Collegiate Times

Tech lost by fourteen points in the John Paul Jones Arena and the Hokie faithful felt every single one of them.

While still on the bubble of an NCAA tournament seeding before the Maryland game on Valentine's Day, Virginia Tech has almost surely now sacrificed what hope was left by losing to the second-to-last place team in the ACC -- and by double-digits.

 It seemed like just another middle-of-the-road ACC battle for the majority of the first half.  Tech built up a six-point lead and then traded baskets with Virginia.

From the 4:56 mark in the first half, where the score was 28-27 in favor of UVa, the Hokies did not score a basket for over 10 minutes.  This allowed the Cavs to go on an 18-5 run and Tech was simply unable to recover.

Going into College Park, Md., this past weekend, the Hokies were on a two-game winning streak and were in good shape as far as their tournament resume and their position in the ACC.

But here they stand, a week later, with two winnable road games lost and their toughest yet to come.

Florida State on Saturday will ultimately decide whether or not we remain on the razor's edge of tournament contention, but that game is definitely winnable.

Unfortunately for this Tech squad, it gets a lot tougher from then on.

The Hokies will face Clemson, Duke, and North Carolina - all of whom are ranked in the top 15 - and end with Florida State on the road to close-out the regular season.

 As far as what went wrong in Charlottesville and College Park, rebounding and getting to the line have been the main problems for the Hokies.

Jeff Allen had picked a great time to flip the bird.

Allen was suspended for the UVa game due to an inappropriate hand gesture at the Comcast Center crowd last weekend.

His absence was a large contributor to the rebounding shortage for the Hokies against the Cavaliers.  Allen is third in the conference in rebounding and also leads the team in that category.

Due to a lack of movement off of ball screens and sheer bad shot-taking, Tech has had some trouble getting to the line in their most recent losses, as well.

Tech has settled for long-twos and mid-range jumpers instead of driving strong to the basket, and this has resulted in them taking 12 less free throws than their opponents the last two games.

This has been a crutch for Tech already, but it was only made worse by the absence of Allen and the frustration of the team at Virginia.

Looking at just Malcolm Delaney against the Cavs, fans watched as he passed the ball off as the lingering shot clock wound down.  Judgments like this will be key for the remainder of the season.

With five tough ACC games to go, Tech needs to win at least three(and fare well in the ACC tournament] to reasonably stay in contention.  The Hokies can still play their way into the Big Dance and, hopefully, that will be a good thing.