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A 75-49 victory over the University of Alabama-Birmingham Blazers, in front of 9,757 fans, guaranteed that the Virginia Tech basketball team will play another day-- in the National Invitation Tournament quarterfinals Wednesday to be exact.

"I think they're a really good team," said Greenberg. "I think that we got them on the right night … we just played well tonight. We saw a big basket."

The Hokies came seeing a big basket from downtown, as Deron Washington and A.D. Vassallo connected on Tech's first three-point attempts of the game. After the first, UAB head coach Mike Davis took his first timeout only 0:28 into the game.

The Hokies would remain hot throughout; going 9-21 from long-range, good for 42.9 percent.

"We're real confident right now," said Malcolm Delaney who dropped in three of those nine three-pointers and finished with 17 points. "Different people got hot at different times of the game. Deron got hot at one point. Then, I got hot and A.D. got hot."

While the Blazers would get back into the game, a 9-0 Hokie run helped Tech jump out to a 21-9 lead at the 15:40 mark.

The Blazers came right back one again with an 8-1 run, but the Hokies countered their run by pushing their lead back to double-digits less than one minute after the end of the Blazer run, putting the score at 27-17.

For a stretch, neither team was particularly hot offensively, but Tech was able to capitalize on a 4:26 UAB scoring drought to grow the lead to a dozen. Tech distanced themselves only slightly more after the end of the Blazer drought and took a 36-21 lead into the half.

The story of the first half was the play of UAB standout and first-team all-Conference USA selection Robert Vaden. The redshirt junior picked up two fouls in less than 3:30 of play and scored only 2 first half points on 1-9 shooting; he was 0-5 from downtown.

He finished the game with only nine points, his fewest since a Nov. 21 meeting with Eastern Kentucky, on 3-17 shooting from the field and a 1-12 mark from downtown.

"That's my main focus every game-- to play great defense," said Washington, who drew Vaden defensively and outscored him 16-9. "We played great team defense…It was just a great effort by everybody to slow him down."

The Blazers were unable to make any cut into the Tech lead early in the second half. Vaden continued to miss shots, taking his shooting all the way down to 1-12 from the field.

A J.T. Thompson jumper, his fourth field goal in as many attempts, saw the Hokies grow their lead to then game-high 23 points, 53-30, and cap an 8-0 run with 12:25 remaining the game.

The Hokies continued to take care of business down the stretch and would see their lead balloon as large as 28.

The sizeable cushion enabled Greenberg, for the second-straight game, to clear his bench and get every Hokie player into the ballgame.

The Hokies return to the hardwood Wednesday evening when they will take on the Ole Miss Rebels in Cassell Coliseum. The game will tip tip-off at 7 p.m. and can be seen on ESPN2.

The last time the two teams played was in the 1982 NIT in a game at Ole Miss. The Hokies won 61-59.