Basketball thoughts

Nine days ago, Brad Brownell thought his team would be energetic and inspired in a game at Virginia Tech. The Tigers came out and looked dead in a boisterous environment over the first 10 minutes and had to overcome a big deficit before losing a close one in the end.

Two days ago, Brownell probably didn't know what to expect when his team ventured into Lawrence Joel Library, er, Coliseum on Saturday.

You never really know when you're dealing with kids.

The most impressive thing I took from the 20-point win was the energy the Tigers brought from the start. They played like a confident team. They showed purpose and aggression. Surely playing a bad team had something to do with it, but showing these kinds of intangibles isn't easy when you're on a three-game losing streak.

I would submit that what we saw Saturday afternoon in Winston-Salem presents strong evidence that Brownell still has this team together and fighting to do something memorable this season. After so many close losses, and in the wake of that knee-buckling home defeat against Maryland last week, this was the point of the season where things could've spiraled. The Tigers were 3-6 in the ACC, and it wasn't all that outrageous to think they could go to Wake Forest and sleepwalk through a game in a bad atmosphere.

Last year, a big part of the Tigers' success was pushing the pace and probing for high-percentage opportunities in transition. The defining characteristic of Saturday's win was an up-tempo approach that produced easy baskets off turnovers, and also early in the shot clock.

This team isn't going to make 58 percent of its baskets every game, and certainly it's not reasonable for us to expect this bunch to make 15 of 18 shots as it did during a stretch that spanned late in the first half to early in the second.

But maybe this group just feels more comfortable when it's jacking shots early in possessions. It goes against the grain of sound basketball reasoning, but maybe it helps this team stay loose. Seems as if we've seen countless instances of the Tigers letting the shot clock tick down to five seconds and then rushing a shot, turning it over or whatever.

What we saw Saturday was a team executing freely and not getting bogged down in the mental part of it. Again, it helps when the opposition stinks and doesn't play much defense (if any). But you wonder if the style was a bit of a revelation moving forward.

This team still has plenty to play for. Tomorrow night's home game against Virginia presents an opportunity for a bigger confidence boost against a good team.

LW