TICKET SALES HOLDING UP TECH-UVA STARTING TIME

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 21, 1992                   TAG: 9201210032
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SCOTT BLANCHARD SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
TICKET SALES HOLDING UP TECH-UVA STARTING TIME
The tip-off time for the Virginia-Virginia Tech basketball game at the Roanoke Civic Center on Feb. 5 still is uncertain.
Cable's Home Team Sports wants to televise the game and has listed it on telecast schedules. According to an agreement between Tech and HTS, however, the game will not be shown unless the 10,056-seat civic center is sold out.
If the UVa-Tech game is not televised, it will start at 7:30 p.m. If it is televised, the tip-off will be moved up to 7 p.m. for HTS.
Tech associate athletic director Danny Monk said that as of Monday HTS had not set a deadline for Tech to notify it of a sellout. But Monk said Tech wants to decide the issue sooner rather than later to avoid conflicts with fans and Tech's radio network affiliates, which are planning on a 7:30 start.
Tech ticket manager Tom McNeer said fewer than 7,000 tickets have been sold. Tickets are available at Tech, at UVa and at the civic center.

Regardless of its record or talent, Tech's basketball team will be hot at some point next season or the season after.
Hokies coach Bill Foster is mulling offers for Tech to play either in Hawaii or Puerto Rico in 1992-93 or '93-94. Foster said Tech, which played in Honolulu in the 1989-90 season, is eligible beginning next season to play in an in-season tournament in Hawaii, Alaska or Puerto Rico without the games counting against the NCAA limit of 27 regular-season games.
Foster said he has talked to longtime friend Riley Wallace, the University of Hawaii's head coach, about the Hokies playing three games in three days in Honolulu. The San Juan Shootout is an eight-team tournament in which each team plays three games. Next season's field, Foster said, includes Radford, Iowa, Southern Illinois, Eastern Michigan and Wright State.

No date has been set for North Carolina's visit to the Roanoke Civic Center to play Tech. Foster said the game will be played but that the Tar Heels want Tech to play a return game at Chapel Hill, N.C.
"I'm not big about us playing ours off-campus and theirs on," Foster said.
Possible remedies include Tech playing at Greensboro, N.C., in the 1994-95 season or, Foster said, Tech might offer to split the Roanoke gate with the Tar Heels and not return the game at all.

It's not hard for ever-optimistic Foster to find bright spots about his team. But he had strong praise for the Hokies' Texas connection last weekend, even after Tech went 0-2 on its Metro Conference road trip to Tulane and Southern Mississippi.
Jimmy Carruth, a 6-foot-10 sophomore center with an armspan of 90 1/2 inches, still can look clumsy on the court. But the Port Arthur, Texas, native is developing a short hook shot and had 11 points on 4-for-6 shooting with five rebounds in 17 minutes against Southern Miss.
"He comes out and gives us a physical presence," Foster said. "He's not pretty all the time, but he's the best defensive post guy we've got, and he's been getting better and better all year."
Corey Jackson, a 6-7 sophomore shooting guard from Missouri City, Texas, has been inconsistent throughout his Tech career. But he has scored 10, 12 and 18 points in his past three games and is averaging 4.7 rebounds in that stretch.
"Corey Jackson played the game of his career as far as I'm concerned [against Tulane], and not just the 18 points," Foster said. "The rebounds, the loose balls, he defended well."
Foster said he also liked the fact that Tech rallied from big deficits in both road games, cutting a 27-point Tulane lead to 14 and a 17-point Southern Miss lead to nine.
"I don't like losing, but we're close," Foster said. "If we can do a few little things a little better, then we've got a chance to win on the road."

Foster briefly chewed the ear of Metro Conference supervisor of officials Dale Kelley on Saturday about the referees in the Southern Miss game, and the coach hardly seemed satisfied when the two finished talking. On Monday, Foster had mellowed.
"He did all he can do," Foster said of Kelley. "You sit down the next day and watch the films, and the calls you didn't like you still don't like, but there were ones missed that went the other way."
Two of Saturday's officials - Charles Watkins Jr. and Bob McGrath - are 11-year Metro veterans. The other official, Ed Gatterdam, joined the league in 1986.
Foster said he has told the players not to worry about the officiating and said he should take his own advice.
"I need to button myself up a little," he said.

Whether or not he has surgery on his injured ankle, Hokies forward Johnnie Tooley won't play for Tech this year, Foster said. Tooley played just five games his freshman year at Arkansas-Little Rock after spraining an ankle.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB