The Vegas line for Virginia-Virginia Tech opened on Sunday at 11.5, but the market soon realized – hey, wait a sec, Virginia Tech always wins this one – so now it’s down to 8.5.
UVA Football coach Tony Elliott told reporters Tuesday to expect a one-possession game playing into the final couple of minutes.
He’s not blowing smoke up your, you know.
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By and large, Tech (3-8, 2-5 ACC) has availed itself well since the early-season parting of ways with fourth-year coach Brent Pry, who clearly had lost his team amidst the 0-3 start – all three losses by double-digits.
The Hokies won at NC State, which beat both UVA (9-2, 6-1 ACC) and Georgia Tech (9-2, 6-2 ACC), played Wake Forest (8-3, 4-3 ACC) tough in a one-score loss, beat Cal (6-5, 3-4 ACC), who gave the ‘Hoos fits a week later, led for a good while in a 28-16 loss to Louisville (7-4, 4-4 ACC), who they played before the Cardinals fell off the face of the earth with a rash of injuries.
The last couple of games have been uneven, at best.
Florida State (5-6, 2-6 ACC) pulled away in the second half in a 34-14 win in Tallahassee, while Miami (9-2, 5-2 ACC) took control early and coasted to a 34-17 win in Blacksburg last week.
The one constant: even in those losses, the Hokies put up yards on the ground – 238 in the loss at FSU, 194 in the home loss to the ‘Canes.
That’s one thing these Hokies can do, is run the ball.
Tech is third in the ACC (188.2 yards per game); incidentally, Virginia is fourth (187.9).
I’ll assume here that Kyron Drones, the starting QB, will be behind center Saturday night – I’m hedging only slightly, nodding to interim head coach Philip Montgomery subbing in the backup, Pop Watson, in the fourth quarter last week.
I can’t find anything from yesterday’s Montgomery presser one way or the other on that, so I’ll go with Drones being the guy for the purpose of this analysis.
Drones is basically a fullback (6’2”, 235) back there in the shotgun, and he’s really good at the read-option – he has 774 sack-adjusted rushing yards this season, averaging 5.6 yards per attempt, and 544 of those yards are on designed runs, and he averages 6.3 yards on designed runs.
The status of the lead tailback, Marcellous Hawkins (744 yards, 6.3 yards per attempt), is a question mark at this writing – Hawkins was dinged up in the Miami game, and Montgomery was noncommittal on Hawkins for Saturday.
I assume the kid plays.
The focus for Virginia defensively will be, obviously, trying to take away the run, to make the Tech offense one-dimensional via the passing game, where the Hokies haven’t been good this year – ranking dead-last in the ACC in passing yards (174.4 yards per game) and 15th in pass efficiency (123.7).
On the other side of the ball, the Tech D has been susceptible to getting beaten in the passing game – the Hokies rank 16th in the ACC in pass-defense efficiency (151.1), which you can guess will factor into the thinking of Des Kitchings, the Virginia offensive coordinator.
I can see an establish the pass to set up the run game approach, basically, game-planning backwards, working here.
Whereas the Tech side is going to want to shorten the game with its ground game, eating up clock to limit the number of possessions, to keep things artificially tight into the latter stages.
If it comes down to a late kick, it’s advantage: Hokies – the kicker, John Love, has two makes of 50-plus, and hasn’t missed inside the 40.
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Chris Graham
