B.C. is gonna win. I’m sorry to have to type that, but I feel ethically obligated to tell you I’m pretty solid on this. “But why will this happen b’street? How can this happen b’street?!?”
Here’s why……….in short, points are gonna be hard to come by Thursday nite inside of Lane Stadium for both sides. Last year I learned two major things writing for 
TSL.com……first, the short week really hurts the traveling team, but both have 12 days off for this one. The second thing I learned was that a returning starting Sr. Qb is worth the weight of Fort Knox. So I expect this one to go low, lower, lowest, and my original 20-13 call seems a little tall right about now. That is…presuming the forecast for a soggy Thursday nite holds true. But why is this game gonna be such a MLB scoreboard kinda defensive slugfest you ask?
- B.C. leads all 119 D-1 football teams in both Picks, and in Run Defense!
- B.C. has more injuries than Hawkeye & Trapper can treat with all the gin stills in the world. 2 all-conference quality starters out for the year, 1 regulation skilled starter out for the year, 5 backup’s who are dinged and dented and may or may not play, and now their top WR is nursing a bad ankle.
- B.C. is #2 in the all important category of Turnover Margin in D-1.
- The great Hokie nation will not suffer it’s spirits dampened, nor sit on it’s hands for this one. Lane will be “loud, louder, loudest!”, Lane will be rowdy, Lane will be ripe for a Thursday nite ESPN prime-time ACC showdown.
- In their last three games, our former back-to-back #1 Hokie defense is hitting it’s 2007 stride, only allowing 2.0 yards per rush, 5.6 yards per pass, and sacking the opposing Qb on average 4 times per game.
- Our scoring defense is 1st best in the ACC, and only one team has broken the century mark on the ground vs. us since mid-September, and two different teams combined to run for exactly 39` on us! (that’s only thirty-nine feet folks!)
So points will be at an extreme premium this Thursday nite, and both teams will be
uno-dimensional on offense. Now think of it this way, in Fantasy Football League terms, are you gonna pick a gimpy rookie nick-named T-Mobile, or Sean (do you see a hint in here somewhere) Glennon over Matt Ryan? Me neither. Matt Ryan may not be the next Doug Flutie (he’s only 7“ taller and would dunk all over Mr. Hail-Mary in the low-post); but he is the first Matt Ryan, and he may have very possibly already unseated the littlest member of ESPN’s all-hair announce team as the best ever Eagle signal-caller. Than there’s this…B.C. has a downright nasty Red-Zone scoring defensive percentage of only 45% on the year. Think about maths involved in that; 20 yards out is really only a lower mid-range 37 yard-field goal. Most any D-1 kicker should nail that most of the time. Also note that B.C. is out-scoring opponents by nearly 400% in the second-quarter on the year. Now finally be aware that we only have 12 takeaways on the season, whereas the F’n Eagles have nearly doubled us up at 21.
I don’t enjoy typing it, but I gotta side with the 5th year Sr. Qb, the better Red-Zone defense, and the team that holds the Turnover Margin edge, on a uber physical, head-knocking, hard-hitting, but soggy bottom kinda nite. VT 13, B.C. 16. b-st.
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