VT beat UVA.. plain and simple. I won’t even make excused. Tech came out beat us in the second half.
I was really pleased at half time. While we missed a few key scoring opportunities, we held VT to under 100 yards, and were moving the ball. UVA definitley should have been up at halftime.
But UVA even came out strong in the third quarter, forcing a VT special teams turnover (rare) and converting on a 3rd and long for a TD (even rarer). But then Tech responded, and never looked back. Blah blah blah.
Unlike many wahoos (i.e. my girlfriend), I’m not bitter towards Tech. I thought they played a good, hard fought game. In my opinion, UVA lost the game for itself. I thought a lot of the coaching calls were awful, we didn’t convert twice within the redzone, our secondary gave up too many big plays, and we had stupid costly penalties. We had a few opportunities to take a strong lead, and yet we failed to convert and let Tech stay in the game. And give it to Randall and the VT D – they played well.
Overall, talent-wise, I think UVA had the better team this year. We were more prepared then any other year. But in the big picture, I think this game showed the UVA football is still a few years behind Tech’s program, and we have a ways to go. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not being a pessimist by ANY means. I’m the biggest UVA football supporter, and still so after today. But I think a lot of our expectations may be too high, and we need to realize that Groh is building what hopes to be a powerhouse program.
Now we only hope that Ahmad Brooks, Darryl Blackstock, and Heath Miller stick around for next year. We hope our recruiting class gets even stronger. And we hope for a great offseason. And oh yea, a bowl win, wherever that may be.