BLACKSBURG — Because the Virginia Tech women’s basketball team opened the season on a weekday afternoon, it was hard for spectators to find empty parking spaces in the lot in front of Cassell Coliseum.

But not as hard as it was for the Hokies to find the basket.

The Hokies looked just as bad offensively as they did last season, opening with a 55-35 loss to Old Dominion on Friday.

“We’re extremely disappointed,” second-year coach Dennis Wolff said. “I thought we were capable of playing better than we played on offense.

“We’ve kind of got to go back to the drawing board offensively. … We need to coach them to be able to recognize where the shots come from and get them in a rhythm where they can practice those shots.

“We’ve just got to look at the plays and see if we ran them. A lot of the situations we didn’t run the way we tried to coach them.”

With athletic director Jim Weaver watching from press row, the Hokies shot just 25 percent from the field. They were 0-of-12 from 3-point range.

“We just missed a lot of open shots that we normally make,” off-guard Monet Tellier said.

Actually, Tech missed a lot of open shots last year too.

Last season, the Hokies ranked last in the ACC in scoring offense (51.7 ppg), field-goal percentage (34.4 percent) and 3-point field-goal percentage (27.2 percent). Tech scored fewer than 40 points in seven games last season.

Here we go again?

The 35 points were the fewest the Hokies have scored in the 27-game history of the series.

“We just tried to get them to shoot more from the outside,” ODU coach Karen Barefoot said. “We did a really good job pressuring.”

Tellier, the Hokies’ leading scorer last year, was 0-of-9 from the field and scored just one point.

“We held her to one point? That’s awesome,” ODU guard Jackie Cook said.

Point guard Aerial Wilson, the team’s second-leading scorer last year, was 1-of-9 from the field and scored only two points.

“Everybody had a number of open shots that they just missed, and that’s something that we can work on,” Tellier said “Get in the gym tomorrow, work on the shot.

“We were trying so hard that we took ourselves out of rhythm.”

Tech trailed 21-13 at halftime.

“I came out at halftime and I’m like, ‘They have 13 points, … that’s crazy,’ ” said Cook, who had 17 points.

Tech lost its 10th straight game.

“It’s a little bit of a carryover from what happened last year — because of these kids’ desire to play well at home, one missed shot leads to another missed shot,” Wolff said.

Reserve Alexis Lloyd, one of four Tech freshmen who played Friday, was 0-of-9 from the field.

“She was way, way, way, way, way, way too anxious,” Wolff said.

This was also the opener for ODU, which went just 11-21 last season. ODU opened last season with a 77-65 home loss to the Hokies.

The Monarchs won despite shooting just 35.2 percent from the field.

“They had more energy than we had, and that’s my fault and we’ve got to do something to correct that,” Wolff said.

Tech won just seven games last season.

“We definitely have a better team than last year and a lot more talented players,” Wilson said. “We’ll bounce back.

“It’s the first game — a lot of jitters and a lot of different emotions.”

The offense might improve once junior-college transfer Uju Ugoka makes her Tech debut. Tech is planning to hold the power forward out of the first nine games because of an NCAA violation she committed while in junior college. She watched Friday’s game from the bench.