Tech Talk Live Notes: Mike Young Ahead of Clemson, ACC Tournament

Ahead of Virginia Tech men’s basketball’s regular season finale against Clemson on Saturday, head coach Mike Young sat down with Mike Burnop on Tech Talk Live.

The two discussed the ACC Scholar-Athletes of the Year, the wins over Miami and Louisville, Brad Brownell’s Tigers and the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament.

Mike Young and the Hokies have won nine of their last ten games. (Ivan Morozov)

Mike Young

On Elizabeth Kitley winning ACC Scholar-Athlete of the Year:

How about Justyn Mutts, the Skip Prosser recipient, and Elizabeth being the Kay Yow [recipient]. Elizabeth and all of those girls are just really, really nice young people. They’re smart. They’re serious basketball players. Elizabeth puts a lot of time and effort into the game. And she’s a heck of a player, obviously. 

Great respect and admiration for what she’s done, not only on the basketball court. The girl, she’s brilliant. Think she’s a pre-med major and wants to be a medical doctor. Got to know her dad well. Her dad, Ralph, played at Wake Forest, back a few years ago. Just really, really a fine family.

On Justyn Mutts winning ACC Scholar-Athlete of the Year:

That’s an academic achievement. Most deserving. Very serious about his studies. He will finish this spring with yet another graduate degree and you’ve heard me say it before, he can do anything he wants. He can be the President of the United States, he’s that talented and gifted and has the ability to get along with others and communicate. He’s a rock star.

On having a good relationship with the women’s program and sharing Cassell for practices:

I come from a place – for probably 27 years, we had one facility and three teams. Our team, the women’s basketball team, and volleyball; one facility. You better be able to pivot and not get your feelings hurt when you don’t get to share. It’s not that hard. It’s not that hard. I have great respect for our women’s program.

Kenny [Brooks] comes to me or comes to someone in our program, ‘Hey listen, I need 15 more minutes practice.’ Have at it man. We’ll figure it out. We have a great relationship with their staff and again, just admire their accomplishments, what they’re doing with their team and pulling for them all the way.

On getting the Miami win despite turning the ball over 19 times:

The fog of competition. It happens. I’m sure coach [Jim] Larranaga has a really good – they are really good. He had two timeouts and [Kameron] McGusty’s an old guy, McGusty’s a sixth-year senior and he’s looking right and then he turns back left instead of calling timeout. He tried to squeeze one right under the backboard to No. 11 [Jordan Miller], the left-handed four man. And Hunter [Cattoor] deflected it. 

Hunter deflected it and [Darius] Maddox scoops that thing up and steps back. Great presence of mind. He never looked down at his feet, which you don’t want him to do. I mean, he knew where he was on the floor, got his feet behind the arc and rises up and bangs it. Pretty amazing. 

On Sean Pedulla’s performance against Miami:

He was good. He had a big basket. Of all the big plays, this particular play would not register with anyone but he was able to get all the way to the basket, we’re down nine or seven. He brought the ball on the front court and Charlie Moore tried to light him up a little bit up top and he got right by him to the rim for a basket. We don’t have anybody else in the backcourt that can do that. He’s got a really strong lower body and he’s young and he’s got some pop in his wheels and I mean, he had a really good ballgame.

I thought he did a really nice job. His defense on Charlie Moore, I assume that they wanted Charlie Moore to take that last shot. And his defense on Charlie was exceptional, I mean just brick-walled him. And Moore had to give it up to Waardenburg. Waardenberg took a desperation shot that [Keve] Aluma had defended well. We got a miss. Got out there with an enormous win, huge. 

On having the most turnovers in three road wins:

What were we, six wins on the road in league play? That’s pretty good. Now Miami, it wasn’t us being careless. Those guards are so disruptive. Miller is really disruptive. Waardenburg is really disruptive. And they do some things and I’m not being critical of Miami, they do some things and you look back at it a second time, it’s like nobody else in our league does that. Nobody else defends that stuff the way they do.

It’s not bizarre, it happens like, ‘come on, man.’ You’re not supposed to guard it like that. That’s ridiculous but you know, we hung in there with them and I think we did have 20 assists. Aluma was very, very good. Mutts was very, very good. Maddox was outstanding. We captured victory from the jaws of defeat. And you know, needed it, desperately.

Sean Pedulla is one of a handful of bench players that have helped the Hokies win lately. (Ivan Morozov)

On going from 2-7 to 11-8 in ACC play:

My team would tell you that I stopped coaching. I got out of the way and I just let them play. And there might be something to that. It speaks to the character and speaks to what we have inside that locker room and they continue to hang in there and practice well and stick together. Didn’t have their lips stuck out and pouting and feeling sorry for themselves.

I told them a couple of times, we’re going to turn this thing around when we do, it’s going to be a beautiful thing. The month of February was pretty good to us. The last five, six weeks have been really good to us and we think we got a lot more to look forward to down the line. 

On getting production from the bench:

It’s so helpful. I went through a stretch. Someone may take this as a knock on our backcourt, it’s not. We were just, we weren’t playing very well and just couldn’t get any production out of our back court. I can remember at Virginia, everything was going through Mutts and Aluma. Mutts and Aluma. Mutts and Aluma, but the skies open and those guys start to play better. And then there’s another uptick and Pedulla comes on. And Maddox comes on. David N’Guessan’s had some moments.

John [Ojiako] has helped us in spurts and now we’re back to how we’re comfortable. Maddox is playing 22, 23, 25 minutes a game. Pedulla’s 18, 22, 23 [minutes]. He would’ve played more the other night. He played 17. He had two fouls in the first 10 minutes which kind of disrupted our substitution pattern. But we think we got it greased up and feel great about our rotation and role definition has been altered here as we’ve gone along in a very positive way

What are the next steps for Maddox, Pedulla and N’Guessan:

I haven’t given it a lot of thought. Maddox – you will always find a place for a man that can score like he can score. Now I’ve told you and I’m serious, his defense has improved remarkably over the last month. He’s doing a very nice job and he’s guarding very good players and he’s competing. His role is only going to continue to grow. I’m running stuff for him now. I ran a couple of things for him the other night. He’s really bought in. He’s really working at it, he’s always done that.

He didn’t play a lot as a freshman. Here we are late in his sophomore year and he’s been terrific and we have times that we have a hard time playing without him on the floor. And that’s only going to get better. That is only going to become enhanced as we move along. He’s got to get a little bigger and stronger. He’s at 185 [pounds]. He needs to get to 195, 200 [pounds]. And that will be something that we talk about a lot here over the next coming months.

Pedulla, on paper, will be penciled in as our starting point guard for next year’s team. Another kid that’s very serious about it. Good basketball player. And to be frank, he’s better than we thought he was and we knew he was good or obviously we wouldn’t have taken him at Virginia Tech. The kid’s got something to him. He drives me crazy sometimes. He wins and I think our team rallies around him. Two unfortunate early fouls last Tuesday, but the guy’s a basketball player. 

David N’Guessan, he’s got to get bigger and stronger. He’s at 207, 208 [pounds]. He desperately needs to get to 220 [pounds]. I make fun of him all the time, he can’t keep his chair down in a movie theater out here, he’s so slender. Momma told me he’s only got one pinstripe on his pajama top. He’s got to get bigger and stronger.

And you know when he does that – like Virginia. There’s not a matchup on the floor. He can’t guard Jayden Gardner, he’s not big enough and he certainly can’t guard [Francisco] Caffaro. Caffaro just buries his right head in the hole and then turns around and scores it . But a very talented basketball player. He’s got a nose for the ball. Good passer, good motion player. Very conscientious motion player. So high hopes for those guys.

On Keve Aluma’s season:

He’s been awesome and I don’t take him for granted. You just come to expect it around here. I don’t know what he’s averaging, 16 and seven, 16 and eight? He bails our tail out of a lot of sticky situations when you’ve got to have a basket and you run something for him to get a touch in the middle of the floor and he turns over that left shoulder and makes that jump hook. He’s having a great year. I’m sure he’ll be on the all-league team, not that I care about that and he doesn’t care about that. I would think he’d be a first team guy. Time will tell. He’s had a great year. 

Keve Aluma is having an All-ACC caliber season. (Ivan Morozov)

On having a game that wasn’t down to the wire against Louisville:

I don’t know who was more excited about it, myself or my wife. My wife told me when I got home, said, ‘Lord sakes above, we need more of those.’ We played a good ballgame. The first four shots we threw in the air were threes and they went down and found ourselves up 12-2. It was a 12-point game at the half and I thought defensively we were very good, limiting Louisville to 37% from the field. 

We outrebounded them, I was really nervous about that. And their ability to grab it off the rim with Dre Davis and Sydney Curry. Sam Williamson. I told you in the pregame show, they are really talented and they’re big. And I thought they could just overwhelm us on the glass, but that certainly wasn’t the case. We got out of there with a comfortable win. 

On the difference that making threes makes for the team:

A real difference. We hadn’t shot the ball, I guess it was four games leading up, we’d been around 25% [from three]. We had more open ones in that Louisville game than we had in some of our recent ones. Nahiem Alleyne was terrific. He had a really good game for us. Storm [Murphy] got two down. Pedulla got two down in the first half. Hunter got one down. Aluma got one down in the second half. And our numbers were good. The ones we took were high percentage catch and shoot plays. 

On his relationship with Clemson head coach Brad Brownell:

Kind of a walk down memory lane. My first game as a Hokie was in Littlejohn Coliseum. Goodness gracious, I wasn’t sure we were going to score and low and behold we won the game. I love that facility, I love what they’ve done to it. Brad is a very good friend of mine. He’s a whale of a coach. We kind of came up, cut our teeth together. He was at UNC-Wilmington for a long time. Got his first head coaching job at Wilmington, and then Wright State before coming to Clemson.

Obviously, know a lot of people in the Upstate, have a bunch of family friends. My boy’s coming down from Wofford which is about an hour drive. Some of his buddies are coming down for the game. It’ll be a fun afternoon. We got work to do. We got our hands full, need another win. Going to have to play a good ballgame if we expect to do that.

On Clemson’s win against Georgia Tech Wednesday night:

Last night was a good win. Really, really good win was Wake Forest. And they’re doing right now without PJ Hall, who’s an all-league player, a kid that’s really playing well for them. They’ve beaten Wake Forest, Georgia Tech and BC on the road. They’ve won those three games without PJ. They got Hunter Tyson back last night, who’s also a fine basketball player and a senior. Hunter broke his clavicle, his collarbone probably three weeks ago and he played last night and did well. So you know they’re a little different right now, a little more guard-oriented.

David Collins. Chase Hunter is playing good basketball for them. Seems like Al-Amir Dawes and Nick Honor have been there since the rocks cooled. And those guys are playing well. Collins or Chase Hunter has a big game every night. Chase Hunter has been outstanding, was not great last night. David Collins was really, really good. So again, a handful and going to have to play awfully well.

On going to Brooklyn for the ACC Tournament:

We practice at Barclays. We’re not going to do a lot. We’ve been in there, that was partly by design to get up there in a holiday tournament when we played Memphis and [Xavier]. So we’ve been in there, we’ve shot in there. There’s some familiarity there. We’re staying in Manhattan. Let’s take care of business on Saturday. Another real challenge for us. 

I will look forward to getting to New York. I look forward to getting to the ACC Tournament. This cannot happen. Not a third time in a row. I am so thrilled that I’m not going to play North Carolina in Greensboro again. That’s cruel and unusual. I don’t know who we’re going to play, but it’ll beat playing the Tar Heels in Greensboro. So we’ll be excited to get there.