Delaney dribbles down the floor last season against Gardner WebbDelaney dribbles down the floor last season against Gardner Webb
If the Virginia Tech men’s basketball team wants to earn an NCAA Tournament bid this year, it’ll need to finish the games it failed to last season.
Last year, eight of the Hokies’ losses were by four points or fewer.
In those games, the final opportunity to make a play was usually given to then-senior guard A.D. Vassallo.
This year, Hokies junior Malcolm Delaney will often be the one with the ball in the final minutes.
“I’m going to have to step up more at the end of the game,” Delaney said.
“That’s the position A.D. was in, and I’m going to have to take more of them, but we’ve still got Jeff (Allen) and Dorenzo (Hudson) who can hit big shots. So we’ve got a good team of people that can hit shots at the end of the games. Last year, we just had A.D., so a lot of them didn’t have to do it.”
During the offseason, Delaney worked with some other, more notable go-to guys to improve his abilities.
NBA All-Stars LeBron James, Deron Williams and Carmelo Anthony, who Delaney knows from his hometown, Baltimore, Md., all helped the Hokies’ starting guard.
“I worked with LeBron, Deron Williams, and I worked out with ’Melo for a week,” Delaney said.
“I know ’Melo personally,” Delaney said. “I’ve known him since I was four. It’s just good to be around that type of work ethic and get to show me how he got where he got and what he got to do to maintain his game. I learned a lot of new stuff, a lot of new moves and a lot of new things to work on my game.
“Just how to control my steps in the lane. A lot of just new moves on one-on-one — when I’ve got to break the defense down when I get one-on-one situations,” he said.
Without Vassallo, Delaney and his teammates — specifically Allen and Hudson — must fill a big void.
“You create your late-game situations to put the ball in the hands of people that can score in a number of different ways,” said head coach Seth Greenberg.
Greenberg noted the different ways the Hokies could use Vassallo at the end of games and the importance of his versatility.
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