Virginia Tech Hokie Women’s Basketball Defeat the Florida Lady Gators: 68-64

The ACC/SEC Challenge WBB series hasn’t been going well for the ACC this season. An ACC team had only won one of the seven games prior to the contest between Tech and Florida. Florida seemed to be favored for this one. The Lady Hokies had other ideas.

It was Carys’s Game

It is difficult to not be under the basket with the cameras, but it was nice to have this one broadcast so that it could be viewed on the TV and reviewed for plays of interest. What was the most evident in the general coverage was the heavy interest in Florida, and the seeming tilt in that direction for the coverage. It wasn’t a bias as much as it was that the media is more interested in the story from Gainesville, not Blacksburg.

Florida has some interesting players of national note on the floor, and aside from an occasional note for Carleigh Wenzel, Virginia Tech hasn’t really developed a single highlight star player this season or last, for that matter. Narrative always wins over objectivity so there was a pretty heavy dose of interest in Florida’s personnel, which includes one of the nation’s high scorers in Liv McGill and Shaq’s daughter, Me’Arah O’Neal.

The Hokies started their usual opening roster, but that changes pretty quickly as Coach Duffy subs in players based on how she feels she needs things to go on the floor. Her bench is deep this season and she uses it.

Who knows? That might be changing a bit in the future because this particular Hokie WBB team is starting to develop a personality and some stories are being started for a few of the players. For the second game in a row, true Junior forward/post Carys Baker has led the Hokies on the court. We aren’t just talking about scoring and rebounding, Baker double-doubled in this one, Carys is developing into a full-game team leader and a critical feed target for two excellent point guards, Carleigh and Mackie Nelson.

The team is also developing a real group personality, and it’s not centered around a single player like Florida’s center of gravity McGill (who scored almost half of Florida’s points). This Hokie team has developed into a united group of truly unselfish players. If one player is struggling the others pick her up. If another player is hot, there is no hesitation in feeding her the ball. This game, as with the Coastal Carolina contest, Carys had the hot hand, and the entire team worked to make sure that the hot hand was getting the ball. It didn’t hurt that Baker was all over the court, on both offense and defense, demonstrating speed, strength, outside and inside shooting skill. It was a really complete game for her. We’ll talk stats a bit later.

This was a quality win at the minimum and might qualify in the signature category as season develops. So, let’s go over some of the game highlights and observations.

Quarters One through Three

Why are we piling the first three together? Check the score for each, and it’s pretty self-evident. This game was even up for nearly every tick of the clock in every quarter. The score was tied 12 times, and the lead was exchanged 12 times. Other than an initial blast from the Hokies in the very beginning with a tip-off win and opening basket by Kilah Freelon that opened the 3-minute 10-2 run for the Hokies, this one stayed within 5 or 6 so points for the entire contest.

The First

The first quarter ended in a 19-19 tie as Tech hit a stretch of dry shots after jumping out to that 8-point lead. There was a concerning full minute of no scoring for Tech for just over a minute, with Carys dropping in the tenth point at 6:48, but the lid would reappear for the Hokies for another minute and a half before Mackie Nelson got the scoring going again with a layup and then a trey. But by that time Florida had caught up, and Mackie’s trey wouldn’t be followed up until Florida passed them and Tech needed to tighten their defense, and push to get points. Carleigh drew a critical foul that generated two from the charity stripe, and Samyha Suffren turned on the jets to layup the final 2 of the quarter and that tied it up.

The Second

So, the second period opened up with a score from Kayl Petersen who Coach Duffy just keeps putting on the floor and Kayl finds some way to contribute something significant, especially underneath and in the paint on the ball or off. It’s really important to get something started on offense in any period, and Tech getting the first bucket in a game of 12 exchanges of the lead and 12 ties was critical. It’s that bit of momentum and confidence that sets the tone for the entire quarter, and sometimes the game.

The 2nd quarter was marked by just that reality. It was critical for the Hokies to get “on the exchange” and stay there. We always talk about “the exchange”. In basketball defense is difficult since scoring is three dimensional (outside, inside, and under the boards) and covering all three levels can be a challenge. That means that the opposing team is going to score points. The job is to keep up and get one step ahead where every exchange is either your team in the lead, or them scoring to tie. Tech managed to do that from a plus side for a while in the 2nd quarter, but a quick burst of scoring by Florida flipped the exchange.

Carys managed to even the exchange at the end of the 1st half with a bucket from just beyond the foul line on a turnaround jumper off of an offensive rebound to close out the 2nd quarter tied 34 each.

The Third

Remember that Third Quarter Rule… It often determines the outcome of the game, and more often than not it will, at least, foreshadow the end of a close contest. In this one, the rule leans towards the foreshadowing. The Hokies and Gators were, again locked in a scoring exchange flip-flop back and forth. But what transpired was the Hokies managed to grab the biggest lead of the game (6 points), by the middle of the quarter. Carys Baker was on a tear and kept hitting from mostly 2-point range but also dropped in a three.

The foreshadow, even though Florida would win the quarter by a single point, was that Tech was capable of turning on the jets offensively, breaking the exchange, and get ahead long enough to maintain it for the win. The last points of the quarter were from Carleigh at the free-throw line. She was a perfect 4-4 from the line in this one, and every one of them was a pivot point. Those last two points set the tone for the Hokies in the 4th. They were in a neck and neck fight with a team that had an edge in talent notoriety. They also proved that they could get ahead and hold it long enough that if they did it in the 4th, they could pull off the win.

The Foul Factor

There is a factor that hasn’t been talked about just yet, and that was the foul count. Aside from some really perplexing calls and no-calls that benefited Florida, the fouls for this one were pretty evenly distributed, and the Lady Gators lost that count 22-17 with two critical players fouling out (including McGill – who seemed to be unaware of how many she’d been charged with). McGill fouling out deprived them of their leading scorer as the seconds of the 4th ticked down to zero. Even a few minutes of her being off the court hurt the Gators since she was nearly half of their offensive output. What this should prove to the Hokies is that they can hang with a team that plays close and physical, but it was going to cost the coaching staff foul count tolerance and bench trust.

The Fourth

Carys Baker started off the Hokies with that critical first bucket of the period. That pulled Tech ahead by a point in the possession trade, and a flipped possession accompanied by a bucket from Carleigh put three points between the Hokies and the Gators before Florida got the ball in the basket from inside by McGill who was supposedly fouled on the shot so that evened the score, but the positive exchange went to the Hokies. If they could keep it up Florida would be playing for the tie not the lead in a finite race to the end of the period.

It would take about a minute and a half before the 55-55 tie was broken, but Kilah Freelon dropped in a layup off of her offensive rebound to break up 2 points to stay on the positive side of the exchange. At the 5:38 point of the period, Mel Daley drew a foul and buried her 2 shots to put the Hokies ahead 59-57. They never lost the lead again in the period. Mel would score from the floor, again, after an exchange flip by Carys drawing an offensive foul. In this game, 4 points was a relatively big differential, that Carys would widen to 6 points with two more from inside.

For the rest of the game Tech kept answering with something or coming up with a defensive stand that either burned up too much clock or flipped the exchange. As Florida dropped into the final 2-minute foul game they eventually lost out to Tech foul shooting and the final horn sounding.

Mackie Nelson scored the final point of the game on a free-throw. The bench and crowd erupted as the clock hit 00:00 and the red lights flashed on the backboards. The Virginia Tech Lady Hokies took the game to the Florida Gators for the entire 40 minutes, held their own, and passed them in the home stretch.

No, it wasn’t a breakfast biscuit game, but it was pure gold for the Hokies, and it snowed in Blacksburg so it’d have been hard to get to Bojangles on South Main, anyway.

Stats

Carys Baker

This was the 2nd game in a row were Carys led the team in scoring and also on the floor. She played just over 37 minutes and seemed to be everywhere doing everything. Carys double-doubled with 23 points, an assist, and 10 boards. One of her two offensive rebounds was that critical tying put back at the half. What’s even better about her 23 points is that they came off of a 10-16 effort. She was blistering hot from the floor in this one. Even the ACC media folks had to pay attention to this effort.

Mel Daley

Only one other Hokie scored in double figures for this one. Mel kept putting them up and enough fell to give her a total of 12 points for the game. 4 of them came from her machine-like accuracy from the charity stripe. Teams are going to learn to avoid fouling her because the points are getting to be automatic. Daley also pulled down 4 rebounds for the game (1 ORB, 3 DRB). To go with the defensive rebounds, she also registered a block and a steal. Daley triggered and pushed the critical pull away in the 4th that ended up netting the game for the Hokies.

Carleigh Wenzel, Mackie Nelson, Aniya Trent, Samyha Suffren, Kilah Freelon, and Kayl Petersen

Carleigh hasn’t had the best time shooting over the last few games. She scored 8 for this one, on 12 attempts and 4-4 from the foul line, but she pushed out a team high 6 assists and grabbed 5 rebounds. The big problem for this game was foul trouble as the refs seemed to be dishing out “look mean fouls” often.

Mackie just doesn’t shoot much. At some point she’ll bubble up here and there, but the points that she does register, in this one 8, are always critical pivot points. She did start out hot with 7 to start in the first half but cooled off as she spent more time on defense and distributing the ball. She did push out 3 assists but joined Carleigh in the foul trouble bucket with 4 PFs… some of which were a bit hard to explain and justify. She also took a few for the team without whistles being blown as well.

Aniya scored 7 off the deep bench. She was a perfect 3-3 from the floor, five rebounds (3 offensive), and pushed out an assist. It was a really nice 15 1/4 minutes on the floor for her. We’ll be seeing more of Aniya Trent over her hopefully long Hokie career.

Samyha played a critical role in this one, and it wasn’t necessarily scoring. With McGill pushing out nearly half of the Gator points, defense against the other players was critical to hold down the Florida scoring other than McGill. Suffren used her nearly 15 minutes of floor time to go 2-4 from the floor for 4 total and 2 assists to go with that, but she was there for speed and defense. Samyha grabbed 2 defensive rebounds and stole the ball twice.

Kilah got picked on by the refs. You can tell when a player is attracting more attention from the officials as their foul counts pop and the replays give you pause and beg the question “…how is that a foul?” Kilah seemed to have to deal with that sort of observational gravity for this game. She was a perfect 2-2 from the floor for and 2 offensive rebounds but was time limited due to the foul attention. Defensively she pulled down a board and registered a block.

Kayl put in 11 1/2 minutes on the floor. She scored 2 on that nifty move for the 2nd half opening bucket. She put up 5 more, mostly in traffic and under pressure so they didn’t fall. She also pulled in 2 offensive rebounds, and a defensive board to go with her block and 2 steals.

Leila Wells and Amani Jenkins both played a few minutes each and contributed an assist and a steal respectively.

Getting Ready for the ACC

This was a critical match-up. The ACC hadn’t won anything significant on the day and the Hokie win put folks on notice that the team doesn’t have superstars scoring gagillions of points but what it does have is depth, quiet talent, and unselfish teamwork.

The Lady Hokies will get a chance to show the ACC that they are something to respect with the ACC opener at the Cassell against Duke on Sunday December 7th.

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