Hokies Ponder How to Best the Buckeyes Again, as Excitement Builds for "Most Anticipated Game Ever"

With anticipation for the Hokies' Labor Day season opener against the Ohio State Buckeyes building to a fever pitch, VT President Tim Sands made the prudent call to cancel classes the day of the game.

The tailgating scene in parking lots around Blacksburg was already likely going to be rambunctious, but without even the smallest threat of unmet obligations, revelers will have the entire day to prepare for the Hokies' rematch with the defending national champs.

That all begs the question: will that have any effect on the crowd in Lane Stadium that night? Some Hokies aren't so sure.

"I don't think it's gonna affect it," said cornerback Kendall Fuller in an interview session at the ACC Kickoff. "I don't think anyone was going to class that day. I seriously doubt it. If somebody was going to class, kudos to them."

Starting quarterback Michael Brewer can't help but agree with Fuller's thoughts.

"That's probably a good point," Brewer said with a laugh. "Regardless, class, no class, that's going to be crazy environment. Our fans are extremely excited about it, we're excited about it. It's good for college football. The defending national champions coming into a historically great place to play, Enter Sandman, Frank Beamer, Urban Meyer, it's awesome. It's what you grow up watching, stuff like this."

It would seem that even with a few extra hours for fans to whip themselves into a frenzy, there's no way this game could possibly be more anticipated. While Frank Beamer stops short of calling this biggest game to ever be played in Lane Stadium, he will admit that the buildup to this opener is unlike anything he's ever seen.

"It's the most anticipated game ever," Beamer said. "How many times do you play the number one team in the country? And they're by far the number one team in the country. From a talent standpoint and how they're coached. You've got them in your place, that doesn't happen very often. It's a great way to start the season."

The Hokies have certainly played their fair share of top programs in openers over the years, but matchups with powerhouses like USC or Alabama have all been neutral site games. The prospect of hosting the defending national champs in a home opener is something fueling even Beamer's excitement about the matchup.

"Coach Beamer's talked about how it's going to be the best environment he's seen since he's been there in Lane Stadium, he's really excited about it, which in turn makes us really excited about it," Brewer said. "It's cool when we see him get all jacked up about it."

Part of that anticipation likely stems from his desire to make another national statement by beating the Buckeyes, but he seems to derive just as much pleasure from the prospect of testing his team against the very best to start the year, a philosophy he's subscribed to for the better part of the last decade.

"I've been a guy all along where I think these games are good for your football team," Beamer said. "Because number one your preparation going into the season is probably better because you've had better summer workouts, preseason practice, spring practice because there's something big to look forward to, the only game on Monday night against the best team in the country.

"But I think the other thing is, you find out a lot more about your football team. I think you can hammer someone 50-7 and not know a lot more about your team come Monday than you did Friday. I think when you play an Ohio State, if you're deficient in an area it's going to show up, if you need to work more on area, it's going to show up. I think the end result is you start out in a better position and I think you know quicker how you need to get better."

But even with the eagerness to face the Buckeyes once more driving the team's preparation this offseason, the team is bitterly aware of what can happen if they put too much focus on just the opener.

"It's tough to say it's just another team, but the one thing that the four, five years of playing this game at this level that I realized I've got to do is you can't over prepare for a team more than you would for another team," Brewer said. "You've got to keep it the same every week, your preparation has got to be the same every week whether you're playing Ohio State or week two, three, four, five and six."

Tech's struggles down the stretch last season stemmed from a variety of factors, but there's little sense denying that the emotional rollercoaster of beating the Buckeyes had some sort effect on the Hokies' sloppy performances in the two games following the momentous win. Brewer says he's perfectly cognizant of what happened last year, and he's going in with his eyes wide open this time around.

"I think we fell into that a little bit last year, and I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen this year," Brewer said. "It's going to be the same every week, and we've got to get up the same every week. We've got to get up to play the national champs and we've got to get up for Furman the next week."

Yet for all the platitudes, preparing to face Meyer's talented, schematically complex team does require extra effort on the part of the Hokies.

Fuller says the prep work for facing OSU started "as soon as the season was over," and there's little doubt Bud Foster is laboring even now to find a new wrinkle to baffle the Buckeyes.

Foster's reliance on eight-man fronts leaving his defensive backs in one-on-one matchups might've done the trick last year, but Beamer concedes it's unlikely the Hokies will deploy that strategy again.

"I think we lined up and we had a lot of one-on-one situations and we got by with it," Beamer said. "I think we probably need to mix up how we do things a little bit more, but we were effective, Bud has a great understanding of that during the ball game, so it's probably not getting into quite as many one-on-one situations as we had last year. Probably if you give them that many opportunities now, with their experience, they're going to hit on some of those balls."

Complicating the matter is the lingering uncertainty over who will takes the reins as OSU's starter under center. The quarterback picture got a little less complicated with Braxton Miller's announcement that he'll be shifting to a role as a wide receiver/H-back, but there's still the matter of whether J.T. Barrett or Cardale Jones will take the field in Blacksburg on Labor Day.

"I kind of hope they're down there fighting in the end zone before the ball game, which one's gonna start, which one's gonna play second," Beamer joked.

Yet Fuller says the team prepares less for specific passers, and more for Meyer's vaunted spread attack.

"I think all of them are the same," Fuller said. "They all run the same offense, in most instances, they kind of do the same things, we just prepare for their offense."

While Foster and Fuller have the monumental task of preparing to keep OSU's offense in check once more, Brewer and Scot Loeffler are trying to find ways to recapture the magic Tech's offense discovered a season ago in Columbus.

"Things just kind of clicked for us a little bit," Brewer said. "We were able to make plays when they presented themselves. It probably helped that they didn't have a whole lot of film on what we were doing, because the year before, Logan (Thomas)'s senior year, was more of a power run game, running the quarterback a lot, and we came in with more of a spread attack, more of a pro-style spread attack with some jet sweeps, we spread the field and they probably didn't have a whole lot of film on that."

That element of surprise won't necessarily be on Tech's side this time around, unless Loeffler has made some wholesale changes to the offense that he has yet to unveil. Regardless of how the offense looks next year, Brewer is confident the team has grown enough to keep pace with OSU.

"We know what we're up against, they're a really good team, the defending national champs for a reason, they're a lot better than when we played them last year," Brewer said. "But we're a lot better than we played them, so we're excited about it. We feel like we've got a defense that can keep us in any game that we play. So long as we protect the football and make plays when they present themselves, we feel like we've got a chance against anybody."

While matching up with Tech again so soon may make the Buckeyes more prepared to handle Tech's scheme, Fuller notes that principle works in the Hokies' favor as well.

"You go in there with some type of familiarity, you know what you're getting, it's not like you're playing a team for the first time," Fuller said. "You're not on edge, you know what to expect."

That's the type of thinking that gives Fuller the confidence to proclaim this challenging matchup as merely a chance for the team to prove its greatness.

"It's a great opportunity," Fuller said. "Me personally, I don't look at as 'oh, we have the national champions in there.' It's just a team coming to our house and we're gonna try to win the ball game. Anytime you face any opponent it's gonna be a challenge."

Even if many circumstances are wildly different from the last time the two teams squared off a year ago, Fuller says one important thing hasn't changed since that first contest.

"The year before we went 7-6, we were hungry, we wanted to show everybody we could play," Fuller said. "We're still gonna have that hunger."