At Last, Virginia Tech Finds Good Ju-Ju in Balanced Attack

If there was anything surprising about Tyrod Taylor's short walk over for the post-game interview, it was that he didn't stretch beforehand. After all, that was by a wide margin the most athletic thing he'd had to in the better part of 90 minutes.

With Taylor on the field, the first half of Virginia Tech's blowout 48-14 win over Boston College taught us just how dominant the Hokies can be when when both sides of the ball play well.

The second half taught us that their backup quarterback is named Ju-Ju.

In retrospect, only one of those should've been unexpected.

Our apologies, Ju-Ju.

"It's good that finally all our hard work paid off because we've been down on ourselves,'' said linebacker Cody Grimm. "We've been working hard and playing what we thought were some good games and having some plays that killed us. For it all to come together is awesome."

But it shouldn't have been a surprise.

This was the game Virginia Tech had hinted at all season, the game Hokie fans have waited on, since the Vick brothers turned scoreboards into rolling odometers. This was the game when the grab-you-by-the-throat defense met an offense that could finally sing in harmony.

It was Taylor beating a Boston College defense that looked like it had overslept and forgot it was exam day. It was freshman tailback Ryan Williams barreling through gaps and piling up yardage. It was a balanced offense rolling to 27 points in the first half (and applauding as the defense tacked on seven more), and a defense that made each and every one stand up

It was Virginia Tech throwing the knockout punch before the Eagles ever heard the bell. Make that a 1-2 combo knockout.

Offense, meet defense, meet the Hokies best all-around game in four seasons.

"We haven't had one like this in a while." Hokies head coach Frank Beamer said.

For Boston College the first half numbers were a Tarantino screenplay put to numbers, pure horror in four acts, from start to finish.

How bad was it?

Nearly 19 minutes went by before someone caught one of David Shinskie's passes. Of course, it was Virginia Tech cornerback Rashad Carmichael, who promptly returned it for a touchdown.

Shinskie was intercepted twice in the first half and didn't complete a single pass to his own team in the first 30 minutes. For the game, Shinskie would connect on just one pass -- half as many as Taylor threw touchdowns -- before being yanked for the third stringer.

But Shinskie wasn't alone. The list of Eagles who struggled against the Hokies was longer than the waiting list to get in the school.

The Eagles amassed just three yards of offense in the first half, or to put it another way, the same amount of offense as if Yao Ming had stumbled once at the line of scrimmage and stretched forward. Three of BC's six full drives in the first half went for zero or fewer yards.

Trying to find some combination that works, the Eagles ran out their second-unit on offense in the second quarter This was also not the answer.

"We had some manners laid on us," Eagles coach Frank Spaziani said succinctly, manners apparently being a nice way of saying they'd been flattened like a beer can in a car crusher.

But this wasn't a game in which Boston College simply imploded as they were beaten again and again. The Eagles committed just three turnovers, and Virginia Tech was actually whistled for more penalty yardage.

Of course, for the Hokies, the defense is as much as part of the team's identity as Beamer's permanently wind-blown hair. It was the offense that made Saturday's win unique, and a shot across the rest of the nation's bow.

They'd beaten Miami soundly two weeks earlier, but that had been the defense and ground game, coupled with an untimely pair of drops by Miami's Jimmy Graham. This was a balanced attack, in fact, the first time the Hokies had run and passed for more than 200 yards since 2005. They finished with 441 total yards -- 235 on the ground, 206 through the air -- numbers even more impressive when you consider the starters were in baseball caps early in the third quarter.

Those things that had been question marks at the season's start -- could Taylor develop an arm to compliment his legs, could the freshman Williams fill in for Orange Bowl MVP Darren Evans -- became exclamation points against what was the 26th-ranked defense entering the game.



Taylor played the whole game, or at least the portion he didn't spend on the sideline, like an encore to his game-winning drive against Nebraska. Williams rushed for 159 yards and moved ever closer to snapping Evans' freshman records.
.
All of which led to Ju-Ju Clayton getting a rare second half of work in Taylor's place.

Granted, running to the forefront of the ACC isn't the sort of charge you need to wake Napoleon from his grave to lead, but the Hokies are now primed for their third straight ACC title and, the moment Texas loses, possibly the inside track for a berth in the BCS title game.

Virginia Tech's next game, in Atlanta against Georgia Tech's triple option, will likely prove more of a test than the Eagles, and the Hokies have only to look backward to Miami to see how quickly hype can be dispelled.

But after a Saturday afternoon statement, the game plan for the rest of the season seems clear right through to the ACC title game.

More balance. More wins. More Ju-Ju.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this article.