It wasn't so much Virginia Tech's struggles against Big East competition that turned the tide against coach Ricky Stokes, who was fired yesterday after four seasons as VT's head coach. The Hokies started out 2-14 in the Big East in 2000-2001, improved to 4-12 the following season, and treaded water this past season, again going 4-12 in the league.

No, what really doomed Ricky Stokes was the Hokies' inability to win the "winnable" games, namely, the out-of-conference teams that used to serve as automatic 20-point wins back in Charlie Moir's 1980's heyday.

Hokie fans accustomed to a top-20 football team expect their men's basketball team to make short work of the likes of Liberty, Wofford, ETSU, Chattanooga, Radford, and William and Mary. But during Ricky Stokes' four-year tenure, the Hokies lost to all those teams and more, some of them more than once, and many of them at home.

Here are thirteen out-of-conference losses that frustrated and alarmed Hokie fans during the Stokes years.

After opening up 2-0 under Stokes, the Hokies got spanked by ETSU on the road. Tech lost the game at the free throw line, converting just 11 of 29 (37.9%) free throws in the 15-point loss. All this despite the Hokies having a senior point guard (Brendan Dunlop), a talented junior in Rolan Roberts, and a rising star (or so we thought at the time) in sophomore Dennis Mims.

Seven days after getting crushed by ETSU, the Hokies laid an egg at home and lost to Radford by two points, despite shooting 54% (27 of 50) from the field and outrebounding the Highlanders 37-22. The Hokies had 24 turnovers to RU's 13, and Radford hit five 3-pointers to just one for Tech.

Just two days after dropping one to Radford, the Hokies compounded the mistake by losing a close one to Liberty, again at home. In the first 25 years Cassell Coliseum was open (1961-1986), the Hokies had only lost one home game against an in-state team -- that is not a misprint or typo -- but the 1999-2000 Hokies did it twice in three days. The Stokes era was off to a 4-3 start with three losses that could only be described as embarrassing.

With Rolan Roberts gone, Dennis Mims a junior, and Carlos Dixon and Bryant Matthews starting as freshmen, the Hokies lost to William and Mary on a last-second tip-in. The Tribe had 16 offensive rebounds on the night, and Tech hit just 13 of 23 free throws and went just 14 of 43 from the field.

Amazingly, the Hokies lost to Liberty at home for the second year in a row. Down 28-19 at half time, Tech couldn't catch the Flames and suffered another embarrassing loss at home. Tech stood at 1-3 on the season, their first in the Big East.

The Hokies were outrebounded 36-23 by a Chattanooga team that started three guards. The 2-5 Mocs were never seriously threatened in taking a 38-33 lead and then ringing up 46 second-half points on their way to victory.

The Hokies shot an ice-cold 29.8% (17 of 57) in serving notice that little would change in Ricky Stokes' third year as head coach. Once clearly the second-best team in the state behind Virginia, the Hokies were again proving that any other team in the state of Virginia could knock them off, any time, anywhere.

The Hokies stood at 5-2 before losing in Louisville, Kentucky to Murray State. The loss started a 1-13 slide that would see Virginia Tech bottom out at 6-15 before finishing 10-18 on the season.

After beginning their third season as a Big East member 3-1, the Hokies dropped a stunner at home to Wofford, in a game in which Tech trailed at half time by 17 points, 43-26. The Hokies outrebounded Wofford 45-24 and shot a respectable 19-26 from the line, but 17 turnovers (to Wofford's 8) doomed them to the loss. The Wofford loss became the crown jewel of embarrassing defeats for the Tech fans who wanted to see Stokes get fired.

The 4-2 Hokies took on the 0-4 Tribe � and got hammered. VT trailed 28-13 at half time, a half in which they shot 5 of 30 (16.7%). This game marked the second time in a row that W&M had beaten Tech, after the Hokies had gone 12-1 against the Tribe from 1983-1999.

Group these two games together, because they represent the same thing: Losses to mediocre, no-name basketball teams that the Hokies dominate in football. Tech led a 5-0 ECU team 36-29 at the break but got destroyed 47-24 in the second half, the type of collapse that occurred many times under Ricky Stokes. Against Western Michigan, Tech never got out of the gate, trailing 38-23 at half time in losing their second straight game to the Broncos.

VT fell behind 47-31 at half time by giving up 63.3 percent shooting, including seven three-pointers, to the visiting Seminoles in the first half. This game is a significant loss because it left the Hokies at 6-6 at the end of their non-conference opening schedule and heading into Big East play. This occurred in a year in which VT was served up a creampuff schedule in the hopes of going at least 9-3 or 10-2 before conference play started.

TechSideline Pass Home