Here are three takeaways from this past weekend's football action around the state.
Hokies stay hot
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Virginia Tech certainly has come a long way from a humiliating September loss to Duke (45-10).
The Hokies made it three conference wins in a row and four wins in their last five games overall with their most impressive performance of the season, a 36-17 win over previously No. 19 Wake Forest.
The Hokies dominated the second half after trailing 10-6 at halftime and 17-13 early in the third quarter, scoring the final 23 points of the game in beating a ranked team for the first time this season.
The defense limited a high-powered Wake Forest offense to its season low in points and total yards.
With the win, it’s looking more and more like the season finale at Virginia will be a winner-take-all game for the ACC Coastal title and the chance to face Clemson in the ACC title game.
The Hokies have games at Georgia Tech and home against Pittsburgh before visiting Charlottesville.
Virginia survives, inches closer to title game
Virginia cut it a lot closer than many hoped against a two-win Georgia Tech team, but the Cavaliers managed to pull out a 33-28 win to stay on top of the ACC Coastal standings in what was Virginia’s second-to-last conference game of the season.
In a strange quirk of scheduling for late November, the Cavaliers will be off next week, then host Liberty in a nonconference game before hosting archrival Virginia Tech to end the season.
Rematches dominate first round of state playoffs
The pairings for the state football playoffs were announced over the weekend, and needless to say there will be a lot of games where opponents are familiar with each other.
Overall, there will be 19 rematches of regular-season games in the first round of the playoffs, so it will be interesting to see if it really will be hard for some teams to beat another twice in a season.