Virginia Tech's March Madness Chances Now Viewed As A "Longshot"

Virginia Tech has been on the bubble for the better part of two months and the bubble may have burst last night with their ACC Tournament loss to Wake Forest.

Despite numerous opportunities against teams like Virginia, North Carolina, Louisville, Duke, and Miami, Virginia Tech could not get just one or two more important victories down the stretch of the season and make their case why they should be an NCAA Tournament team.

In fact, ESPN's Joe Lunardi has dropped Virginia Tech from first four out to the next four out and CBS Sports analyst David Cobb has the Hokies as a longshot to make the tournament.

"NC State has dropped six of its past seven games and would be advised to beat No. 15 seed Pitt on Wednesday unless it wants to be subjected to intense scrutiny from the selection committee. The Wolfpack's best road wins over Clemson and SMU have depreciated in value, and a 24-point beatdown of North Carolina comes with a significant asterisk since UNC was missing stars Caleb Wilson and Henri Veesaar. Thus, it feels premature to call NC State a lock just yet. Virginia Tech and Stanford are all but done after losing their first-round games at the ACC Tournament on Tuesday."

Season over?

Barring something truly shocking, Virginia Tech is likely heading for the NIT and not the NCAA Tournament field. This has been a frustrating season for the Hokies, who have suffered many close losses and have had plenty of opportunities this season to prove that they do belong in the NCAA Tournament.

Last night after the game, Hokies head coach Mike Young talked about the missed opportunities that his team has had this season:

"Doing it a long time. 24 years as a head coach, you have never heard me make an excuse. Was it hurtful? Yeah. But tonight, down Amani, and you've got to find a way to continue to win, and we didn't do enough of that. We didn't do enough of that. Not quite good enough.

There was a lot of mixing and matching throughout the year. It wasn't a shoo-in, this team. They all matter. We did a lot of things right. 11-2 coming out of non-conference. We didn't have a blemish. We still don't have a blemish. We had great opportunities. We had unbelievable opportunities. Now, a lot of those opportunities were on the road. North Carolina, Louisville. We won at Clemson, won at Syracuse, on and on. Had Duke at home, and they were playing really, really good basketball. We had our opportunities, and we came up just short. That's disappointing, infuriating, and I take a lot of responsibility there."

This season will be looked at and defined by the missed opportunities and close losses that the Hokies had. They had the talent to be an NCAA Tournament team, but they could not take advantage.