Epic Smackdown of UNCheaters!  Woot woot!  Got to our spot a little before 9:30am on Saturday, and had craig back and planning menus for the first time this season.  Ribeye sliders and bacon wrapped beef tenderloins by him, meatball sliders by jimmy, and random marinated chicken breast by me for the post game.  20ish big beer game participants, including some beers that we hadn’t seen in quite a while (hello, Camo Black Ice!) courtesy of Richmond ghetto marts.  The same guy drew the joker again this weekend as did against Clemson, and instead of challenging “that Clemson sumbitch right there!” he challenged “that unc dumbass right there!”  2-0 victory for the good guys in RPS!

 

Also, Jimmy got in a lot of good snuggle time with Jack the dog on both Friday night and Saturday night.

Regarding the game itself, it was a beautiful day followed by a beautiful night, with a nice whomping of UNC in between.  Orange effect was pretty awesome.

The 52 point beatdown was the largest margin of victory for VT over an ACC opponent since joining the league in 2004. We got scores from the offense, defense, and special teams IN THE FIRST HALF.  The run game still has some issues, but I’m OK with a “flawed run game” that still produces 181 yards. This was the first time all season that Josh Jackson (10-20, 132 yds, 3 TD) was held below 220 yards passing, but he DID break his streak of 3 straight games in which he had thrown an interception.  UNC got a cheapie TD late after it was already 52-0, but they basically couldn’t do anything offensively all day long.  Coleman Fox continues to look like our best RB, though pretty much all his carries this year have come in garbage time.  I’d like to see us get him involved earlier in the game and see what he can do.  He is now 2^nd on the team in rushing yards with 211 yards, and has the best YPC average (5.9) of all the RBs.  And that’s your BDG Sneaky Stat of the Week.  Bonus stat:  The VT defense scored more points in the first half than the UNC offense has scored the past 2 years.  Suck it, Carolina.

Recap of our conference mates/season opponents in week 8:

++ No out of conference games this past week.  Big one coming up this week though, as #14 NCState travels to South Bend to play #9 Notre Dame.  I fully expect NCState to lose, cuz that’s what they do.

++ Our regular season opponents went a solid 7-4 this weekend, with 3 of the 4 losses coming to other teams on our schedule.  In the biggest surprise of the week, ECU actually managed to win a game (33-17 over hapless BYU), AND held their opponent to less than 34 points for the first time this season.  Well done, mateys!  UVA, they of the 5-1 start and overly inflated opinions of themselves, were brought crashing back to earth with a 41-10 defeat at home against BC (as a 7 pt favorite).  Our opponents are now 47-40 on the season, and our OOC foes are a combined 14-15.

This week:

the Blue Devils of dook.  The dookies got off to a strong 4-0 start including OOC wins over Baylor and Northwestern and what seemed at the time like an impressive win over UNC, but they have now lost 4 in a row since getting into ACC play (6-31 vss Miami, 21-28 @ uva, 10-17 vss FSU, 17-24 vss Pitt).  Dook probably has the 2^nd best defense we have faced this year (behind only Clemson), but their offense is struggling (particularly in the pass game).  They rank 77^th in scoring offense, 115^th in passing efficiency, 109^th in sacks allowed (21), and 73^rd in total offense. Conversely, they are ranked 27^th in total defense, 33^rd in scoring defense, and 7^th in sacks (24).  Containing QB Daniel Jones in the run game will be the biggest key for the VT defense.  I expect this to be a low scoring, fairly close game despite the vegas line of about 16 points, because containing mobile QBs is not exactly our strong suit.