Hokie ClubBLACKSBURG – As the Virginia Tech men's basketball progam begins preparation for its 118th season, and seventh under Mike Young, the head ball coach and select student-athletes met with the media Tuesday morning. Read and watch below to see what they had to say:
Head Coach Mike Young
Opening statement: It's good to be practicing again, good to be back in Hahn Hurst and another season is underway. I really like our team, really like our team. We probably practiced 35 times this summer, I gave them a little time off as they got back to campus. We're 42 days away from competition, you've got 34 opportunities to practice in those 42 days and yesterday was number one. We're healthy. Jaden Schutt and Neo (Avdalas) are coming back from minor stuff, they will be full go I expect by the end of the week.
On initial impressions of the team with everyone on the court: Work in progress. It was a tad choppy, Neo (Avdalas) was playing for his national team in the under 20 world games in Greece as a matter of fact, so we knew that we weren't going to get him here before the third week of July maybe even the last week of July. We probably practiced with Neo and the whole unit, (Antonio) Dorn got here early July, for 10-12 practices late summer which was big. We continued those practices throughout the month of September, I gave them three days off last week. We're all dealing with it, we've got nine new people and that takes some work. We're not going as long in the summer and the continuation of summer practices into September but we're ramping it up to two (hours), 2:15. I do think we've got ample time to get it all in a good place heading into the season, that's only going to improve as we go along.