Hokie Tracks are Rapping about Lil' Wang

Lil' Wang practiced on Saturday for the first time since breaking his foot against ECU. That's great news as far as the future of the o-line is concerned. Both starting guards, Jaymes Brooks and Greg Nosal, are seniors. The coaches raved over Wang during spring practice and August camp and he figured to rotate at guard this season. In his only complete game of the season he played 29 snaps against Appalachian State and graded out at 89 percent. Michigan's two inside tackles are stout, and it'd be a huge boost for his progression to get work against them.

Juniors David Wilson, who Yahoo! named a second team All-American, and Jayron Hosley will both soon decide whether or not to enter the 2012 NFL the draft. Mark Giannotto says David Wilson is undecided about the draft, where as Hosley will likely enter.

"Clear first round, it's definitely gonna be like, 'Whoa,'" Wilson said. "Second round, that's gonna make it hard and think about it. .?.?. With the combine, there's chances to move up. It just depends."

DW is an ambitious hardworking kid, and if he's already thinking about improving his draft stock at the combine, then he may have already made his mind up and not know it. At the beginning of the season I figured he'd come back to school, because he just seems like one of those kids that loves the college experience.
Losing Hosley is going to hurt.

"I plan on getting my grade back and go from there. Right now my mind is I'm moving on after this season," Hosley said.

"I put the papers in because obviously I have my mind on leaving or possibly leaving," he later added. "I'm not going back and forth or re-thinking anything. Right now my mindset is on leaving so right now I'm gonna complete the rest of my time here and help my team to win as much as I can for right now."

Against Clemson we saw a glimpse of what the secondary might look like without Jayron. Granted Fuller was playing Whip and not corner, but it didn't look pretty. Although their ceilings are high, Jarrett and Bonner looked young and inexperienced, because they're young and inexperienced. And don't forget, 5th man Cris Hill is a senior.
http://blogs.roanoke.com/andybittervirginiatechfootball/2011/12/11/lefto...

But did anyone tell Tyler Denard doesn't tie his shoelaces.

"That's the thing that kind of scares you because when you can run so well with the quarterback you don't need an extra blocker," Tyler said. "When you're running with the quarterback, you use your running back as an extra blocker, and it's tougher to get into gaps because there's that extra blocker. It's more difficult, especially with a runner like him. He can break it for a long run in a flash, so in this game it's all about stopping Denard Robinson."

...

"You have to be really good with your run-pass reads and also when you do get a pass read he can take off and run and just scramble,' Tyler said. "So you have to be really good at coming back to the ball. You have to be very good at tackling in space, because he's so elusive and there's going to be a lot of one on one tackles out in space. I mean, really, it's going to be a team effort. You're going to have to get him down, make them run another play. You can't let them get many big plays."

I'd imagine whenever Michigan is in their multiple receiver, shotgun formations we'll see Hill and Hosley at corner and Fuller, the spill-man, at Whip to match up with Denard's speed and balance against the run-pass threat. Although, I bet French will go into our defensive gamplan in more detail as we get closer to kickoff.

Why aren't you buying Sugar Bowl tickets? As of today we've sold less than 10,000 tickets, the Frankinator is shilling like Seth on HokieSports for you to buy (which makes me sad inside), and now VT is letting people buy proxy tickets. Can you not afford the trip, or on the fence? Or are you going, but buying scalped tickets? Or are you burnt out after 4 BCS games in the last 5 seasons?