Huh.  WTF!?!?  That’s basically what I was thinking throughout much of the game on Saturday.  We move the ball to the GT 5, and face a 4th and 2 trailing 7-3.  Surely, Fuente has learned from his mistakes after going 0-4 on 4th downs over the past 2 weeks and will take the points, right?  RIGHT?!?  Uh…no.  Well, at least he surely has a clever play drawn up for Josh Jackson to execute.  What’s that you say?  AJ Bush is at QB?  <facepalm>.  And not surprisingly, just like that VT is now 0-5 on 4th down attempts in scoring territory the last 3 weeks.  ZERO FOR FIVE.  COACHING STAFF, PLEASE TAKE NOTE.  Z-E-R-O.  Fast forward a bit…nice KO return sets up a VT TD…sweet.  14-10 going into the half.  Wait, what’s that you say?  Fuente is chasing the points and going for two in THE FIRST HALF?!?!?  GAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!  No second guessing on either of those, that was first guessing all the way.  Just horrible, horrible decisions.  There has been some talk that Slye had a hamstring issue, but that didn’t stop us from kicking an early 41 yard field goal, or using Slye for the PAT in the second half.  You’re telling me a 22 yard field goal or 20 yard extra point is harder?  bullshit.  Fast forward to the last drive…3rd and 1, we throw a fade out of bounds.  which is basically what we have done on the fade all season long.  Don’t disagree with a throw, but *STRONGLY* disagree with THAT throw.  4th and 1, we got the coverage look we wanted, but that’s not a pass that JJ has shown any ability to make all season long.  GET THE FIRST DOWN AND A NEW SET OF PLAYS, YOU HAD 2 PLAYS WITH WHICH TO GAIN 1 YARD!!  Speaking of which, several people have made comments like “are you really confident that we could get 1 yard there?” to which I reply “moreso than completing either of those 2 passes”.

Anyway, enough bashing of the coaching decisions by Fuente and Cornelson.  Lets bash Terrell Edmunds and Mook Reynolds for a little while.  On the first play of the game, Mook got beaten deep BADLY but the GT QB missed the throw so it didn’t matter.  Later, on 3RD AND FREAKIN 18, Edmunds lets a guy run right past him.  3rd and 18!  What the hell are you looking at?!?  And then, of course, after we finally took the lead in the game (thanks to Greg Stroman’s pick-6), Mook once again decides not to cover the deep man and gets abused for an 80 yard TD.  ugh, ugh, ugh.

OK, enough bashing.  There were some things I liked.  I though Holston had a pretty good day running the ball.  TMac34 had his ups and downs running the ball, but came up with a few explosive plays on kickoff returns and a couple of pass receptions.  Kumah had a career game (6 catches, 82 yards), and seems to be coming on at WR.  I thought our defense was outstanding, outside of the 3 plays I mentioned above.  The DL, in particular, was very disruptive to the GT triple option attack.  And the LBs were making plays as well, and I have to definitely give a shoutout to Anthony Shegog, who played a fantastic game despite getting very few reps this year prior to this game.  Tua, 49Edmunds, and Shegog combined for over half of the teams total tackles (32 of 63), and also had 4.5 of the 7 TFLs.  And that’s your BDG Sneaky Stat of the Week ™.  Moving on….

Recap of our conference mates/season opponents in week 10

ACC went 1-1 OOC, with Miami coming up with a huge 41-8 beatdown of then-#3 Notre Dame.  Why, that’s even worse than WE lost to Miami!  Clearly, per the transitive property, we are better than Notre Dame.  dook dropped their 6th straight, losing to Army 16-21 (at West Point, on Senior Night, on Veterans Day, so they can have a pass for that.  Yay Army!)  Speaking of “getting a pass”, Army has thrown the ball just 57 times in 10 games, and just once in the past 2 games combined.  Crazy.  ACC is now 31-14 in OOC games on the season, and 6-12 against P5 teams (including ND).  Lots of “should be a cakewalk” matchups this week, as Clemson (Citadel), FSU (Delaware State), and UNC (Western Carolina) scheduled 1-aa patsies in advance of their end-of-season rivalry games.  BC is also playing a bad UConn team, though they (BC) just lost their QB for the season so that game could be a struggle.  I’m still gonna call for 4-0 though.

Our regular season opponents went 7-5 on the week, and are 64-54 on the season.  Our 4 OOC foes went 3-1 to even their cumulative record at 20-20.  WVU is ranked, ECU sucks, Delaware is 7-3 and looks to be on the playoff bubble in the FCS, and ODU beat the fighting Kiffins of FIU, which is always nice.

Coming Up

This week we get our first noon kickoff at home, technically at 12:20 against the Pitt Panthers (4-6, 2-4 in the ACC).  It’s a sad day, in as much as it means the end of the home football slate, and the last home game for 14 Seniors.  Those seniors are:

WR #5 Cam Phillips, VT’s all time reception and yardage leader
PK #46 Joey Slye, VT’s all time points scoring leader and FG leader
CB/PR #3 Greg Stroman, not sure if he holds any KR records or not. if not, he’s close
CB #31 Brandon Facyson
LB #54 Andrew Motuapuaka
LB #24 Anthony Shegog
LG #57 Wyatt Teller
C #64 Eric Gallo
RT #61 Kyle Chung
LT #67 Parker Osterloh
LS #87 Colton Taylor
S #20 Deon Newsome
LB #56 Sean Huelskamp
WR #89 James Clark

Regarding the game itself, VT will take on a 4-6 Pitt team this week that is coming off of a loss to UNC, and needs to win out against VT and Miami to become bowl eligible.  The UNC game was on Thursday night of last week, so they have had a little extra prep time for this game.  Pitt is coached by Pat Narduzzi.  Pat Narduzzi is a dick.  Let me give you a refresher about Pat Narduzzi the dick.

 

Anyway, much like last year, Pitts biggest Achilles heel is defending the pass.  They are ranked 111th nationally in pass yards allowed per game, and 107th in pass defense efficiency.  We have played some terrible defensive teams this year, and yet only ECU is worse than Pitt in those 2 categories.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure we have a passing game right now that can take advantage of that weakness.

Pitt also lost their starting QB early in the season, and their replacement (Ben Dinucci, 6-2 220 SO) has been adequate at best.  He’s completing about 56% of his passes, and has not yet thrown for more than 170 yards in the 4 games since he took over as the starter.  Part of that is by design though, as they have relied heavily on the run game since he took over at QB. Although not a very successful scrambler most of the season, he rushed 14 times for 83 yards last week against UNC (after totalling just 41 carries for 42 yards prior to that game).  Their primary running threat is Darrin Hall, who has really emerged over the past 3 weeks.  Check out these numbers:

First 7 games:  31 carries, 108 yards, 1 TD
Last 3 games:  72 carries, 486 yards, 8 TDs, 110+ yards in all 3 games

VT is a whopping 16 point favorite right now, though I would expect that line to drop as the week goes on.