Collegiate Times

Delaney dribbles down the floor last season against Gardner WebbDelaney dribbles down the floor last season against Gardner Webb

“You know, we could post him, we could isolate him or we could bring him off staggers. So your goal as a coach at the end of the game, you want to put the ball in your best players’ hands, and that would be Malcolm and A.D. last year.

“I think Malcolm has the ability to score baskets at the end of the game, and I think Jeff has the ability to score baskets at the end of the game,” Greenberg said.

“They need to. They have probably the most invested in the program in terms of minutes played and responsibility, so they need to step forward and set the tone for sure.”

Yet scoring isn’t the only thing the Hokies need to do late in the game.

According to Delaney and many of his teammates, Tech’s close losses didn’t just reflect who had the ball in the waning minutes.

“We’ve got people who can produce that, just last year, they didn’t really have to,” Delaney said. “But we don’t need more scoring — we just need to stop some more people on defense, and that will take away some of the scoring. So we don’t really just need to just fill in the void of A.D. We’ve got a lot of other stuff we can do.”

Defense has undoubtedly been the focus of Tech’s offseason thus far.

Last season, the Hokies ranked 245th in the nation and eighth in the Atlantic Coast Conference in scoring defense.

Delaney said one of the problems last year was that instead of focusing on stopping their opponent on the defensive end, they focused more on outscoring their opponent with their offense.

 “Defense,” Delaney said. “Defense is what caused us to lose those games. There might have been one or two that was just lucky shots, but the rest we could’ve just got that last stop and stopped it from happening. Just the emphasis on defense should help us in winning those close games.”

Delaney embraces his position as a leader on the team and realizes that for Tech to succeed this year, he’ll need to be that leader on and off the court.

“I was a leader last year,” he said. “I mean, I play the same role. I was more of the leader last year on the team. A.D. was a leader on the court, he didn’t say a lot, but my role hasn’t really changed as a leader. I just have to do a lot more because we’ve got a lot more freshmen.”

Hudson says Delaney is a great guy to have beside him on and off the court.

“He’s a very, very good guy,” Hudson said. “I mean, real friendly. We hang out with the guys, we’re all real close. The junior class is all really close so we all like, when it’s time to go out — we all just go out together. You know, (he’s) just a real laid back guy.”

While the Hokies may never be able to fully replace a player like Vassallo, who led the Hokies in scoring, field goal percentage and three-point field goal percentage last season, they believe they can improve and make some noise in their conference.

“We’re better than most teams,” Delaney said. “I mean, if you look at the stats from the last couple of years, we’re like the fourth winning program in the ACC. It doesn’t matter if we get picked eighth in the preseason — they do that every year. 

“We’re not really worried about that, but if you look at it on paper, the teams we beat and the teams we lost to in close games, I ain’t really worried about that. We’re better than most teams in the ACC.”

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