Collegiate Times

Every college basketball fan worth his tortilla dip and six-pack of beer is familiar with the quintessential “trap game.”

In most instances, those games occur when a team is facing a lesser opponent and has a big upcoming game that it is more concerned about.

For the Virginia Tech basketball team, the 2010 NIT is a trap tournament.

The campus is still seething after the Hokies were left stranded from the big dance Sunday evening and left to play in the NIT for the third straight season.

Despite the disappointment from barely missing the cut yet again, there is still reason for the Hokies to leave it all on the floor in the next few weeks.

Will it be a hard task? Of course it will; no team that goes from NCAA Tournament “lock” status to having to play in the “Not Important Tournament” would be thrilled about it.

Essentially, Tech has two choices about how it wants to approach this tournament. It can feel sorry for itself, play uninspired basketball and end a mildly successful season on a sour note.

Or the Hokies can man up and make a run in the NIT, maybe even win it, and go into the off-season with a good vibe.

For head coach Seth Greenberg, he needs to get his team to choose the latter.

Next season promises to be a memorable one in Blacksburg if everything goes according to plan.

The entire starting lineup is expected to return next season, including the Atlantic Coast Conference’s leading scorer Malcolm Delaney. The addition of Florida transfer Allan Chaney along with incoming freshmen Jarell Eddie and

Tyrone Garland will help comprise the most talented roster Greenberg will have had since coming to Tech.

If the Tech fan base spends the initial months of the off-season talking about how stunningly and poorly the 2009-10 season ended, it won’t create near the energy around the program that an NIT championship would.

Besides, one of the calling cards of Greenberg’s teams is the edge they play with night in and night out.

Next year can be a four-month long “look how good we really are” tour around the country, and winning the NIT would be the ideal start.

The Hokies don’t need to look any further than last season’s finale, an 84-66 home loss to Baylor in the second round of the NIT, to find motivation this time around.

After just missing the big dance, the Hokies narrowly escaped Duquesne in the opening round before being embarrassed against the Bears. It was clear that Tech wanted to be anywhere but in Cassell Coliseum that afternoon.

The Bears, meanwhile, went on to lose in the championship game of the tournament in Madison Square Garden.

After returning the core of that team, where are the Bears this March? They are the third seed in the South Region of the NCAA Tournament.

That’s what is at stake this go-around for Greenberg and the Hokies.

Hopefully that game and its aftermath taught them a lesson, which is to take this tournament seriously and use it to build for the future.

As a No. 1 seed in its region, Tech is unquestionably one of the favorites to make it to Madison Square Garden (for the semifinals or finals). Two seasons ago, it was in a similar position but lost to Mississippi in the quarterfinals.

Two seasons of NIT futility should only stoke the Hokies’ fire in 2010.

After seven seasons at the helm in Blacksburg, Greenberg has slowly moved the standard for the program to NCAA Tournament berths. A fan base that was ecstatic just six years ago to simply qualify for the Big
East Tournament is now slightly agitated to be the top seed in the NIT.

While that shows great progress by Greenberg and his staff, even he knows this program is capable of greater things.

A loss to Quinnipiac Wednesday night, and anything short of a trip to New York (Greenberg’s home state) will go unnoticed by most of the country.

Although in Blacksburg, it will be another bitter end to a once promising season and a crippling transition to 2010.

How the Hokies want to end their season is up to them.

They just better watch out for traps.

A version of this article appeared in the Mar 17 issue of the Collegiate Times.