Hokies passed up for the Big Dance once again

The Virginia Tech men’s basketball team was snubbed yet again.

The Hokies compiled an NCAA Tournament-worthy resume this season, but it wasn’t good enough to be selected for the Big Dance. They were one of the last teams left out of the field of 65 and were relegated to the NIT for the third straight year.

Tech seemed like a lock for the NCAAs entering this week’s ACC Tournament in Greensboro, N.C., but a slew of upsets by bubble teams such as Houston, New Mexico State and Washington, coupled with its own loss to 12th-seeded Miami in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals, bounced it off the bubble.

But the Hokies (23-8) still had reason to be angry about being left out for the third straight year, especially when teams like Wake Forest, who lost to the Hokies head to head and has lost five of its last six games, and Florida, which is 21-12 and had an RPI on par with Tech’s, got in instead.

“It’s nerve-wracking for a lot of us, that’s just the way it is,” Tech coach Seth Greenberg told reporters Sunday night. “That’s the nature of the beast. There are only a certain number of spots, and when spots are disappearing, that is the reality of the NCAA Tournament.”

The one knock on Tech was its weak nonconference schedule. It played the likes of Brown, North Carolina Central and UMBC, which ranked them near the bottom of all of Division I in overall nonconference schedule strength.

The Hokies beat Seton Hall, Georgia, Iowa and Penn State in nonconference play, but none of those teams made it to the NCAAs.

Their biggest wins came against Wake Forest, Clemson and Georgia Tech, all of whom made the NCAA tournament.

“We can’t control the records that the other teams have,” Greenberg said. “We can only control the record that we have.”

No one will blame Tech for not being interested in the NCAA Tournament this season. This is the third straight year it has been left out when it had a chance to earn an at-large bid in the last week of the season.

Last season, the Hokies had top-ranked North Carolina on the ropes in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals, but the Tar Heels came up with some big plays at the end and won to close the door on Tech’s NCAA tournament hopes.

Two years ago, No. 1 North Carolina beat Tech in the ACC Tournament on a last-second jumper by Tyler Hansbrough. That loss, coupled with Georgia’s improbable run to the SEC championship, were big reasons the Hokies didn’t make the Big Dance that year.

And now this. Tech tied a school record with 23 regular-season wins and went 10-6 in ACC play. No 10-win ACC team has ever been left out of the NCAAs.

Leave it to the Hokies to break the trend.

They move on now to the NIT. They earned a No. 1 seed in the secondary tournament and will host Quinnipiac in the first round Wednesday at 7 p.m.

The winner of that game will advance to the second round and play the UConn-Northeastern winner on an undetermined date.

Quinnipiac (23-9) won the Northeastern Conference regular season championship but failed to earn an automatic bid into the NCAAs when it lost to Robert Morris in Wednesday’s NEC Tournament final.

Tech and Quinnipiac have never played before in men’s basketball.

“It’s going to hurt today, no doubt about it,” Greenberg said. “But we have a chance to play. We have a chance to go to New York (for the NIT semifinals and final) and cut down the nets. That’s going to be the vision we are going to sell to our team.”