Collegiate Times

The Virginia Tech football team has been among the nation's most consistent over the past three seasons, winning 10 or more games each year. The Hokies look to continue that streak despite losing their second-leading scorer and resident sharp-shooter.

Brandon Pace's accurate kicking leg and former Playboy All-American punter Nic Schmitt have graduated, leaving a fierce race to fill the coveted positions.

Schmitt averaged 42.2 yards per punt last season, including 17 inside the 20 yard-line. Rising redshirt sophomore, Brett Bowden is pretty confident about replacing Schmitt.

It's hard, but I think I can do the job," Bowden said. "I think I'm just as good as him, if not better. The only thing he's got on me is the size… I think I'll be good. I think everyone's expecting me to be good."

The shoes Bowden's fellow special-teamer, Jared Develli, is left to fill are also quite large. The rising senior has one shot at the kicking duties after handling kickoffs for the past three seasons. He is looking to replace Pace, who went 18-19 on field goals last season.

"My strength is my strength," Develli, said, who was 0-1 on field goals in 2006. "I'm good from pretty long distance… All I have to work on is being consistent and accurate."

Develli said he is consistently connecting on field goal attempts 55 yards and in. If he can do that on a regular basis, Develli could be among the best place-kickers in America. Behind him is redshirt senior Jud Dunlevy, who has never attempted a field goal in his career. Still, Tech head coach Frank Beamer feels confident about his kicking corps.

"Jud's got great potential, and I think there's great potential within our field goal guys," Beamer said. "So, I think the potential is there, we've just got to reach a consistency that you've got to have in the kicking game. We're going to do a lot of that this spring."

With the departure of Schmitt and Pace the usually solid Virginia Tech special teams must rely on one certainty — if Bowden and Develli are as good as they claim, then the Hokies should be a much more formidable opponent this season.

"We've had some good ones. There's no question about that," Beamer said. "But these guys here have a chance to be very good too."

Beamer has had to replace some of his personnel on the sideline in recent years, but replacing the talent on the playing field proves even harder for most teams. For the Hokies to become one of college football's elite teams, they need the ability to reload and forego the rebuilding process. According to Beamer, that starts with major players and special teams.

Most of the time, the replacement's key to success is at the quarterback, running back, wide receiver positions, but this season looks to be different. This year, Virginia Tech will need to fill the shoes of recently departed punter and place-kicker if the Hokies are to continue their special teams' dominance.

"We're going to spend a lot of time this spring on our kicking game because we have new kickers," Beamer said. "The only time these guys have performed has been in practice, so we need to get them in front of the football team as much as possible."