Virginia Tech 38 Northeastern 0

FOOTBALL IS BACK!!!

Today is the first college football saturday of the season and it was a great one. The Hokies kicked off their season against a 1-AA Northeastern team.(or as Davey would say Cupcake U.) Virginia Tech came out on fire to begin the game. Northeastern received the ball first and the ball sailed deep into the endzone for a touchback. The Huskies were able to gain 8 yards and a 5 yard penalty before Chris Ellis sacked Anthony Orio for a 14 yard loss. Then two plays later the Huskies were forced to punt. Eddie Royal took the punt all the way back to Northeastern's 34 yard line. In comes Sean Glennon first start and he looked great. He completed his first 2 passes to Eddie Royal for 1 yard and Branden Ore for 26 yards. Then Ore powered his way to a 6 yard touchdown run.

The next Hokie touchdown came after a Brandon Flowers interception. On the very first play after the pick Sean Glennon threw a beautiful 54 yard strike to Josh Morgan. After the successful extra point by Brandon Pace, Northeastren took over and went three and out, as they lined up for their first punt of the day, a stat suddenly popped into my mind...we only had three blocked kicks all of last year and sure enough as soon as I thought that Cory Wade blocked their punt, it was recovered by Kam Chancellor.

After the blocked punt we took over again with excellent field position. Glennon completed a short pass for 3 yards to David Clowney and then we took it to the ground with George Bell and Carlton Weatherford. Bell puched it in from 1 yard and we went up 21-0 in the first.

After a turnover on downs by Northeastern, a punt by the Hokies and another punt by the Huskies, we took over once again this time at our own 37 yard line. After gains of 5 and 6 for Ore, Glennon was intercepted by Louvans Charlot. That would be the only mistake Sean Glennon would make all day. Then later in the 2nd quarter the Hokies turned what appeared would be a simple screen play to Branden Ore into a 55 yard touchdown due to great blocks. At halftime the score was 28-0 Hokies!

The third quater started off kind of slow untill Glennon and the Hokies put together an impressive drive that ended with a 4 yard touchdown pass to Carlton Weatherford. After the VT touchdown, Northeastern put together an impressive drive of their own mostly by Maurice Murray, only to end with another Tech interception, this one by D.J. Parker.

Since the game was well in the hands of the Hokies, Frank Beamer decided to take out the starters and in came the speedy redshirt freshman Ike Whitaker. Whitaker led them to a good drive that ended with a 30 yard field goal by Brandon Pace. After another three and out for the Huskies, the Hokies once again started a short field drive that ended with a rare blocked field goal by Northeastern. For the final drive of the game for Northeastern, they ran the ball 10 times and only passing 4 times, they were unable to get into the endzone against the 2nd and 3rd string defense of the Hokies, so they set up for a field goal attempt. With only 38 seconds remaining in the game, Virginia Tech blocked the 42 yard attempt, this one by Kory Robertson.

It was a very good win and a good start to the 2006 season. But there is some areas that i'm a little displeased with. Branden Ore only had 11 carries for 55 yards 1 td. I wish he would've gotten some more carries, but he likely will against North Carolina next weekend. The other area is takling. There was alot of broken takles in this game by the Hokies. That will be tended to in practices later next week for sure.

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