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Turning the tide

If you make your way toward Blacksburg, you might come across a sound that typically whizzes through the frozen forests of southwestern Virginia around this time of year. It is the sound of Virginia Tech's NCAA Basketball Tournament bubble leaking fast, its latest puncture coming from none other than the Hokies' struggling arch-rivals in Charlottesville. The bipolar Cavaliers - at once capable of out-shooting the ACC's hottest offense and losing to President Teresa A. Sullivan in a game of H-O-R-S-E - earned a signature win Saturday and in the process dealt another blow to Seth Greenberg's dreams of mid-March tango sessions.

Like the Hokies, the Cavaliers have not been invited to the Big Dance since 2007, so chiding Virginia Tech for its difficulties with the selection committee is nothing short of hypocritical. For a Virginia team with a 4-8 conference record, postseason gibber-jabber after a big rivalry win is totally apart from the point. What the Cavaliers should take away from this game is exactly what lies on the surface - they just beat Tech. At this juncture of the team's fateful, injury-marred season, that outcome in and of itself should be gratifying enough.

A win against a red-hot Virginia Tech squad won't buy Tony Bennett's crew an at-large NCAA Tournament bid, but it does afford them a much-needed boost with potentially rewarding implications down the line. The Cavaliers limped into Saturday's contest having dropped eight of their previous 10 games, leaving their confidence tank practically empty. Defeating an arch-rival that had run away with five of the teams' previous seven meetings gives Virginia players something to feel good about. Maybe their season hasn't played out the way they had hoped, but at least they can take solace in sweeping the Hokies for the first time since 2006 - a feat even Sean Singletary and the 2007 NCAA Tournament team failed to accomplish. An achievement like that provides the depleted Cavaliers a shot in the arm that might help them finish the season on a high note.

It wasn't too long ago that sweeping Virginia Tech on the hardwood was practically taken for granted. That's not the case anymore, though, as Greenberg has helped draw more attention to basketball in Hokie country and elevated his program above Virginia's in recent years. A season sweep of Greenberg's boys marks another step in Bennett's own quest to return his program to the pedestal of the state's basketball pecking order. It brings a fresh dose of positive attention to the team, perhaps even making a lasting impression on potential recruits that recognize Virginia's intended path to success. Saturday's statement win joins the infusion of an outstanding recruiting class and a clear-cut change in philosophy as Bennett steps toward the still-distant top. The next big step, of course, is winning more games than you lose.

For fans who thought that last big step would begin this season, Saturday afternoon offered a glimpse of the way things were supposed to be at this point in the year. Assane Sene's two emphatic dunks suggested a much-improved center finally in control of his domain. Jontel Evans' pair of ridiculous jumpers hinted at a guard who lived up to the "talk of the town" improvements on his jump shot that were so publicized during the preseason. Mustapha Farrakhan was fulfilling his leadership role by hitting big shot after big shot. Joe Harris was justifying the freshman class's hype by firing on all cylinders from the land of plenty. And Sammy Zeglinski was putting on a virtuoso shooting performance more typical of the Harlem Globetrotters than a college basketball team as he found his shooting groove in the form of desperate, buzzer-beating heaves from the corner.

Perhaps more impressive than all those individual offensive performances, though, was the collective defensive effort that paved the way for those performances. The Cavaliers held a Virginia Tech team that entered the game averaging 96.5 points during their previous two games to a mere 54 points, and they did it through cohesive execution of a pack-line defense which did exactly what coach Bennett always preaches: "make 'em earn." Virginia looked more organized than ever on the defensive end, doing all the little things, such as hedging properly off ball screens and avoiding getting lost out of double teams. The result was the Hokies' inability to find easy shots and consequent reliance on the audacious shooting of Malcolm Delaney for points. The confidence Virginia drew from the defensive end seemed to combine with the untamed energy of the 13,679-strong crowd to spur the Cavaliers' marksmanship on offense, where they shot better the further they were from the basket - 47.8 percent three-point shooting compared to 45.7 percent overall.

Saturday's result certainly was a big one for Virginia. Still, the only outcome the Cavaliers should be focused on at this point is the one that will come out of Wednesday's matchup against a struggling Georgia Tech team. Virginia basketball might be on the right track, but it needs to string together some wins to really get rolling.

"We've had a lot of adversity this year so it's been good to get these two wins against Tech," Zeglinski said. "I think we can go on a run now. We have a game Wednesday and we are playing some good basketball defensively, so it should be good"

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