2023-11-10 12:00:00
In their season openers Monday night, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Liberty’s basketball teams won by a combined 135 points.
Things figure to be tighter Friday when the three take part in the Hall of Fame series tripleheader in Charlotte.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what we can go against and what we work well against,” UVa redshirt freshman wing Leon Bond III said.
UVawhich beat Tarleton State 80-50 on Monday, will face Florida at 7 p.m. at the Spectrum Center. Virginia Techa 100-55 winner over Coppin State in its opener, takes on South Carolina at 9:30 p.m. The event starts with Liberty playing Charlotte at 4:30 p.m. The Flames rocked Mid-Atlantic Christian, a non-NCAA program, 103-43 on Monday.
People are also reading…
Virginia basketball lineup, rotation figures to morph game to game
The trio the Virginia schools face Friday all won their openers this week.
“A good night for our team,” Tech coach Mike Young said after the 45-point win Monday. “But it gets a tad more sticky here on Friday.”
Florida and Virginia haven’t played since the 2017 NCAA tournament, when the Gators drilled UVa 65-39 in a second-round matchup in Orlando. That team, coached by Mike White and led by Chesterfield native Devin Robinson, reached the Elite Eight.
This year’s team, in its second season under coach Todd Golden, is picked eighth in the SEC and started things off with a 20-point win over Loyola Maryland, a game that saw Riley Kugel, a preseason second-team all-conference pick, score 23 points.
Golden remade the roster around Kugel this offseason, adding nine transfers and freshman. Three of those transfers started the Gators’ opener.
In UVa’s win over Tarleton State, it broke in six players who made their debuts in Virginia
“Those new guys are amazing,” said Bond III. “They came in and it feels like they’ve been here for a while, the way they hoop and everybody plays hard. So that makes it so much easier.”
Virginia basketball opens season with win over Tarleton State
Virginia Tech hasn’t faced the Gamecocks, once league foes in the Metro and Southern Conferences, since 1997, when South Carolina won a one-point game, also in Charlotte.
South Carolina, in its second year under coach Lamont Paris, is predicted to finish last in the SEC.
For Paris, this will be his sixth head-to-head meeting with Hokies coach Mike Young. The two coached against each other five times while Paris was at Chattanooga and Young was leading Wofford. Young was 5-0 in those games.
In the Hokies’ blowout of Coppin, center Lynn Kidd had a breakout game scoring 14 points and grabbing 11 rebounds and North Carolina transfer Tyler Nickel, a Harrisonburg native, showed he could be an impact player, scoring 12 points and grabbing seven rebounds.
That duo complementing a backcourt led by Hunter Cattoor and Sean Pedulla could make Tech formidable, especially if it can defend the way it did Monday, when it held Coppin to 37.3% from the floor and forced 19 turnovers.
“Let’s do it against South Carolina on Friday,” Young said. “Let’s do it night in and night out.”
Liberty, coached by former Virginia assistant Ritchie McKay, takes on Charlotte on Friday in the Hall of Fame series early game. This will be the first-ever meeting between the teams.
The Flames, who have won over 20 games in each of the past seven seasons, are the preseason favorite in Conference USA. They’re led by forward Kyle Rode and guard Joseph Venzant, both returning multi-year starters, and Bowling Green transfer guard Kaden Metheny.
Charlotte is in its first season under coach Aaron Fearne. Fearne was named the program’s interim coach in the summer when its former coach, Ron Sanchez, left the position to return to UVa as an assistant.
Mark Berman of the Roanoke Times contributed to this report.
Undefeated and now ranked, Liberty football still out for respect
1699621033
#Competition #stiffens #Virginia #Virginia #Tech #Liberty