Recent Comments
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10 years 1 month
# | Hokies Offer Three Prospects from Justin Fuente's First Blacksburg Camp, Impress Attendees 
Andy knows what audience he is dealing with:
http://www.thekeyplay.com/content/2016/march/16/best-college-town
Ever had one of those days where nothing on the Internet works for you? This is one of those days for me.
Hopefully those links I tweeted won't give you an error message.
That would be one heck of an episode/season finale
I believe we are 12-17 in bowl games (11-12 in the Beamer era). Although since it was a catch...Beamer should be at 12-11. So we are really a coin flip in bowl games.
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10 years 1 month
# | Hokies Offer Three Prospects from Justin Fuente's First Blacksburg Camp, Impress Attendees These are football players at a football camp of course they aren't thinking about academics at these things.
No, although Wilson only scored 9 TDs on 290 carries as the unquestioned #1 back in 2011. That's a very low number. KJ scored 21 in 2003 on 9 fewer carries. Wilson was an explosive athlete who didn't always hit holes. He was a track guy carrying a football. If he had a gap, look out. Suggs had very good speed but was (in my opinion) a much better running back. He found holes and got the tough yards on 3rd and short. Wilson could never do that consistently.
The RB coach prior to Shane (I kick myself for not remembering his name) said that Cyrus Lawrence was one, if not THE most talented backs that he's ever coached, and the only back that ever equalized that was Suggs (it's in a RTD article, I believe). Should also be noted that Suggs was the only collegiate player to win the Dudley award twice.
XV
I am choosing to view the "X" as a roman numeral, so I agree. X win season. Book it
Those having trouble voting (or doing it "wery quickly," try these links:QB: https://t.co/MvzhC0vktrRB: https://t.co/n2oipk1Wid#Hokies— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) June 16, 2016
Suggs was undeniably better than Wilson
...because he had more touchdowns? Because this is a ludicrous statement as to who was a more gifted runner.
Thoughts on 16 out of 24 advancing? Not a fan. Think it should be 12, giving the top four 1st place teams a trip to the quarterfinals.
TEEMING WITH INTEL
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10 years 1 month
# | X-Win Seasons, A Question of Semantics and Bowls (and kind of a poll) 
I would bet that Hamilton is a contributor this year. I could see him absorbing some of Shane Henry's minutes from last year and getting on the court a fair amount. He started last year multiple times. Also, never talk badly about Greg Donlon. He is a key facet to this team on the encouragement side. Plus, when he gets in the game he balls out.
Suggs was undeniably better than Wilson. I still say Williams is the best VT has had and KJ was awesome by his Junior season.
I guess what it really comes down to is that there isn't a set standard (at least, none that I'm aware of) which dictates how win totals should be predicted. I think at that point it is up to the party who asks the question to set the bounds. If you ask me for my prediction without specifying whether or not to include the bowl game I'm going to have a different answer than a lot of people. The simplest thing would be to ask for peoples' predictions and specify whether or not to include post season games from the outset.
But the bowl game is so far after the regular season, we don't know if we're going up against a team keeping their coach or what motivation they might have. Is it a first time bowling team that's damn glad to be there? Is their legendary head coach retiring? Has their current coach been hired away elsewhere, so it's a skeleton interim staff running the show?
Of course, I just assume we're going to lose the bowl game anyway, considering we're something like 5-20 in bowls.
I predict our win probability distribution will look something like this:
Huh? There are 12 scholarships. Most teams - good, bad, or indifferent - go with something like 4-4-4. Having a complete, balanced roster doesn't necessarily make you deep. Yes, having all of those wings can create match-up nightmares for the opposition...and for VT.
I love Leday and think Blackshear could be a very nice college player. But mark my words...VT's lack of depth inside will cost this team 3 or 4 wins next season. If Buzz could wave a magic wand, he'd take a half-way decent graduate student 4/5 in a heartbeat.
Johnny Hamilton? Greg Donlan? I said contributors.
Do you think they provide any real depth when Blackshear and/or Leday get in foul trouble? VT fans will be holding their collective breath if Blackshear and/or Leday were to be lost to injury. And Sy is a "maybe" at best right now.
Is the '16-'17 deeper and more talented in comparison to past VT rosters? No doubt. That this roster can lose Jalen Hudsen and probably not suffer means something. But I wouldn't call it top 25 in terms of overall team depth or talent.
That doesn't mean they can't be a top 25 team. Depth and talent aren't necessarily the end-all, be-all. But it will require some good favor with Blackshear & Leday. If either or both of them can't be on the court for significant minutes a game or (God forbid) games, the lack of front-court depth will become readily apparent. And that's what I'm getting at.
I guess the counter-argument to that is that we don't really know how good any of our opponents are. We have no idea how good teams like Notre Dame, Miami, and Pitt are going to be. We have no idea which teams will sustain significant injuries to key players. At least with the bowl game, we're most likely to go against a similarly ranked team. In some ways that's more predictable then marking Miami or Pitt as a tough out when it turns out Kayaa's out for the season and Pitt's offense is dreadful without Tyler Boyd taking pressure off the run-game. Or predicting Syracuse a likely win after Barbers turns them around and starts putting up 600 ypg.
Ultimately, every single game is a crapshoot so might as well build in some margin of error while predicting the total that you'll actually care about at the end of the year.
Not sure what you're trying to say there with the second part. Of the eight seasons with 10-wins, only two required the bowl game to be the 10th win (2008, 2009). In the rest of the seasons, we either lost the bowl game (2004, 2006, 2010) or it was our 11th win (2005, 2007). In 2011, we finished the regular season at 11-1, before we even got to Charlotte.
Me after getting that message:
I'm just going to copy and paste my response that got lost in the rabbit hole:
"Here is a simple solution for everyone up-thread. When you predict our win total for the upcoming season, say whether you mean just the regular season or are including the bowl game. Or give the number of losses as well so we can figure out what you mean. Typing "8-4" or "8-5" instead of "8 wins" would have prevented a whole lot of circular arguing over semantics.
For the record, I think we will go 7-5 (see how clear that is). Of course you include the bowl game when referring to past seasons because it occurred, but I have no idea how you can reasonably predict a bowl win or loss when you have no idea who we will play or if we will even be in one.
Offseason sucks."
TL:DR version: In order to avoid misunderstandings due to semantics, communicate better.