No Sy, Big Problems

It was announced that the No. 21 Virginia Tech Hokies would be without their big man Khadim Sy in their second ACC game against N.C. State.

It wasn’t pretty, unless you are a N.C. State fan — if you are a Virginia Tech fan, cover your eyes, close your ears, because the No. 21 ranked Hokies’ who were wanting that respect from the AP voters, absolutely got routed by the Wolfpack in their second road test of the season.

Dennis Smith Jr. and North Carolina State certainly proved they know how to respond to a loss. Smith had 27 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists on the night for just the second triple-double in program history. The Wolfpack’s Terry Henderson finished with 22 points and Malik-Abdul Abu finished with 20 as N.C. State routed the Hokies, 104-78.

The Wolfpack bounced back from a tough ACC opening loss to Miami in which head coach Mark Gottfried said, “we took our ‘cool jacket’ off and played basketball.” The Wolfpack didn’t trail a single time in the game — nor did Virginia Tech in their last game against Duke.

Welcome to the ACC. Really want to know what it is like playing basketball in the ACC? Look no further than right here:

No team is safe. The ACC is a dog-eat-dog conference. It doesn’t matter what the last game produced, if any team thinks the ACC is going to be a easy conference to win in, they were proved wrong on Wednesday night.

As for the Hokies’, they were without big man Khadim Sy and it proved to be big problems for the Hokies when protecting the rim. Sy rolled his ankle during shootaround when he was coming down for a rebound.

Virginia Tech already lacks the size down low with Kerry Blackshear and Johnny Hamilton being out. The only two big men the Hokies can rely on right now is Sy and Zach LeDay. In his first start of the season, LeDay finished with 16 points and six rebounds but the missed production of Sy obviously hurt the Hokies.

After the game Williams said he didn’t know the full status of Sy and couldn’t say if he would be ready to play No. 12 Florida State on Saturday. It gets worse — Seth Allen wasn’t on the bench for the some of the second half and Williams said he sent Allen to locker room as precautionary measure after he hit his head late in loss at N.C. State. Allen will undergo concussion protocol sometime on Thursday.

Ahmed Hill was the leader for the Hokies in the points column dropping 17 as Chris Clarke finished with 15 and Justin Bibbs finished with 13.

“I thought the plan was right,” Hokies coach Buzz Williams said. “The execution was obviously near to zero. I just thought the mentality relative to the execution was bad from the start, and it trended toward being too individualistic on both ends of the floor. And we’re not good enough to play that sort of game.”

The plan may have been right early on before Sy went down, but as soon as he did it seemed like the entire momentum the Hokies were working with all season went down the drain as soon as he was ruled out.

“We were way too flat. We were playing below our man,” Williams said. “And whether it was off the pass or the bounce, when the ball got to the paint, our rotation was bad.”

The road only gets tougher from here for the Hokies. After their showdown with FSU they will return back home to face a hot Syracuse team and that will start a three-game home stand that will see them square off against No. 23 Notre Dame and Georgia Tech during that span.

Florida State is coming in hot against the Hokies entering their third ACC game 2-0 in conference play and 14-1 overall. The Seminoles defeated Virginia, 60-58 on the road in which some people are saying it is the biggest win in program history.

More from Fighting Gobbler

This article originally appeared on