Virginia Tech coach Kenny Brooks was standing at the stair stop to trim the final strands from the net when the familiar thump began to wail through the arena speakers.
The Hokies’ first Final Four berth was entitled a little Metallica and a little “Enter Sandman”.
Elizabeth Kitley scored 25 points and grabbed 12 rebounds, Georgia Amoore added 24 points and top-seeded Virginia Tech advanced to the Final Four with an 84-74 win over No. 3 seed Ohio State in the Seattle Regional Finals on Monday night.
For the seventh time in the last 10 Final Fours, the participant will be a first-time champion of the ACC, adding another feat to the best season in school history.
Playing in their first regional final, Virginia Tech (31-4) won their 15th straight game and will go without a loss in more than two months to the Final Four. The Hokies will face LSU in the national semifinals on Friday in Dallas.
“We’re not just going to the Final Four. We’re in the Final Four. That’s something that means the world to me,” Brooks said.
Kitley, the Hokies’ 6-foot-6 center, and leading scorer this season, took over the interior in the second half. He scored the first seven points of the fourth quarter, and his three-point play gave Virginia Tech a 70–60 lead.
Amur hit his fourth 3-pointer of the game to increase the lead to 13. Ohio State pulled within six in the final minute, but the Hokies were almost right at the foul line down the stretch.
After the final buzzer sounded, “Enter Sandman” blared out the Climate Pledge Arena for the first time, setting up an even louder party for the Hokie fans in attendance.
And it was played again as Brooks stood on the ladder above the celebration.
“I don’t know if you see it as more than a dream. Obviously, it hasn’t been easy and one day I will sit back and realize how difficult it was for us to get here and to realize that we are the last of the four teams. are one,” Brooks said.
Amur shook off potential injury scares in the first half and scored 16 points in the second half. He had a career-high 29 in the regional semifinal win over Tennessee. Kela King added 12 points in the first half for the Hokies.
“This group, we all come from different places, but this year we came together because we all wanted the same thing,” Kitley said. “It’s great to be in this place but we know we don’t want to end yet because we have so much fun playing together.”
Taylor Mikkel led Ohio State (28-8) with 25 points, but 19 of those came in the first half. Mikkel did not score in the first 16 minutes of the second half before hitting a 3-pointer with 3:35 remaining.
Jesse Sheldon scored 19 and Big Ten Freshman of the Year Coty McMahon scored 18. But the pressure defense that Ohio State used to hold UConn to 25 turnovers in the regional semifinal was easily handled by Amur and the Hokies in the opening minutes and mostly abandoned by the Browns. Buckeyes.
“I thought we were a little tired coming into this. We put so much energy into Saturday’s game and didn’t have that much energy in the press,” Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff said. “And when you don’t have that, it’s tough because all you can really do is get up on the back end and drop easy baskets.”
Ohio State was looking to join its Big Ten Conference partner Iowa in reaching the Final Four for the first time in 30 years. The Buckeyes held Virginia Tech shot-for-shot through a highly entertaining and high-scoring first half.
But the shots that fell in the first 20 minutes stopped falling in the second half. Ohio State shot 64% in the first half, including five 3-pointers from Mikkels, but that dropped to just 28% in the second half.
“We got the stop we wanted. We didn’t find most of them offensive, Sheldon said. “We didn’t execute the way we wanted to. So support them. He played a great game.”
rare company
Brooks is the third black male coach to take a team to the women’s Final Four and the second since the 1994 expansion of the field to 64 teams. Winthrop McGriff with Cheney in 1984 and Quentin Hilsman with Syracuse in 2016 were the others. Brooks is in his seventh season at Blacksburg.
“I know that when I was trying to make a name for myself, there weren’t many people doing it or advocating for people who looked like me. In this profession, I feel like we belong. I think there is a place for black men to come in and make a positive impact,” Brooks said before the Sweet 16.