Improving Hokies come up short

BLACKSBURG Over an hour before tipoff, a ticket scalper outside Cassell Coliseum was wondering if he’d be able to unload his entire stash for Tuesday’s Virginia-Virginia Tech game, asking a reporter what type of crowd the Hokies were expecting for the night.

No matter the mark-up, any customers he found got their money’s worth.

For the fourth straight home game, the improving, emerging Hokies played their opponent to within a basket.

For the first time in that stretch, Virginia Tech was on the wrong side of the narrow margin, falling 61-59 to rival Virginia.

“We did a lot of good things,” Tech coach Seth Greenberg said. “I thought we played with great spacing and pace for the majority of the game.”

The last possession Tuesday? Maybe the Hokies’ worst of the night. It included a near turnover on the wing, followed by freshman forward Dorian Finney-Smith actually turning the ball over with three seconds to go.

It was a play designed to get Erick Green driving to the basket. When that was closed off, the ball came to Finney-Smith. Greenberg said he would have liked to have seen Finney-Smith head toward the rim.

“You want to try to get downhill,” Greenberg said. “I’m not sure he felt he was on balance or low enough to go the basket. In that situation, you want to go downhill and try to make a play.”

Before that miscue, the game was playing out like Virginia Tech’s last three home wins.

Tech (15-13, 4-9) dropped Clemson 67-65 on Feb. 4 to start the home win streak. They nipped Boston College on a Dorian Finney-Smith stick-back in the final seconds on Feb. 12. Saturday, they clipped Georgia Tech in overtime on Dorenzo Hudson’s buzzer-beating 3-point heave off a broken play.

Monday, Virginia coach Tony Bennett pointed out the Hokies “are dangerous at home.” And Tuesday, his Cavaliers (21-6, 8-5) were in peril in the waning seconds, with Tech having the ball and a chance to win yet again. 

For a while, the frustrated fans at Cassell Coliseum could see why Greenberg keeps telling anyone and everyone how much he likes this Hokies team.

Against one of the ACC’s – and the nation’s -- premier defensive teams, the Hokies, looked, well, surprisingly effective in the first half. They shot 55 percent from the floor in before the break, hitting six of their nine 3-point attempts. That’s stunning long-range production from a team that came in averaging six 3’s a game.

And it was some of the youngest Hokies that helped get them off to the fast start. Finney-Smith scored all eight of his points in the first half. Same for freshman guard Marquis Rankin.

But in the second half, Tech cooled off, shooting just 35 percent from the field and going 2-for-7 from beyond the arc.

“I thought we played good defense in the first half,” UVA coach Tony Bennett said. “They hit some really tough shots. In the second half, I thought we were there on the catch more. … When you’re there on the catch, it just makes it harder.”

No longer in a shooting zone, Tech turned to junior guard Erick Green – the closest thing this team has to a go-to scorer. He put up 17 of his 19 points after the intermission.

“Erick made some great plays down the stretch,” Greenberg said. “He made some really, really good plays down the stretch.”

It wasn’t enough.

Not when a cold-stretch in the final 13 minutes helped UVA to an 11-0 run. That made Tech a tough loser, failing to return the favor for last year’s Cavaliers’ sweep of the Hokies.

Still, it was worth the price of admission.