Mike Young has now been the head coach of the Men’s Virginia Tech Basketball Team for 2 months now and I’d have to say things could have not gone much better. This is not intended to be a homer post celebrating Mike Young because we have to as I admittedly questioned the hire when it was first announced and was leaning more towards a younger hire in the P5. However, the more I have learned about Coach Young and how much he is truly committed to Blacksburg the more I became excited.

There are still plenty of haters out there and we wont’t truly know for a few years on the end result, but here are some key reasons to get excited for 2019/2020 and beyond:

1. Retaining Landers Nolley and Wabissa Bede: I can’t stress this one enough. Landers is a red-shirt freshman, a top 75 player in the country when recruited and has the potential to be a future Hokie great (assuming he doesn’t go pro) and decided to stick with Coach. Bede is a previous 4 star recruit as well who decided to stay at VT after exploring the portal. I believe both of these speak volumes, they’ve had the chance to meet Coach Young and must think he’s the man for the job or they could have left to many other P5 schools.
2. Jalen Cone and everyone else. This is not a slap in the face of our other recruits, but it is meant to show just how big the Cone commitment was. Cone picked VT with a brand new coach after being pursued by Buzz Williams and Tennessee’s Rick Barnes (among many others). He’s viewed as a top 50 player by some and will be massive to the success of the program.
3. His assistants: if Chester Frazier, Antwon Jackson and Christian Webster didn’t exceed your expectations.. your expectations were far too hire. These were dynamite hires all around, no question about it.
4. He has a proven track record at Wofford and a program that plays to analytics to a tee (even if Coach Young says he doesn’t pay attention to analytics). Wofford has consistently been rated extremely high in offensive efficiency. As well as every classic basketball analytics number you can think of: turnovers, 3 pt percentage etc.
5. Lastly: The only players that have left were incoming freshman who were committed to Buzz that weren’t on campus. I get this may change with Kerry.. but the truth is Bede, Nolley, Kabongo, Wilkins, Horne and Palmer all stayed and I think that shows what first impressions were like with Coach.

Overall I think we got a good one folks. Whit said him self Coach Young won’t jump to a new program the first chance he gets. He’s a great coach committed to our program, something that cannot be said for the our previous coach, name that must not be said. Get excited for the future of this program, it’s going to be a fun ride.