Hokies hoops happy to dominate on Terps' court ...

Virginia Tech’s game at Maryland on Thursday night began with the home crowd loudly booing Hokies seniors Jeff Allen and Malcolm Delaney during player introductions. The fans also shouted “SUCKS!” after each Tech player’s name was announced.

The Comcast Center crowd booed Allen and Delaney each time they touched the ball. Allen, of course, famously flipped off the Maryland crowd the last time he was here two years ago. And then Delaney this week said of the Terrapins’ faithful, “They might have the worst fans ever.”

Add in the fact that the Hokies desperately needed a quality road win – and Maryland represented one of just three remaining chances to beat a current top 100 RPI team away from home – and the stakes were as high as the atmosphere was charged. So how did Virginia Tech’s understaffed squad respond?

Go buy a lottery ticket if you saw this coming: The Hokies handed the Terps a 74-57 beating Thursday night, the largest losing margin for Maryland in the Comcast Center since the building opened in 2002. In fact, it was the worst home loss period since 1999. 

Virginia Tech (12-5, 3-2 ACC) dominated this game throughout. The Hokies held the Terps scoreless on their first seven possessions and raced out to a 12-0 lead – sparked by 3-pointers from both Allen and Delaney. That was a swiftly delivered message. From that point forward, Tech had an answer for every Maryland run.

When the Terps cut it to 17-13, the Hokies responded with a 6-0 spurt in a 47-second span. Tech continued to get good contributions from its role players as Manny Atkins came off the bench to convert a 3-point play that pushed the lead back to a dozen with 4:01 left in the first half ... then bury a 3-pointer just before halftime to give the Hokies a 40-29 edge at the break. Atkins has 31 points in the last three games.

Forward Victor Davila, while still fumbling the ball away a couple of times and showing some lingering issues with his hands, was big in big spots against Maryland. After the Terps’ final push – during which Cliff Tucker lit up the Hokies for 11 points in barely two minutes to cut the lead to 61-53 with 7:15 remaining – Davila scored five points during a 9-2 Tech burst that finished the job.

After Davila’s disastrous game at North Carolina, contributing to Tech’s collapse from a 16-point lead, he has responded with his two best career games in ACC play. Davila had 14 points and 5 rebounds against Wake Forest, then 13 points and 5 rebounds against Maryland. His game isn’t perfect, but he is capable of giving the Hokies big buckets in spurts – which they need with only eight scholarship players and precious few big men.

But the real story of this game was Tech’s stellar guard play and ability to completely neutralize Maryland’s star center, Jordan Williams. The Hokies’ starting guards, Delaney and sophomore Erick Green, combined for 43 points, 9 assists, 8 rebounds, 6 steals and only 4 turnovers. Williams, who entered the night with a streak of 11 straight double-doubles, was held scoreless for the game’s first 15 minutes.

Williams had just two points at halftime. He squeaked out another double-double, finishing 11 points and 11 rebounds, but he had averaged 19.1 points and 12.5 rebounds in his previous 11 games. Still, he did tie Len Elmore’s school record for consecutive double-doubles. (Probably not a coincidence that Elmore called the game for ESPN2.) No doubt Williams would’ve traded that hollow stat for a better team performance against the Hokies.

As it turned out, neither Delaney nor Williams (not Allen, either, who did help the Hokies by staying on the floor for 32 minutes and grabbing 10 rebounds to go with 7 points) were the star of this game. That distinction belonged to Green, who continues to play far above anyone’s preseason expectations of him.

He had 14 points, four steals and two assists in the first half. He didn’t stop after the break. In fact, Green's baseline drive and ridiculous up-and-under layup with 7:40 to go in the game interrupted Tucker’s outburst and kept the Hokies from giving up too much ground. Another Green layup less than a minute later pushed Tech’s lead back into double digits.

Green hit 12 of 16 shots, scored a career-high 24 points and had four steals, three rebounds, two assists and only one turnover. It was just the latest – but also the greatest – of Green’s string of breakout games. Consider this: In Green’s first 40 games at Tech he shot 39 of 129 (30.2 percent) from the field and averaged 3.0 points per game. Now consider Green’s numbers in the nine games he’s been a starter this season since senior Dorenzo Hudson was lost to a foot injury: 47 of 90 (52.2 percent) from the field, 126 points (14.0 ppg), 29 assists (3.2 apg), 25 steals (2.8 spg), 9 turnovers (1.0 tpg).

That is one of the more dramatic improvements you’ll ever see. It’s kind of stunning. And it’s a big reason the Hokies have won 8 of 9 games and still have a pulse – never more so than after tonight’s big ACC road win – in their pursuit of that elusive NCAA tournament bid. It’s crazy, but it’s true. This Tech team, depleted though it may be, is playing good basketball.

Now here’s what the Hokies had to say in the afterglow ...

SETH GREENBERG

ON STARTING IN MAN DEFENSE, THEN SWITCHING SEAMLESSLY BACK TO THE ZONE THAT’S WORKED LATELY, AND FLUSTERING MARYLAND ALL GAME: “We were very alert defensively in the first few possessions and we made shots, so all the sudden your defense feeds off your offense. We were sharing the ball and guys were making good decisions, and then we went to the zone and the zone was pretty active and kept them in front.

“But in the end, when (Maryland) made that run, that’s where I was really most pleased with our guys because we remained poised. We had some possessions down the stretch where we really played good, unselfish basketball. That’s what we’re trying to do. It was a good win, but it was just one game. We’ve got to get better.”

ON THE TERPS BEING BETTER THAN THEIR RECORD INDICATES: “They’re a very, very good team. If you watch them on tape, I’ve said it all week: They’re the most efficient offensive team, probably, in our league and they probably utilize their personnel better. But today, they just didn’t make shots. And we made shots. (Tech hit 30 of 56 from the field, while Maryland hit 20 of 56.)”

ON GREEN’S DRIVE AND UP-AND-UNDER BUCKET IN CRUNCH TIME AND WHAT THAT SAYS ABOUT HIS MINDSET RIGHT NOW: “He’s gaining confidence each and every game. More importantly: You can be gaining confidence and it could be false confidence, but he’s gaining confidence because he’s playing really good basketball. He’s getting in the lane. He’s playing on balance. He’s finishing. He’s long, active defensively. And all those things help us win.”

ON WHETHER TECH RALLIED AROUND DELANEY AFTER HIS SOMEWHAT INCENDIARY QUOTE ABOUT MARYLAND’S FANS: “What is this like the Jets and the Patriots? I’m (Rex) Ryan. No, that had nothing to do with it at all. The team was extremely poised. In fact, before the game I said to Coach Wolff, ‘They’re at such an even keel, I don’t know if that’s good or bad.’ But they were just very focused. They wanted to play well, and they played well.”

ON WHETHER THIS WAS TECH’S BEST GAME, START TO FINISH, OF THE SEASON: “Yeah, we’re starting to play better basketball. I enjoy watching the way we’re playing right now. We’re making the right decisions. We’re playing hard defensively. We just have to continue to do that.”

ON RESPONDING TO THE UNC LOSS WITH TWO QUALITY OUTINGS: “Winning a game in the league is hard. Whether you’re responding to the Carolina game or not, what was important today was we finished. Carolina game, we didn’t finish. You guys look at this think globally, and we look at it like one game, micromanagement of one possession, one play at a time. We don’t look at it like, ‘The Carolina game, oh my God, we gave that one away; we better get two in a row.’ We don’t think that way.”

ON HOW THE HOKIES LIMITED WILLIAMS, MARYLAND’S STAR IN THE MIDDLE: “I don’t know. The zone, we tried to make other people beat us. Beat he’s so good. We did a nice job of swarming. You’ve got to decide what you’re going to give and what you’re going to take away. First and foremost, we wanted to try to take him way. We didn’t take him away, but we wanted to try ... because he’s such a good player.”

G MALCOLM DELANEY

ON HIS COMMENT ABOUT MARYLAND’S FANS THIS WEEK RILING UP THE TERPS FAITHFUL: “I don’t care. Do Maryland fans care about me? No. So I don’t care.”

ON WHETHER IT FIRED HIM UP TO KNOW THEY WANTED TO RATTLE HIM: “Yeah. The more trash they talk to me, the better I play. I feed off that. The more they did it, it was just making me play better.”

ON THE HOKIES THRIVING IN THE ATMOSPHERE, NOT LETTING IT BOTHER THEM: “We’re more mature. Before, it could’ve gotten to our team – a couple years ago. But now we’re a more mature team and we know what type of environment we were coming into. We just capitalized on that and made it like our home court.”

ON FEELING LIKE A PROUD PAPA WATCHING YOUNGSTER ERICK GREEN BREAK OUT: “He’s stepping up. I pushed him when he first got here, so now to see him stepping up is definitely good.”

ON GREEN’S BIG DRIVING BUCKET: “That’s just his confidence. He knows he needs to do that for the team to win. That’s his confidence in being the starting point guard now; he knows his role. He pretty much has the green light right now and he knows for me and him to be attack mode is how this team’s going to win.”

ON NEEDING A BIG ROAD WIN FOR THE NCAA TOURNAMENT RESUME: “It’s good. We’re trying to win every game we possibly can, not just at Maryland. When we go on the road to the rest of the places, we’re just trying to get wins.”

ON THE DIFFERENCE IN BLOWING THE LEAD AT UNC AND NOT BLOWING IT AGAINST THE TERPS: “Defense. We settled down on defense and started getting more stops.”

G ERICK GREEN

ON HAVING HIS CAREER-BEST SCORING NIGHT IN A TOUGH ACC ROAD ENVIRONMENT: “It feels great. Playing at Maryland, getting a road win, and just seeing how far we’ve come as a team, that just feels even better. Everybody stepped up. I just came to play and I had a good night. I saw a big basket, teammates set me up and I just finished.”

ON PLAYING WITH HIGH CONFIDENCE RIGHT NOW: “Confidence is way up. I’m feeling real good. Hopefully I can keep it going.”

ON HIS DRIVING LAYUP IN A BIG SPOT LATE, DURING CLIFF TUCKER’S 11-POINT OUTBURST FOR MARYLAND: “He hit three 3s and I take the blame for two of them; I should’ve got out there. But I came down, thought we needed a bucket, made a play and we got back up.”

ON NOT LETTING THE LEAD SLIP AWAY LIKE AT UNC: “We just kept the intensity up, played good defense. We kept our poise. That’s a big difference from the Carolina game.”

F JEFF ALLEN

ON GETTING A CRITICAL WIN IN FRONT OF A HOSTILE CROWD AND NEAR HIS HOMETOWN: “It was a great win because that’s an extra game in the ACC, a road win. I came home and my family got to see me play. And to come back from the last time we came here and we lost, it’s always good to come back and pay them back.”

ON HANDING MARYLAND ITS WORST LOSS EVER IN THE COMCAST CENTER: “It makes me feel good (grinning). We bounced back. We came out strong today, the way we’re supposed to. We finished the game today.”

ON THAT GRIN MEANING THIS GAME MEANS MORE THAN OTHERS: “Yeah. Yeah. Just because I’m home and the incident that happened (here two years ago).”

ON NOT LETTING THE FAN HATRED AND ROWDINESS AFFECT THEM, RATHER THRIVING IN THAT ENVIRONMENT: “I can say we fed off the crowd’s energy.”

* For instant updates on the Hokies, follow me at twitter.com/kyletuckerVP

COMMENTS ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here; comments do not reflect the views of The Virginian-Pilot or its websites. Users must follow agreed-upon rules: Be civil, be clean, be on topic; don't attack private individuals, other users or classes of people. Read the full rules here.
- Comments are automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules, click the report violation link below it.