Mike Young Figures Out The Eagles, Virginia Tech Puts Down Boston College 76-71

Virginia Tech (12-7, 4-4 ACC) soared over Boston College (11-8, 2-6 ACC) in a blacked-out Cassell Coliseum on Tuesday night by a final score of 76-71. The Hokies managed to pull off what some thought was the unthinkable, but in this case, the unthinkable isn’t anything spectacular.

The Eagles have given the Hokies some problems lately and have been a thorn or claw, in this case, in the side of Head Coach Mike Young. Coming into tonight, Young was 0-5 against the Eagles in his Hokie tenure, until some timely buckets and clutch free throws down the stretch ended the BC curse once and for all.

“You know, we’ve had some good games; you know, I’ve been around here five years now; any of these ACC wins, I don’t give a damn who it is, what it is, where it is; sign me up,” said Young.

“We beat a good team; we got Georgia Tech in here in 72 hours, and we look forward to that opportunity.”

The running theme with this Virginia Tech team is that in order for them to win, they must play as a team. Simple, right? It might seem obvious that a team must play as a cohesive unit in order to win the game, but that is especially true with the way the Hokies do things.

Four members of Tech scored in double figures, with two more not falling far behind. To add to that, three players had three assists or more in the contest. It's a constant that doesn’t happen every game, but when it does, it’s a thing of beauty.

“Well, it’s good balance,” said Young. Without that, they can load up on Cattoor or Pedulla. We got good production as we do every night.”

“I think we got 18 points and nine rebounds, a pretty good number from our frontline, so that’s something you have to consider. Tyler Nickel didn’t ring the bell like he has of late, but that is going to be rare. The kid is playing great basketball for us.”

This game brought along many challenging stretches where it seemed like the Hokies would return to their same old ways and fall once again to the Eagles of Boston College, but that wasn’t the case.

Every player executed their role to their utmost potential, and when plays needed to be made, it wasn’t one man doing all the work; it was a community effort.

“It’s a very important part of the game; you've got to get contributions from everyone and get a couple of guys healthy moving forward.”

Don’t get it twisted; this game was not easy by any means, but in this conference, you take what you can get, and Virginia Tech sure as heck got it through many avenues.

The Hokies forced 15 turnovers and shot an angelic 16-16 from the charity stripe, including clutch trips from Robbie Beran and Hunter Cattoor down the stretch to seal the game for Tech.

“They all have shot their foul shots well,” said Young. Rob steps up, gets both of them down, looked cool as a cucumber. You know the luxury of old people, and Robbie has played in a lot of big ball games.”

“That’s a real luxury, you know, to step to the line and get those down. It can take you out of the game; it can get you over the hump. It got us over the hump tonight.”

Of course, there are always things the team needs to work on, as the team wasn’t perfect tonight. One of which was in the rebounding department. The Hokies lost the rebounding battle -13 and gave up easy second-chance paint points, but Mike Young seems to have an idea on how to fix the problem.

“We’ve been a pretty good rebounding team, and they (Boston College) are big men,” said Young. They’re bigger than we are. We’ve seen other teams that are bigger than we are, and we rebounded well.”

“Are we escaping the lane to box out? Are our boxouts physical enough? That's something that we will address and have to do a better job of moving forward.”

Virginia Tech came out with a much needed win and intends to not get stung this upcoming Saturday as the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (9-10, 2-6 ACC) fly into Cassell Coliseum coming off of back-to-back conference losses. The game is set to tip-off at 5:00 p.m. on the ACC Network.