QUESTION: Should Virginia Tech be ranked in the top 25?
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If we are to wrestle with this question, we have to look at the other teams across the United States. Without trying to litigate every single team-to-team comparison, let’s use these broader evaluations: There are six teams in the SEC and Big Ten which clearly deserve to be ranked ahead of Virginia Tech. Notre Dame deserves to be ranked ahead of Virginia Tech. Oregon and Utah deserve to be ranked ahead of Virginia Tech. Four AAC teams do. Oklahoma and Baylor do. Boise State does. That’s 22 teams right there.
Clemson. 23. Virginia. 24.
If you want to make the Hokies No. 25, fine… and their game against Pittsburgh could be viewed as a battle for a top-25 spot.
That’s the bigger reality here: Whether you think the Hokies deserve a national ranking or not, Virginia Tech gets to play its way into — or out of — that distinction with its final two regular-season games. A split continues the conversation. 2-0 seals the deal. 0-2 just as clearly knocks them out.
We don’t need to make things more complicated than they are.
The bigger picture: Virginia Tech has real hope for 2020, something which did not exist in early October. Justin Fuente’s tenure was in significant danger a month and a half ago; now it stands on solid footing once again, with the program being pointed in the right direction.
Yes, it is very true that a 7-3 record (with a chance for 9-3) doesn’t suggest stability in and of itself. It is very much worth reminding ourselves that 7-3 in THIS ACC, one of the weaker ACC assemblages of teams we have seen, is not nearly as impressive as a 7-3 record in the 2016 ACC, or other similarly strong iterations of this conference in the past. Virginia Tech still did get blown out by Duke at home; that can’t be ignored.
Nevertheless, Virginia Tech had severe problems; Justin Fuente fixed many of them. That, more than a No. 25 ranking, is what the Hokies should focus on (and cherish) as they work toward the end of the season and try to win the ACC Coastal.
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1 ping
Hokie Mark says:
November 18, 2019 at 6:46 am (UTC -5)
Not to be TOO nit-picky, but I only count 5 SEC and 3 AAC teams who ‘deserve to be ranked ahead of the Hokies’… of course, that also depends on whether VT continues to play at this newfound level of excellence against Pitt and UVa.
(I’ll grant you 6 Big Ten teams – for now).