Virginia Tech stuns Duke as No. 7 seed, wins first ACC tournament title

No more wait until next year as we have heard year after year. No more we got close, but not close enough. This time the Hokies finally delivered their first ever Atlantic Coast Conference Championship. The first ever in school history. The fans have waited for this for years. The cities of Christiansburg, Blacksburg, Roanoke have waited to explode for this team.

For the second straight Saturday night, Duke failed to deliver Coach K a send-off victory. This time it was Virginia Tech playing party pooper.

Hunter Cattoor scored a career-high 31 points and the seventh-seeded Hokies won the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament for the first time, beating Duke 82–67 on Saturday night to deny Mike Krzyzewski a league title in his final season.

Virginia Tech (23–12) came to Brooklyn in need a of a run to make the NCAA Tournament, and the Hokies became just the second ACC to take the crown with four wins in four days. They made their run, four wins in four nights. The Hokies also are the worst seeded team to win the most-storied conference tournament in college basketball.

Virginia Tech’s first ACC championship since joining the conference in 2004 was sealed.

Soon after Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” the Hokies’ unofficial fight song, blared throughout Barclays Center and the Virginia Tech fans sung along like it was the fourth quarter at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Virginia Tech’s last — and only other — conference tournament championship came in 1979 when the Hokies were in the Metro Conference.

Hokies coach Mike Young led his teams to five Southern Conference Tournament titles in 17 seasons at Wofford. It only took him three seasons to get his first with Virginia Tech.

Meanwhile, Krzyzewski was denied his 16th ACC title in his 42nd and final season.

The Hokies came to the Barclays Center with it all to play for, sitting squarely in the middle of the bubble. Maybe in, maybe out. They showed they weren’t content leaving their NCAA tournament hopes in the hands of the committee as they beat Duke and made sure there will be no stress this Selection Sunday with an emphatic 82-67 win.

“I don’t watch the prognosticators and bracketologists,” head coach Mike Young said after the game. “I’m thinking, you get to the ACC final, even if we lose this game, holy cow we gotta be in the tournament, aren’t we? We are now, so to heck with that stuff. Our name will be called tomorrow and we’ll be excited wherever we may go.”

This was Virginia Tech’s first ACC title game appearance in program history and they denied Coach K his 16th and final tournament title. They wrote their own chapter in what is supposedly the coaching legend’s storybook ending. Young, Murphy and forward Keve Aluma won a SoCon conference title together at Wofford in 2019 before they all came to Blacksburg (Cattoor signed to Wofford in the spring of 2019 as well before also following Young & Co. to Virginia Tech). They were champions then, and they’re champions again now. Tech enters the NCAA tournament red hot, but their road here has not been a straight path. They started ACC play 2–7 before finishing 13–2 heading into March Madness.

“As we’re 2–7 and losing games we’re not expecting to lose, that weight, that burden, that doubt creeps in. That’s tough, it’s tough to have that,” Murphy said. “It was a dark place. We didn’t want to be there, we didn’t expect to be there. But the resilience of this team and the belief never wavered. I think we had more belief in those moments even than we did in the summer and the preseason with all the expectations.”

On Wednesday night after an Darius Maddox sank a buzzer-beating three-pointer in overtime to beat Clemson, head coach Mike Young called the win “luckier than hell.” Source: Sports Illustrated

The Hokies winning was shocking and it sets up some intriguing scenarios as teams try to make the NCAA Tournament. Virginia Tech is clearly in now. It’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the bracket shapes up.