Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 13 No. 2 | October 2020

inside.hokiesports.com 23 “Asiah is athletic as all get out,” Brooks said. “She’s probably the most talented. Liz is the most skilled, but AJ is the most talented. AJ can score in a variety of ways. She’s now starting to develop a 15-foot jump shot. She’s so bouncy that she scores over top of people. Tremendous rebounder, and she’s a dynamic shot blocker. What I mean by that is when she blocks a shot, it’s dynamic. It’s not just a tip. She really erases things. She gives us a rim protector from the 4 position. With that combo, we’re very, very excited.” The other two post players—Nevaeh Dean and D’asia Gregg—also add length and athleticism. Gregg played at Georgia Tech as a freshman before spending this past season at Gulf Coast State College, a Florida junior college where she averaged 15.3 points and 6.1 rebounds per game. Dean nearly averaged a double-double her senior season in high school. THE SCHEDULE Brooks wasn’t ready to reveal the Hokies’ nonconference opponents, but said the schedule featured four games against regional opponents. He and his staff tweaked the schedule several times over the past six months because of the pandemic, but ended up with just four games because the NCAA decided to start the season later (Nov. 25) and because the ACC decided to implement a 20-game conference schedule, as opposed to 18 (the league hadn’t announced the dates as of this writing). Eleven ACC teams finished with winning records last season, and six—including the Hokies—won 20 or more. So the addition of two more league games will be challenging, especially considering of all the Hokies’ newcomers. “I don’t know if I’m in favor of adding two more conference games as hard as our conference is, and maybe in years past, I would have been opposed to it, but I feel like we can compete,” Brooks said. “If you want to be the best, you’ve got to play the best, so we’ll go along with it, and we’re excited.” FINAL THOUGHTS Entering his fifth season, Brooks loves the potential of this team even with all the newcomers. For the first time, the roster features depth and length—the by-product of a conscious recruiting effort. Brooks and his staff not only wanted to get bigger in the post, but also longer on the perimeter, and now Tech’s roster features nine players taller than 6-foot. That should enable the Hokies to be more competitive with Louisville, NC State and Florida State—three teams that have gotten the better of Tech of late. “When I first got here, we were just surviving. We were outmatched in a lot of different areas, just overmatched,” Brooks said. “As we went out and started to get our footing down with recruiting, we were able to start to hone in on the type of player that we wanted. We like long players who can play multiple positions … That’s something that we’ve coveted, and now in year 4 or year 5, we have our footing on the type of player we want to have … Kids who are long and athletic and cover a lot of ground. Those are the type of kids we covet right now.” Brooks knows that he may need several games to figure out where all the pieces fit. The players need to learn his system and their roles within it—and other than Kitley, no player from last year’s team will be in the same role. That includes Sheppard, whom Brooks wants to play exclusively at the shooting guard spot after playing her seemingly everywhere last season. But he feels the talent and athleticism are there for an NCAA Tournament berth in March. “I do think this team is an NCAA caliber team,” he said. “We have to have some things go our way, but I definitely think we’re capable of reproducing what we accomplished last year.” Hopefully, that is the case. For sure, it would be the perfect cure for last March’s pandemic-induced heartache—one that has lingered for the past several months.