Friday, February 08, 2008
Worst outing for Hokie team in past 10 years
Aaron McFarling
Recent columns
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- All you could hear was Jerry.
Poor, poor Jerry. The rest of us could sit in stunned silence with our mouths agape, but Jerry Massey is a radio play-by-play man. He gets paid to describe things.
Even things his listeners back home in Virginia do not want to hear.
"Biggs throws it out of bounds," Jerry said solemnly into his microphone during the first half, "... and it's going to bounce all ... the .... way .... to ... me."
That began a run of six straight turnovers -- three by Virginia Tech, three by Wake Forest. A lost ball. A walk. A three-second call. Palming. Just bad, bad basketball. The timeout coordinator yawned a big, windy yawn. The crowd of 727 at Joel Coliseum, best described as "intimate" and "anti-raucous," politely declined to boo the two worst teams in the ACC.
All this might be funny if not for one fact: Thursday's 67-50 loss to Wake was the lowest night for the Tech women's basketball team in the past 10 years.
Yes. Worse than that 52-point home loss to Connecticut in 2001. Worse than that 23-point loss to William and Mary at Cassell Coliseum last year. Worse than any blowout, on any stage, at the hands of any other team.
The Hokies trailed this one by 30 points in the second half. Thirty. Against a team that, like Tech, had not won an ACC game this year. In fact, the Deacons had not won an ACC game in their previous 27 tries, dating back to February of 2006. Barry Manilow's "The Greatest Songs of the '50s" topped the album charts the last time Wake won a conference game.
Seriously. We looked it up rather than watch another series of turnovers.
So the Deacons were quite happy after this one, and they should have been. The Hokies were near tears, and they should have been.
Tech coach Beth Dunkenberger called it the worst loss in her four years on the job. She called it "frustrating" and "embarrassing."
"That's unacceptable," she said. "Maybe it's got to be a system where when I don't get what I need like this, then maybe I make their life miserable for the next three days. That might have to be the way it goes."
Has she ever taken those actions before?
"Not to extremes," she said. "But I'm ready to go to extremes now. If we can get it done in one good practice, that's fine. If it takes two, then we'll have to go two. If we have to go three a day, we'll do whatever it takes to get this team back to where it needs to be."
This game was an opportunity to show signs of hope, but you don't see them. Any momentum gained by taking fourth-ranked Maryland to overtime on Monday disappeared by late in the first half, when the Hokies had one fewer turnover (16) than points (17). They couldn't shoot. They couldn't hang on to the ball. They had no post presence at all, just a gaggle of perimeter-oriented players jacking up jumpers or throwing up wild shots on the drive.
Dunkenberger kept calling timeouts and asking for better execution, better effort.
She didn't get it.
"I tried to reason with them," she said. "I tried to be a little firmer. I'm not a huge screamer, but you can hear from my voice right now that they got more than an earful."
The season's final five games now get even more crucial for Dunkenberger and her staff. They have to show something.
Of all the sports that made the switch from the Big East to the ACC, women's basketball figured to have one of the easiest transitions. The Big East was a comparable league in women's hoops, and the Hokies always finished in the mid-to-upper tier. Boston College, a team similar to Tech when both were in the Big East, is 5-3 in the ACC after a 10-point loss to Duke on Thursday. The Hokies are 0-9.
Just as Ricky Stokes' struggles with the men's program raised Bonnie Henrickson's profile, Seth Greenberg's success has increased the heat on Dunkenberger. So have the successes of football, soccer, softball, golf and track and field. The message is clear: The Hokies are a player in the ACC. Given their tradition, they should be at least a middle-of-the-pack team in women's basketball, too.
Dunkenberger knows this. She's a former member of Henrickson's staff, after all, and helped build those solid 20-win teams. She expects much more and vows to work harder and harder until she gets it.
"This year's no different than any of the other 20 I've been coaching," she said. "I have high expectations, and I want us to be the best that I can be. Yes, we're young. Yes, we're developing kids. But we're not the best that we can be right now. I'm disappointed, and it starts at the top. It starts with me, because obviously I didn't get them ready to play tonight."
Five more games. Five more opportunities. Five more radio broadcasts.
Poor, poor Jerry.
