years from now it’s a completely different media day, as long as we’re supplementing around those guys as the grow up,” Williams said at the team’s media day this month.

“Do I think that it’s going to be a different media day two years from now? I do. Is that arrogant? I’m not saying any of it in an arrogant way.

“Maybe my only talent is I have a pulse on people. … I believe in those kids. Do we need to get better? Absolutely. If we don’t get better, we won’t have a different media day two years from now.”

Williams has a proven track record, having led Marquette to five NCAA tournament appearances in the past six seasons.

“He’s a high energy guy,” point guard Devin Wilson said. “The high energy that he brings radiates on to us.

“When you’re in our practice gym, you can just feel the energy that is going around. People really have a sense of urgency all the time.”
http://www.roanoke.com/sports/colleges/va_tech/hokies-could-be-in-for-tough-basketball-season/article_62ceb954-d577-5158-b943-f2340904b8e9.html

[MUfan12]

Why?

[4everwarriors]

Bumstead's got that chit eatin' grin goin' on, aina?

[ChicosBailBonds]

Send it to the....

[Dawson Rental]

Vintage Buzz:

“Maybe my only talent is I have a pulse on people. … "

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

Whoops! Meant to click on muscoop, not VTscoop

[Dawson Rental]

Whoops! Meant to click on muscoop, not VTscoop

Thread Nazi.

[Benny B]

Thread Nazi.

Godwin.

[The Lens]

Anybody gotta James Madison preview? 

[Benny B]

Anybody gotta James Madison preview? 

I'll let you know if I come across one as I feverishly scour the interwebs for a Maryland-Eastern Shore preview.

[Eldon]

"We are the underdog"

Q: Hey Buzz, have you sold your house in Milwaukee yet?
A:  Did you not hear me?  I am the underdog.

[Daniel]

Bumstead's got that chit eatin' grin goin' on, aina?

He should be wearing a gold suit with that maroon tie.

[Tums Festival]

Bumstead's got that chit eatin' grin goin' on, aina?

And a hint of an eerily Crean-like tan.

[Dawson Rental]

Godwin.

"The rules of snippy online debates, though, are nothing compared to public discourse. The Anti-Defamation League has beaten the hell out of anyone who's dared use a Nazi analogy over the last decade. A Republican state senator got it for calling abortion a "holocaust." Wal-Mart got it for running a newspaper ad that showed a book burning. Critically, the ADL launched a complaint in 1997 when the Random House Webster's College Dictionary got hip to slang and expanded the definition of "nazi" to include a person who's "fanatically dedicated to or seeks to control a specified activity." ADL President Abe Foxman raged: "If someone can be a 'soup Nazi' or a 'traffic Nazi,' how bad could the real Nazis have been?"

Pretty bad. To recap, the Nazi party took over Germany via a violent rigged election, then banned all rival political parties. They systematically shut down all voices of opposition, killing journalists, creating Nazi churches, and exiling academics. While gearing up for a war of conquest, they introduced eugenics into their school system, took all rights away from Jews, and brutalized other non-Germans. For dessert they launched a six-year war that killed millions of people, enslaved millions more, and systematically exterminated entire ethnic groups before retreating to a bunker and demanding their citizens commit mass suicide.

You can't really downplay this stuff or cheapen it through overuse. Think about this another way: You can say your sandwich tastes like a urinal cake. This emphasizes that the sandwich is truly awful, and gives your listener an idea or image of exactly how awful. But you don't lose sight of how bad the urinal cake can be. It's a poisonous sanitary product, and nothing will ever change that."

http://reason.com/archives/2005/07/14/hands-off-hitler

[willie warrior]

Send it to the....

Absolutely agree. But Sultan is the final authority on that.

[g0lden3agle]

Absolutely agree. But Sultan is the final authority on that.

What are you trying to prove?

[MU82]

<<We have to take charges. >>

Lucky for him, Vander has no eligibility left!

[GooooMarquette]

Bumstead's got that chit eatin' grin goin' on, aina?

You would too if you could finish 13th or 14th in a 15-team league and be viewed as a savior.

Hell, they could suck for five seasons and the VT fans will still be saying "at least he isn't Greenberg."