Box Score

Most coaches don’t believe in moral victories because they almost always come at the expense of an actual loss on your schedule. Still, moral victories do have some benefits, such as knowing that your team, despite not scoring for the first 6 minutes and 48 seconds of the game and trailing 12-0, didn’t quit.

The Hokies (2-4) lost their second straight game, 77-70, on the road against clemson. Senior all-universe guard Erick Green scored his average, 25 points, to lead Virginia Tech. Jarell Eddie had a solid game with 19 points, but it wasn’t enough.

The Hokies got off to about as bad of a start as you could possibly imagine (excluding injuries). Virginia Tech fell behind 12-0 and missed its first 10 shots of the game. The Hokies didn’t get on the board until Erick Green, the nation’s leading scorer, converted fast-break layup with 13:22 to play in the first half, nearly seven minutes into the game.

It appeared that the Hokies would get blown out of the gym, but somehow, they fought and scratched and clawed their way back into the game and used a 13-4 run to tie the game at 33 going into the half. tiger fans had to be wondering how this could be given that VT went scoreless for the first seven minutes.

The second half was a back-and-forth affair. Tech took its first lead of the game just 40 seconds into the second half when Eddie buried a three. But in the end, clemson simply had more depth and better players and wore the Hokies down with its perimeter shooting.

Eddie was 5-of-11 from the field and 7-of-8 from the free throw line. Green was 7-of-17 from the field and 11-of-14 from the line. Together, Green and Eddie shot 12-of-28 (42 percent), while the rest of the Hokies shot just 9-of-32 (28 percent).

For the fifth time this season, Green went 0-for- from behind the arc. The first two times he didn’t make a three, the Hokies won. The last three times he hasn’t scored a trey, they’ve lost. Today, he was 0-for-3.

Tech was out-rebounded 42-33 and had a season-high nine shots blocked. The Hokies committed 25 fouls, the second most this season (they had 26 in the home loss to bc). Fifteen of those fouls against clemson came from Joey van Zegeren, C.J. Barksdale, and Cadarian Raines, all three of whom fouled out.

@hiphop_hokie pointed out another demoralizing fact from today’s game in a Tweet:

@TechHoops Barksdale & Raines – who I watched battle in the VHSL AAA qtrs – 1 point. Walk-on Beyer, 4 points. Unreal lack of post presence

As for the TechHoops.com Opponent Hall of Fame, you can expect three nominees this week: senior Milton Jennings, who averages 9.8 points per game, but had a career-best 28 points today. There’s also K.J. McDaniels, a sophomore who averages 10.8 a game and scored 17 today thanks to a career-best FIVE three pointers. And last but not least we have Damarcus Harrison, another sophomore that averages less than 5 points per game, but had a… wait for it… career-high 19 points today against the Hokies.