No. 18 Hokies focused on Yellow Jackets, not division title

With a plethora of teams in front of them losing on Saturday, the Hokies are primed to move up in the latest installment of the rankings, in spite of their less-than-decisive victory over the Blue Devils in Week 10.

“We’re a good football team”, said Cutcliffe, in his ninth year as Duke’s coach.

“We feel like we’ve gotten some momentum now”, Rogers said.

On a second-and-10 play from Duke’s 32-yard line, Edmunds made helmet-to-helmet contact with running back Shaun Wilson, who fumbled the ball.

BIG PLAYS: Virginia Tech will look to take advantage of Duke’s knack for giving up big plays.

This was the first game this season in which junior quarterback Jérod Evans did not throw for a touchdown.

He completed 15 of 27 passes for 192 yards to go along with 18 carries for 83 yards, accounting for the majority of Tech’s 207 rushing yards.

The Blue Devils bounced back in the second half, behind their own scrambling quarterback. He remembered that Tech is bad at covering running quarterbacks so went about designing a set of play calls that got their big strong Redshirt Freshman QB, Daniel Jones into carrying the ball. QB Daniel Jones has thrown for 1,889 yards and 11 touchdowns, but also has nine interceptions.

The 6-6 guard had an inconsistent freshman year last season averaging 11.8 points, 3.6 rebounds, and 1.5 assists per game. Jones finished the day with 186 completions.

Ford is just eight receptions away from passing Jarrett Boykin as the Hokies’ career leader with 185 catches, and needs just 363 receiving yards to supplant Boykin as the school’s career receiving yards leader. Wilson rushed for 76 yards, Ajeigbe 52, as Duke totaled 227 yards on 45 rushes and that includes the 26 yards Jones lost on three crucial sacks. None of the team’s six remaining matches are against ranked programs and the best opponent left appears to be 17-6 Duke. Of the five touchdowns allowed by the Blue Devils against Georgia Tech, three covered at least 20 yards – including an 82-yard TD run by Justin Thomas and a 21-yard scoring pass in the final minutes. GT barely squeaked out a win last week against a down Duke team.

The Blue Devils have had a longstanding tradition under legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski of inviting the previous year’s Division II champ to Durham for an exhibition.

“We just get the message from Coach, and we try to instill that in the young guys, let them know that we’ve got to take it one game at a time”, senior offensive tackle Jonathan McLaughlin said. “He’s played great. I think, to be quite frank with it, he’s played the best overall since we started practice”. You love our warrior spirit, but the story is getting hard.

“You can’t look back”, Giles-Harris said. You worry about your staff. I’ve said this before, but it’s very nice to work at a place that really wants to support what your kids are doing on a weekly basis, whether they’ve got to drive a couple hours or not. And the Dukies are always risky in Wallace Wade Stadium, where the Tar Heels will visit on short rest Thursday night for their ESPN headliner. “We’re a good football team and we can’t lose faith or lose hope”. “That’s the reality. We’re going to wake up tomorrow knowing that’s the reality, but we’re also going to wake up tomorrow knowing that it’s (the equivalent of) Tuesday of game week. Like I’ve talked about many weeks, the previous weeks don’t really mean anything in terms of what we’re trying to accomplish this week”.