Above The Tar Heel State

On Saturday the sixteenth-ranked Virginia Tech Hokies stumped the North Carolina Tar Heels by a final score of 26 to 10 in Chapel Hill.

Virginia Tech is above the Tar Heel State in a geographic sense, and more importantly in a football sense.

With the win, the Hokies have now defeated all five FBS schools from the Tar Heel State this season.  East Carolina, NC State, Wake Forest, Duke, and most recently North Carolina have all fallen victim to the Hokies.  You can honestly say that Tech has single-handedly whipped the state of North Carolina, and in just one season.

The Hokies' success against the Tar Heel State reaches far beyond just this season though.  Since joining the ACC in 2004, Tech is 22 and 3 against the Division 1 schools from North Carolina.  The three losses came in 2004 at home against NC State, in 2008 in Charlotte against East Carolina, and last year (2009) at home against North Carolina. Wake Forest and Duke have yet to beat the Hokies, while the other three teams have failed to defend their own stadiums against Tech.  That's right the Hokies have won every away game in the state of North Carolina since 2004, including the one on Saturday against UNC.

The first half of this game looked almost as bad as last year's lackadaisical 20-17 loss at home to the Tar Heels.  The most exciting thing that happened in that game was when Tech students launched paper airplanes from the stands onto Worsham Field.  The most exciting thing about Saturday's game was the second half...at least for the Hokies.

North Carolina carried a 10-9 lead into halftime, as the fans took a nap.  The Tar Heels scored the only touchdown of the first half on the first drive of the game.  The rest of the half was a soccer match between Tech's Chris Hazley and UNC's Casey Barth, which Hazley won by a count of 3 to 1.

I don't know what Frank Beamer said at halftime, but it woke the Hokies up.  In the second half Tech's offense put up 17 unanswered points, as Bud Foster's defense pitched a shut-out.

Tyrod Taylor and T.J. Yates entered the game in a battle for the ACC's best passing efficiency.  Without a doubt, Tyrod won that battle.  Taylor went 13 of 28 for 249 yards, and two touchdowns, while Yates finished 18 of 33 for 197 yards, and 4 interceptions.  So at the end of the day, Tyrod Taylor > T.J. Yates.   There's just no contest.  Unless it's a Tony Romo look alike contest, then Yates has the advantage.

Tech's defense may have helped out Tyrod a little bit in that battle.  They sacked Yates 4 times, while forcing him to throw 4 picks to the Tech secondary.  Jayron Hoseley racked up 2 of those picks.  Both of his interceptions were dangerous deep balls that would have set the Tar Heels up for scores.  On the second pick Hoseley looked like the receiver on the play.  He's got 8 interceptions on the season, maybe we should try him out on offense?

Eddie Whitley had the best face-guarding interception that I have ever seen, and in the endzone no less. I mean I really really hate face-guarding, but Whitley made me hate it a little less for a moment with that pick.  He mirrored the receiver, saw where his hands were set up, and grabbed the ball away from him when it got there.  It was textbook face-guarding.  It was an incredible catch.  It was nerve-racking.  Next time do me a big favor and turn around Mr. Whitley, unless you can do that every time.  Then you can face-guard all you want.

Davon Morgan had the other interception of the day, as he picked it off at the 12 and ran it back to the 37 yard-line.  Morgan has a nice collection of interceptions on the season.  He's broken quarterbacks' hearts...and arms...literally.

Tech's defense also racked up some huge stops on the day.  The biggest stop of the day came in the last quarter of the game on the Hokies' last yard of defense.  It was first and goal North Carolina from the VT one yard-line.  UNC tailback Anthony Elzy takes the hand-off and dives for the endzone.  Jeron Gouveia-Winslow has a big name, and he makes a big play.  He smashes into Elzy and dis-lodges the ball.  That slippery pigskin eludes multiple Tech defenders, and squirts out of the endzone.  It doesn't matter though, it's a touchback for the Hokies!  First down...Hokies! (in Lane Stadium announcer voice)

With Dyrell Roberts injured, Marcus Davis got the chance to start and he had a career day.  He really stepped it up for the receiving corps.  Davis was instrumental in Tech's offensive production, and the win.  He was on the receiving end of both of Tech's touchdowns.  Davis also led Tech in receiving with 4 catches for 81 yards.  It's good to see that we have another solid receiver that we can count on and go to when our other receivers are having a bad day.

Speaking of receivers having a bad day,  how about Jarrett Boykin?  Boykin is usually Tech's go to guy, but in this game it seemed like every ball that went to him went to the ground.  He dropped three catchable passes from Tyrod, and each one would have given the Hokies a first down.  Boykin did somewhat redeem himself with a long 43-yard catch, and he did gain more yards than any other Tech receiver with 85.  Everyone has a bad day, and I guess Boykin's really wasn't that bad.  It was just unexpected.  Luckily Marcus Davis had an unexpectedly good day to make up for it.

The David Wilson-less rushing duo of Ryan Williams and Darren Evans carried the load for Tech.  Their stats were almost identical.  Evans hammered away at the Tar Heel defense, forcing 5 UNC defenders to take him down on one play.  He finished with 90 yards off of 14 carries with his longest run being 33 yards.  A solid performance.  Almost equally solid was Ryan Williams.  He rushed 15 times for 83 yards with his longest run being 31 yards.  Talk about a balanced rushing attack.

From a Beamerball perspective, things couldn't have been much better (well maybe with a blocked kick).   Senior kicker Chris Hazley made all 4 of his field goal attempts, including a career long 52-yarder.  He also converted on kicks from 38, 26, and 23 yards out.  Punter Brian Saunders averaged 44.6 yards off of 5 punts.  His longest was a 65 yard boomer.  And to top things off.  The punt team recovered a fumble from UNC's punt returner.  The returner signaled for the fair catch, he muffed it, and the ball bounced right to a Tech gunner.  It was one of those trademark Beamerball plays.  We'll see that on a highlight video one day.

The Hokies won this game fair and square, but at one point it looked like the officials tried to slow things up.  The referees called a pretty fair game, as they flagged 8 penalties on UNC and 9 penalties on Tech.  On paper it looks fair, but on tape it looked bizarre.  A colleague of mine, a certain Mr. Whitesell, alerted me to the strangeness of three of Tech's penalties.  Between the two of us we had never seen any of these calls before, or at least not in the context in which we saw them called on Saturday.  The first was an illegal fair catch signal by Jayron Hoseley.  I've seen plenty of times when a guy called for a fair catch and then tried to run, but Hoseley just called for the fair catch and caught it.  The refs said his signal just wasn't good enough.  The second was offensive encroachment on tight end Andre Smith.  Offensive Encroachment?  I thought encroachment was only for the defense.  I've seen an overabundance of false starts and a fair share of lining up in the neutral zone calls, but never an offensive encroachment.  The third was a sideline interference call on Frank Beamer.  The refs said he was on the field, and hence interfering with the play.  Beamer may have barely been on the field, but he was over 20 yards away from where the play was taking place.  It was a ridiculous call.  It forced a patented "Who Farted?" look from Beamer, and it was much deserved.

But not even bogus calls could stop Virginia Tech's magical momentum.  The Hokies have now won their eighth-straight game, and are undefeated in conference play with a 6 and 0 record.  Tech only needs to win one of their last two games to win the Coastal Division, and punch their ticket to Charlotte for the ACC Championship.  I expect them to win both, and the ACC Championship.