Virginia Tech (2-0) played a good game shooting from the field, and defeating the Liberty Flames (2-1) 73-63. Despite turnig it over 19 times, Tech showed some hope and glimpse of great up-and-coming players. A team with mostly freshman and sophmores, you can expect there to be some minor mistakes. The Hokies got fouled a lot in the game, but only converted 16-of-28 from the charity strike. Devon Wilson and Adam Smith of the Hokies both scored 13 points, Justin Bibbs played well scoring 10.
The man of the night for Tech was Joey van Zegeren scoring a game high 17 points. Van Zegeren went 7-of-9 from the floor. The Hokies shot 61 percent (25-of-41) from the field. Zegeren not only was in double digit points, he also grabbed 10 rebounds and recorded his first ever double-double. "My teammates went to the basket, they got good attempts," said Zegeren.
Liberty had the lead just once and that came when James Johnson hit a layup with just 25 seconds into the game. However, the Hokies struggled to put the flame out in Liberty. A 3-pointer by Bibbs gave the Hokies a 31-28 lead going into halftime. It wasn't until the mid-way point that Tech started to pull away as they went on a scoring spree. The Hokies scored on eight of nine possessions and jumped to a 59-45 lead, which was Tech's biggest lead of the game. When you thought that the Hokies had it sealed and delivered the Flames came pushing their way back to cut Tech's lead to just 6 points, 65-59 but it was not enough as Tech went on to win by ten.
Tamasz Gielo a 6'9 forward led the way for the Flames with 13 points while he showed some great range hitting 3 3-pointers. Just under 3 minutes to go the Flames only hit one shot to finish off the final stretch. The bright side for LU is they shot excellent from the field and out rebounded the Hokies (31-26), the place where Liberty hurt themselves was in the turnover column where they had 21, and the Hokies scored 27 points off of those turnovers.
Virginia Tech stays in non-conference to play the traveling Appalachian State Mountaineers (0-2) at Cassell Coliseum Saturday at 1 p.m. ET, while the Liberty Flames will travel up North to take on Miami (OH) (1-1) to take on the RedHawks on Saturday as well at John D. Mills Hall at 3:30 p.m. ET.