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Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster said redshirt freshman linebacker Jack Tyler will start against Stanford in the Discover Orange Bowl, and Bruce Taylor will start at the "backer" position and rotate at middle linebacker as well. The rotation will also include redshirt freshman Tariq Edwards.
Foster said he had lingering concerns about the mobility of Barquell Rivers, a projected starter this season who has yet to see the field because of injury, but that Rivers was "much better" in Thursday's practice. How much Rivers plays, if at all, remains to be seen.
"He had a little bit of massage to him and a little heat therapy and that kind of thing, kind of warmed him up prior to going out, and he moved a little bit better," Foster said. "But he can play great. I know the biggest thing, I know Mike Goforth is going to sit down and talk with him. And Barquell is a prideful kid; I think he'd tell me everything I wanted to hear, you know, that he's ready to play. But I also want to know does he feel like he can perform at a high level and at the level that he's got to play at for us to be successful. And I think Mike is going to sit down with him and talk that over and kind of feel him out a little bit from that standpoint."
Foster said Tyler is "a playmaker" and likes his experience at the Mike position.
"I think he's a little bit more physical guy than Tariq," Foster said. "Not to say that Tariq is not going to be a good football player; I think Tariq is going to be a very, very good football player for us. But with this offense, what they're doing, they'll be running the football. Jack is a very -- he has good vision, very instinctive guy, and it's just kind of a gut feeling for me from that standpoint.
"But you're going to see -- Bruce is a guy, he's a heady football player. We've practiced him the last two weeks at our backer spot. He can play Mike and he will play Mike, and Tariq is going to play. But I just felt like going in with this offense, what their strengths are, we need to match what our strengths could be as far as that position goes."
South Beach
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Promoted to front page because I heart statistics --Joe
Hey guys, I crunched some numbers to see how the two teams compare- what surprised me was how little separation there was between them in the numbers I ran. I find this particularly useful given the JMU aberration, which I conveniently threw out (along with Stanford’s Cal State-Sacramento game).
Some background on what I did:
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen will be asked to take a buyout, a source familiar with the program said tonight.
Friedgen's ouster comes just hours after athletic director Kevin Anderson declined to say Friedgen would return for 2011 and on the same day offensive coordinator and head coach in waiting James Franklin accepted the head coaching position at Vanderbilt.
The source also said defensive coordinator Don Brown, running backs coach John Donovan and wide receivers coach Lee Hull were invited to join Franklin's staff and are possibilities to do so.
Virginia Tech Hokies football, basketball, athletics blog and forum featuring: unique columns, breaking news, film studies, in-depth analysis, recruiting, videos and jokes.
The military helicopter peels sideways through the broad blue sky as the crowd roars, and soon enough Frank Beamer appears at the mouth of the tunnel here at Lane Stadium. He’s about to lead his team onto the field, but as usual he pauses as he allows the fervor to gather, all the while surveying the world he has built from what was once the quaint mediocrity of Virginia Tech Football.
On this day, his face is drawn and tired and fixed with the grave concern that always clouds over him when one of his teams stumbles. This 2010 group waits nervously behind him in the tunnel. The players are mostly young and uninitiated yet very eager to please Beamer. But stumble they have in spectacular fashion. They appeared to have beaten third-ranked Boise State in a season-opening Monday night game, only to collapse and lose at the end. Five days later they suffered the greatest humiliation of Beamer’s impressive career by falling here, on their home field, to lowly James Madison.
“It is what it is,” he told the media afterward. It is a phrase Beamer has used often in his 30 years as a head coach.
It’s the phrase his mother taught him long ago. Projected to perhaps challenge for the national championship, Beamer’s club instead began the season with two losses. So now he stands here, eyeing the expanse of Hokie faithful who have spent the past dozen days venting their anger on talk radio across the state.
He is eager to see if they still love him.