The Virginia Tech Hokies come away from Chestnut Hill with a hard fought victory.
The first half was plagued by another slow start by the Hokies, with a near disaster interception of a tipped pass. Josh Jackson’s attempt just couldn’t make it over the defense. But the Tech Defense rallied to get the stop, and the Eagles missed the field goal.
Eventually the Hokie O, seemed to grab a little bit of rhythm and instead of continuing to throw the ball short and outside, Jackson hit Sean Savoy and Henry Murphy on a series of slants, crosses and seams. The Hokies scored first, with a beautiful touchdown strike to Savoy, and then the defense had a few breakdowns that allowed the Eagles to grab a Field Goal after the Tech Defense tightened up and quit allowing the Eagles to gain yards on 1st and 2nd down attempts. The Hokie D was great on 3rd down again.
The second half was marked by total defensive domination by Virginia Tech. There isn’t much else to say because the Tech offense in the 3rd period was unable to score when inside the red zone, and even on short field situations couldn’t even manage to do more than a Joey Slye Field Goal. The Offense did burn some clock, and finally push the field position marker to consistently pin the BC Eagles back inside their 10. The 4th quarter offered more of the same red zone opportunities but Slye needed to push the ball through the uprights for another -4.
The nervous towels came out late in the 4th quarter though. Lefty (Scot Loeffler) pulled some trickeration out of his basket of stuff and ripped up the yardage and scored with less than 6 minutes in the game. That narrowed the score to 13 points, at 23 to 10, and then the Tech Offense just didn’t execute anything good, tanking two plays and then forcing 3rd and long for Josh Jackson who threw an incomplete pass. several times.
BC’s attempt to get in to the end zone a second time, just short of the two minute mark, was foiled by a quick stiffening of the Hokie D, and the Eagles turning it over on downs with 2:11 left and BC still 10 points shy of a tie.
The final score was not completely indicative of the totality of the game, but Tech comes away with a victory and we go to 5-1. We get a bye week next week, and that will be really important because Cam Phillips came out in the 1st half with some sort of foot injury. Mook Reynolds was stunned and that ended up putting some serious negative pressure on the defensive secondary.
The big names for this game will be Eric Kumah, Sean Savoy, Mook Reynolds, and Oscar Bradburn (who quietly and effectively flipped the field and kept the Eagles pinned. Boston College didn’t quit, and they got some folks sweating bullets.
The Hokies still have a whole lot of things to fix. The offensive play calling was not good. It wasn’t consistent, and often inappropriate for the situation. The defense often looked like it didn’t understand the signals coming in from the sideline, and during the 4th quarter were repeatedly caught flat footed.
We have a week and some Coastal games at home coming up. Let’s get to Coral Gables with a 7-1 record, please.