Hokie ClubBLACKSBURG – Malcolm Delaney, Jeff Allen and Terrell Bell all made key free throws in the waning seconds, as Virginia Tech remained perfect at home this season following a 74-70 win over North Carolina in an ACC game played Thursday night at Cassell Coliseum.
The victory moved Tech to 17-4 overall and 4-3 in the ACC. The Hokies moved to 11-0 at Cassell Coliseum and avenged a 78-64 loss to the Tar Heels earlier this season. In fact, Tech snapped a five-game losing streak to UNC.
“It’s North Carolina, man,” Tech coach Seth Greenberg said. “They don’t even retire numbers unless you’re the player of the year. This is a team that beat Michigan State and played Texas down to the wire. They’ve got eight McDonald’s All-Americans. Yeah, it’s a big win. It validates what we’re doing. It keeps us relevant.”
“Besides the time we lost to North Carolina my freshman year, we’ve been so close every time,” Delaney said. “Every time, I’ve been like ‘We can beat them.’ Just for us to get this win and stick with it the whole time, it’s just a happy feeling.”
The Tar Heels (13-9, 2-5 ACC) led 43-42 following a John Henson basket with 15:20 left in the game, but Tech retook the lead on a Delaney bucket 27 seconds later and never trailed again.
Tech appeared to be in trouble when Delaney picked up his fourth foul with 12:07 left and went to the bench. The Hokies led 54-47 at the time and the Tar Heels immediately scored five straight points to cut the lead to two. But Tech scored seven straight, with the final three coming on a three-point play by Dorenzo Hudson that gave the Hokies a 61-52 lead with 9:44 remaining.
The Tar Heels cut that lead to two on two occasions down the stretch, the final time coming on Larry Drew’s basket with 1:09 remaining that made the score 69-67. But Delaney hit two free throws with 36 seconds left, and after UNC’s Marcus Ginyard and Will Graves missed 3-point attempts on UNC’s next possession, Allen his a free throw with 17.9 seconds that made the score 72-67. After a Drew missed shot, Bell got fouled with 4.6 seconds left and made both free throws to seal the Tech win. Drew hit a meaningless 3-pointer at the buzzer to account for the final margin.
“I thought we were a determined group,” Greenberg said. “Even when we struggled a bit at the beginning of the second half. We stayed together and stayed the course.
“I told the guys at halftime that if we didn’t rebound and if we don’t do a good job of out-numbering the basketball and defending inside-out, we’re to have a problem. We weren’t going to have a repeat of what happened there [in Chapel Hill]. We were going to 100 percent commit to each other for the next 20 minutes and play with a sense of toughness and a sense of purpose. That’s what we did.”
Delaney, the ACC’s leading scorer at 19.7 points per game coming into this one, paced the Hokies with 21 points. He hit 6-of-17 from the floor, including 2-of-9 from beyond the arc, and all seven of his free-throw attempts. He had missed 20 straight 3-pointers before snapping the skid with a trey with 12:12 to go.
“It’s crazy because I’ve been shooting so good,” Delaney said. “Working out before the games, I haven’t been missing. I don’t know what’s going on. Then as soon as I got hot, I got my fourth foul and that threw me off again. But I’m definitely confident going into the next game that I’m going to hit some shots.”
Hudson added 17 points for the Hokies, making 6-of-13 from the floor, and Allen had 14 points, hitting 4-of-14. Tech shot just 38 percent from the floor, but did everything else well. The Hokies shot 81.8 percent from the line, out-rebounded the Tar Heels 21-13 in the second half and forced 19 turnovers compared to 10 of their own.
Ed Davis led North Carolina with 15 points, while Henson added a career-high 14 points and David Wear finished with a career-high 12.
Tech had little time to celebrate this one, with Clemson coming to town for a Saturday afternoon game at Cassell Coliseum. Tip off is slated for 4 p.m.