Thursday night, in the wild minutes after Virginia Tech's historic 67-65 victory over Duke, I stood in the stands and watched the students celebrate, packing the floor with the Hokie players and cheerleaders. My eyes roamed to the rafters, where ACC banners now hang, and for a moment, I thought I saw ghosts. And as I watched, they slowly faded away.

Had I really seen them? I continued to stare into the rafters of 44-year old Cassell Coliseum, and though the vision didn't return, I decided that yes, I had seen something. I had seen the smiling faces of basketball players from years past, fists raised in triumph, celebrating a victory that had occurred over 19 years ago � and until last night, a victory that haunted the Virginia Tech program that struggles mightily at times to measure up to its past.

The ghosts wore #30, #44, and #31, and on February 1st, 1986, they and their Virginia Tech teammates recorded a win over #2 Memphis State, a Tiger team sitting at 20-0 and poised to take over the top spot in the polls, thanks to a UVa victory over #1 North Carolina just two days prior. Memphis State had destroyed the Hokies 83-61 in Memphis two games earlier, but in the rematch, the Hokies triumphed 76-72 in front of a frenzied crowd of 10,000 in Cassell Coliseum.

They did it behind 28 points from Dell Curry (#30), 10 points and 13 rebounds from Bobby Beecher (#44), and 16 points and 11 rebounds from Keith Colbert (#31). And though the Hokies had beaten Memphis State in 1983 when the Tigers were ranked #1, the Tech players to a man said the win over Memphis State in 1986 was more satisfying and more important.

That win put the 16th-ranked Hokies � yes, Virginia Tech was in the Top 20 back then � at 18-4, and Virginia Tech basketball was riding high.

Little did we know that the February 1986 victory over Memphis State would be in many ways the high-water mark for Virginia Tech basketball for almost two decades. That 1985-86 team dropped five of their last nine games that year to finish 22-9, including bowing out in the first round of the Metro Conference Tournament and the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

There was a brief period in the mid-90's where Bill Foster's Hokies won 66 games in three years, including an NIT championship in 1995 and an NCAA first round win in 1996, but for the most part, Hokie basketball since that monumental win over Memphis State in 1986 has been marked by losing, conference shuffling, poor coaching, and declining fan interest.

While the gradual erosion of the program was painful, what was more painful was the fact that even as that Memphis State game receded further and further into the past, it was one of the few things that Tech basketball fans had that they could cling to. Time and again, that Memphis State game is remembered fondly on the TSL message boards, in wistful, wishful tones that clearly yearned for more of that, for a return to the time when epic battles were waged in Cassell Coliseum before screaming, packed houses.

The ghosts of Curry, Beecher, and Colbert � and of Perry Young and Al Young, who graduated prior to that 85-86 season, and of Dale Solomon and Wayne Robinson and Les Henson and Allan Bristow, who all came before them � roamed the corners and hung heavy over Cassell Coliseum and the Virginia Tech fans who remembered them. But here's the thing about ghosts: they don't want to be ghosts. They want to go quietly to restful slumber, taking their place in history, becoming fondly-remembered memories, not a source of pain for those who pine for days gone by.

The ghosts become more still with each passing game, and Thursday night, perhaps they finally earned the right to lie down and be still. Someone said to me after the game, "You know, 19 years from now, people are going to talk about this game the way they talk about that Memphis State game." I nodded in agreement.

19 years from now, the 13 points and 18 rebounds by Coleman Collins will be remembered as 20 points and 20 rebounds. Zabian Dowdell's game-winning three-pointer with 14.6 seconds left will move closer to the end of the game, until finally it is remembered as a buzzer-beater that went through as the game clock expired. Jeff King's 7 points will turn into 10, then 12, then 15. These are the things we do with our memories of games long ago. We embellish them, from great efforts to Herculean accomplishments. That's okay. It's part of the fun of being a fan.

For all the Hokies had accomplished this year, winning five conference games before Thursday night and spending a good portion of the season in the upper half of the ACC standings, this inaugural ACC season needed a signature win, a victory over one of the ACC's two most storied programs, North Carolina or Duke. While VT has made great strides, building the program they want is a long process that begins first by building fan support � that has already happened � and then by notching significant wins that are etched in the minds of the eighth and ninth graders who become tomorrow's prized recruits.

Seth Greenberg is doing all he can to build the program, and his players have responded. This team is woefully thin and lacking depth, and they are tired, but they battle on, straining to accomplish the things that will benefit not just them this season, but the Virginia Tech program for years to come. If they can keep this up, keep competing and winning games like this, Virginia Tech will eventually become the type of ACC program they long to be.

I remember reading a Sports Illustrated article over 20 years ago that chronicled the early part of Dean Smith's North Carolina coaching career, a struggle that saw Smith heavily criticized and even hung in effigy. What finally turned things around for Smith, leading to two national championships, 11 Final Four appearances, 879 wins, and 30 All-Americans, was a victory at Duke. Duke at Duke, the article said in italics, to emphasize the significance of the win.

This wasn't at Duke, but for Virginia Tech, it was Duke, and that's a start.