This shouldn’t be a tough one. The 7:00pm kick should have promised to start off a good event for the Hokies on the way to a relatively easy win. Current circumstances just don’t make it so easy anymore, and a win went from a guarantee to a one score potential brawl.
The Thursday News Feed on X Started Slowly
There are usually small nuggets of activity notes, personnel announcements, and events popping up early on a Thursday morning in preparation for the next game.
Things are a little sparse this week with only two active team announcements regarding game prep. Even the game week announcement is missing its link information.
This Weekend’s #25 for Special Teams
The announcement came in the middle of Thursday, but Kickoff Specialist Kyle Lowe will be wearing the #25 for this one. Lowe has been famous for consistent touchbacks which force the receiving team into pushing across the entire 75 yards from a kick.
The Uniform Looks Like it’s the Home Standard
For the people who worry about clothing choices, the Hokies look like they’ll be sporting the normal home uniform of a maroon jersey over white pants. It looks like the maroon helmet, but sometimes it’s white, and sometimes its maroon. We’ll just have to wait and see. The current uniform contract is sort of blah in that regard, so it’s all basically stirring the pot on the same few colors.
There Wasn’t Much Hype this Week
It seems there might have been a bit of humble pie dished on this one, because the Hokie hype wagon wasn’t particularly full this week.
Maybe that’s a good thing, because this game isn’t a cupcake shrug off. The Hokies have a near peer adversary showing up at Lane, and we really know the score when it comes to the health and capability of this particular team at this time.
Staff Predictions
Bryan Manning
Speaking of very little hype. It’s been hard to get into it this week. So, for Saturday, ODU’s quarterback is a great athlete. He’s the leading rusher, but a not-so-great passer. It’s simple: keep him in the pocket and make him throw it. Offensively, feed the backs. The OL is in bad shape right now. Who wins? The Hokies, I guess: 27-17
John Schneider
Well, it was going pretty okay and right along the lines of the prediction last week, and then the wheels fell off the Hokiemobile at the very beginning of the 2nd half. The offensive line was, against a surprisingly good SEC team, crippled by the 3rd quarter as Tech lost both starting Tackles. The defensive line, that had managed to contain Diego Pavia to modest numbers and an interception suddenly forgot how to get off blocks and get any sort of balanced penetration. The Linebackers forgot how to run fill, and the defensive backs went almost completely somnambulant. And with the loss of the key starters on the O-Line, the offense was completely shut down for the entire 2nd half, barely doing more than executing three play snaps and a punt for the entire time.
ODU rolls into a Lane Stadium that is unlikely to be too friendly to its own team, and an offense that is a near total unknown. The defense might do better, with an offense that is more equal in size and skill level. With ODU’s offense not being particularly high powered. Objectively, the likelihood of a win went down from the 60/40 favoring Tech to a 55/45 near tie. The odds makers are setting things at -6.5 favoring Tech, and a 51.5 Over/Under. Folks, that’s pretty awful if your calculations are that Tech is still a Power conference program.
Frankly, if Tech gets it together and plays as good a game as they can, and minimizes mistakes, I just don’t see them losing the game, but anything can happen, and if the post halftime melt from the Vandy game continues, Tech could very well lose this by a score. If they do, then the season is pretty much a write off, and they have to know that. Maybe they realize that reality and rally up to win this next two games to get back to par and put them in a position to potentially rescue the season with a booger bowl. Right now I think that they can but it might be a close eek out.
24-21 Hokies
Poll Time
Well, that’s it for this one. It’s pretty much all over but the interminable waiting before a 7:00 kickoff. The Hokies are really an unknown quality for this one. We’ll all just have to wait and see.
