Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 18, 1995 TAG: 9510180061
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The Virginia Tech coach has a basketball team with every starter returning from an NIT championship. It's a club that produced a school-record 25 wins. It's in a new league, and the Hokies are among the favorites.
The ink figures to be dry on his contract extension through 2000 by the end of this month. And when Foster looks down the bench, he thankfully still will see valued aide Bobby Hussey, who easily could be the head coach at UNC Greensboro now.
He also will see players, and as Kathleen Turner once proved, there's something to be said for body heat. If Foster wanted subs his first four years at Tech, he had to go to a deli.
The Hokies, only a few days into hoops workouts for their first Atlantic 10 season, already have one major development. No coaches have to practice.
Foster said Tuesday that the only team in his previous 28 years as a head coach with similar depth to these Hokies was his 1980 Clemson club that reached the NCAA regional finals, losing to eventual champion UCLA. That was the last Foster-coached team to reach the tournament.
These Hokies, as they proved last season, are tigers of a different stripe. ``We don't have the size of that Clemson team,'' Foster said, ``but that team didn't have the chemistry of this one. If it had, we might have blown past UCLA and gone on to win the whole thing.''
Foster remembered that Clemson club was the last at-large team picked for what was a 48-team field. His 1994-95 Hokies may have been the last team erased on the NCAA selection board. For that, they were fortunate.
Instead of a likely one-and-out in the big dance, they played their way into the annual Garden party, where they added to a number that tells Foster this team has a chance to be as tough as the defense that limited five NIT foes to a combined 36-percent shooting.
Tech's home is its Cassell, but in the past two seasons, the Hokies have won 20 games elsewhere. That bodes well for the first tour of the A-10, a league in which Tech's arena will be a Taj Mahal.
Last year's team belonged to the players. This year, although the most prominent names haven't changed, it's Foster's team. The Hokies must play for him in more ways than one.
How Foster handles the veteran depth is one question to answer. How the veterans handle the way Foster handles that depth is a major consideration. Will players accustomed to averaging 37 minutes be satisfied with 27?
``This could be a tougher coaching job, for different reasons,'' Foster said. ``We have to make sure people feel good about their part in the big picture. I think we have guys who are willing to give up quantity [minutes] for quality.''
Foster hasn't seen anything early to change his starting lineup of Ace Custis and Shawn Smith flanking Travis Jackson up front and Shawn Good and Damon Watlington in the backcourt. That means the Jackson twins, Jim and David, and Troy Manns, the George Mason transfer and push-it-up playmaker from Roanoke, will be relievers.
Foster also has big man Keefe Matthews, currently slowed by a stress fracture, forward Shawn Browne, guards Myron Guillory and Kelly Mann, and signees Alvaro Tor and Andre Ray.
Whom to redshirt? Probably two players, Foster figures, barring injury, and not necessarily freshmen. Good guesses are Tor and Guillory.
Ray has been very impressive in early workouts, and is called a ``no position player'' by the Hokies' coach, meaning Ray is just the opposite, a 6-foot-5 swingman with potential at several spots.
``It's early,'' Foster said. ``We'll just see how it plays out.''
Around New Year's, Foster should become the 15th active Division I coach with 500 victories. He needs six, and he didn't think he'd get there. He didn't figure to coach at Tech past his original four-year contract, but he's 63-56 after rebuilding the program.
``If anybody had told me we'd be over .500 after four years, I'd have told them they had a loose screw,'' he said.
There is a sense on campus that, new contract or not, Foster still might head for the hills after this season if the Hokies are as good on hardwood as they are on paper.
Foster and his wife, Linda, are building a new retirement home in the mountains of North Carolina, and the Hokies' goal isn't just to grab their first NCAA bid in a decade.
Projecting them toward the Sweet 16 isn't a stretch, although expecting to play for a national championship at the Meadowlands the night of Foster's 60th birthday may be an April Fool's wish.
``If I thought we'd have player problems or coach problems,'' Foster said, ``I'd probably be over in the mountains teeing it up right now.''
Besides, he's never flunked chemistry, either.
by CNB