Tayler Persons owned 21 points and five assists, while Kyle Mallers added a career-high 19 behind a career-best five 3-pointers. That duo combined for 63 percent of the Cardinals’ offensive production in their first game at TD Arena.
Ball State, which suffered a second straight loss to a top-25 opponent, falls into the consolation bracket to meet Alabama, which lost its opening game to Northeastern. That game will tip Friday at 1:30 p.m. on ESPNU.
“I thought there were moments of the game where we played really well,” Ball State head coach James Whitford said. “If I’m disappointed, it’s that we let three-point runs become 10-point runs. There were moments where we let the game get away from us, but we competed and played hard.”
Ball State (1-2) built took a five-point lead on Persons’ pull-up 3-pointer and had the momentum midway through the first half. But the Cardinals went cold the rest of the way as Virginia Tech outscored them 26-7. Justin Robinson’s long 3 at the halftime buzzer sent the Hokies to the locker room up 43-29.
A 10-0 run keyed by a pair of Mallers 3’s early in the second half cut the lead to 45-39, but Virginia Tech (2-0) quickly stretched it back to 10. The Cardinals then scored five straight and cut it to 49-44 on a bucket at the rim from K.J. Walton with 12:32 to play. But the Hokies answered again to push the lead back to double digits and eventually stretch it to as many as 17.
It took a while for Ball State to settle in against Virginia Tech’s unique collapsing, trapping defense. But once they did, they were able to get good looks from the perimeter. Just not enough of those looks fell. The Cardinals were 9-of-27 from beyond the arc, with Mallers going 5-for-12 to lead the way.
“We played Oklahoma and Oregon last year, and they were so athletic that we were overwhelmed and we didn’t really have a chance to compete,” Whitford said. “We had 20, 25 minutes of the game today where we hung in there punch for punch just fine. It was the moments where we got frustrated, and I thought the mental side of the game hurt us a lot more today than the physical.”
It wasn’t always easy, but Ball State managed to take pretty good care of the ball against a Hokie squad that turned Gardner-Webb over 29 times in its opener. The Cardinals had 14 turnovers.
Virginia Tech shot 46 percent from the floor and 59 percent inside the arc on the way to out-scoring BSU 42-22 in the paint. Nickeil Alexander-Walker led the Hokies with 21 points, followed by Kerry Blackshear Jr. with 18 and Justin Robinson with 15.
(Courtesy of BSU Athletics)