Hokies chasing NCAAs

BLACKSBURG -- A banner hangs from the ceiling of Cassell Coliseum, commemorating Virginia Tech's last trip to the men's basketball NCAA tournament, in 2007. Today, the Hokies will play under that banner again, as they begin their season at 4 p.m. against Brown, a season whose success will hinge almost entirely on whether they can return the NCAAs.

They will chase that goal over the next four months and 30 regular-season games, traveling to Philadelphia and Iowa and Boston and even Cancun, Mexico, in search of the feeling that has eluded them for the past two seasons: hearing their team's name called on Selection Sunday.

Despite losing leading scorer A.D. Vassallo, the Hokies have fresh hopes, to match their new motion offense, that they can avoid settling for a spot in the National Invitation Tournament for the third consecutive season.

"We didn't come to college to play in the NIT," said junior forward Jeff Allen. "So I think we're gonna make it to the NCAA tournament this year."

Tech coach Seth Greenberg feels less certain, at least at this point, about how the Hokies will run the motion. Its current incarnation in Blacksburg, he said, isn't exactly the well-oiled scheme that coach Bob Knight used to become a legend at Indiana. "We're force-feeding it to them at this point," Greenberg said. "It's not easy to understand, but it gives them more freedom."

The offense relies on unscripted player movement, spacing on the floor and effective use of screens -- both by the player setting them and the player waiting to be freed by them.

Greenberg is using the motion to get junior point guard Malcolm Delaney open. He is the Hokies' leading returning scorer -- 19.1 points per game last season, to Vassallo's 18.1 -- and their only proven perimeter shooter. Greenberg wants to move Delaney "to different spots so people can't mark him as easily. We want to be less predictable because people are going to add at least an extra half of a defender on him.

"I'm doing it, too, because I think it will make our defense better. If your offense gets better and you work against it every day, then your defense is going to get better."

That's important for the Hokies, whose field-goal percent defense increased from 40.7 in 2007-08 to 42.1 last season. Moreover, six of their 15 losses, including five of their first 10, came after their opponent hit a shot on its final possession.

Greenberg hammered defense into his players' heads during the preseason. They did stance work -- defensive technique drills without a ball -- five days a week, compared to three last year. Greenberg created a list of "absolutes" -- things that absolutely must happen in practice, such as closing out on defense with your hands up and diving to the floor for a loose ball. Team managers mark down when players miss an absolute, and they run as punishment.

Delaney noticed a difference the first day of practice. "People were just getting hurt because we were just taking charges," he said. "Everybody on the team tried to take a charge. Last year, we had maybe two or three people that even attempted."

Of course, this time of year, optimism abounds across the college basketball world. Every team is better and more disciplined than it was last season. But the only result that matters will come in March, when the Hokies will either be playing in the NCAA tournament or watching it on television and thinking, as junior forward J.T. Thompson did last season, "Man, with a couple of wins, we could have been there."

Said junior forward Terrell Bell: "It feels like now, we've got to do something special. We've got the team that can do it. I think we're ready. So we're gonna try to make it happen this year."