Earlier this week, I wrote a story about all the cancellations in the Virginia Tech basketball program, saying the Hokies would go 10 days between games. I did, however, add this disclaimer: “There is no guarantee 10 days will be all the delay there is, as the next opponent is North Carolina, which has had issues of its own. Then the next game is against Florida State, which started the string of postponements."

You may now call me Nostradamus.

Sure enough, the North Carolina game was postponed, and now today, the ACC has announced the postponement of Saturday’s game with Florida State. Since the team hasn’t played since Feb. 6, this means there will be at least a 17-day break, as the next scheduled game is a home game with Georgia Tech on Feb. 23.

Saturday’s Clemson-Pittsburgh game has also been postponed, so instead of these two games, Florida State will now play at Pitt at 4 PM Saturday. Additionally, the North Carolina at Boston College game for next Tuesday has also been postponed.

The ACC said in a statement on its website that “The postponements follow positive tests, subsequent quarantining, and contact tracing within the Virginia Tech, Clemson and Boston College men’s basketball programs. The teams are adhering to the outlined protocols within the ACC Medical Advisory Group report.”

So once again it’s hurry up and wait for the Hokies. I doubt any of these postponed games will be played, meaning Virginia Tech won’t face Florida State at all this season unless it’s in the ACC Tournament.

I like the hire today of Jon Tenuta as Virginia Tech’s senior defensive analyst.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I really like it.

It fills a need Justin Fuente has had on the defensive side of the ball, and Tenuta has all the skills and experience necessary. Fuente has hired quite a few young, up and coming former players to defensive coaching positions, but they were missing that old soul, Charley Wiles-type of coach who had been doing it for a long time and always had a hidden trick up his sleeve.

Tenuta is that and more. He’s 63, been coaching for over 40 years, and has held positions at enough schools you could put them all together and have a super conference. He played at Virginia, but he’s held every defensive coaching position there is, been at places like Ohio State, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Notre Dame, and was even the interim head coach at Georgia Tech.

He’s been there and done that.

He looks like he has the potential to add the same sort of flavor to the mix that Jerry Kill did during his time as a consultant to the Hokies. He also has a special factor going for him that really makes me bullish on this hire, and has nothing to do with his experience.

It's that he already knows this team, as his son, Luke, is a rising redshirt junior who has started the last two years at right tackle for the Hokies.

Coaching a team or managing an organization where you child is involved, I’ve found, tends to add an interesting wrinkle to the job. You don’t want father managing son, because that’s a no-win situation where favoritism is suspected even when you tell the son “good morning.”

But in an arms-length situation like this, it’s a bonus. Tenuta has probably already watched every Virginia Tech game of the last two years because of Luke. Probably more than once, in fact, because that’s what Dads do. He is coming into this situation from Cincinnati probably already knowing as much about how the Hokies play as he did with the Bearcats.

Well, that didn’t take long.

This morning, in talking about the 10-day break between Virginia Tech’s last basketball game and when the next one was scheduled due to COVID issues, I mentioned there was no guarantee that the delay would only be 10 days, as other COVID issues could arise.

Turns out they did, as The Atlantic Coast Conference announced today that the Virginia Tech at North Carolina men's basketball game scheduled for Tuesday, February 16 has been postponed. 
 
According to a two-paragraph statement on the league’s website, the postponement follows a positive test, subsequent quarantining, and contact tracing within the Virginia Tech men's basketball program. The team is adhering to the outlined protocols within the ACC Medical Advisory Group report, the statement said.

So now, the earliest the team could player would be a Feb. 20 game at Florida State, two full weeks after the last time the Hokies played, a Feb. 6 overtime win over Miami.

I’m  beginning to think that the Virginia Tech basketball team is really an NHL hockey team, and we’ve just gotten to the point of the season where they take a month off to go participate in the Olympics.

Today will be the second straight postponement for the Hokies, as opponents have had issues with COVID, setting up a minimum of 10 days before the last game and the next scheduled one. There is no guarantee 10 days will be all the delay there is, as the next opponent is North Carolina, which has had issues of its own. Then the next game is against Florida State, which started the string of postponements.

It’s as if the Hokies need to go out and buy a truckload of Snickers, since it would appear they’re not going anywhere for a while.

There is one school of thought that believes this could be a good thing. It can be like a bye week (or two) in football, where players can use the extra time to get healthy. Cordell Pemsl had not been available with back issues, Jalen Cone was in a walking boot after the last game against Miami, and John Okiako – who has bulked up significantly since last year, and in a good way – has been slowed by a knee injury. All those can improve with rest, something you can’t do in a season where you’re playing every 3 or 4 days.

Then there is the case of Tyrece Radford, who has been serving an indefinite suspension for DUI and a gun charge. The word around Blacksburg is that the matter is going to be settled sooner than later now that there was a plea agreement on the DUI charge (he was found guilty), and the judge placed the gun charge in advisement for a year. He could dismiss that charge at the end of that period if Radford shows good behavior.

The rest is now up to Virginia Tech, meaning it’s possible he will either never play another game in Blacksburg, or could be back in the lineup the next time the Hokies play.

I am not like those that rage at Virginia Tech offensive coordinator Brad Cornelsen and dream of his reassignment to store clerk at a local Blacksburg convenience store, although I will confess he has on occasion caused me to invoke the name of the Almighty when outside of a church setting.

Despite this, I did find a couple of things he said yesterday in a press conference a bit puzzling. The one comment that seems to have caused the most controversy didn’t really bother me much, because everyone who has followed the team last year probably has had a touch of that sentiment as well.

“Going into the season, knowing we had three capable guys, probably what would happen is we would retain one and then two guys would go somewhere else,” Cornelsen said. “So that was definitely not a surprise.”

You knew the first night of the season it was going to happen, and the guy to leave was going to be Quincy Patterson. He rarely saw playing time, but when he did, he made big plays. The game against North Carolina will always be a classic, as he made big runs and completed a pressure 4^th down throw, plays that if he doesn’t succeed at, the Hokies lose. But once others healed from injuries, Quincy became the forgotten man.

If I’m annoyed by the statement, it would because he so openly admitted this thought while apparently doing nothing about it. Handling people is an art, not a science, and once you realize you don’t have three footballs for all 3 QBs to throw in a game at the same time, you make it a focus to keep all 3 feeling involved. If you do, you might keep all 3. Worst case, you only lose one.

The Hokies apparently handled it like a bad third baseman booting a line drive, losing Patterson AND Hendon Hooker.

That, however, is the past, and you can’t do anything about that. It was his comment about his beliefs that a quarterback needs to commit to a school for at least 3 years to be able to develop in his system. “Most of those guys (who left) did that and you saw both of those guys continue to take those steps as third- and fourth-year guys in the same system,” he said. “And that’s what it takes.”

I’m not sure I’d be all that excited about hearing that if I’m a top-flight quarterback out on the recruiting trail. With the transfer portal changing the college game, that sounds a lot like dial-up modem thinking in a high-speed internet age. There is no substitute for live snaps in a live game for the development of a quarterback, and hearing “three years to develop” just doesn’t seem like a realistic goal these days.

Bruce Arians had a place in Virginia Tech football history even before he coached the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl victory over Kansas City this past weekend.

From 1983-88, Arians, a former Tech quarterback, was the head coach at Temple, where his 1986 team finished 6-5.

That included a 29-13 victory over the Hokies in the Oyster Bowl in Norfolk.

At the same time, Tech was looking for a successor to head football coach Bill Dooley, who also had served as Tech's athletic director. Reports of possible recruiting violations had led Tech president William Lavery to replace Dooley.

Dooley was succeeded as AD by Dutch Baughman, whose first choice to succeed Dooley as coach was Bobby Ross, who had resigned as head coach at Maryland.  

Frank Beamer and Ross were the two finalists. Arians had interviewed Dec. 18 and removed his name from consideration three days later.

He had a 21-39 record in six seasons at Temple and later served as the offensive coordinator at Alabama and Mississippi State. He was an assistant for six different NFL teams, including Kansas City, the team his Tampa Bay squad team defeated Sunday in the Super Bowl.

Arians had a checkered career as a Virginia Tech player, where he passed for a total of 1,270 yards and six touchdowns from 1972-74 and only led the Hokies in passing once, when he passed for 952 yards and three touchdowns in 1974.

That was the Hokies' first season under head coach Jimmy Sharpe, a protégé of legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant.

After losing their first four games, the Hokies travelled to South Carolina, where they won 31-17. The next week, they headed to Virginia.

Arians, who was in his fifth year at Tech, had never played in a Tech-UVa game until Sharpe took over as coach.

Arians referred to it as "the biggest game of my life."

The first real newspaper I worked for was a twice-a-week newspaper called the Blacksburg Sun. Being the low man on the totem pole back in 1976, I got the assignments nobody wanted, so my first story was about a high school football game between Christiansburg and Floyd.

The game was at Floyd, in fog and rain. If you’ve never driven uber-curvy Route 8 in those kinds of conditions at night in Southwest Virginia, you just don’t appreciate what gripping the steering wheel tight really means. Plus if on the way back home you misread the signs and ended up on 221 instead of 8, you got the bonus experience of driving some of the most deserted backwoods stretches of pavement in the region before arriving at Bent Mountain and eventually Roanoke an hour later.

If you were a 20-year-old kid like me, this meant instead of getting home at 10 to write that story, you instead arrived home at 1 AM. The story got finished at 3 AM. Then you had to get up at 7 to turn the story in and get ready to cover your first Virginia Tech game.

Access was different back then for media, as if you wanted to write a story on someone, you made a phone call and were usually told “when can you be here?” An interview was set up by the paper for me to sit in the coach’s box instead of the press box, and I was to watch a graduate assistant handle his duties from there. Then I’d write a story about it.

The GA was friendly and helpful. He pointed out things that were being done and explained them fully. He also pointed out things I should avoid, as they were taking black and white polaroids of formations of both teams, marking them, and sending them down to the field in an envelope attached to a string that ran down to the bench. Some, he said, were OK. Some, he admitted, were not.

The game ended and I wrote a very forgettable story. I was new to all this, so I just regurgitated every quote I had written down, then forgot about it all. I had survived the weekend, filed my story, and was well on my way to earning the $1.90 an hour I was being paid that would come to me in a check that Friday.

I never thought much about that story until coming across it in an old box of worn, yellowed newsprint from 40 years ago. I read the story, thought it sucked even worse than when I wrote it, but saw the name of the GA.

His name was Bruce Arians.

There are some things you see in scrolling through bulletin boards and the internet that you find yourself asking out loud things like "why did they do that?"

Such was the case this morning when I checked out what was going on in "The Lounge" on the Techsideline.com board. Someone posted this video, which is a mashup of Huey Lewis' "Hip To Be Square" and Metallica's "Enter Sandman", which has long enjoyed anthem status at all Virginia Tech sporting events.

My mind is still wrestling with all this. I have questions, starting with why, then moving on to who's idea this was.

Plus if you look closely when a bunch of people come onstage to be backup singers, you will see Joe Montana and Dwight Clark of San Francisco 49ers fame among them.  

All I know is, hearing Enter Sandman at a Virginia Tech football game is never going to be the same again 😊

Sunday’s Super Bowl wasn’t one that kept you on the edge of your seat, so when I look back at the evening of viewing that went from 6:30PM until a little after 10, I judge it the way I judge my golf game: There were enjoyable moments, even if the sum total of everything wasn’t that great.

I mean, you knew Tampa was going to win after Tom Brady threw his second touchdown pass to Rob Gronkowski. Patrick Mahomes made some incredible throws that his receivers must have been in such awe of that they dropped them, but after the first quarter, there was never a doubt in my mind the Bucs were going to win. It was just a matter of how much.

So my attention veered toward other things, from the commercials, to the halftime show, to wondering if Tony Romo was ever going to shut up. I’ll save you the any further thought on that one: No, he never did.

But these are the things I’ll remember if you ask me about the game a few months from now:

• Bruce Arians, accepting the Super Bowl trophy and making a point of giving a shoutout to his 95-year-old mother, who was there in the stadium. “Love you Mom,” Arians said before the down-to-earth coach uttered another Arianism, saying the trophy really belonged to the players and assistant coaches. “I didn’t do a damn thing,” he said.
  
  
• Tom Brady, being similarly humble and refusing to get trapped in a question about comparing how this title felt versus the six others he won in New England. He just credited Arians, his coaches and his fellow players, but that’s not what caught my eye. It was how cool, calm and collected he was while his daughter – who looked like an exact mini-me of his wife Gisele – was jumping up and down trying to play with the Lombardi Trophy. If you've ever been a parent,  you know that takes pretty incredible focus and patience.

I’ve watched Virginia Tech football and basketball for close to 50 years, and never have I been so convinced that the Hokies had lost the game I was watching as I was around 1:45 PM today.

Shows you what I know, as for the second time in the last seven days, I had to admit it: I could not believe what I just saw.

After leading by 11 with 8 minutes to go, the Hokies started making silly mistakes, which led to Miami going on a 10-0 run to put the Canes back in the game. As that familiar uneasy feeling of blowing a game down the stretch started getting bigger and bigger to Hokie faithful, the teams traded baskets until Justyn Mutts hit a free throw to tie the game at 71-71 with 11 seconds left.

Long-time Hokie watchers knew what was coming next, and Miami’s Isaiah Wong did not disappoint. He launched a 3-pointer in the final seconds that was dead-center perfect, ripping through the nets as Miami players danced and celebrated. I immediately thought “well, that’s two losses in a row, goodbye top 25 rankings, this one is really going to hurt.” Probably the toughest loss of the Mike Young era.

Or was it?

With 2.4 second left, the odds of tying the game were right up there with winning the Mega Millions and Powerball jackpots in the same weekend. Technically there was a chance, but realistically there was none. A pass to halfcourt was batted away by Miami, giving the Hokies the ball with 1.7 seconds.

Then Al Michaels was back in my ear asking “do you believe in miracles? YES.”

Wabissa Bede threw a perfect pass to Hunter Cattoor as he came around a screen in the corner. Cattoor calmly took one dribble, turned, went straight up and drilled a 3-pointer crisply through the nets. Pandemonium ensued. The game was tied, and the game went to overtime.

On paper, tonight’s 83-72 loss to Pitt makes no sense.

A week ago, Virginia Tech beat Notre Dame handily on the road. Saturday, that same Notre Dame team went to Pittsburgh and beat Pitt by 26 while the Hokies upset No. 8 Virginia. On paper, the game shouldn’t have been close.

On the court, however, Pitt executed a strategy that beat the Hokies like a drum in the second half, and it showed that when Virginia Tech is having a tough night from outside the 3-point arc, you can disrupt their offense and frustrate the heck out of them.

I know they certainly frustrated the heck out of me.

Usually, teams try to beat up on Keve Aluma and try to get him out of his game, and given his superlative 29-point game against Virginia Saturday, I expected the paint at Pitt to be more like Octagon. Aluma didn’t seem bothered, in part thanks to the play of Justyn Mutts, as he proved to be a strong additional presence under the rim so when Pitt doubled Aluma, Mutts picked up the scoring.

It was 31-31 at halftime, but the scoresheet showed a glaring problem that would be even more evident in the second half: Only 3 players scored for the Hokies, with Mutts and Aluma combining for 22 of the 31 points. The other 9 were from Jalen Cone on 3 3-pointers, and while nice, they were a bit of a mixed bag.

The first Cone 3-pointer was so far off the mark, it bounced off the square and banked in, while the other two were where Cone needs to consistently get to. He went straight up, launched a shot where there was enough spacing that he had a clear look at the basket, and the result looked like the Jalen Cone of old. Unfortunately, he shot several more that looked like the more recent Cone, hurrying his shot, firing them up on the move, and shooting even with heavy defensive pressure on him. He missed those other six shots and didn’t score in the second half.

The rest of the backcourt had an even rougher night. The shots weren’t dropping, they didn’t compensate by driving to the basket and trying to draw fouls, and at times looked lost. Wabissa Bede was 0-5. Nahlem Alleyne was 1-8. Hunter Cattoor was 4 of 10. The entire team was 9 for 30 from the 3-point arc.