We have one less Hokie Hoops team to worry about this year, as the Virginia Tech Women's Basketball team closed out their season yesterday with their third loss of the year to UVa. A pretty dismal season came to a dismal end. Unlike the men's team, the women's team has been out of post-season contention for a while.
Yesterday's loss in the opening round of the ACC tournament was a similar to recent men's games in that the Hokies got in a hole early ("flat" is how head coach Beth Dunkenberger described it), then tried to crawl back but fell short.
I suspect this is passing interest to most Virginia Tech fans, but I like seeing Hokie teams in the NCAA brackets, whether its men's or women's. The last time the women played in the NCAA tournament was 2005-2006, when they actually made it to the second round after pounding Missouri in round one 82-51, then got trounced themselves by powerhouse Connecticut 79-56 in the second round. Seeing a Virginia Tech basketball jersey on ESPN in March is pretty cool regardless of gender.
In 2006-2007 the Hokie women's team made it 2 rounds into the NIT tournament which I doubt anyone saw or remembers, but neverless important for the program and more than they'll achieve this year. This year's team took a serious blow when leading scorer and senior leader Brittany Cook was lost to injury in November.
Women's basketball has become high profile at some schools, generating big crowds, and honestly I'm not sure how much its filled Cassell this year. However in my opinion a measuring stick for an ACC athletic program should including the following key achievements (at minimum) in any given year:
- bowl game for the football team (and for a program like VT the goal should be a BCS game)
- NCAA berth for the men's basketball team
- NCAA berth for the women's basketball team
Yeah, I'm tickled if we do well in soccer, wrestling, baseball (college world series), or other olympic sports, but those 3 goals are clear litmus tests. So let's home the Dunkenberger can turn things around in 2008-2009.
Go Hokies!
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