Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Virginia Tech’s recruiting presence is one guy

Virginia Tech Hokies' Finney-Smith, Raines, Green and Duke Blue Devils' Plumlee battle for a rebound during their college basketball tournament game in Atlanta

Virginia Tech Hokies forward Dorian Finney-Smith (L-R), forward Cadarian Raines, guard Erick Green (11) and Duke Blue Devils forward Mason Plumlee (5) battle for a rebound during their Atlantic Coast Conference college basketball tournament game in Atlanta, Georgia March 9, 2012. REUTERS/Chris Keane (UNITED STATES - Tags: SPORT BASKETBALL)

REUTERS

In a way, Virginia Tech’s decision to fire head coach Seth Greenberg in April was a case of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. The Hokies declined to fire Greenberg for his win-loss record in March, then dumped him a month and a half later because all of his assistants quit on him.

Whether you think that’s a valid reason to fire someone or not, there’s little doubt that the move took away the one coach the Hokies had left, the only guy who could have possibly gone out on the recruiting trail this spring. So what are the maroon and orange doing about this sorry state of affairs? Let the inimitable David Teel of the Newport News Daily Press give you the depressing (but oddly charming) rundown of the Hokie presence at this weekend’s Nike EYBL event:

Virginia Tech’s sole representative was John Janovsky, who wore his Hokies garb proudly.

Janovsky has never coached at the Division I level, but he appeared more than comfortable after his battlefield promotion in the wake of Seth Greenberg’s firing.

Prior to Greenberg’s exit, assistant coaches Rob Ehsan, James Johnson and John Richardson, plus operations director Jeff Wulbrun, resigned. That left Janovsky, a former assistant at Division II Indiana of Pennsylvania with myriad Division I contacts.

Janovsky spent this past season as Tech’s video coordinator. When Wulbrun left for an assistant’s job at Alabama-Birmingham, Greenberg promoted Janovsky to the operations gig.

With no coaches on staff to travel during this month’s evaluation window, Janovsky passed the required NCAA recruiting test and headed to last weekend’s EYBL session in Minneapolis, plus Washington-area high schools Paul VI and Sidwell Friends.


Maybe a video coordinator in head coach’s clothes is better than nothing. It’s hard to say.

Teel has also done a good job of keeping track of realistic (an important distinction) possible replacements for Greenberg, including Loyola’s Jimmy Patsos and Lehigh’s Brett Reed, both of whom led their teams to the NCAA tournament this season. Reed’s upset of Duke might make him a very popular candidate, indeed.