CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. – Once again, Virginia Tech comes away from a game looking like a team on the verge, but not breaking through to pull off a win. Their 67-66 loss at Boston College is just the latest close loss for a team that’s been a little snake-bitten.
Virginia Tech has lost seven games this season. Six of those losses have been by four points or less, with the aberration being their 25-point loss at Duke nearly four weeks ago. Conversely, they have won just two games that were decided by that margin. Knowing that, one might have an idea of what part of the pre-game talk in the locker room might encompass.
“I put certain things up on the board that I think are imperative to have a chance to win, and the last thing I put on there is finishing,” said head coach Seth Greenberg. “In this league you’ve got to finish.”
The Hokies certainly didn’t start well, although the Eagles didn’t exactly put on a clinic in the first half, either. In an ugly half, the Eagles held a slim lead, although the feeling was that they were up by more. The Hokies didn’t finally break through until later in the second half, and they had the lead in the final seconds. Then heartbreak struck again, as Rakim Sanders tipped in a Tyrese Rice miss with 0.4 seconds left.
This all began in the fourth game of the season, when Xavier beat the Hokies at the buzzer in San Juan. A week and a half later, a jumper with less than a second to go sank them against Wisconsin. Eight days after that, they had two chances in the final seconds at Georgia but were unsuccessful with both in a one-point loss.
That’s not all. Two nights earlier, they didn’t lose in the final seconds, but they blew a 15-point second-half lead against Clemson at home and lost by four. It wasn’t a last-second loss, but it stung all the same, and the loss at Boston College only adds to it.
“We played horrible, but at the end, we did what we were supposed to do to win the game, except get the rebound,” said Malcolm Delaney, who scored 14 of his 18 points in the second half. “Every game came down to either the last play or something like that, but we had the game. We just keep beating ourselves.”
The Hokies are still 4-3 in the ACC, including wins at Wake Forest and Miami, although the latter doesn’t look quite as good right now. While no games promise to be easy the rest of the way, the last five in particular will surely be daunting, as they play Florida State twice, go to Clemson and host Duke and North Carolina. Five of the remaining nine are at home, and they have a week before their next game to get practice time and work on ways to finish games.
The week off might also be a time to keep some perspective. Greenberg is doing just that, remembering that games in the ACC are like this in 2008-09 and there’s always the fine line between winning and losing.
“We lost a killer game to Clemson, then we came on the road and played a very good Boston College team, and we lost a one-pointer,” Greenberg said. “Does that make us a bad team? I told our guys before the game, it’s really simple. When we were up 15 against Clemson, in the back of my mind I was thinking, we’re good. This is a good team. That hasn’t changed. Just because we lost a heart-breaker there, and just because we lost on a tip-in, does that make us a bad team? No. Not as good as I’d like us to be.”
It also means the bottom line doesn’t tell the whole story of this team. It’s a young team, but one that’s in just about every game, which can be a blessing and a curse. They have a chance to win, but they could easily lose as well, and losing such games can take a toll.
And it also means that they’re a team on the verge. At some point, they might well turn those close losses into wins.
