March Madness
The Hokies will take on the University of Alabama-Birmingham for the right to move into the round of eight — the last before the NIT shifts play from campus sites to Madison Square Garden in New York City.
While the NIT may not be part of March Madness in the opinion of some, it's not quite a spring snoozer in Virginia Tech head coach Seth Greenberg's book.
"If you were in the Cassell Wednesday night — it was a better atmosphere than we played in in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last year," he said. "When you walked out there, you knew something special was happening."
The Blazers, Conference-USA's regular season runner-up, come in fresh off an 80-77 win at Virginia Commonwealth University Wednesday, while the Hokies are coming off a 92-64 win over the Morgan State Bears.
The Hokies and Blazers were among the teams considered on the NCAA Tournament bubble toward season's end.
"They're a good team," Greenberg said. "A lot of teams that win games in any tournament … They're a very talented, extremely athletic, very well-coached team."
UAB's body of work shows as much. The Blazers registered regular season victories over the Universities of Cincinnati, Houston, Tulsa and Kentucky and over Old Dominion. The Blazers also suffered a one-point loss to the University of Memphis Tigers.
There is one key ingredient necessary to register such results.
"They're very talented," Greenberg said. "Robert Vaden (21.4 ppg) is as good a guard as we'll play against. Channing Toney (10.8 ppg) is physically strong and tough and (Lawrence) Kinnard (11.2 ppg) is a tough matchup."
That list of players doesn't even include 6'9" 245 pound forward Walter Sharpe who averages 14.2 points and 6.8 rebounds per game.
Vaden is the main offensive threat that Blazer head coach Mike Davis has on the court. The Indiana University transfer has scored as many as 41 points in a game this season and has scored 25 or more points on 10 occasions.
Vaden is far from a one-dimensional player — he can hurt opponents in a number of ways.
"He scores a lot of different ways," Greenberg said. "He can post you up, catch it and just face you up and jump over you. He can rebound the ball … He's one of the premiere two-guards in the country."
UAB's talented personnel isn't just on the court, but on the sideline as well. Davis is an accomplished head coach who took the Indiana Hoosiers to the 2002 NCAA Championship game.
"Mike does a great job," Greenberg said. "He got the Indiana job under a very difficult situation, but he did a terrific job."
With all of the talent at Davis' disposal, the Hokies may not have the kind of cushion they enjoyed during the second half against Morgan State. This may not be the case from here on out this postseason.
"The margin of error is small," Greenberg said. "If you have one bad day, you're done."
If the Hokies can keep it within that margin of error, they'll have the opportunity to showcase themselves up to three more times after Monday on either ESPN or ESPN2.
"That's one thing that I'm actually going to address with our team," Greenberg said. "We're playing nationally televised games. This is a great chance for us to make impressions and sell the program. And sell it in home games where the environment is as good as any in the country."
One of the reasons for that atmosphere may be the packed stands, which Greenberg and some donors have tried to ensure by once again donating 3,000 free student tickets that can be picked up Friday from 9 a.m. through 4 p.m. at the basketball ticket office inside Cassell Coliseum.
If you don't plan on picking up one of the complimentary tickets or don't want to pay $5 for a student ticket or $15 as a member of the general public, the game can be seen on ESPN at 9 p.m. on Monday.
Should the Hokies defeat the Blazers, they are tentatively scheduled to host a quarterfinal game Wednesday evening that will be televised by ESPN2.
