Virginia Tech will try to put together a better start when it hosts Winthrop on Monday night in Blacksburg, Va.
The Hokies improved to 2-0 with a 93-74 win against visiting USC Upstate on Friday night, while the Eagles (2-0) defeated visiting Little Rock 82-67 Saturday.
Mylyjael Poteat and Brandon Rechsteiner both scored a career-high 19 points in Virginia Tech’s win. Freshman Tyler Johnson scored 16 points and Jaydon Young had 14.
Despite the win, the young Hokies had a cold-shooting start on Friday. They missed nine of their first 10 shots and trailed 16-2 early. USC Upstate hit six of 10 shots to begin the game and Virginia Tech committed five turnovers early.
Virginia Tech trailed by five at intermission but pulled away in the second half. A 7-0 run gave them a double-digit lead and they never looked back.
“I feel like that’s a good definition of what the season will look like,” Young said. “I think it’ll start off pretty ugly, as it should, new team coming together. I feel like a lot of teams look like that right now, but January, February, later on in the season, it might look a little better.”
In contrast to Virginia Tech’s youth, Winthrop starts five seniors and returns four starters, the top four scorers from 2023-24.
Despite that, Winthrop followed a similar narrative to Virginia Tech last time out. The Eagles led Little Rock by four points at halftime before scoring the first nine points of the second half to build a 41-28 lead with 17:38 to play.
They pushed the lead to 23 points and Little Rock got no closer than within 13.
K.J. Doucet led Winthrop with 17 points and seven rebounds. Tommy Kamarad and Kasen Harrison added 13 points apiece.
“I think we showed the quality of our depth,” coach Mark Prosser said. “I think there was a lot of unselfish plays that happened today. A little bit of a lull here and there where I think some of the things we talk about in preparation we can be little bit better in execution when the game starts.”
This marks the third meeting between the Eagles and Hokies, who won the previous two. The last meeting was Dec. 3, 2013, when the host Hokies prevailed 81-63.
