247 has announced that Troy Pride, 4* CB, has de-committed. He's the 2nd de-commitment this week for the Hokies. This is to be expected and probably won't be the last one. Expect a lot of change in our current class over the next 3 months.
https://t.co/NoWaaca8ZF pic.twitter.com/s62JmQhCyY— Troy Pride Jr. 5 (@GHSIsland5) November 12, 2015
http://virginiatech.247sports.com/Bolt/Pride-backs-out-of-Virginia-Tech-...
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Sh*t.
Ladler, Jackson, Diablo, Kumah, Denmark, Wolfolk, and Floyd...please stay!
Didn't Diablo already open up his recruitment again?
Not publicly at least, but he plans on taking an OV to UNC so that pretty much means yes he has opened his recruitment.
Very unlikely that Jackson stays
Classiest de-commitment I've ever read. I wish him good luck and hope we can get him back once we get our new coach.
He did it right, and I can't really blame him.
Who knows. Maybe he'll come back once the smoke clears.
At the same time, this convinces me that this year is the right one for a transition.
We will lose some but we will also gain some with new incoming coach.
#BuckleUp
I think ND gets his letter.
it was definitely VT vs ND and even before Beamer announcing retirement the momentum was going ND's way.
Yep, unfortunately I got the feeling he was ND or Tennessee bound regardless of Frank's decision to retire.
Just a little frustrated about seeing this....
I know it was coming but still rough seeing it happen.
He gotta charge his phone tho
That battery life'll get after ya
Especially when you runnin on T-Mobile smh
Fuck
This one hurts!!!
Not unexpected.
and with this decommitment, is see 24-7 dropped our recruiting rankings 11 points down to 45. ouch!
If we were gonna choose when to change coaches, I'd choose the year recruiting was dipping anyways every single time.
yup
Ugh, he was one of those gems we found before anyone else too. :\
I'm done paying one lick of attention to recruiting until after the new HC and staff are announced. There will be way too much volatility between now and signing day to have any emotional investment in recruiting. Right now my focus is
This recruiting class might be awful, or we might surge after the new coach is announced. I'll worry about that in February.
For what it's worth, I think Get New HC comes before Bowl. Whit promised a new HC in early December.
Ranked in personal order of priority, not chronologically.
In that case, beating UVA is ahead of going to a bowl for me
I've actually given that some thought. I know I'm probably in the minority, and possibly alone, but to me, the bowl streak means more. Going out with 23 consecutive regular seasons without a losing record is huge. I'd rather that continue that the UVA streak.
But it's really close.
In the end, if we make a bowl but lose to LOLUVA, we could still send them a postcard from our bowl destination, while they're home for the holidays.
I'd rather beat UVA. Best case scenario: Beating UVA is what gets us bowl eligible. That would be awesome. Aaand, we've done it before
Going to a Bowl is more important, it gets us that many more practices
how many more practices do we really want these players to get with coaches WHO AREN'T GOING TO BE HERE NEXT YEAR?!?!
A month's worth of practice is still a good thing.
I don't think it matters. The new coaches will be teaching different scheme and maybe even different techniques. If they get an extra month of practice before the new coaching staff comes in all they're doing is furthering themselves along a different path. The new coaches need to unlearn the players and then teach them again a different way, more likely than not. The less they practice under the current staff the less the new coaches will have to unlearn the players.
All that being said, I'd like to go bowling, but I'd rather beat UVA. If we lose to GT and UNC we're not going bowling anyway. We can still beat UVA in that scenario.
A 5-7 team WILL go bowling this year if the current patterns and trends holdout. Bowls would snap up a Frank Beamer led Hokies in a heart beat as his final game.
5-7 teams are chosen in order of APR, by NCAA rule. We rank pretty well there, but the whole "Frank's last possible game" will not factor in at all.
But, if we do get a bowl bid at 5-7, wouldn't we have a good chance at getting a better game?
Correct it will not effect the NCAA waiver but it would effect if a bowl game would invite the Hokies.
Exactly, eventhough we may be slated for a crap bowl based on our record, the bowl selectors will know that it's Beamer's lasts game and Hokies travel hella good. Meaning a better bowl would snatch us up to make it rain.
IIRC, the NCAA stipulates that ALL 6-6 teams must be selected for bowls before ANY 5-7 teams can be selected. That would mean our only competition would be other 5-7 teams. There isn't really a "better bowl" in that scenario. Basically all the upside you site would be the reason we get selected over other 5-7 teams, but at that point it's going to be slim pickings on what bowls are actually open.
We will need to check it because if I recall UCLA got a bowl invite while a 7 win team didn't.
UCLA got a bowl bid with a 6-7 record a couple of years back because they finished 6-6 and somehow won the Pac-12 south. They lost the conference championship game, but NCAA rules permit a 6-6 team to get a bowl invite even if they lose a conference championship game. It did piss some people off, but that's how it went down.
Same situation at GT 2 seasons ago.
There's no protection that a 7-win team can't be passed over for a 6-win team, at least on the NCAA level. Individual conferences might have such protections, but aren't required to.
The NCAA does, however, have protections against a 6-win team being passed over by a 5-win team in the event they grant waivers to allow 5-7 teams to fill unfilled bowl slots. Also, bowl eligibility isn't predicated on being 6-6. The requirement is 6 wins. Most 6-6 teams will not be making conference championship games, so UCLA's example is a wonky one, but by the book, UCLA was still bowl eligible at 6 wins. So the UCLA example is apple and oranges compared to the conversation about what our bowl prospects would be at 5-7. Literally EVERY 6 win team would have to be selected before we could get a waiver to fill a bowl spot.
Reps always matter.
Schemes change but techniques rarely do.
Not to mention that VT needs to find a third WR for next year. Probably a young guy who will need.... wait for it.
Reps.
Do you actually believe this?
if the players were practicing to build on their previous experience for next year, then yeah, the practice is extremely important. They're not though. What are they practicing? How much of what they'll be practicing will they be employing next year? They can do work outs and skills drills on their own time if they really want to improve. I don't see the benefit of practicing under one regime at the end of the season when they don't know what they're building towards. The next coach will undoubtedly take them in a different direction and ultimately I think the "extra" practice will do relatively nothing to prepare them for the future under the new coaches.
If Bud is HC or remains DC many of the young players will be doing the same next year
BIG if...I wouldn't count on it. I doubt if Bud gets the nod for HC and I doubt even more if he'll remain as DC if he doesn't get the offer.
Even if Bud is gone after this year, a lot of the coverage principles that would be covered in those extra practices would benefit young guys like Mook and Alexander. I could see defense benefiting from extra practices regardless of who the DC is in 2016.
Offense? Forget about it. I have a suspicion we will not be running a pro-style multiple offense next season. And even if we are, it'll be way different from Lefty's. I don't see the offense gaining much from the extra practice time, with the only possible exception being the offensive line.
I mean, I understand that all coaches do things differently, but the basics of playing football are all reasonably similar. Unless we hire a new coach that wants to install the flexbone or something equally ridiculous, extra practices with real, live football snaps can only be good for our guys.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm arguing that beating LOLUVA is much higher on my priority list than going bowling
It's still just football. You may think that there is some magic fairy dust that a new coach is going bring with him, but it's still a game mostly about big, strong, fast guys trying to push past other big, strong, fast guys.
And practicing it on a field in real time against real players and then doing the same against real players in a real game is infinitely better than not doing it. Especially for those who haven't done it a lot.
We don't know who will or won't be here as far as the coaching staff goes. Getting extra reps for young guys like Mook and Adonis is big
Unless our new head coach is going to the playoffs
Ouch.
Understandable, but great kid with great potential.
Still hope he becomes a Hokie.
He said this about coaching uncertainty before the Beamer announcement
This is the price to be paid with a coaching transition. I am not sweating any of the recruits this year.
I like our wide receivers where we desperately need help, Denmark is fast, Kumah and Diablo are both tall, Ladler is a beast at CB, Jackson at qb. I am sweating a few but this is the best year for a coach change as far as recruiting goes.
He really means it, he ate up 91% of his battery trying to word that correctly.
I'm hoping Kendall Fuller comes back next year. Troy made the decision he thought was best for him. A new coach will bring everything back to normal and get more recruits anyway.
I love your optimism. Don't agree with it...but I love it.
You don't have to agree as long as you love it. I'll take #HokieLove over 100% agreement. HAHAHA.
We may lose some players off of current roster once new coach gets here...
I'm more and more in the "just suck it up these next two years and let the new head coach recruit the people that want to play for him" camp.
It's going to be fun cheering for a team with no expectations over the next couple of years. Just like it has been for the last few weeks.
I'm on board with that. I think everyone around the whole program will have much more fun now that the pressure is off Frank. I think he probably feels a lot better too
That's what you say now. I'll bet there are few who share your patience and understanding if the program falters for two years. In general, fans don't care about rebuilding or injuries or bad luck or their own inflated expectations for the program as a whole. They just want wins and they want them now.
That's why coaches often don't even get 4 years any more.
I don't expect a 10 win season but I do expect improvement on the penalties, recruiting, and clock management. Given our talent on the offensive side of the ball and likely a more reliable (although probably not great defense) I think 8 wins is a reasonable goal
We are plenty good enough to contend for the division title next year as long as we get average QB play. Unless we lose like 20 players like Texas did in their transition.
I think you could argue that we've had average QB play this year....and it hasn't gotten us anywhere close to a division title...just sayin'
Well, it should have. Avg QB play against Pitt and we win. We needed one play that we didn't get against Duke to win. If we had those two, we would be in the drivers seat.
And I think we're better next year in a lot of ways, especially on offense.
We'd kinda be in the passenger seat since UNC is undefeated in conference but point taken.
Not necessarily.
Had we beaten Pitt and Duke, we'd have only one conference loss while yet having to play UNC. We'd control our own destiny since if we beat UNC the tiebreaker would be ours.
Not to be an a$$, but I've been saying i think we will be better next year the last few years.
Already setting high expectations, I see...
I will not fault any kid that decommits right now. I'll be honest, if I were any of these kids I would open my recruitment back up, at least, until I saw who we hire and how the cards fall.
People that are actually getting mad at these kids are str8 trippin'.
Yep.
To the beating UVA to become bowl eligible crowd...does it still count toward a winning season if we lose the bowl? I say WIN 'EM ALL, make a great hire, and the rest will work itself out (legacy preserved).
Yeah, imagine going 8-5 this season, all of a sudden, don't sound so bad of a season.
Don't blame these kids at all if they decommit with things in transition like they are. Like someone said previously, this is a good year for a transition recruiting wise as this has been quite honestly a very weak class. There will more that leave and we will add a few when the new hire is on board.
On the other hand, kids like Pride and others that commit so early are many times just securing a spot somewhere and then wait to see what their options are later as they get more exposure. Again, don't blame them I just don't put much credence in these commitments 12-18 months before signing day.(
These are kids, making a decision that could drastically affect their future. They want to go to the place where they will best succeed either in college, putting them in the nfl, or getting a degree so they may have a career one day. A coaching change can have a huge impact on the first two of those three things, it only makes sense that there would be attrition or at least people looking elsewhere until the situation is cleared up.