On Thursday night, Virginia Tech men’s basketball coach Mike Young and Tech wrestling coach Tony Robie joined Zach Mackey and Mike Burnop on Tech Talk Live. The Hokies are back in action on the hardwood on Saturday in Cassell Coliseum vs. Wake Forest (5:30 p.m. ET) while Robie’s bunch compete in the ACC championships on Sunday, March 10.
Mike Young
What’s the last couple of days looked like?
Had practice today, You have to take a day off. Yesterday was our day off. Any Saturday-Tuesday, Wednesday is our day off. It’s a good day, they’re all there throughout the day, getting treatment with Hisham [Ziyout]. Went at it today, had a really good practice, and began our preparation for Wake Forest. You get to this point in the year, in January and then through February and March. You’re really following the same schedule. It’s almost like clockwork, the kids know what’s going on, Tomorrow will be a heavy Wake Forest day. And in that preparation, it kind of runs itself now, other than practice, and we had a good day today.
How about up at Syracuse just talking about that game a little bit. The first half, that’s a huge hole you got to dig out of, and boy, it’s hard to dig out from 18, isn’t it?
Former Virginia Tech assistant coach Adrian Autry is doing a good job with his team. They’ve always been hard to beat in that building. We went up there Year 1 if you recall. Went up there in Year 1 against a good Syracuse team. Quincy Guerrier, Elijah Hughes, Marek Dolezaj. Quincy was a good player on that team. Buddy Boeheim was a sophomore. Joe Girard was a freshman, if you’ll recall. And we’ve lost our last two, and then again on Tuesday. You got to play two halves, for crying out loud. We were better in the second half. We were better on both ends in the second half. But they had a good crowd in there and we didn’t respond as well as we could, needless to say, and couldn’t overcome. I think we cut it back to six with the ball in the second half but couldn’t quite get over the hump.
What about Judah Mintz is one of the better scorers in the league? He goes for 29 points in that game. How difficult is it to guard him, especially when Hunter was in foul trouble?
I thought Hunter had a good defensive possession and Mintz was down on the baseline as he always does, shot fake. Mintz has an uncanny knack for getting fouled, he goes to the foul line an average of eight times a game. I think he went six in the first half in our game on Tuesday. He’s long, he’s got good size for a point guard. He was really good for them last year as a freshman. He’s gotten better. Doesn’t shoot the ball very well from the perimeter, but he makes the three in the first half against us early in that game. But you know he makes those other guys better. And he scored it even better than he typically does on us. Tuesday, I thought Hunter competed like crazy. Mintz got over top of him and beat him on a couple of occasions. But it wasn’t from a lack of effort and giving us everything he has.
In the first half, you guys only had 18 points in the paint. But in the second half those guys got going. Lynn Kidd and Mylyjael Poteat end up with a good game with those 27 points and 14 rebounds. What did you think of your big play?
They both played well. We thought we had, as we do most nights, an advantage there. Maliq Brown is a good player for them but did a nice job of getting the ball. They did a nice job of carving out space away from the baseline and finishing over both shoulders. I would say Mylyjael is eight, nine, 10 games into a really good run for our team. He’s playing really hard. You talk about a guy that’s overcoming some things, his legs. He’s got a left knee that he’s had some surgery on and he’s got some swelling in that thing. It looks different. I was talking to him today, he said, “Coach, it looks a lot worse than it feels.” He’s moving great. We’re very cautious with him in practice, trying to get him game to game. But he has handled himself remarkably well. He’s in the training room three times a day getting treatment from Hisham in an effort to stay healthy and to stay on the floor helping our team. I can’t tell you how proud I am of him. He’s a good one.
While he’s trying to stay healthy. The same can be said for Lynn Kidd. He was really sick going into that game on Saturday. I mean, it was impressive to see him even out there performing.
He lost some conditioning through that illness. And he’s still working his way back into it. Had a couple of long stretches without a whistle and needed to get him off the floor. He, again, gave us everything he had. He looked a little bit better today and I think by tomorrow’s practice. I think he’ll be closer to 100 percent on Saturday against the Demon Deacons.
They have made some renovations to the JMA Wireless Dome up there with the video boards and everything they’ve done to that. They’ve made some nice additions to that arena, haven’t they?
You’ve been in there when it’s full for a football game, Mike. I can’t imagine that. That atmosphere is such a unique building. It’ll always be the Carrier Dome to me. I remember seeing so many great games with coach Jim Boeheim’s teams through the years. It is really different. I guess there’s nothing else to do in Syracuse, New York. They draw really well. They’re passionate about their Orange, it’s a knowledgeable fan base. I enjoy going up there, I enjoy seeing the folks that you come in contact with year after year. Good people and happy for Adrian Autry again, he’s doing a nice job with his club.
Coach Boeheim wasn’t a fan at first of playing in the football stadium, but it’s turned into a phenomenon now across college basketball. It’s funny how they work that almost into an advantage for them using that football stadium.
They’ve worked it into a real advantage. And Coach Boeheim had a lot to do with that. The great teams that he had there. They had Jim Boeheim Day on Saturday against Notre Dame. Great crowd and should have been a great crowd in honoring coach and all of his many accomplishments during his 100 years at Syracuse, coaching the Orange basketball team.
Speaking of 100 years, think about Jeff Jones. What was that, 41 years he coached? And now he’s retiring. I guess he’s got some health issues down there. But the news today broke out that Mike Jones got the Old Dominion job.
He sure did. I got a call from a couple people at Old Dominion yesterday, as a matter of fact, talking about Mike as a possible candidate. Of course, Mike played at Old Dominion and was a really good player at Old Dominion for Oliver Purnell. He spent two years with us, a year at Maryland on coach Kevin Willard’s staff. I talked to Mike earlier today as well and he shared with me that he had been offered the job and had accepted. So anytime a former assistant has their opportunity, have their shot to be a head coach, that’s a real celebration for me. I’m thrilled for Mike, a gentleman that I think the world of and did really good work for us during his time in Blacksburg.
You called the timeout to stop the run that one time and then called it again. How do you make the determination when they’re coming over of when you’re going to encourage, when you’re gonna have to kind of get on them? How do you make that call?
It’s an interesting question. It’s just a feel of the situation. Where the game is, even the timeout is a feel and what needs to be stopped, what needs to be corrected, what needs to be encouraged. Adjustments that need to be made, what’s the next three sets that you’re going to employ? Are you going to tweak coverage in your defense, in your ball screen coverage? I guess that’s the luxury of doing this thing for 22 years and 38 overall. There is not any coach that would tell you that there’s no rhyme or reason. You want to value those timeouts and I hate going into the second half with only two. I like to have at least two going down the stretch. But you know if you feel that something is slipping away from you, you got to stop it, you got to stop the bleeding. You got to get them over and look them in the eyes and get them back on track hopefully.
Chris Bell, a kid that had been really playing well for them, shot the ball extremely well the last couple games. But you have Bell gloved up pretty well the other night
We did a great job on Bell. Bell played really well. Bigger than I thought he was, he’s a good-sized young man. Chris Bell is one of those guys where a lot of times after an offensive rebound the ball finds the other team’s best shooter. Syracuse is no different. The ball had an unreal ability to find his hands. After Maliq Brown offensive rebounds or Quadir Copeland or one of those guys and they stick that thing back onto the perimeter. He gets it out of there in a hurry. And you’re all huddled up around the paint because you’re going after that defensive rebound. But he’s a really good scorer, he can catch, square you up, jab step, get up over top of you with that 6-5 probably 6-6 frame, but we did a great job of getting to him in transition. He missed one that he typically gets down. Every time he shoots it. We caught a break with that. But Tyler Nickel, Sean Pedulla guarded him quite a bit. We did a good job with Bell.
You get 50 points down in the paint but yet you have only three free throws in the game. Did that surprise you?
We’ve had that a couple of times on the road. We had a very good officiating crew. John Gaffney is one of my favorites, was on the game. You know, as much as we had it in the post, as much as we drove it, surprise? Yes. But I’m not going to make any more of it than that.
You talk about the officiating crew. You talk about Teddy Valentine. I know you think of the world of him and you guys have got a good relationship. Tell us a good Teddy Valentine story.
I don’t know that I’ve got a specific story. I’ve had him a lot. I can remember Valentine doing games. It was Valentine that tossed Bobby Knight out of that game years ago, gosh 30 years ago. Ted’s taking great care of his body. He is a lot older than he looks. He still moves very well. I’ll tell anybody that asks, he’s my favorite. You know there’s gonna be … he’s different, not in a good way. He’s the best official that college basketball has to offer. And I say that for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is a lot of times lesser officials are going to anticipate plays, they’re going to anticipate contact around the rim. And he doesn’t. You’ll see what looks like a car crash in the lane and the ball goes shooting out one way and bodies are flying around. You go back and look at it on film. There is not the contact there that you thought it was. It was a good clean block. But there’s so many that are going to call that a foul and it’s not. He hustles and he’s always in a good position. Just little things about how he manages a game. Ted Valente is one of those guys, when he’s on your game, all you have to be concerned with is your team, in coaching your team. You don’t have to worry about the officiating. He’s going to take care of it. There are other outstanding officials in our league, Roger Ayers, Ron Groover, there’s a bunch of them. I think Valentine’s is the best. I really do.
It’s a different life, too. I know Roger Ayers there, obviously just down the road in Roanoke, but these guys they’re doing 80 games at this point of the season, from one coast to the other. It’s an amazing life. It’d be interesting to follow one of those around for a week.
You’d do it too if you knew what they made. They’re independent contractors. So there’s no limitations on the number of games. They’re not going to limit Roger to four games in a week. And if Roger wants to work six, if he wants to work seven, I think most of them have a couple of days built into their schedule each week, typically Friday and oftentimes Monday, where they can get back and collect their thoughts and get things together. But like players, officials take care of their body. You’ll see those guys in the training room before games all the time. And they’re icing knees and getting taped by your athletic training staff. I had a guy, Duke Edsall, remember that name? The ball went through the basket, and the net got caught up on the rim. And this is early December. A lot of those officials do so well in the four or five months of officiating, they don’t have to have another job. Some do. Roger does, some others do. For the insurance and that sort of thing. Valentine I don’t think has ever worked outside of officiating. But Duke didn’t have another job. And Duke jumps up, the balls in play, he’s gonna jump up real quick and grab the net. And he does so and he tears his Achilles. All right, so there’s no insurance. He is done for the year. And that was that. A tough time for Duke. And I know Duke very well, I know all those guys very well. I’ve had Valentine a lot early in my career. Roger Ayers. The majority of them find their way into the ACC and that’s needless to say quite the accomplishment for any official to be able to call in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
I was going to ask you about the model that came out with the scheduling for the 2025 season. Talk about the road games, because you’re gonna have to go out West for a nice trip.
I think it’ll be interesting to see how they manage that. You know, if you play Wednesday, Saturday, you’re gonna go out Tuesday, obviously. And you’ve got missed class time, you’ve got other considerations, you’re certainly not coming back and going back out there. So that would be a Tuesday departure to play Wednesday. You’d have Thursday, Friday out there to prepare for the next one. Play Saturday then come home. I’m not sure what that looks like. I haven’t looked closely at it. I knew that we picked up Clemson. In a home and home along with UVa and Miami. We retained those two games twice a year, every year. It’s going to be different. But I do think, and we’ve talked about it, I do think the addition of Cal, Stanford and SMU are great additions for our league, so we’ll figure it out and we’ll do the best we can.
I wanted to ask you about something that’s been going on around the sports world this week and that’s the court storming at Duke and Wake. What’s your take on it?
I think it needs to be outlawed. Somebody said fans don’t belong on the floor. And we don’t belong in the stands. And I think that’s right. Now, I hate to temper the Fun Police, I hate to temper our students, Cassell Guard and their enjoyment and they’re being a part of our program and being Hokies. But I saw that replay today. As a matter of fact, I watched the Duke-Wake Forest game. And what bothers me as much as anything, as much as Kyle [Filipowski] getting hurt is, and I’ve had this happen to me, our teams when we lost on a buzzer beater. Invariably, some student who’s not where he’s supposed to be, in terms of his well-being at that point, is going to approach a player and say something to them, and they’re not telling them what a good game they played, all right. They’re saying something really ugly. And you’re coming out of that emotional state. The young lady at Iowa got hit, and could have hurt her. Kyle got hit, could have hurt him. It just doesn’t make any sense to me, it never has. So I think that steps need to be taken to ensure that doesn’t happen. Now. Again, I watched the Duke-Wake Forest game. A lot of times, if that’s an 8-, 10-point game, and you see that happening, you can call a timeout, and you can get those guys off the floor and get them all back to the locker room. I’ve had coaches that were leading and out of respect for our team would call a timeout to let me get our players off the floor. So that’s my take on it. I am not sure how you monitor that, how you police that. It’ll be interesting to see, I do have great confidence in our commissioner, Jim Phillips, and the leadership folks in the ACC to make the necessary changes to make that right.
What do you make of the net rankings and all that stuff? Is there more parity in the ACC this year than you’ve seen in a long time?
Yeah, I think it’s a pretty well-balanced league. Brad Brownell made some interesting points this week. I was a little surprised he said it, but he’s right. He’s dead on. He said now, Virginia Tech is in the middle of our league. Virginia Tech beat us, Clemson, that is. Virginia Tech beat Iowa State handily. His point is that Big 12 people in non-league play, there’s the analytics, how you’re doing offensive efficiency, defensive efficiency. And if you went back and looked at the Big 12, and their non-league schedules, Iowa State, Cincinnati, some of these others, it is not very impressive. They are playing eight, sometimes nine teams from the 300 area to 365. And they are beating the fire out of them, which positively affects your offensive and defensive efficiency. Now, once you get into league play, and it’s such a strong league, it is really hard for your net to move because you’ve started way up here with who you played in November, December. And Brad makes the point and it’s a great point that our league is performing every bit. We were 9-3 against the Big 12. Overall, we had a very good record against the Big Ten, and I think we were a push in the ACC-SEC Challenge. So he made valid points. Wake Forest, we got to play a good ballgame and beat them on Saturday. I don’t think there’s a path that Wake Forest would not be in, their net and their KenPom ranking and all of those things. I think they’ve had a really good year, they’ve got a really good team and I think they’re deserving, I think we’ve got a couple more of us that need to get on the stick and we’re gonna have a shot at it when that time comes.
What are the Demon Deacons looking like in your eyes?
They’ve gotten better. Hunter Sallis is having a really good year. I talked to coach Steve Forbes today. I would think that Sallis would be No. 2 in voting if the season ended today in Player of the Year honors behind RJ Davis from North Carolina. I don’t know that, but the kid is playing good basketball. Boopie Miller at the point is playing very well. I’ve always really admired the [Cameron] Hildreth kid. At small forward, Andrew Carr has gotten better and better, playing well up there against us. Efton Reid, not real deep, Parker Friedrichsen is playing good basketball for them. They’re playing fast, they are guarding at a pretty good level. Demon Deacons are formidable, we’re gonna have to bring our best ball game if we expect to win. That’s what we intend to do.
They had five guys, all five starters, in double figures the first time you saw them, so you kind of pick your poison, don’t you?
They’ve struggled on the road, as a lot of us have. Think they’re 2-6 coming into Blacksburg, they lost Tuesday night at Notre Dame. Notre Dame played well. But yeah, they’ve got a number of people that can hurt you. They score the ball, all five spots. Efton Reid has really given them a boost with his ability to carve out space in there and catch the ball and score. He’s big as a house. So they’ve got a good basketball team. Steve’s doing a good job.
Tony Robie
Let’s talk a little bit about the season. It’s obviously go time with the ACC championships and NCAA championships coming up, but just give us how you feel the season has gone along for the Hokies.
Anybody who was at the Ohio State match in November knows it didn’t start off well. But I do think that we’re doing our best wrestling at the right time of the year. I think we’ve gotten a little bit better throughout the course of the season each and every week, we made some adjustments to our lineup. And that was part of what we’re trying to figure out early in the season is who was going to be where, who we may or may not redshirt, you know, trying to get a feel for if some of these freshmen were ready to go and giving them an opportunity. In wrestling now they can wrestle five matches before you burn the redshirt. So we tried to take advantage of that. And we tried to throw some guys out there and put some guys on the mat that maybe weren’t ready at the time. And we figured some things out throughout the course of the season. So we’ve made some changes to our lineup at 125, at 141 and at 184. And all of those guys are wrestling really well and I think can help us down the road here. We lost a tough match last weekend at NC State, which was disappointing, but I thought there were a lot of real positives that came out of that. They’ve got a really good team and we knew it was going to be tough. It’s a hard place to wrestle. But, we had some guys that wrestled really well, in particular 165, Connor Brady. I thought he wrestled one of his best matches I’ve seen him wrestle in his career. And then at 184, T.J. Stewart, who’s a freshman for us, beat the eighth- or ninth-ranked guy in the country in pretty convincing fashion. So it was great to see the progress in those places. And I think with the ACC championships coming up, it’s about hitting your stride at the right time of the year. And I think we’re doing that.
The rivalry you’ve built with NC State has become quite special, hasn’t it?
Yeah, it certainly is. I think the last I don’t even know how many years, probably the last eight or nine years, it’s come down to the NC State-Virginia Tech match to decide the team championship. Oftentimes at the ACC tournament. It’s come down to us and NC State and so we’re looking forward to another opportunity to get an ACC championship here in a couple of weeks. I do feel like we have a better tournament team this year than we do a dual meet team, with some really high-end guys with Caleb Henson and Mekhi Lewis and we get Bryce Andonian back in there and healthy. Not having him in there has really made things a challenge for us. When you have a guy of that caliber that can not only win but can win and score a lot of bonus points for you, gets some pins, gets some tech falls and some major decisions. So looking forward to getting Bryce back in there at the ACC championships. And I think that’ll add a lot to us as well. But yeah, it is a great rivalry and they’ve got a great program. And it’s a hard place to wrestle. Reynolds Coliseum is loud and it’s packed and their fans don’t make it easy on us. But like I always tell our guys if we want to make it easy, just keep winning. And they don’t say much when you win matches. So that’s what we got to do.
What about Mekhi Lewis? I know folks like to talk about him going for his fourth ACC championship. He’s got a national championship under his belt, No. 2 in the country right now at 174. What does that weight class look like? And what’s your expectation for him these next couple of weeks?
Well, Mekhi has been really consistent this year. I think he is the most consistent now than he ever has been in his time here at Virginia Tech, which has been a long time. He’s been here for seven years with a COVID year and an Olympic redshirt and a regular redshirt. So we’re certainly are going to miss Mekhi. But I think from just a maturity standpoint, the focus standpoint, he’s wrestling really well. Kind of distance themselves in some matches where in the past, he would make matches a little bit closer than they need to be sometimes. So I think we’ve seen some separation between Mekhi and some guys that he’s better than, so, you know, excited for him. It’s a tough weight class. I mean, winning an NCAA championship is incredibly difficult. He’s got a kid named Carter Starocci from Penn State who’s going for his fourth NCAA title, who he lost to in overtime a couple of years ago in the NCAA finals. He’ll be in the weight class. There’s another kid from Michigan that transferred from Stanford too, Shane Griffith, who was an NCAA champion a couple years ago. So there’s three NCAA champions that account for five NCAA titles at the weight class. It’s not going to be easy. It never is easy, winning at that event is tough to do. I just feel good about where Mekhi is physically and mentally right now going into this thing. He’s really dialed in and been working his butt off. So I think he’s going to perform well.
You mentioned Bryce Andonian, who’s a two-time All-American, four-time ACC finals. When you miss that much time and you’re getting ready to come back in, how difficult is it to stay sharp at what you do and to be challenged in practice? And, I mean, do you have rust? How does that work?
Obviously, it’s not ideal. Wrestling is a hard thing to simulate. You can’t get on a treadmill and with his injury, he really couldn’t even do a whole lot of running. So, we have some things, we’ll put them on an Airdyne bike, we’ll put them on a VersaClimber, we’ll have him do some hard conditioning to try and get his heart rate as elevated as possible. And we monitor their heart rates. We have a pretty good idea of how hard he’s getting. We talk about in our sport, there’s some guys that are just afraid to get tired, and no one likes getting tired, but it’s something that you have to accept. And when you have that fear of it, and you kind of try to go away from it instead of going toward it, it makes it hard to be great and makes it hard to be elite. If you’ve ever watched Bryce wrestle, I’m not saying he never gets tired, but he’s not afraid to get tired. And so fortunately for us, we can put them through some conditioning workouts at practice and try to simulate as much as possible. But you know, wrestling is a hard thing to simulate. Unless you’ve been out there and you felt it and you’ve wrestled somebody, you know, in a live situation. That feeling is tough to simulate. So we’ve done the best we can to try and do that from a conditioning standpoint. Fortunately for us, we have the ACC championships to hopefully knock any rust that may be on there. I will say this much, Bryce in the past has performed really well when he’s come back out of injuries. Last year, for people that follow our program, probably remember he was out for a good portion of the year. He had a real bad turf toe injury. And he came back for the NC State match. Then wrestled a guy that was an eventual All-American last year, who’s really good, and he beat him by 14. So sometimes for whatever reason, Bryce performs well when he has some adversity, and we’re hoping that’s the case again this year.
What are some of the differences? Are there any when you talk with your wrestlers about the differences between a dual meet and a tournament-type style like you’ll have coming up?
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of differences in the way that you approach it. I mean, at the NCAA championships, and even at the ACC championships, you’ve got to be real careful that you just stay focused on what you can control and really not getting too wrapped up in what happens with your teammates. As much as you want your teammates to win and as much as you know, you’re invested into those guys, you have to really just worry about yourself and you can’t get too emotionally invested in what’s going on outside of your own matches. You go to the NCAA championships, and then that thing is just an absolute meat grinder. It’s three days you have to make weight, three times you wrestle if you make it to Day 3, you’re wrestling anywhere from five to eight matches. So it’s grueling, and there’s a lot of back and forth between the arena and the hotel, and we tried to get guys out of there, get them off their feet, so logistically, it’s a lot to manage. So for us, we really try to talk to the guys, and the guys that have been through it once, I think it helps them a lot and they understand that, but you’ve got to wrestle your match and get back to where we camp out in the arena and then get back to the hotel as quickly as we can possibly do that. You know, get your nutrition in you. Make sure your weight’s in a good place, go back and get whatever you need from a recovery standpoint. We have some guys that will go back and cold plunge and stretch, and just getting their bodies ready to go for that next round. So that’s kind of what the focus is there. So there’s definitely some things that we have to do different from a preparation standpoint. And just from I think that day, taking care of a lot of things even from a nutrition standpoint and fueling your body and you know, so it’s a challenge.
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