Here’s an interesting letter from Coach Greenberg, rallying the students for a big showing on Saturday. Seth rocks.

College basketball junkie CassellKing (Virginia Tech class of 2002) penned the note below about arranging your schedule with The Man so you can catch the tournament.

How to Tell Your Boss to Take This Tourney and Shove It
Written by CassellKing

1. QUIT. March Madness is on! You hate your job anyway.

2. SALES CALL. If you’re a salesman this is a given. If you’re not in sales, your boss will think you’re showing initiative. For the icing on the cake, take all of the business cards in the fish bowl of whatever sports bar you catch the games at, to later show your boss the fruits of your labor: “hot leads”.

3. JURY DUTY. Act pissed off when you inform your boss that you got called for jury duty. He/she will probably not ask to see the paperwork. If he/she does ask, you don’t want that boss anyway and that problem is probably about to clear up. Note that Richmond is a particularly felonious city, some trials last up to a month.

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Breaking News: The Hokies are in first place in the ACC following the twerps’ 89-87 win over carolina in College Park tonight. Technically tied for first at 10-4 with carolina and the hoos, Virginia Tech owns tiebreakers over each team and, for now, VT is effectively in outright first place in the conference.

Having already clinched an ACC tourney first-round bye, Virginia Tech can seal the ACC regular-season title and top seed in the ACC tourney with wins over uva on Thursday at The John and at home against clemson on Sunday in the regular season finale.

Hey, who’s watching UMass at Fordham!? Sweet A-10 tilt. I just spotted it on ESPN2… And,… I surfed on by to Pay it Forward briefly before landing on a South Park rerun.

This is what I’m talking about: I literally don’t know where Fordham is — in fact the only thing I do know about Fordham is that it has a basketball team in the A-10, and I feel like they maybe had a tourney run a few years ago. I suspect that as a member of the A-10, Fordham is likely near the Atlantic coast. I’m going to guess its in… Philly. Or NYC, maybe. It feels like NYC too. Let’s see…

OK… Fordham appears to be scattered around The Big Apple. Terrific, now I know — thank you Larry and Sergey. So how exciting is a UMass at Fordham game to sports fans in Virginia? Not very exciting, really. Really?

I remember the A-10 days all too well. I clearly remember thinking
1) where the @#$% are these schools located?
2) why does our conference @#$%ing suck so bad?
3) ACC basketball is muhney

When I arrived as a freshman at Virginia Tech in August 1988, Hokie athletics was a train wreck, nobody farther out than Roanoke could point to VT on a map, and admission to Tech required only a pulse and an application submission. A few years later I went back home to Blacksburg for a one-year grad program in 1997-98. I was busy as hell, I’ve never worked harder in my life, and I don’t think I attended one A-10 game (although I did log my 7th of 8 spring breaks — some things rise above the mundane pursuit of education and achievement).

Which brings us to: 2007

The Hokies have achieved a perpetual state of national recognition, new academic and athletic facilities (and highways) are sprouting everywhere, admissions standards have skyrocketed, and the Hokie sports fan experience is utterly unrecognizable by comparison to 1988.

Imagine — students today are attending VT as members of the ACC. In three years they have seen home wins in basketball over duk, carolacky, the twerps, the wreck, the pack, the hoos, wake, and clemson. If I was in school again I’d be at every single home game without exception. This year the students are enjoying something they can’t possibly appreciate fully — VT is legitimately challenging for the ACC regular season title, with reasonable expectations for a run in the ACC and NCAA tourneys.

I am jealous, to say the least. I don’t think I can swing a third enrollment in college but I’m not ruling it out.

Anyhow. My Bigfoot Ale is empty, and I think South Park ended. The point is, these are great days we’re living. We just SMASHED the hoos and beat cackolickity in the deandome. Virginia Tech is in the ACC and that is freaking amazing. The shift from A-10 to ACC is truly a rags to riches metamorphosis.

How did we get here? I just can’t say this enough, we have to recognize the unbelievable sea change in circumstances our basketball program and Athletic Department in general are enjoying right now. Accepting the risk of beating a mostly dead horse, I offer this once more: Virginia Tech is in the ACC.

So what about tonight’s big A-10 game? Ooh, UMass 63 Fordham 47, still underway. I’m definitely in bunches now. Me and Holpe are probably the only people in Richmond actually watching at the moment. And that’s not going to last long for me. Looks like Rome is coming on HBO…

So I think I’ll sneak in a scotchy nightcap. This cat in my lap won’t appreciate that — sorry, cat. Nite nite all y’all.

So Virginia Tech lost a couple games? Big deal. The sky is not falling. The Hokies lost one game against the ‘pack that we probably should have won, but then the ‘pack went and beat unc too. The Hokies also lost a game on the road to a tough bc team. This happens — good teams lose sometimes. We’re probably going to lose again this season.

After sharing these sentiments last week with one of the more excitable contributors to this site (rhymes with squeemo), I was pleased to see this quote from Will Stewart on Techsideline.com: “For their part, the fans need to stop flipping out over individual losses, or even a couple of losses strung together. It happens all the time in basketball.”

After the nc state game, one comment on TechHoops predicted that the Hokies would miss the tourney, “folding up the tent and collapsing.” While this is certainly a possibility, there is no good reason to count it as a likely outcome — let’s take a deep breath and manage expectations a little. We’re going to win some, we’re going to lose some — but this is still the team that already beat unc, duk, md, and gt. They are who we thought they were! (gratuitous and somewhat senseless Dennis Green reference).

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Have I mentioned how awesome it is to be in the ACC? Yeah, I think I said that in my last post. Well its has continued to be fantastic… I’m a pretty versatile sports fan, but not historically a big college basketball fan during the regular season – like most folks, I’ve always gotten fired up for March. Now, with the Hokies in the ACC (and competetive!), suddenly a midweek uva at md game is compelling… Suddenly I know that gt put up an 18-0 run in a comback win over nc state… Suddenly beating duk is a winter ritual.

And perhaps more to the point, suddenly Virginia Tech is a two sport school, and we’re all along for the ride. Joining the ACC has been incredible. Thank you John Casteen, you fantastic dopey wahoo.

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Today is national signing day for college football… Perhaps due to the rebirth of the Hokie basketball program and the added excitement generated by participation in the ACC conference schedule, I haven’t had much thought today about the football program — coming from a fairly obsessive Hokie football fan, that’s saying something on signing day. A clemson friend e-mailed me about VT’s recruiting class, and I realized 23 new football signees came in today unbeknowst to me while I was fretting over whether Z and Jamon will be able to shut down reynolds and singletary on Saturday.

Yay football signing day. Hoorah. Talk to me in April. Until then we’ve got business in Cassell Coliseum to attend to.

Player of the game: Zabian Dowdell.

Take a look at this stat line: 30 points, 7-of-10 shooting, 15-18 free-throws, 4 steals, 5 assists… and no turnovers! The Hokie from Pahokee was dialed in last night.

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5-1 in the ACC! How did we get here? Let’s see, we were in the A-10 a few years ago, playing teams I can’t remember from schools whose home state I couldn’t reliably guess. Then there were a few joyless Big East years. Then out of left-field Donna Shalayla and John Swofford shook everything up and out popped… VT dominating ACC football, which is a pleasant surprise, and VT at 5-1 in ACC basketball, which is utterly shocking.

If you reset to a 2004 perspective and examine our position today it is truly glorious: here in our third season we are 5-1 in conference with wins over duk (again!), unc, md, and wake. Take a moment to smell that — its fantastic.

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And let’s throw out some big ups to Seth Greenberg. Here’s a side take: How much money has Seth earned in future contracts with these two little wins over duk and unc? Millions.

January 13, 2007: The day the Hokies gave the baby blue Tarholes a mighty ass-whippin’ in Cassell Coliseum.

My story is fairly mundane but that’s alot of what blogging is all about: mundane historical context.

My wife and I recently bought a house, so we were moving out of our Fan apartment in Richmond. I was fairly bummed about missing the game but I was busy as hell and it couldn’t be helped. When 3:30 rolled in I was sweepin’ and cleanin’ and switching the radio over from music to Bill and Mike. My buddy Snipes and my wife Lori were working around the apartment as we settled into the game. I reminded everyone (which would continue all day) that Wick and icecoldballa Rob were at the game and that I was very jealous.

And suddenly it was something like a 17-9 UNC lead. Dammit. I went down to the basement where I couldn’t hear the radio for some more cleaning and figured the magical day was not to be. When I went out to load a bunch of crap in my truck in the back alley I thought I heard UNC was up a bunch on a huge run. Dammit again. But something was bugging me, I thought I might have heard it wrong, and when I got back in the truck to move it I discovered that the Hokies were on a massive run and up something like 27-20. Cassell was in full throat, and the Hokie seniors were running inexperienced UNC off the court.

Everyone knows what happened for the next 20 minutes. The Hokies blew it open. I feel like I remember most of the play — somehow listening on the radio makes it more vivid in recollection — that and being mostly sober. I remember making senseless guttural caveman noises upon hearing the 10 point halftime margin, and I remember thinking we really *might* win when we went up 23. I remember Vasallo threes and Deron flying and CC dunking and dunking and dunking. I was pacing around the empty apartment wiping stuff down and pacing and wiping and getting increasingly giddy and agitated.

By this time Snipes had bailed up to Buddy’s. Lori and I had about 15 minutes total of work left to do before closing up the apartment for good, but we couldn’t stand it — we headed up to Buddy’s too. We arrived there in our cleaning clothes with a truck full of miscellaneous crap parked right out front on Stuart. We grabbed a few delicious beers and settled in to soak up the amazing blowout.

And then that torturous final four minutes kicked in. Instantly the lead was down to 16, to 9, to 6, and, incredibly, down to 3 points with 16 seconds remaining. UNC was on an unbelievable hot streak, and the Hokies couldn’t break the press. I was making a complete ass of myself in the bar, to my wife’s horror. This is nothing new, she explained to the other patrons.

And then it was over — we pulled through. Jamon Gordon sunk two free throws with 4 seconds remaining and that just barely shut the door on UNC’s impressive but futile comeback.

The rest of the evening was a continued march of delicious cold beers at Buddy’s and finally a boozy passout at Snipes place. January 13, 2007 was a very very good day indeed.