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GREENVILLE, N.C. -- The Virginia Tech Hokies were able to keep their hopes of 10 wins alive and avenged a tough season opening loss in 2008, defeating the East Carolina Pirates on the road 16-3 Thursday night.
The No. 23 Hokies, who haven’t played in Greenville, N.C. since 2000, were able to avoid a three game losing streak for the first time since the 2002-03 season. The game brought out 43,569 fans, the sixth-largest crowd in the history of ECU’s Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.
Tech head coach Frank Beamer said the win was a redemption of sorts.
“The word I would use for our team is relentless,” Beamer said. “We kept losing in unusual ways but I think we righted some things tonight.”
The Hokies’ offense put up big numbers, including 180 yards of rushing from starting tailback Ryan Williams, with the defense holding the Pirates to 277 yards.
Williams, whose fumble last week led to a game-winning field goal for UNC, was happy with his performance.
“Words cannot describe how I feel right now,” Williams said. “There’s a lot more smiles.”
Williams said after that loss he studied game tapes and looked up turnover statistics from his favorite running backs, including Chicago Bears great Walter Payton.
“I just realized that it happens to everybody,” Williams said. “Nobody can be perfect.”
The Hokies started the scoring in the first quarter with a 41-yard field goal from senior kicker Matt Waldron, following a 33-yard punt return from freshman cornerback Jayron Hosley.
The Hokies followed their opening score with a 14 play, 75-yard drive, featuring a 23-yard pass from Taylor to Dyrell Roberts. The pass set up another Waldron field goal from 22 yards out giving the Hokies a 6-0 lead with 51 seconds left in the first half.
The Hokies defense stepped up, making big plays to stop two potential scoring drives.
With the Pirates pressing in the redzone, senior linebacker Cody Grimm stripped ECU senior tight end Rob Kass and recovered the fumble with 12:03 remaining in the second quarter.
To top it off, Tech linebacker Lyndell Gibson recovered a Pirate fumble in Hokie territory in the third quarter.
Hokies’ cornerback Rashad Carmichael sealed the game with a late interception.
“To hold this crowd to three points is impressive,” Beamer said.
The Hokies appeared to be primed to score when a 16-yard run for Taylor was ruined when he was stripped by defensive back Van Eskridge on the one-yard line, resulting in a touchback, with 10:55 left in the first half.
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Was anyone else wondering why Stinespring was calling reverses and sweeps when we were running consistantly between the tackles? The play calling looks like throwing darts at a dart board.
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I said the exact same thing during that series. There is no rhyme or reason to Steinspring's play calling. Did you also notice that in the beginning of the game when Ryan Williams was struggling briefly, he kept running him up the middle behind our Center Via who was starting his first game!!!!! Not until Ryan started running to the right did he get it going! Steinspring is horrible and needs to go.
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Geeze, talk about bad sentence structure. The author makes it sound like this is the first time we haven't lost 3 in a row since 2002-2003.
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I didn't see a football game. I saw Bryan Stinespring take a dump on a football field.
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Stinespring didn't change is play calling at all, instead he relied only on the athletic talent of Taylor and Williams along with our fantastic defense to win this game. There was no strategy that I saw that was different.
If our defense hadn't shown up, the game would have been much closer.
Even though we won, we can't play like that against our next top 30 team of which ECE was not one of them. I hate to appear negative but I'm just realistic. I am a hokie fan at heart but any fan paying attention and who knows a little bit about football knows that if we continue to play offense like we have been against a top 30 opponent, we will loose again.
That simple. Lucky for us, our next top 30 opponent won't be until whatever bowl we play in.
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