Kendall Fuller hears it from Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster all the time.
“He’s used to 10-, 11-win seasons,” said Fuller, an All-America cornerback whose family tree is used to 10- and 11-win Tech football seasons.
Fuller’s three older brothers, Vincent, Corey and Kyle, are also Hokie football alums, so Tech football runs in the family, and winning Tech football comes hand-in-hand.
But it’s Foster’s voice that Kendall Fuller hears in his ear all the time.
“He reminds us that we can’t be satisfied or happy at all with 7-6, 8-5 seasons. All of us came to Tech to win, so that’s what we’ve got to do,” Fuller said.
The Hokies have had nothing but 7-6 and 8-5 seasons of late. Two of the past three seasons, Virginia Tech needed wins over in-state rival Virginia in their regular-season finale and then wins in lower-tier bowl games to avoid the program’s first losing season in more than two decades.
Virginia Tech has gone 22-17 over the past three years – 7-6 in 2012, 8-5 in 2013 and 7-6 in 2014.
“We need to get back to where we have been,” Tech coach Frank Beamer said. “I think we’ve got a shot to do that. We’ve got a tough schedule. But we’ve got a good team, got the capabilities of a good team. Putting that together is what challenges me. The capabilities are there, but getting it to be efficient, getting it to be consistent, getting the chemistry right on your team, that’s what challenges me now.”
The media at the ACC Football Kickoff picked the Hokies to finish second in the Coastal Division in 2015, behind Georgia Tech, last year’s division champion. The annual game between the Techs has almost always been for Coastal Division supremacy, making their Nov. 12 game in Atlanta most interesting.
The Hokies open with defending national champion Ohio State, who Tech upset in Columbus last September, 35-21, handing the Buckeyes their only loss of the 2014 season.
After a Sept. 12 home game with Furman, Virginia Tech then goes on the road twice in late September, at Purdue and at East Carolina, before getting into the heart of the ACC slate.
The conference schedule is somewhat favorable, with the cross-division games against Atlantic Division also-rans North Carolina State and Boston College, and Coastal Division games against Pitt, Duke and UNC at home, and games on the road at Miami and at Virginia to conclude the regular season.
It’s a schedule that could be conducive to winning a division title, and at Virginia Tech, that’s always the goal, a division title, then an ACC title.
“At the end of the day, that’s what our goal is, to win the ACC championship,” Fuller said. “We know that we’ve got to take it week by week. We can’t be looking ahead to that. We’ve got to worry about what we’re doing today and just keep on going day by day getting better.”
– Story by Chris Graham
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