“You’ve got to try to make it hard for him to catch it deep and you’ve got to make sure that we do a good job of chesting him up and eliminating his second-chance points.”
On the offensive side of the ball, the Hokies will need a big game as always from junior point guard Malcolm Delaney. In the two team’s first matchup, Delaney carried the Hokies into halftime with a 38-34 lead, scoring 20 of his 26 points in the first half.
In the second half, however, the Hokies were outscored 44-26, while Delaney converted on just one of five field goal attempts.
“In the second half,” Williams said, “we started playing better defense and not fouling (Delaney) and putting him on the free-throw line so many times. We tried doing a better job of keeping him in front of us and getting a hand up on his shot.”
“You can’t stop Malcolm,” Williams continued. “He’s just too good. Hopefully, you can slow him down a little bit. ... It helped us that the other guys didn’t have a great night.”
While Delaney maintains his position as the ACC’s leading scorer, he hasn’t been as effective lately compared to his early season performance.
In his past three games, Delaney has made just 35.3 percent of his field goals and has made a shockingly unimpressive two of 18 from three-point range.
Greenberg says that’s mainly because of the way Tech’s opponents have been defending Delaney.
“I don’t think it’s a shooting struggle,” Greenberg said. “I think it’s that people are defending him. He’s getting an extra defender and they’re helping on every single screen.
“You know, he doesn’t get a lot of shots with room and rhythm. I mean, when you’re a guy that has that ability to make plays on a team that at times is offensively challenged, you know, that’s going to happen.”
Greenberg made it clear that he wasn’t worried about Delaney down the stretch.
“He’s a world-class shooter. I’m not worried about that,” he said.
Greenberg, Delaney and the Hokies will tip-off at 9 p.m. in Cassell Coliseum. The game will be televised on Raycom Sports.
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A version of this article appeared in the Feb 4 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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