Jake Lyman, Evan Hughes Make History For Virginia Tech SMA Program

When Evan Hughes saw Virginia Tech women’s basketball’s name flash across the screen on Selection Sunday, he was happy — but also breathed a sigh of relief knowing the Hokies made the cut to host an NCAA Tournament regional.

His biggest reaction came less than a minute later, though.

Six hours away in Nashville, Tenn., Jake Lyman watched the same program. Baylor was announced as the No. 5 seed region, joining the No. 4 seed Hokies. Then it came.

No. 12 seed Vanderbilt. Playing in Blacksburg.

“I was so stunned,” Lyman told Tech Sideline. “I couldn’t believe it.”

“It was a surreal feeling,” Hughes said.

In the weeks leading up to the bracket reveal, the two women’s basketball radio voices — Lyman of the Commodores, Hughes of the Hokies — joked about the possibility of Vanderbilt playing in Virginia Tech’s regional. But after Tech slipped up down the stretch and lost three of its last four games, two of which were without star Elizabeth Kitley, it became more of an afterthought — hence the reaction.

Lyman locked eyes and high-fived Allison Randall, Vandy’s strength and conditioning coach, who spent seven years working with Olympic sports at Tech from 2012-19. Hughes had similar feelings to that of Tech head coach Kenny Brooks last season at this time.

On Selection Sunday in 2023, Brooks celebrated the Hokies hosting before finding out he was facing one of his former assistants and best friends in Shawn Poppie and Chattanooga in the first round, a team he followed closely all year because of their tight bond. Hughes keeps up with Vanderbilt because of his connection with Lyman and Andrew Allegretta, the current director of radio broadcasting for the Commodores and one of his mentors.

“It was this immense feeling of pride and joy for the Hokies and then pride and joy for Jake,” Hughes said, “knowing that he’s going to have a moment that he’s never going to forget in his career right back at the place where he got it all started.”

Fans of the Hokies and Commodores are stoked for the NCAA Tournament and the madness that awaits in March. But it’s more than that for Lyman and Hughes.

The two broadcasters go way back. They were part of the first-ever wave of students in Virginia Tech’s Sports Media & Analytics program under Bill Roth, the Voice of the Hokies and a professor of practice in Tech’s School of Communication. Both grew up with Tech ties.

Hughes was a freshman in the fall of 2017. The Rockville, Va., native vividly remembers driving up to Northern Virginia to meet then-seniors in high school Lyman and Kevin DiDomenico — the former voice of the Reno Aces and the Salem Red Sox who will pinch-hit for Hughes in calling Hokies baseball this weekend at Boston College — and pitch them on coming to Virginia Tech.

Roth and Allegretta, who served as Tech’s director of broadcasting for digital media and Olympic sports from 2011-19, were trying to build a culture of journalism at Tech. On the broadcasting side, Hughes and Lyman were at the crux of that.

“I’m really proud of how hard each of them have worked to get to where they are at such a young age,” Roth said. “Both of them have coveted jobs. It’s hard to be a broadcaster in the ACC. It’s hard to get a broadcasters job in the Southeastern Conference. Both of those guys got those positions right out of Virginia Tech, and they worked really hard.

“… For me, to see how happy they are, at two great universities, working so hard to perfect their craft, gives me great joy and pride. I remember visiting with both of them when they were in high school. They talked about what their dreams were and I told them that if they came to Virginia Tech, they could do that, and that we would have a program here that could get them to where they want to be.”

They played an instrumental role in the founding of 3304 Sports, the multi-media platform for student sports journalism at Tech, and were part of the group’s first-ever broadcast on Feb. 10, 2019, of Tech women’s basketball vs. Louisville. Hughes was the organization’s first Sports Director; Lyman was the second.

“I think the absolute world of Jake as a person, let alone as a broadcaster,” Hughes said. “We were both there at the first-ever meeting on January 30, 2019. The fact that 3304 Sports five years later is going to be calling that game up in the rafters while we call the game for our respective teams is super special.”

They set the tone in other ways outside of the Sports Media & Analytics program as well.

Hughes was the first student to host the Tech Sideline Podcast, starting with Episode 40 in the fall of 2018. Lyman was involved with TSL, too, between covering men’s basketball and Olympic sports. His first podcast was Episode 186 with Tony Robie in the fall of 2019. Combined, they anchored 187 shows — over half of the all-time episodes.

“We were lucky to have both those guys, and Giovanni [Heater] and anybody who follows,” Tech Sideline founder and general manager Will Stewart said. “They were instrumental, especially Evan, in shaping our podcast into what it is today, and they did a really good job. I feel like their success and their advancement in the industry is due more to their hard work and the development that occurred with them in Bill Roth’s Sports Media & Analytics program.

“… I think their success has a halo effect on the whole program. It’s a recruiting tool for Bill Roth and for anybody who comes after, and it’s proof that you can come here to Virginia Tech — with its program that is relatively young — and [thrive].”

Their reach extended as far as Minnesota, where Hughes was the radio play-by-play voice of the St. Cloud Rox in the Northwoods League for three seasons. A Rox broadcaster from Virginia Tech quickly became the norm when Lyman took over for two years.

Hughes, who won the 2021 Jim Nantz Award for the top collegiate broadcaster in the country, was hired at Tech out of school. Lyman accepted a job offer from Allegretta to join him at Vanderbilt before wrapping up his final semester at Tech.

They’ll both be back in Cassell Coliseum this week for the NCAA Tournament, the greatest stage in women’s college basketball.

“When you’re in college, you never think about what the career’s going to look like or what the journey is going to look like,” Hughes said. “You look back on the college years, I was really passionate about what we were building in Comm, and so was Jake. I think it was a true mission for us to try to put Virginia Tech and 3304 Sports on the map. We did everything in our power over the five years of overlap that the two of us have here.

“It just continues to support the narrative that you can come to Virginia Tech and accomplish all of your dreams and achieve your aspirations if you put in the work. Opportunities are going to be presented to you, the right people are going to support you, and the rest will take care of itself.”

It’s amazing how quickly things change.

Lyman was coming off his first season as the voice of the Commodores last March but did not have postseason basketball to cover. Meanwhile, Hughes was with the Hokies through their Sweet 16 and Elite 8 victories in Seattle to their Final Four trip to Dallas.

When he needed someone to fill in calling baseball while he was gone, he looked no further than Lyman, who spent three weeks with Hokies baseball — two of them in Blacksburg.

A year later, he returns to call his own team, the 22-9 (9-7) Commodores, in a building he spent so much time as a student.

“I remember right after we lost in the SEC Tournament, I was helping out with a coach’s show at Vandy and [head coach] Shea [Ralph] came up and said, ‘Jake, don’t get used to any time off in March, this isn’t going to be the norm,’” Lyman recalled. “It’s cool that a year later, we’re in it. We’re in the Big Dance. 22 wins, 9-7 in the SEC. … There aren’t words to describe it. First off, getting in, and second, getting to come home and call games in Cassell Coliseum.”

There are a number of hurdles standing in the way, but if Vanderbilt wins its First Four game vs. Columbia on Wednesday (9 p.m. ET) and beats Baylor on Friday (6 p.m. ET) while the Hokies take care of business against Marshall (3:30 p.m. ET Friday), Lyman and Hughes will be the first Virginia Tech Sports Media & Analytics alumni to call the same NCAA Tournament game for opposite sides.

It would be historic, and still will be even if the two teams don’t meet. But they want it to become the norm. Just like there’s seemingly a Syracuse broadcaster everywhere you look, they hope there will soon come a time where alumni from Tech’s SMA program are the standard in the industry.

“This is not going to be the last time we have two of our alums calling a big NCAA Tournament or a big game like this,” Roth said. “Our program is so young, this is just the first time, but it’s going to happen a lot.”

“That’s what we’re trying to build,” Lyman said. “Like you go to a random Atlantic 10 game somewhere and both broadcasters are from Virginia Tech. That’s what we want, and it’s cool that it’s happening in the NCAA Tournament. And again, there’s work to be done to get that moment with us facing off, being on opposite sides of the floor calling the same game, but even just being in the same region, it’s cool to have two VT SMA guys with the program being so new.”

Hughes and Lyman have paved the way for those to come. They’ve had great mentors in people like Roth and Allegretta — “There’s nobody who’s meant more to my career than those two guys,” Lyman said — while putting in hundreds of hours, between basketball arenas and baseball stadiums, to get to this point. And they’ll share the stage together, potentially sharing notes and prep before and swapping suit jackets after.

“I really hope that we get the chance to sit on opposite sides of the floor and decide who goes to the Sweet 16 on Sunday,” Lyman said.

Tech Sideline Podcast 355

Here’s Jake and Evan’s appearance on the TSL Podcast with Will Stewart.