Excruciating Saturday for Hokies

BY NATHAN WARTERS
twarters@newsadvance.com
(434) 385-5540

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Saturday must have been excruciating for Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg and his players.

The Hokies, who still appear to have a hold – a tenuous hold – on an NCAA tournament at-large bid, saw several teams pull off upset wins to push them closer and closer to the Big Dance’s proverbial bubble.

They’re squarely on the bubble now, thanks to wins by Houston in the Conference USA championship game and Washington in the Pac-10 championship game. Neither of those teams were even on the NCAA tournament radar until pulling off upset wins against certain at-large teams UTEP and Cal, respectively.

Then there were bubble teams Mississippi State and Minnesota, who recorded improbable wins Saturday over No. 20 Vanderbilt and No. 6 Purdue, respectively.

Virginia Tech was helped by Illinois and Rhode Island, a couple of borderline NCAA tournament teams that lost.

What all this means is anybody’s guess. It just gives the Hokies even more heartburn heading into today’s selection show at 6 p.m. They’re still in the NCAA tournament picture, but as Saturday proved, a couple of results could knock them out.

Divine intervention
Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt was asked Saturday what he and his team could do to prepare for Duke’s high-scoring trio of guards Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith and forward Kyle Singler in today’s ACC Tournament championship game.

“Pray,” Hewitt said with a laugh.

Scheyer, Smith and Singler combined to score 55 of Duke’s 77 points in its semifinal win over Miami on Saturday.

The Yellow Jackets didn’t have much time to celebrate their semifinal win over N.C. State. Duke’s Big Three, particularly Singler, who scored 30 points against Georgia Tech back on Feb. 4, have created problems for opponents all season.

“I saw something from Kyle Singler the last game. It’s amazing how he shot the ball with a bad wrist,” Hewitt said of Singler, who was battling a pesky injury the last time the teams faced off.

A first for Coach K
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said he didn’t have any ulterior motives when he was whistled for a technical foul late in the first half of his team’s semifinal game against Miami on Saturday.

It just happened. With 2:07 left in the half, Coach K said something that referee Roger Ayers didn’t like. Ayers blew his whistle and gave the coach his first technical of the season.

The foul came during a 17-2 Miami run that allowed the Hurricanes to take a 35-32 lead into the locker room at the half.

“We were up. It wasn’t an orchestrated thing,” Krzyzewski said. “There was no motivational ploy at all on my part for that.”

But Coach K said later in his postgame press conference that sometimes he has to do things to help his team win. If that means showing emotion, so be it.

“For those two hours, you should do everything you can to help your team win, and some of the things you do aren’t good. Some of the things are good, but you should do them,” Krzyzewski said. “You should do them. What the hell? You’ve got to do them.”

Read Warters’ blog at www.mynewsadvance.com, and follow him on Twitter at @nathanwarters.