Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 11 No. 2 | October 2018

28 Inside Hokie Sports Visit hokiesports.com/hokiekidsclub to join! KIDS CLUB THE OF VIRGINIA TECH ATHLETICS Official “Everything that Virginia Tech has, I fell in love with from the moment I got here,” she said. “I felt like I had already been through a lot of different situations from visiting other schools to being at two different schools. You really find out what you’re looking for and what you love in a school and what you’re trying to find. I could be at the smallest school in the country as long as I have Coach Brooks and my teammates and my other coaches with me. I don’t care where I’m at. “At the end of the day, it’s about who you’re around and not exactly where you’re at, and that makes Virginia Tech home—because of the people that are in it and surround you every day.” Emery adapted quickly to the Division I game, and more importantly, to Brooks’ system. She scored at least 20 points in five of the Hokies’ first six games of the 2017-18 campaign. Tech dusted most of its non- conference foes, jumping out to an 11-2 record. But the ACC is a different animal, and the Hokies’ lost six of their first nine conference games. That span included a nightmarish game for Emery—against rival Virginia, of all teams. She scored 18, but made just 7 of 24 from the floor. On the bus ride back, she grew furious with herself. That performance prompted her to head straight to the Hahn Hurst Center once the bus arrived in Blacksburg that Sunday evening to launch shots. Every day, she’d come in and shoot at least 100 shots. Her teammates started noticing, and they, too, started coming in and working on their games. A trust began developing—and Tech coincidentally played better. The Hokies won road games at Syracuse and North Carolina and knocked off Clemson on Senior Day. They then beat Syracuse again, this time in the ACC Tournament, behind Emery’s 28 points and almost pulled a stunner over then-No. 4 Louisville, falling by three despite Emery’s 27. “Any time you throw someone into a situation, and they’re new to it, there is going to be some dissension among players as to who the go-to person is,” Brooks said. “We let it happen organically. We didn’t insert Taylor and say, ‘Hey, everybody get the ball to Taylor.’ What she had to do in the beginning was win her teammates over to the point that they started looking for her naturally instead of me having to call plays. That’s the way we wanted it to happen. “Doing it that way, I really felt like it was going to take longer for her to establish herself, but she established herself quickly, and they understood that when we needed a basket, then, ‘Hey, let’s go to Taylor.’ She did a really good job of not forcing it. She really took what they gave her. I probably had to tell her to be more aggressive in looking for her opportunities, but she did that and did it at the highest level.” Brooks hopes to see more of that high level of play this season from Emery, who feels poised for a big senior campaign both on and off Accepting ALL Continued from page 27 GETTING TO KNOW… TAYLOR EMERY Q: What is your dream vacation? TE: I think I’d want to go to Jamaica or Puerto Rico or a Latin country. You always see the movies where the people are on the beach and they have their coconut drink, but then I just want to dance. I want there to be a place where they play all the music that makes you want to move. I just want to dance my heart away and relax and be gone for a week. I just want to have fun. Q: What is your favorite social media platform? TE: Instagram. I like to see pictures. Twitter is cool, but a lot of people just talk there. I just want to see pictures. I want to see different things. I’m a very visual person. So I like Instagram. Q: If you could play any other sport, it would be which one and why? TE: Soccer. That’s what I grew up with. That was my second love. It’s a lot of running, though. Q: What is the one talent that you wish that you had? TE: I wish I could sing. I feel like that is the one thing I’m missing. I just don’t have it. I wish. Q: What is your favorite thing about being a Virginia Tech student-athlete? TE: There are so many good things. I would say that it’s homey. You have a lot of people who care about you, whether they’re involved in your sport or not. I have a lot of people in the English department who care about coming to games and care about me as a person. I think that’s one thing I appreciate about Virginia Tech, and I didn’t have that at the other schools, where people don’t just look at you as a basketball player. They look at you as a person [at Virginia Tech]. They try and get to know that person off the court, and that’s what I love about this place.