While fans, players and coaches have all kept Listerine bottles handy in the past week to eliminate the unpleasant taste of a 21-point loss to Memphis in the second round of the NIT, the next stage of Year Two in the Greenberg era is thrust upon us, more quickly than all of us wanted.

While this second edition of Greenberg has been an unqualified step forward, there is still much left to be done on this reclamation project, starting with finding the very best player to take the one remaining scholarship that Greenberg has to use this spring. That player might be a junior college post prospect. He could end up being one of the remaining few high school front court prospects. He might even be a front court player from a foreign country whose name we won’t immediately be able to pronounce or spell.

It is even possible that this next Virginia Tech player won’t even be a front court player at all. And, with all of the movement in college basketball, can we totally eliminate a potential transfer donning the orange-and-maroon next year? Probably not.

While the season ended with a stunning quickness, the time to ponder and reflect upon the highs and lows is not now. Not yet, at least for the staff. Time is of the essence in gaining traction with the available prospects on the recruiting trail that can still help shape the 2005-06 edition of Hokie basketball, or in more succinct terms, Year Three of the Greenberg era - assuming that happens, of course, a more likely event given the contract extension that Athletic Director Jim Weaver gave Greenberg last week.

The coaches are consumed with the immediacy of wrapping up their 2005 recruiting class, but we can feel a little warm and cozy at this time, especially when compared to the feelings we felt at this time last spring, when we knew the program was embarking on the first year of ACC play after losing the leading scorer from the 2003-04 team, Bryant Matthews. Or how about two years ago, when we were coming off another season-ending stay-at-home performance, while other Big East members whooped it up in the Garden at the Big East tournament. And having just dispatched four-year head coach Ricky Stokes, we were still looking for the new sheriff to direct a moribund basketball program.

Go ahead and count me as an optimist, but you don’t have to be a Prozac-induced sufferer to see that things are really a little bit brighter now than they have been during the past two off-seasons. The key question now becomes what will year three hold? Will the progress continue? What exactly will be considered progress, and will it be distinctly measurable or be something more abstract?

After seeing the program in the doldrums for too many years, every follower can easily see the path out of the abyss. Getting into your own conference’s postseason tournament and posting a winning season reflects some progress, and we witnessed that in the first year of Greenberg’s tenure. In this past season, we saw a team surprise almost all pundits, finishing 8-8 in the ACC, getting a first round bye in the conference tournament and being seeded fourth, then finally participating in postseason play for the first time since the 1995-96 season, albeit in the junior mint tournament, the NIT.

The progress was easy to measure because almost any small step represented progress, after year after year of emptiness. That road now has become much grayer, as well as more difficult to navigate.

For instance, if this team falls short of .500 in conference play next season, will people consider that a disappointment, given that there will be four returning starters? Even if a sub-.500 record is as simple as taking this season and reversing the results of one last-second victory, resulting in 7-9 instead of 8-8? Will another winning record be a requirement before even discussing whether progress continued in year three, even if the overall schedule gets beefed up?

Is the margin between progress and stagnation that minute?

Once you have shown and demonstrated back-to-back relatively successful seasons under a new coach, perhaps it just might be. Expectations become elevated, for the simple reason that they have been dormant for so long. Failure was expected in many quarters due to the recent trends. Now that people have had a taste of postseason play, more will be expected.

It probably won’t even come as a shock to see this program picked in the upper half next season in pre-season ACC prognostications. If you need any proof of rising expectations, consider that very real possibility.

Perhaps the most under-rated variable that comes into play next year concerns the expectations of the players and being able to play under the newly-created atmosphere of being expected to win more often than they lose. Even having a bull’s eye on your back will be something that will be a new development for this program in recent years. This isn’t to suggest that other conference opponents will see Virginia Tech as the opponent they can defeat to bring credibility and national attention to their program. That is still reserved for Duke and North Carolina in this conference. It also doesn’t mean that other conference opponents will take this team more seriously next year, either. That lack of preparation and respect was always reserved for our former brethren of the Big East.

It does mean that our players might operate under a different mindset. Gone will be that chip-on-the-shoulder, no-respect mantra that they have felt during the past two seasons, trying to prove themselves worthy members of two of the best conferences in the country, while their recent records suggested otherwise. They will no longer go into every conference game as an underdog. They will no longer be a program looking to make a statement and earn opponents’ respect.

Instead, it will now be about expectations. It will be about the pressure that comes with performing as people think you should. It will now mean that each victory will not be treated as a small measure of progress, but rather an expected development in many instances, a simple small step to gas up before continuing the journey. It will be about handling that increased pressure, scrutiny and attention that will come when you feel that you have to surpass what you recorded in your most recent season.

Expectations can be a drag because often they are unrealistic and don’t account for the full, broad picture. Often, expectations are all black-and-white and leave no room for the gray shadings that we know exist.

But, like I said before, an optimist would rather have some expectations, even if somewhat unrealistic, rather than the numbing feeling that usually accompanies a situation when zero success is expected and you cast furtive glances at other programs and wish at times they were your very own.