NEW YORK -- If there's one thing we know after the first game of tonight's Aeropostale Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden, it's that Hofstra won't be repeating as championships.
That's because behind veterans Deron Washington and A.D. Vassallo, Virginia Tech dominated an Antoine Agudio-less Hofstra team that really could have used those 26.8 points that the senior had been averaging for the season.
But the nation's second leading scorer never even got to step onto the floor against the Hokies after injuring his ankle in practice on Wednesday.
"I was taking a jump shot and I just came down on my ankle the wrong way," the 6-foot-3 senior guard explained after the game. "It feels better but I am taking it day-to-day."
That was certainly a big surprise to me, who saw Agudio as one of the few reasons to go to the two-day holiday tournament just up the street from my desk at CSTV.
"It is a little different when you don't play against Antoine Agudio," Virginia Tech Seth Greenberg said in his post-game press conference. "He is such a good scorer. I thought we played good and played hard. Whoever we play tomorrow, we have to do better."
"Obviously without [him] we are a different team and we struggled to score," Hofstra coach Tom Pecora. "If we are going to play without Antoine for awhile, and we are not sure if that is the case and we will know tomorrow, we need to figure out a way to turn a negative to a positive."
For the way things looked tonight, that might be hard to do.
The game, in fact, never seemed to be in doubt for Virginia Tech, which led by as many as 30 points before leaving the building with an 84-59 victory.
"When you make shots, you look smart," Greenberg remarked on the game as a whole. "When you take the same shots and miss them, you are not that cerebral. We have lost five games and we could have easily won four or four [of them]. We are good enough to play anyone and also not good enough to lose to anyone."
That's because Greenberg has six freshman on his roster, and it's not like they're riding the pine. That's what college basketball, though, has come to these days, where teams are often starting two and sometimes three freshmen.
For Pecora, it's a similar scenario, as a young Hofstra team can only hope to get wiser and better quickly with Agudio sidelined.
"This is a learning experience for us," Pecora asserted. "They are a great bunch. They work very hard as a team in practice. I truly believe that at the end of the year we will be a good basketball team that nobody will want to play. I have to play the freshmen to get them seasoned by February to have a chance to win the conference."
And if the Pride was able to do that, it would certainly be quite a testament to Pecora, his coaching staff and ultimately his players.
Post-game Notes:
* Charles Jenkins led Hofstra with 13 points on 6-of-13 shooting from the field to go along with four assists and four rebounds. Darren Townes was the other scorer in double figures for Tom Pecora's ball club, tallying 12 after making six of his 10 attempts from the floor.
* Virginia Tech finished the game shooting 56.3 percent from the field and 37.5 from three-point range. Hofstra, meanwhile, couldn't buy a bucket from downtown, missing all five of its attempts in the second half and going just 1-for-10 on the night. The Pride registered a 34.3 shooting percentage from the floor.
* Hofstra surprisingly did outrebound the Hokies by a 43-37 margin, which included 21 offensive rebounds, something that Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg wasn't happy about.
"Twenty-one offensive rebounds is probably a good place to start," he said. "That is probably the biggest flaw [from tonight's game]. We didn't guard the ball in the second half. We were reaching and slapping. We have to get better. In our conference, you have to play better to win. It is hard to win games now."
