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Message: [QUOTE="Consigliere, post: 2437483, member: 559"] Got to be honest. As much as I have enjoyed watching this team fight and scrap on every possession, for each loose ball and like every rebound is theirs my expectations have stayed relatively low. I saw a badly flawed team on offense and while the 11-2 OOC record was certainly an improvement over last year's debacle it was compiled against some good, not great teams by any stretch. Preseason my single goal was 17 regular season wins to keep the streak alive. I saw Virginia Tech as a Top 6 ACC team pre-season. Saw the matchups going into last night as terribly skewed against us. I have watched Buzz's team dissect the zone effectively for years - while we managed to prevail in many of our games against Marquette and Va. Tech we needed a number of miracle finishes and big comebacks to do so. I was fully prepared to drive south on 81 last night 0-1 in conference. Then came the first half. Struggling to remember a better performance defensively but waited for the other shoe to drop. Turnovers in the last 30 seconds gave Tech opportunities but we dodged some bullets. Then came the missed oop and the 12-0 Hokie run. Here it goes, I thought. This is where our faults come to light. To see this team punch back with an 11-0 run of their own spoke volumes in my mind. The effort on the boards ratcheted up significantly. The defensive intensity was through the roof. Dolezaj and Moyer diving 10 feet across the floor for a loose ball showed a refuse to lose attitude. As a result, I'm all in now. I'll still nervously track the 5 wins we need to get that goal of 17 behind us but given the level of effort and that mysterious chemistry component I am ready to level set my expectations. I see the substandard Assist / Turnover ratio as an opportunity, not a problem. Think we will continue to improve offensively as the freshmen become more engrained and the backcourt becomes more accustomed to their tendencies. Think that the cracks that some of our ACC brethren have shown will give us a chance to "steal" a couple of wins that may have looked unlikely pre-season. Think that the schedule and our home-and-home opponents provide a solid floor that we will be able to build on. Net-net I think the return to relevance has arrived a year early. Barring injury or other unexpected blow to a no-margin-for-error rotation I expected a Top 25 finish, a breakthrough in the ACC Tourney and a Top 8 seed in the NCAAs where, depending on matchups, we could last to the second weekend. Now go ahead and crush my dreams! [/QUOTE]

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