Indeed, salute to our senior class. However, not gunna lie, I hope this incoming class has a little more maturity in leadership. I know these guys had talent and the incoming ones will as well, but I’d love to see some maturity and leadership.

I’d love to see some guys that can be vocal leaders, some guys that don’t commit devastating, emotional technicals, guys that can play a simple game on College Gameday without looking like they think they’re too cool for it.

I dunno, some of that lack of maturity really bugs me when I see players on other teams get interviewed during post games like Darius Johnson Odom last night for Marquette.

I definitely appreciate the contributions of Malcolm, Terrell, and Paul for what they were each worth. Malcolm is quite simply, a baller. I grew very frustrated with the way that he almost ALWAYS tried to flop and draw a foul in his freshman and sophomore years… really on into the first half of his junior campaign. But I think that last year, when it became blatantly obvious that refs had been watching plenty of tape on Malcolm, he changed his game and we all were able to watch him evolve before our very eyes. I say this because – through his first 3 years – Malcolm scored 33.4% of his points via free-throws… dangerously close to Tyler Hansbrough’s joke of a record 34.1% of his total points (across all 4 years) coming from the charity stripe. Yet in Malcolm’s senior year… a year when he had to put the team on his back time after time… he cut that percentage all the way down to 28.4% to finish with a career total of 31.9% of his points coming as “freebies”. I was very concerned after his junior year that Malcolm might have found some way during his last season to surpass what I think is one of the biggest jokes in ACC statistics (Hansbrough’s FT point %), yet he manned up and showed that he had true game. Tyler “earned” a ridiculous 35.4% of his senior year points with nobody guarding him… whereas Malcolm did his thing legitimately and went out with his head held high. Thanks for the memories, Malcolm. You will always be an all-time favorite Hokie.

To Terrell Bell… possibly one of the Hokie ballers that I will always RESPECT the most for his constant hustle, clutch shooting, and just all-around willingness to do whatever it took to help the team win games… you’re the man, homie. Nobody else on our team could have done what you did for us over the years… stuffing the stat sheet from top-to-bottom, and typically ALWAYS being charged with controlling the opposing team’s best player. I know that perhaps you would have liked to have slightly better numbers (and of course to have gotten to taste an NCAA tourney), but hold your head high, big man. You are a HOKIE through and through. If there were a lunchpail on the basketball team, you would no doubt have been entrusted with it many times over.

To Paul Debnam… the consumate teammate. The heart and soul. The “I see you” symbol flashed every time that the camera was on you. Thanks, too, for everything you’ve done. I’m obviously not in the locker room with you guys, but I have a strong feeling that you provided a glue to the team that nobody else could. Especially here in the 2010-2011 season, which so much adversity and frustration constantly seeming to engulf the squad… don’t know how we would have done it without someone like you always making the sun shine. Bravo, Paul.

And finally. To Jeff. Every kid dreams about “making it big” in sports. Well almost every kid… I’m sure that some dweebs prefer to dream about getting the new TI-150 calculator “one day”. But I digress. You, Jeff, were well on your way to accomplishing that dream. You starred in high school, showing flashes of brilliance at both Oak Hill and on Hargrave’s postgrad team. That earned you a scholarship to a major ACC school, and suddenly you were a Hokie. When we all saw you play as a freshman, we were WOWED, to say the least. We had visions of being able to dethrone Duke and UNC from their perennial perch atop the conference… or at least I did, anyways. But what transpired throughout your career left SO much more to be desired, Jeff. The fouls… the middle fingers… the constant disrespect towards and challenging of the refs… and my question is, WHY? With so much talent and god-given ability, WHY let all of that extraneous b/s hold you back SO much. Malcolm shouldn’t have even been the leading scorer on our team over these past 2 years. YOU should have been. At the core, you are a far superior player to anyone else that we had on our team these past 4 years… maybe EVER. But for whatever reason – and in MY OPINION, mind you – I don’t think that you tried hard enough to be the best. I appreciate you lifting us up at times and helping us win games that we clearly wouldn’t have without you, but I will NEVER forget the way that you constantly dug our team holes that we were never able to climb out of, either by fouling out so early that the rest of the squad was left clutching their shorts at the end of the game, or by committing one bonehead play after another to give an opposing time exactly what they needed… often times at some of the most inopportune moments possible. I will never forget your time in Blacksburg, Jeff… some good, and some unquestionably bad. But overall, your career to me will always be summed up by “What If…”. I hope that you find peace and happiness with whatever you choose to pursue from here.

So that’s it. The 2007 freshman have put a bow on what sadly was an underachieving career outside of some individual accolades for Malcolm and Jeff. Who knows what these fellas could have accomplished had they not lost two huge pieces of their 2011 graduating class in Zo and J.T.?? Maybe they would have won it all. Maybe these types of write-ups would be very different as we reflected back on this bunch. But there’s no point in wondering what could have been… we can ONLY look forward. I hate it so much for all of you that you never were invited to a big dance despite the fact that you probably should have been there THREE times… but I will not soon forget the way that you kept us in the top third of one of the best basketball conferences in the country on an annual basis. No, screw that… this NCAA tournament, not to mention 5 of the last 10 NATIONAL TITLES, has shown that the ACC is the cream of the crop. And you guys always kept us in the mix for at the very worst a bye in the ACC tourney. That’s big time stuff.

But now comes, for me, the most anticipated era in Hokie Hoops HISTORY. The C.J. Barksdale era has begun. And yes, I am more than aware that Dorian is our highest-rated recruit coming in. But as all loyal post readers of this site will know, I have been hyping up C.J.’s arrival for years now. Being that he is from my high school (albeit 13 years behind me… yikes), I had an early glimpse into his raw abilities. And in fact, like I mentioned on this site years ago, I actually contacted Seth way back in 2008 to plead with him to give another GW player – Nick Barbour (just finished his 3rd year at High Point, where he has averaged almost 17 points per game over his career) – a look. And while Seth wrote back and explained to me that he wasn’t going to take Nick, he let me know at that point that he WAS looking at a then-10th grader named C.J. Barksdale. The rest is obviously history as C.J. got the scholly, and is now going to have a chance to put Danville on the map via VT Basketball. So yeah… I’m kind of excited about next year. And I am fully willing to let my credibility rise or fall with how C.J. performs in the orange and maroon. I have a distinct feeling that we are all about to see VT hoops move to the next level… that’s all I’m trying to say.

Oh, and with Spring Football right around the corner, just to add this last tidbit… David Wilson is also from mine and C.J.’s high school as well. So there is a GOOD chance that the fates of both our football and basketball programs are going to be impacted quite largely by these two George Washington High School grads. Let’s go, GW Eagles… time to earn your Hokie stripes.