Hokies corrects mistakes and looks forward to Louisville

By Jimmy Robertson

BLACKSBURG If Sunday’s practice was any indication, the Virginia Tech soccer team should be ready for Saturday’s roadshowdown in Louisville.

Technical coach Justin Font was pleased with his team’s response during Sunday afternoon practice after a bad show on Saturday at Wake Forest that ended with a 23-16 defeat. Sales, penalties and errors in the red zone plagued the Hokies, who dropped out after the loss from the Associated Press national poll.

Fuente knows that good training during the week does not necessarily equate to victories on Saturday. But he liked how his team started the week.

“I like the way our boys responded with energy and juice,” he said. “I was just as angry with the guys who didn’t play in the game as I was with the guys who made the mistakes. We have to understand that in every game our job is to carry the emotion on the sidelines. have done that as well as we should have. It’s not always a one-to-one relationship. Hope we focus on continuing to improve. We’ll have to do that as we go through the schedule and hopefully our guys keep bouncing back. But if yesterday was an indication, I feel pretty good about it. “

The Hokies play against a Louisville team with a record of 2-4, but have an impressive home win over Florida State. The Cardinals scored nearly 400 yards of offense and 31 points in the first half alone in the Seminoles’ 48-16 defeat, easily their best of the season.

Virginia Tech spent much of Sunday on its own mistakes, which must be corrected before game planning for the Cardinals can take place. Here’s more on that and other takeaways from Monday’s press conference:

A storyline from the Wake Forest game was the Hokies’ number of punishments. Tech delivered 10 penalties for 112 yards, the most penalty in the Fuente era at Tech. Fuente took the blame Dax Hollifield’s interference penalty on the onside kick, saying the Hokies had never kicked an onside kick that particular way (with just one jump high in the air, allowing the receiving team to make a fair catch ). He also said he was targeting sanctions for unsportsmanlike conduct Jarrod Hewitt and Norell Pollard, and that there was no extra penalty for those two players.

“I’ve already done a lot of things when those things become a habit,” said Fuente. ‘I don’t expect them to become a habit. It has been addressed and we are ready to move on. ‘

Fuente expects a bounce-back play from quarterback Hendon Hooker, who threw three interceptions against the Demon Deacons. The Tech coach provided the media with context for each interception, saying he liked the decision on the first interception, but the ball should be a little lower against tight coverage. He thought Hooker had read badly about the third-quarter interception, and apologized for Hooker’s latest interception, which had been made with the Hokies in despair in the final seconds.

Hooker entered the game with just two interceptions in his career, but Fuente doesn’t expect the red-shirt junior’s confidence to be shaken.

“If he thinks he will go all season and not turn the ball and never make a mistake, that’s a pretty unrealistic expectation for a man who takes the ball every time,” said Fuente. He’s coming back fine. He had a good day yesterday. We have to be able to handle those things. We have to have broad shoulders. The quarterback gets way too much credit when we win and way too much blaming when we lose. That just comes with the job. The sooner you realize that, the faster you can move forward, either after a good or a bad performance. “

A lot of thought has gone into the Hokies’ performance in the red zone in the Wake Forest 20, and it certainly influenced the game. The Hokies ventured into the red zone four times and got away with just two Brian Johnson field goals, with a missed field goal and an interception accounting for how the other two possessions ended.

Tech got into the game, scoring on 16 of 18 red zone opportunities, including 13 touchdowns. So the poor performance in the red zone came as a bit of a surprise.

“We had two negative plays down there that really hurt us and put us in obvious passing situations when we really felt like we had been really good at getting that ball into the end zone down there,” said Fuente. . “I don’t know what our stats are in terms of long field goals versus short field goals, but I feel like we got the ball down there pretty well to get it into the end zone. We didn’t do well last week. . “

Fuente announced that defensive end TyJuan Garbutt had returned to the team and worked with the team for the past few weeks. Garbutt, who was expected to be a starter in the season, took time away from the program to handle a personal matter. In two seasons with the Hokies, the junior red shirt has registered 62 tackles and two sacks.

“We will now put it into practice a little bit,” said Fuente. “I don’t know when he’ll be ready to play. I certainly don’t believe it will be this week unless I’m just blown away by something or something crazy is happening, but he’s back to training and running a bit. and sort of getting back in the flow for the last few weeks. We’ll be putting him in the field a little bit while still training him in terms of lifting and conditioning and stuff off the field. “

Tech and Louisville are meeting for the first time since Louisville joined the ACC in 2014, a byproduct of the ACC’s planning model. Fuente got a question about that on Monday and he took a diplomatic approach with his answer.

“I find the ACC planning model confusing,” he said. “I always challenge our staff to do this, and our players, I prefer not to be the person who complains about the problem without having a solution. I don’t know what the solution is. I like it. strange. I think it is. in some ways unfortunate. It’s such a cool competition with unique schools and some regional benefits that I think are really unique, maybe just to the ACC, which I don’t think we could use it because of the way it’s planned. I don’t have the solution so I’m not going to complain about it, but it’s strange. “

The ACC announced the start times for the November 7 games and the Hokies will take on Liberty at Lane Stadium at noon. The game can be seen on the ACC network.