Aaron McFarling

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BLACKSBURG -- About the time this campus finalized plans for the coronation, as fans compared flight fares to New York and checked the big city's hotel vacancies, a bus pulled up to Cassell Coliseum.

Inside was Virginia Tech's matchup nightmare.

Post men built like NFL tight ends, perimeter players who can and will shoot the 3, a coach with a solid plan defensively -- they all piled out. And a few hours later, they struck the Hokies right in the jaw.

It's over because Ole Miss ended it. You can point to Tech's spotty shooting or relative inexperience Wednesday, but the fact is, for the first time in more than month, the Hokies encountered a team that was tougher than they were. It showed up in the staggering rebounding margin (Rebels by 23) and ultimately on the scoreboard, where Ole Miss earned an 81-72 decision in the quarterfinals of the NIT.

And "earned" is the key word. A crowd of nearly 10,000 brought its best yet again. The Hokies started quickly, racing to a 12-3 lead in the opening minutes. They took care of the ball, turning it over a season-low five times.

But Ole Miss trumped all that with grit, banging inside for second, third, fourth opportunities to score. That opened up the perimeter, where the Rebel marksmen made 8-of-19 shots from 3-point range.

Tech was left stunned -- and impressed.

"Those guys were grown men," Tech senior forward Deron Washington said. "I think their smallest big man was bigger than our biggest big man."

And not a single one of them was shy. Neither were the guards, who were told by coach Andy Kennedy to be aggressive, to "shoot before you turn it over." And they did so even late in the second half, when Ole Miss was protecting a double-digit lead and a more conservative approach would have shortened the game.

What all this did was serve as a reminder of just how volatile college basketball can be. Great runs can end thanks to one bad matchup. A team that had won just two road games all year, as Mississippi had, can silence the most raucous environment if it brings the right attitude and enough strong bodies.

If this had happened in December, the Hokies could have shrugged it off and moved on to the next one. But without a "next one," it'll take some time for this loss to register with the younger guys -- and the not so younger guys.

"My plan wasn't to lose tonight," Tech coach Seth Greenberg said. "This will stick with me for a while."

But ultimately, that might be a good thing. A team that loses only one starter -- albeit a good one in Washington -- will need to remember how it got here and what it will take to go further.

The fact that Tech was favored by eight points against a 23-win team from a power conference shows you just how far the young Hokies had come. But as Greenberg noted, this 21-win season doesn't guarantee another one next year.

Freshman standouts Malcolm Delaney and Jeff Allen won't necessarily be better just because they're older.

A.D. Vassallo, whose hot shooting streak finally ended Wednesday, won't necessarily be a leader just because he's a senior.

Lewis Witcher and J.T. Thompson and Hank Thorns won't all make strides just by aging.

Those things will require effort, an element this Tech team never lacked in the last month of the season. And even though the bus left for New York without them, these Hokies have just started their journey.

It ought to be a fun one.