On Thursday night, Virginia Tech football head coach Brent Pry and Virginia Tech basketball head coach Mike Young joined Zach Mackey on Tech Talk Live at McClain’s at First & Main. They discussed the recruiting, the beginning and end of their seasons, upcoming senior activities and more.
Brent Pry
How have the last few days impacted meeting with potential players and recruits?
The NCAA did something new this year: they mandated four dead days on the recruiting calendar where you had a chance to meet with your players that were considering the portal. It was a really good idea. At first, the thought was two or three days, head coaches didn’t want four. They mandated four, we needed them. I’ve had seven or eight meetings a day with players, scholarship guys, walk-ons, scholarship guys considering, “Do I go to the NFL? Do I stay?”
Guys that are in significant roles, “Do I go to the transfer portal and look for maybe a better NIL deal somewhere or a better spot for me, you don’t appreciate me.” There are positive meetings too, guys wanting to stay and better their situation. All of it. A bunch of different scenarios. It’s really good we had this time to do it. Normally, you’d be on the road recruiting right now. You’d be doing this over the phone, which would be very challenging. It’s been a busy four days but a good four days.
What are those conversations like?
The guys want to know what you think, like, “Where am I, coach? Do you see me figuring in next year, do you think I can play here? Can I get more targets? Going to get more carries, coach? You see me moving up the depth chart? What are my weaknesses, what are my strengths?” All of that, so they’re good meetings. We certainly encourage straightforward conversations with our players, they walk in my office, I want them to learn how to say what’s on their mind. Don’t be bashful. If you’re concerned about something, let’s talk about it. It’s been good, I’ve enjoyed it, I’ve had a few energy drinks along the way, but it’s been good.
You mention recruiting high schools and transfers, but what about recruiting within your own team?
That’s what these meetings have been, right? It’s paving the best way to get our roster the way we want it to look, and certainly a ton of guys that I’m thankful we have. We’re going to keep growing and developing them, and then there are some guys that it’s just a better situation to hit the transfer portal and go find their success somewhere else. There’s nothing wrong with that, the transfer portal, I’m not against it. It’s not an enemy of mine. It’s busy, and it’s a pain in the butt, but for a lot of guys, it’s the right thing to create opportunities to go find success, know where they can find it. Also, for us to fill some needs, where we need be, know where we have some things that we want to get fixed.
How do you manage the number of players entering the transfer portal?
Well, the first thing is you can’t get overwhelmed. You just have to take it day-by-day, be realistic in what can happen and have a plan. You have to do the work in case this happens, in case this particular player wants to leave, how do you replace him? What does that look like? I think the real variable in this thing, that’s going to probably double the number [of transfers starting in the FBS], the percentage, is NILs.
Young men can be happy, but if their market value demands something that you’re not willing to do, they’re a flight risk. It’s almost like managing an NFL roster, and players making decisions based on finances and not just where they’re happier, where they feel good. Sometimes NFL teams, they may be a good player, but the contract doesn’t make sense for the organization. Between the portal and NIL, it’s a full-time job every day right now.
What happens on the day the transfer portal opens?
If guys are in question, and this is what I tell the guys: if you want to enter the portal, let’s do it the right way. You come see me, we have a conversation, let’s talk about it. If you support us and you’re doing the right things to continue to support this team, we’re going to continue to support you. I’m going to help you navigate this. I do tell them that once they enter the portal, their scholarship is no longer there. I would have the option to bring them back if that was our choice. That’s certainly not guaranteed, and usually not the case. If they’re handling the situation, right, then there’s an opportunity to continue to working out in our facility, to maintain their locker, but they’re not going to work out with our team. That doesn’t seem right to me.
I’m going to support you. We’re moving this team forward. There’s a lot of new things that with this portal that used to be, from a calendar standpoint, pretty easy to lay out. You’ve got this portal open until January 18, and they’ve actually amended it in the spring. It’s April 15 to May 1. You could be feeling pretty good about things, and you come out in the spring and you can have three or four guys hit the portal then, and it’s a little more challenging to replace them. Your roster management is key right now, and you have guys hitting the portal, that’s something that we’ve encouraged. You have some guys that may hit the portal for various reasons. That’s not what we wanted, but also something that because of circumstances, it’s going to happen.
Have a lot of guys mentioned NIL deals? Is that something they want to talk about?
Yeah, I think most of them do. It may not start out that way. We certainly don’t want anybody to come to or choose Virginia Tech because of NIL, but we want to be competitive in that space, and we are.
Are you guys hitting the road to recruit high schools soon?
We have coaches on the road today [Thursday]. They left the office at noon, they can travel today, get where they need to be, and recruit tomorrow and Saturday. We want to do this with high school players. To me, we have 19 high school kids committed right now, a lot of them from the Commonwealth, and we’re going to continue to do that. That’s the base and the foundation of our program, growth and development with a good core group of young guys from our footprint. Then you go to the transfer portal to fill needs. Maybe two guys, maybe three, maybe four, maybe five, you go there to fill needs. We’re going to do this thing and get where we need to go with a good group of high school commitments every year.
How do you split up the assistant coached and decide who goes where?
It’s mostly based on relationships. That was a factor for me in hiring this staff, is guys that can easily go into our footprint and already had relationships, already know coaches, already know people in the community, already know trainers and handlers. You eliminate a bunch of time in developing a relationship when you already have it. So that was important in the process, and we’re maximizing that.
Stu Holt has a ton of connections in North Carolina, his dad is in the Hall of Fame there as a high school coach, so very easy to put him in North Carolina, he knows a ton of people, he played at the University of North Carolina. That’s just one example of what we try to do in recruiting, in the map, and what we want things to look like.
What do the next few weeks look like for the current team?
They’ll spend time with Coach [Dwight] Galt this week, part of next week, and then it’s a reading day or two and hammering out the exams, and then they take off and go home for a little bit. They will get a good team meeting to kick off the spring semester and get into our winter workouts. Right now, it’s about academics, just some modest weight training and some movement stuff to keep them going before we cut them loose for about a month.
The staff is on the road for the next two weeks, we do have a nice senior banquet. We’re honoring those guys at the basketball game, that’ll be good. The staff, for the most part, we’ve got a couple of guys on official visits this weekend. A couple guys coming in unofficially, next weekend is a really big weekend for us, we have about a dozen guys on official visits. We will be on planes, trains and automobiles for the next two-and-a-half weeks, maximizing our time, getting in front of as many recruits and prospects as we can, securing the commitments that we have. We have quite a few guys committed in this class that have a bunch of folks chasing them. They see 3-8 and they say, let’s look at Virginia Tech’s commitment list and see who we like. We’ve done a nice job. There are some really good players in that class who we have some folks coming after.
What was the conversation with the players about the cancellation of the Virginia game like?
It was a tough deal. We had honestly more so told them that they were going to play, we’d gotten word it looked like it was going to be a green light. We went out to practice almost immediately, we came off that practice field, and it was kind of starting to slide the other way. I couldn’t say anything to them until we knew for sure. That was tough night for those guys. They went from believing they were going to play and have a chance to be in Lane Stadium for the last game.
A couple hours later, with just the way things shook out, it wasn’t even in person that they find out that they’re not going to play. So, it was a tough spot. Certainly, our mind, our thoughts, what came first was the University of Virginia and their staff and their players and they didn’t get their last game either. They were also certainly missing some teammates. Our guys felt bad about their situation, but we were always putting UVa up front.
You had a Thanksgiving for the team and then let them go home:
There wasn’t much we could do. We didn’t feel like practicing the next day was the right thing. We did a little tradition that we’re going to start, we took all the seniors out to the 50-yard line in Lane Stadium. Everybody else built a man-made tunnel to our tunnel, called up each senior and they got to call out who they wanted to carry them off the field. You call out Dax [Hollifield] and he’s calling on Coach [Chris] Marve and a couple of the linebackers, they have to lift him up, carry him 50 yards. While that’s happening, their walk off song is playing over the loudspeaker. We celebrated them in our own personal way that day, which was awesome.
Interesting TyJuan Garbutt called on Coach [J.C.] Price and Coach Price only. Coach Price had to put TyJuan on his back and carry him 50 yards. It was good. It was a tough day, to be honest. We had a good Thanksgiving meal upstairs at the Sports Performance Center and the guys got on their way and went home. Obviously, again, UVa comes first. That’s never been in question, but we played pretty good up there at Liberty that day, I felt like our team was a little bit closer to who we can be. I think we all, players and staff, wanted to go see that next kind of step in the right direction. It’s just going to have to wait until the fall.
Who came up with that idea?
Other places I’ve been, we’ve done something similar, but not exactly that. You never know what’s the right thing for a particular team. It just seemed the right thing to me at that time to honor those guys that way.
It was good to see the Hokies get on the better side of a close ballgame at Liberty:
To back it up a little bit, not just to get rewarded, which [the players] were, but to find a way to win it and to do the right things down the stretch. Grant [Wells] made some good decisions. He took the sack like we told him to, they had to burn a time out. Jalen Holston, the sacrifice he made because we had to tell him not to score. He has a chance to score his fourth touchdown and be in the record books and it’s like, “Hey, man, listen, to ensure we win this game. It means going down and not scoring. If they’re smart, they’re going to want you to.” A lot of good things happen at the end of the game, the sack fumble, the way the d-line stepped up when we needed them to. Really proud of the effort that day.
How about the coaching carousel going on?
I think it is happening sooner and sooner. More administrations are trying to get in front of it and get their guy before somebody else does. Coach [Hugh] Freeze and I talked a little bit before the game and obviously Auburn was very interested in him at that point already. That’s the nature of the business. It’s hard to keep up, every day there’s something new going on out there.
On the upcoming banquet to honor the seniors:
We’re looking forward to it. It’s over at the Inn at Virginia Tech. We have some nice hardware to give out to a couple of guys. These guys have invested a lot over the last four, five, some even six years, to Virginia Tech and to the football program. They certainly deserve special recognition and to be honored for their investment and commitment to Virginia Tech football. We’re going to do that Sunday with the banquet. Our seniors, their parents, are involved and certainly going to want to make them feel special. Then they’re also going to be able to walk out at the basketball game. Early in the game, I believe that one of the breaks, they’re going to ask all the senior football players to walk out and be recognized. I’m very happy for those guys.
As a first-time head coach coming into this program, it’s important to get those guys on your side right away and get them to buy into the new staff:
They did such a great job. I know everybody was disappointed in the win total. There were so many good things and so many lessons learned, when you talk about laying a foundation, these seniors were a big reason why we were able to do that. There are so many encouraging things to me and they had a lot to do with that. The way they handled adversity, the way they stuck together, the messaging that they provided our team to keep going, I’m very proud of those guys and thankful for them.
How was the fan support this season?
I couldn’t be more pleased. The fans have been outstanding. You’re talking about supporting a team that was in transition, 3-8. You come out here against Wofford, a FCS team, sellout crowd, students were out there an hour before kickoff. What we have to do as a football team, as a football program, is give them more to cheer about in the second half. I want to see that fan base stick in there until the fourth quarter and all of us celebrate on the field after those victories in Lane Stadium. There’s not a better place in the conference. For a home crowd, it’s certainly a selling point for our recruits. Our players love it. Our staff loves it. I can’t thank that group enough.
What have you learned in your first year as a head coach that you reflect back on?
Certainly, learning to think and take a moment before I speak or respond. That’s been really important. I learned that the hard way, but I want to thank McClain’s, I want to thank Charlie [the McClain’s manager]. This group has been awesome. Charlie’s out here tonight. He looks like a PhD student over at Virginia Tech. This has been a great year. Everybody stuck with us, coming out every night. It’s been awesome. I appreciate everybody that supported the radio show.
Mike Young
How are things going at practice?
Good. We needed the practice time. It’s scouting and preparing for the next game and sometimes I lose sight of what’s most important, what’s most important is our team and what’s important to us, habits. There’s a lot that goes into the scouting side of it, KYP we call it. Know your personnel, know who you’re guarding, know his number, know his game.
We took today, we watched a little bit of North Carolina, the hotspots if you will. We spent a lot of time on the Hokies, defending better, and playing better basketball on the offensive side of it. Getting the ball off the floor and moving it from side to side. We’ve had a good day. We’ll spend a lot of time on that again tomorrow. We’ll delve a bit more into the Tar Heels as we look forward to Sunday’s matchup.
Justyn Mutts and how he’s developed in your program:
He’s just worked at it. There’s no secrets and no magic dust. He put his licks in, he got bigger and stronger, really worked on his game throughout the summer. He was in the weight room continuously, spent a lot of time in our offices during the offseason watching film, and his grasp of the game, there’s kids coming along at different times, that’s been my experience. This young man, the lights came on, if you will. Man is he playing good basketball, he’s doing it night in and night out.
We’re getting consistently 10 to 12 points combined from Mylyjael [Poteat] and Lynn Kidd. We couldn’t sniff that in our first three years together, coming off the bench on the front line. I will have a word with Coach Pry about Mylyjael Poteat. There may come a time that you’ll see him on Worsham field, Lane Stadium, but not in the next couple of years. I can assure you that. That kid is the nicest young man alive. I’m not sure he’s got what it takes to get down on that defensive line and get after somebody. He’ll screen you and he’ll rebound, so he’s a good one.
How have you seen the development of guys growing into their bodies over time?
There are other things. Can they catch? It’s hard to teach a kid catch the balls, those big ones. Can they handle it? Can they think? Keve Aluma was different, could step out and make a shot and he could put it on the floor. Toughness, where’s the ceiling? How old are they? There’s a lot of things that go into it.
You’ve been able to get the points down to the paint, 40-plus points down inside:
We were able to do that against Penn State, we thought we had a decided advantage in the post. I was a little surprised we scored as well as we did in the post against Minnesota. They had some big people. I like sticking that thing in there, we’ve always done it. This team is doing a pretty good job. We’re going to have to do that on Sunday. That’s a tall order because of the [Armando] Bacot kid, who’s big as a bear. Good gosh, he’s a big man. We’ll need to be able to manipulate some things and get Mutts in there and get Poteat and Lynn Kidd and get some easier baskets. We have to get fouled more. We’re not getting fouled enough. We’re still plugging away at it.
Hunter Cattoor locked down Penn State:
I can sit there and watch 10 minutes of film and I can tell you who Cattoor is going to guard. Everything just kind of sprays out from there. There’s the best player, that’s who Cattoor is guarding. There’s their best frontline guy that’s who Mutts is guarding. Now you can mix and match and see the rest of it. That’s the easy one. Now, who are the others going to guard? He’ll guard Caleb Love on Sunday. Caleb Love is terrific. What Cattoor has done with that most important person is quite the luxury. He does it with just sheer toughness and grit. He’s where he’s supposed to be, there on the catch. He’s made himself. I’ve told you before, he couldn’t guard me when he first came here. He has worked at it, and he is just a ferocious defender.
You say you weren’t please with the way you were playing, but you beat Minnesota by 10:
We’re going to get there. We’re an eight-cylinder car hitting on four. We have to do a better job of coaching. We’re not very efficient offensively. I just don’t completely like the look of our team defensively right now. We are rebounding better. That’s a big deal against Minnesota, who has pretty good Big Ten size. We rebounded quite well. We haven’t let it all hang out here on that in quite yet. We’re still trying to get a couple of them up to speed, Pedulla has to guard better as well as Pedulla’s playing. He has to do a better job of keeping the ball in front of him. A lot of little things that we continue to harp on and get better at.
The Hokies won the final ACC/Big Ten challenge:
I’ll miss it. I wish we could play ACC/Big Ten and ACC/SEC. I really enjoyed it. And I really admire the Big Ten as the league. I like the style. I have a lot of friends in that league. Those are good games. I think if we played one at home and one on the road and flipped it the next year… But they don’t ask my opinion. So here we are.
Do you like getting a bit of ACC play in early on?
No, I don’t. Another one they don’t ask my opinion on. I’ve never liked that. For strength of schedule and analytics, all the things that go into the NET, there’s other things that the selection committee looks at in March. They tacked on two more league games so we went from 18 to 20. If you’re going to play 20 league games, you have to play a couple of those before Christmas, it just doesn’t work to pack 20 games into January, February and early March. So here we are. Obviously, we have North Carolina here on Sunday, and then we will travel to Boston College prior to Christmas, and then Wake Forest on New Year’s Eve, and then we’re off and running.
How tough is that when you have a talented team to try to weather the storm?
I don’t know if I’ve ever had a team as talented as this North Carolina team, I’d like to try it one time, I can tell you that. I think it’d be a lot of fun. They’re really good. They’re talented. They have Caleb Love, RJ Davis, Leaky Black, they bring Pete Nance as a grad transfer from Northwestern who’s playing good basketball for them. They could very easily 8-0.
The Alabama game went to four overtimes. I just watched the Iowa State game. They were up seven with under five to play and lost. I thought they played a pretty good ball game at Indiana last night. Indiana was good. It was at Indiana and the Hoosiers knocked them off. They’re really good again, as we all knew they would be. Coach [Hubert] Davis is a terrific coach. They’ll bring a good outfit in here and we’ll have to play really good basketball. If we don’t, it’ll be a tough night.
Indiana was tenacious defensively against UNC:
That’s just what Coach [Mike] Woodson is doing out there. We’re just not geared that way like Indiana is. We’ll stay with what we do, we believe in what we do and we’ll give it get everything we got.
Who do you envision matching up against Armando Bacot?
We’re still trying to determine our best course of action. We’ll have to do it by committee, Mutts guarding some because he’s just that good and he can guard anything, but you have to be careful with fouls. Bacot is, I don’t know what he is, 6-10, 260? He’s appreciably bigger than Justyn. We’ll do some different things with it. But Mylyjael Poteat and Lynn Kidd will certainly get their opportunity with Bacot, so we can move Justyn off and on to Pete Nance or Puff Johnson, one of those guys. There’ll be a lot of back and forth, there’ll be a lot of banter on our bench about matchups, there always is. Fouls and a lot of considerations, a lot of things that go into it.
It’ll be a sold-out crowd in Cassell Coliseum. It’s going to be electric Sunday, isn’t it?
Dress lightly, it’ll be hot in the Cassell on Sunday, I can assure you that. It will be loud, there’s nothing like it, being in that building when it’s on fire like that. It’ll be a lot of fun. A really good opponent in the Tar Heels. It should be a really good college basketball game. I look forward to being a small part of it.
Big women’s game tonight against Nebraska, hopefully a big crowd:
There should be. The Hokie women’s team is really, really good. We’re around those kids a lot, in the same building. They are special people and serious basketball players and I’m a big fan. I love watching their team play. They’re good.
The senior football players are going to be recognized at the game Sunday:
I think that is the right thing to do. Those seniors have done a lot for Virginia Tech, for our athletic department, for our football program. Very unfortunate, but we all understand the reasons why. To recognize them on Sunday at halftime, I think is obviously the right thing to do, and those kids deserve that. I’ll see them in the hallways, I’m going to the locker room and look forward to patting them on the back. A lot of really nice kids.
You also have the opportunity to have a recruit on campus:
We have a bunch of good ones. We’ll have one here officially, who’s playing tonight as a matter of fact, I’ll watch him play here in a minute, and a number of kids, underclassmen, that will be here on an unofficial basis. We look forward to hosting them.
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Maybe CMY thought Hunter couldn’t guard him back in the day.