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Tech-UVa game itself overshadows subplots surrounding it

January 26, 2000
By Jimmy Robertson A funny thing happened on a recent Monday night at the Richmond Coliseum.

With all the hoopla surrounding the return of Tech head coach Ricky Stokes to his hometown; with all the hype of Stokes taking on the team for which he played in the early 1980s; with all the talk of the rebuilding job done by UVa coach Pete Gillen; and with all the arguments about on-campus sites versus neutral sites, an amazing thing occurred.

A basketball game between the Commonwealth's two bitter rivals overshadowed it all.

Tech and UVa bid adieu hopefully to the last game of this rivalry played at a neutral site by putting on a scintillating show. For the more than 7,000 paying spectators who paid $20 a pop to watch, they got their money's worth and then some, particularly when the two teams performed an extra five minutes for their viewing pleasure.

They saw a back-and-forth slugfest in the first half. They watched the Wahoos jump out to a 12-point bulge in the second half before the Hokies grabbed the shovel as the last spade of earth was about to hit their grave, going on a 13-0 run to retake the lead.

They saw turnovers, a technical foul, a tremendous, gutsy performance by Brendan Dunlop, a smooth effort from UVa's Donald Hand. And after nearly 45 minutes, the outcome was finally decided when Hand plopped in two free throws with less than four seconds left to give the Cavaliers a 71-66 win.

After the game, the first question posed to Stokes - amazingly enough - concerned the game itself and not his return to Richmond or his current team playing against his alma mater. Which, of course, was how he wanted it because he thought everyone made too big of a deal in regards to the other stuff.

And, of course, he's right

"I thought that a long time ago," Stokes said. "I was an assistant at Wake for eight years and had the opportunity to play Virginia two times, sometimes three times a year.

"I think the most important thing for people to realize is that we had a game before Virginia and we have a game after Virginia, so we're not just gearing up for this one game and forgetting about the other 27."

Rest assured, no one will forget this one.

"There were no losers tonight," Gillen said after the game.

Beg to differ there. The losers were the 5,000 people who failed to show up for the game. Granted, they would have needed to have brought their parkas and mittens along with a few spare blankets to brave the frigid temperatures of the meat locker known as the Richmond Coliseum. If the game had gone into another overtime, the nurses at local hospitals would have been treating the masses for frostbite.

But those fans do it for football games. So no excuses there.

Next year, though, no one will have to worry about such trivialities since the rivalry moves to campus sites, the first being at Cassell Coliseum.

Just imagine Monday night's game being played in front of a packed house at the Cassell. Tech fans would have raised the reinforced rafters of the place when the Hokies took that 54-53 lead.

Or imagine it being played at refurbished University Hall. Think those students with their light blue shirts, khakis and ugly orange-and-blue striped ties wouldn't have gone nuts?

"It will make the rivalry more intense," Dennis Mims admitted.

More intense? This rivalry? After this most recent game?

Who knows? Yet one thing is for sure. The most recent chapter in this ongoing storybook rivalry has been written.

But the final chapter hasn't even been started.

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Jimmy Robertson is the editor of the Hokie Huddler at Virginia Tech. The Hokie Huddler is the athletics department newspaper that is printed 33 times a year - weekly during football and basketball seasons and bi-monthly during the spring.

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