After Duke led by a touchdown at the end of the first quarter, Virginia Tech catapulted into the lead with a second-quarter offensive explosion. As the Duke offense struggled to muster even a first down, the Hokies scored 24 second-quarter points and went on to win 41-17.
After 10 minutes of football, Duke had sucked the life out of Lane Stadium.
The disbelief started on Virginia Tech’s opening drive, when the Blue Devils’ defensive end Justin Kichen dropped back into coverage and picked off Brian Randall’s pass. The Hokies’ woes continued four plays later—on fourth-and-eight Duke lined up to kick, but punter Trey McDonald stunned the home team by completing a nine-yard pass to Andy Roland to keep Duke’s drive alive. Then, wideout Deon Adams ran a reverse 28 yards for a touchdown. When the Blue Devils forced Virginia Tech to go three-and-out on their ensuing possession, boos could be heard reverberating among the Hokie faithful.
The first quarter belonged to Duke—unfortunately, the final three belonged to the home team.
Virginia Tech (2-1, 1-0 in the ACC) rolled to victory Saturday in Blacksburg, Va., and easily dispatched the Blue Devils (0-3, 0-1) by a 41-17 margin. The Duke offense never got started—the Blue Devils gained only 61 yards in the first half, and 197 yards overall. The Hokies, on the other hand, dominated the Duke defensive front, and racked up a total of 250 rushing yards.
“We got beat by a better football team today,” Duke head coach Ted Roof said. “I though we’ve been ready to play every week, but we have to continue to execute. It’s a game of momentum, and when momentum swing the other way, somebody has to make a play to get the momentum back in our favor, obviously that didn’t happen today.”
The game got out of hand in the second quarter, when the Hokies scored three touchdowns and a field goal over the course of six possessions. Virginia Tech scored its first touchdown on the opening play of the quarter; with the Hokies on Duke’s 1-yard line, tailback Justin Hamilton leapt over the pile towards the goal line. Duke linebacker Giuseppe Aguanno met him in mid-air, but Hamilton rolled down into the endzone for a touchdown.
Virginia Tech scored its second touchdown in equally dramatic fashion. With his team up 10-7 on Duke’s 34-yard line, Randall handed the ball off to wideout Richard Johnson on what appeared to be a standard reverse play. Instead of taking ball upfield, however, Johnson fired a bullet into the endzone, where Josh Hyman made a leaping touchdown grab between the two Blue Devils assigned to cover him.
Randall ran unchecked over the Duke defense, and was Virginia Tech’s leading rusher with 93 yards earned on the ground. The Hokie quarterback escaped from numerous potential sacks, including a botched pitch play that turned into a 30-yard scramble right through the heart of the Blue Devil defense—Randall eluded the clutches of six different Duke defenders and gave the Hokies a 24-7 lead going into halftime.
“You got to tip your hat to Brian Randall, his run was a great run,” Kitchen said. “You put a great athlete in that situation where you miss tackles, he’s going to make something happen—10 out of 10 times that’s guaranteed.”
Missed tackles were the Blue Devils’ Achilles heel. The Hokies earned more than 100 yards after contact.
“We’ve got to make sure we tackle,” said Aguanno, who finished the game with nine tackles. “Plenty of times today we got to ball carrier and just missed tackles. Randall’s a great athlete and he’s going to make things happen, but when we’re there we have to make the plays.”
Duke’s execution on the offensive end was equally poor. At the end of the first half, McDonald was the team’s leading passer and Adams was the team’s leading rusher. The Duke offensive line was unable to open holes for running backs Aaron Fryer and Justin Boyle, who averaged 2.7 and 2.6 yards per carry, respectively.
The passing game also struggled. Senior Chris Dapolito completed 2-of-8 passes Saturday, and sophomore Curt Dukes was forced into the quarterback position midway into the second quarter when starter Mike Schneider suffered a concussion on a third down scramble. Schneider’s injury only aggravated the burden felt by an offense that had already lost its starting running back, Cedric Dargan, and wide receivers, Senterrio Landrum and Deonto McCormick.
Dukes was 3-for-10 in his first major stint behind center, and threw for his first touchdown in the final minute of the game on a fourth-and-11 pass down the left sideline where a streaking Jomar Wright hauled in the catch and took the ball 35 yards for the score.
“During the course of a week there aren’t enough balls, there aren’t enough reps to get three quarterbacks ready,” Roof said. “[Dukes] came in and did some good things and provided some spark and some leadership, and that was good to see.”
The Virginia Tech defense was too strong, too fast and too technically sound for the Blue Devils.
“Things were just going their way,” Adams said. “They’re a great team. They have great defensive guys. They just made plays.”
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