The No. 13 Virginia Tech Hokies hope to bounce back from their first conference loss Thursday night when they face the North Carolina Tar Heels in Lane Stadium.
After losing their matchup against Georgia Tech 23-28 on Oct. 17, the Hokies (5-2, 3-1 ACC) must win out in their final four conference games in order to stand any chance to win the Atlantic Coast Conference Coastal Division.
With the Yellow Jackets sitting at 7-1 overall and 5-1 in the ACC, the Hokies have no room for error heading into the final part of their season.
“There are surprises every Saturday,” said head coach Frank Beamer. “You’ve just got to go play a game. You just never know what’s going to happen. In sports, you better just keep playing yourself, be as good as you can be yourself, and then see where you stand at the end.”
The Hokies face a North Carolina team (4-3, 0-3 ACC) Thursday that could definitely surprise the Hokies if they aren’t ready.
“I think in North Carolina, you have a very talented team,” Beamer said. “Some of them are young. But you look around there, and they’ve played extremely well, particularly in the first half of the Florida State game.”
The Tar Heels fell last weekend against Florida State, 30-27, but they completely dominated the first half.
North Carolina’s offense totaled 333 yards in the game, 238 of which were on the ground, but the Heels blew an 18-point lead to give the Seminoles the edge in the end.
Junior running back Shaun Draughn had much to do with that success on the ground. Draughn tallied 126 yards on 23 carries in the game and regularly sets the tempo for the Tar Heels’ offense.
The Hokie defense hopes to bounce back from being bludgeoned in its last game, when the Jackets put up 309 yards on the ground thanks to their lethal option offense.
“The coaches, they always tell us — it’s in the past,” said Hokies defensive tackle Demetrius Taylor. “You always have to focus on the now, so we learn from our mistakes in previous losses, but you know, you have to move on from it and focus on North Carolina.
There’s really nothing you can do about what happened a week ago.”
The Tar Heels feature a deceptive offense with Draughn coming out of the backfield and quarterback T.J. Yates calling the shots behind center.
“A lot of misdirection in their offense,” Beamer said. “On defense, you look at their front four, really their front seven, and they’re tough. They’re very, very good. And in the secondary, they’ve got juniors playing, so they’ve got some experience there.”
The Tar Heels front seven is the reason why they were ranked in the top 25 to begin the season.
Their defensive line features sophomore lineman Robert Quinn, who currently is second in the ACC and eighth in the nation with seven sacks this season.
Junior linebacker Quan Sturdivant is also a force for the Tar Heels, leading the team in tackles with 48 and placing second on the team in tackles for loss with 8.5.
In the Heels’ defensive backfield, junior cornerback Charles Brown has done some damage this year as well. Brown is second on the team with 37 tackles and has two interceptions and a forced fumble to boot this season.
Going up against the Tar Heels defense will be a Hokie offense led by quarterback Tyrod Taylor and a finally healthy tailback Ryan Williams.
Williams played and racked up over 100 yards against Georgia Tech, but the redshirt freshman was battling an illness throughout.
“I was really disappointed in the Georgia Tech game,” Williams said. “Mostly because of how bad I was feeling throughout the whole game. I wish I could just rewind and just not feel as bad as I did so I could make the plays that I wanted to, but my body just really wasn’t in the right state of mind.”
Thankfully, the bye week allowed the ACC’s leading rusher to get healthy.
“I’m feeling better,” Williams said. “I think it was probably last Monday or Tuesday where I started eating, and I could keep it in. I lost like eight to nine pounds. It’s been the first time I’ve weighed in the 190s since like my junior year in high school, so it was kind of scary at first because I was surviving off of IVs for a couple days, but you know, I’m back to being normal, and I can eat.
Williams added that it felt good to be able to go to practice “and not just feel like I’ve got somebody 400 pounds on my back or something like that throughout the whole day.”
Williams said the weight loss won’t affect his play come Thursday night, though.
“It doesn’t affect me at all because I don’t play with my weight, I play with my heart, so it doesn’t really affect me at all,” he explained.
While the Hokies may not control their own destiny in the ACC anymore, there’s plenty to be excited about for Thursday night’s game.
With Williams healthy and the team under the national spotlight on Thursday night, the Hokies have a lot to prove.
Coach Beamer says he can only tell his team to focus on the now.
“Go get ready to play North Carolina,” Beamer said. “There’s a lot of football to be played. You’ve got your BCS standings. You’ve got your conference situation, and there’s just a lot of football to be played.
“What we can control is how we prepare and how we play against North Carolina. So, that’s the key thing for us right now — to put all our efforts toward North Carolina.”
The Hokies take the field Thursday night in Lane Stadium at 7:30 p.m., and the game will be nationally televised on ESPN.