Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 11 No. 5 | May 2019

inside.hokiesports.com 17 Mike Young displayed a sense of comfort as he walked onto the floor at Carilion Clinic Court, looking as though he simply had unlocked the front door to his house and entered his family’s living room. He undeniably felt right at home. Of course, he should. There wasn’t a coaching candidate in the country who knew his way around Cassell Coliseum like Mike Young. The Radford, Virginia native met with Virginia Tech fans and media members who cover the Hokies at a news conference on the Hokies’ home court on April 8 after Director of Athletics Whit Babcock tabbed Young to be the new head men’s basketball coach. Young took over for Buzz Williams, who departed for Texas A&M on April 4 after five seasons with the Hokies. “I’m still pinching my arms,” Young said. “It is … I don’t know if surreal is the word I’m looking for, but multiple times every day since this was agreed upon, something will pop into my mind, and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I forgot about that.’ Whatever it might be … The number of family and everything that we’ve looked forward to enjoying together, getting [wife] Margaret and [son] Davis and my sweet daughter [Cooper] up here, it’ll be a lot of fun.” Young came to Tech after spending the past 30 seasons at Wofford University, a school of roughly 1,700 students in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He spent his first 13 seasons there as an assistant coach before being elevated into the head role. During his 17-year tenure as the head coach, he guided Wofford to five NCAA Tournament appearances—all in the past nine years—earning conference coach of the year honors on four occasions and amassing a 299-244 record as the head coach. This past season, he led the Terriers to a 30-5 record, as they won the Southern Conference regular-season and tournament titles and received a No. 7 seed to the NCAA Tournament. In that tournament, they knocked off Seton Hall in the first round before falling to Kentucky 62-56 in the second round. The Terriers played an exciting brand of basketball in 2018-19, ranking second in the nation in 3-point field-goal percentage (41.4), and they also ranked in the top 20 nationally in both scoring offense and field-goal percentage. Young’s proven track record as a coach, especially at a school without the resources of Virginia Tech, and his teams’ style of play made him appealing to Babcock, who will be paying Young $2 million per year for the first two years of a five-year contract, with subsequent $250,000 raises annually after that. “Coach Young was and is exactly who we were looking for,” Babcock said at the news conference. “He is the best coach for this teamand teams to come, the best coach for you all and the best coach for Virginia Tech. “One coach that we interviewed, but didn’t hire—I wish I could footnote him but he probably doesn’t want his name out there—I asked him, “How should we build it here?” He said, “We should be long-term greedy.” I kind of like that. It doesn’t mean we won’t be great in the near term, and it doesn’t mean we’re going to wait forever, but we’re going to build it with the thought process to be long-term greedy. Not a flash in the pan, but a program that is in the NCAA Tournament and competing for championships all the time. “We wanted someone who could build it and sustain it, helping us roll from a challenger brand to a championship brand. In a way, Coach Young is us, and we are him.” The news conference featured a lot of questions about Young’s Southwest Virginia ties, and he played up those, referring to landing the Tech job a “mountaintop experience.” He gave a shout-out to former football coach Frank Beamer, who sat in attendance, and paid homage to former legendary Radford High School football coach Norman Lineburg, a relative who also was in attendance. He made sure to single out former longtime Fork Union basketball coach Fletcher Arritt, who coached Young for a season before Young went to college at Emory & Henry, and his college coach, Bob Johnson, who passed away in 2009 after a battle with cancer. Young’s depth of knowledge on the history of Tech Athletics certainly impressed the fan base. He recited the starting lineup of the 1973 NIT championship team, and he threw out names like Allan Bristow, Charlie Thomas, Craig Lieder and Don DeVoe. He talked about how Bristow used to leave tickets for him and his dad to come to games. IHS extra Continued on page 18