Belt-tightening at the home office prevented me from making the trip down to Miami to see Virginia Tech lose 82-75 to the Hurricanes today.

So I had to suffer through the Raycom Sports telecast – untimely “instant” replays, excessive crowd shots and an intrusive graphic near the end of the game advertising the PGA event coming up next. That said, I enjoyed the color commentary from Dave Odom, the former Wake Forest and South Carolina coach, whose son Ryan is a Tech assistant. Well-reasoned analysis from a guy who knows the game better than most.

As I watched the Hokies go down 47-30 at halftime, then 55-36 with 16:31 left in the game, I thought about a couple things …

1. Was this is the same team that led Miami by 35 in the first half of the teams’ first meeting, an 81-66 Tech win on Jan. 13?

2. After Tech’s last game, an overtime win Thursday at Virginia, Hokies coach Seth Greenberg said, “We’re a good team when we get stops.”

And when the Hokies fail to get stops – which is what happened in the first half today – they aren’t a very good team at all. Miami made 14 of 20 shots (70 percent) in the first half ... and yes, most teams aren’t going to look sharp when their opponent shoots that kind of percentage. But the Hokies, offensively challenged as they often are, need to rely on playing consistently sound defense.

“You can’t win a game on the road when you let people shoot 70 percent in the first half,” Greenberg said in his postgame radio interview. “And that’s just disgusting. What happened in the first half, 14 for 20, I understand they made shots, but I was just extremely disappointed with our sense of urgency on the defensive end – right from the beginning. They make three 3s in their first five possessions – one on a chase, one on a catch and shoot. Those are all things that were priorities for us in our scouting report. We let catch-and-shoot guys become catch-and-shoot guys.”

The Hokies (3-3 ACC, 16-4) came back and cut Miami’s lead to 65-60 with 7:32 left. They were down five again, 73-68, when their power forward, Jeff Allen, made a layup with 1:09 remaining. But they never got any closer than that.

“The second half, I thought we did really some terrific things,” Greenberg said. “We defended the ball screen aggressively. We trapped it. We doubled the post quick and we were alert coming off of the doubles. We defended the basketball. … I thought we fought back really hard. We did a good job of getting the ball in the middle of the zone. We didn’t convert all the time. They pushed us out in the first half a little bit. We weren’t as aggressive. We could get the ball into the middle of the zone. We just didn’t make enough plays.”

Still, this is a game that might leave Greenberg shaking his head. His team had proven it could beat Miami (2-5, 16-5). Moreover, the Hurricanes were in the middle of a four-game losing streak, including three defeats by at least 15 points.

The Hokies have little time to mourn this loss. North Carolina comes to Blacksburg on Thursday for a 9 p.m. game, followed by another home game, against Clemson, at 4 p.m. Saturday – a turnaround of less than 48 hours.

Some final thoughts from today and a few more postgame quotes from Greenberg …

** Miami shot 24 of 38 for the game (63.2 percent). That is by far the highest field-goal percentage Tech has allowed this season. The Hokies entered the game holding opponents to 39.4 percent, including 44.9 in ACC play. Just three times had Tech allowed an opponent to shoot better than 50 percent: Campbell (50.0), North Carolina (53.8) and Boston College (55.0). The Hokies lost just one of those games, Carolina.

** The Hurricanes, who attempt more 3-pointers than any ACC team, made 9 of 17 3s, compared to 6 of 27 in the teams’ first meeting.

** Tech got another good game out of backup power forward J.T. Thompson, who scored 14 points, on 4-of-6 shooting, in 23 minutes. Just as impressive, he made 6 of 8 free throws. At Virginia, he scored 17, on 6-of-9 shooting, in 29 minutes. He made 5 of 6 free throws. Before that, he had made 12 of 26 free throws this season.

** Allen rebounded nicely from his ejection for throwing an elbow at Virginia. He scored 19 points and shot 6 of 12. He hadn’t scored in double figures in the previous four games. It was the third-most points Allen scored this season, behind 24 against Virginia Military Institute and 23 in an overtime win against Seton Hall.

** And the last word(s), courtesy of Greenberg and Mr. Marconi’s Magical Box of Boom …

- “I didn’t think the first 10 minutes were what we needed. I tried to talk to them before the game about if you want to be a special team, you go on the road and you are ready. You make the first hit. You make them react to you. That’s all we talked about. We talked about heart. We talked about hustle. We talked about trust.”

- “We spent the last two days trying to paint the picture of how we win. Well, we don’t win letting people shoot 70 percent from the field. We win by getting people to react to us, like we did in the second half – by trapping ball screens, by getting to our big-to-big doubles quickly, by being tougher on the basketball at the end of the shot clock. We just didn’t do that.”

- “I thought we played extremely hard. But you can’t play the first 20 minutes or 22 minutes and let people shoot 70 percent. We talked about trapping ball screens. We talked about doubling the post big to big. We talked about making shooters [become] drivers. We didn’t do a good enough job with it.”

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The Hurricanes shot 70 percent in the first half and 63.2 percent for the game—by far the highest percentage Tech has allowed this season.