No. 13 Hokies look to back to routine
Virginia Tech coach Justin Fuente is concerned his team has not been able to establish a routine heading into the fourth week of the season.
The team’s game against East Carolina last Saturday was canceled because of Hurricane Florence, giving the 13th-ranked Hokies an extra week of practice. That gave the staff extra time to work with some of the younger players, but things didn’t go as planned.
“We let the emotion of not playing a game get in the way of our preparation and our improvement,” Fuente said.
“It was probably a little bit on us as coaches and myself too. We’ve got to do a better job of getting them ready to go so we just addressed it and talked about those things and why we needed to be better, why it’s important. We don’t just go practice just to check a box, we have deliberate practice. We have things we are trying to accomplish, and we need to take advantage of that opportunity.”
Virginia Tech (2-0) this week plays at Old Dominion. The teams have played only once, last year when the Hokies blanked the Monarchs 38-0 at Lane Stadium.
Norfolk and Blacksburg are separated by about 300 miles of interstate driving. While the football programs at Old Dominion and Virginia Tech remain miles apart, the two schools have quite a bit in common, especially in the aftermath of last week’s hurricane.
The Monarchs’ game against Charlotte last week was moved up from Saturday to Thursday, but a week later both schools are still dealing with the aftermath of Mother Nature’s wrath.
“Still praying for those people in North/South Carolina,” ODU coach Bobby Wilder said. “We still have some kids right now that are trying to make their way back from this. We feel very fortunate to be standing here before you today knowing that were in a good situation in this region.”
The Hokies (2-0) last played on Sept. 8 when they demolished William & Mary 62-17. Despite ODU’s 0-3 record, the Hokies are not taking the Monarchs lightly.
“We’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for the ODU program and the job Bobby’s done there, literally building it from scratch,” Fuente said. “You can see on film that they are well-coached. They play incredibly hard, and we’ll need to have a great week of preparation this week.”
