BLACKSBURG, Va. – After suffering their first lost of the season to West Virginia, Lecitus Smith said the locker room was awfully quiet.
While guys were in their heads on Saturday night, Sunday had a brand-new energy across the team.
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“Instead of walking into a locker room full of guys pointing fingers, saying, ‘man it’s because of this, it’s because of that, it’s because offense didn’t do this or defense didn’t do that,’ there weren’t any pointing fingers and that was pretty cool to me because it hasn’t always been like that,” Smith said.
A strong mental shift this week was necessary, as the Hokies welcome the Richmond Spiders into Lane Stadium on Saturday.
“[They’re] a veteran football team coming into our place, they’re very well-coached on both sides of the ball and on special teams,” Fuente said. “They have four or five defensive lineman that would play for us and skill players and scheme. We’re going to have to have a heck of a week of practice.”
A week of practice where emphasis on red-zone execution is likely. The Hokies were 1 of 3 in the red zone against West Virginia, the final scoring opportunity would have won Tech the game.
“I think we just will go over execution,” Tayvion Robinson said. “We made some mistakes Saturday, obviously, but we’re just focusing on executing and going out there and making plays.”
“We have to play better with the ball in our hands,” running back Raheem Blackshear said. “Me, Jalen, Keyshawn, everybody, we talked about it. We have to spark our offense to give us the jump start to get where we need to be at.”
Virginia Tech and Richmond kick off at 12 p.m. on Saturday in Lane Stadium.