Hokie Tracks are antsy for the Sugar Bowl

It's the defense stupid. That's the main reason for Michigan's turnaround in 2011. You can see the trend quickly in chart form courtesy of /r/cfb. If you'd prefer long-ish form Andy Bitter has you covered.

Oft-criticized defensive coordinator Greg Robinson had never run the 3-3-5 scheme former coach Rich Rodriguez preferred and was forced to work with many of the assistants Rodriguez brought with him in 2009-10. The Wolverines' defense, which had always been stout under ex-coach Lloyd Carr, dropped from 24th nationally in Carr's final season to 82nd, 67th and 110th in Rodriguez's three years.

Enter Mattison, who used to coach at Michigan, Notre Dame and, most recently, the NFL's Baltimore Ravens from 2008-10.

A proponent of the 4-3 defense, Mattison's scheme better suited Michigan's personnel, with defensive lineman Mike Martin (54 tackles, 5.5 TFLs, 3 sacks) and Ryan Van Bergen (41 tackles, 12 TFls, 5 sacks) starring up front.

"They present a lot of problems," Stinespring said. "I think they play to their strengths, they're very physical up front, they've got a lot of size."

That's aided by the complexity of their scheme. With Mattison being a former NFL coordinator, Michigan's defensive playbook appears to be much deeper than that of most colleges.

"It's almost like they've got a different playbook for second-and-long and third down," Stinespring said.

Michigan has no shortage of blitzes.

"There's a million of them, and in several different packages," Stinespring said. "And you know that not all of them could come in every single game. ...

"There's a 20-hour [practice] rule being broken somewhere," he joked.

And that's the matchup that worries me the most, our offensive line handling Michigan's front-seven. It seems like we're able to stop superior size xor scheme. Clemson had better athletes and beat us mentally, twice. Stanford did the same in last year's Orange Bowl with their NFL scheme and blitzes. The guys up front will all have to have career games for us to win.

Bud Foster and Michigan offensive coordinator Al Borges are familiar with each other. Borges called the plays for Auburn's three-headed monster of Ronnie Brown, Cadillac Williams and Jason Campbell in the 2005 Sugar Bowl against Tech. The Hokies D held the Tigers to 16 points, 17 less than their season average. (It might be the only Tech game where I wished we had kicked field goals instead of going for touchdowns.) Borges is basing this year's gameplan, in part, on what Clemson did to attack Tech, any sane coach would.

"They're a good team, well coached, and they're going to give us all we want," Borges said. "Hopefully, not more than we want."

There was one team in particular, though, that was able to find the soft spot in the Hokies' defense, and that was the lone team that beat them this year.

Clemson defeated Virginia Tech twice, and did it in impressive fashion. The Tigers won 23-3 on Oct. 1, and again, 38-10, in the ACC title game earlier this month.

Borges said he's dissected the game film from those routs, and saw one significant weakness he plans to attack.
“(Clemson) got on the perimeter a few times," Borges said. "They got in the open field on them, and Clemson's got some pretty athletic kids. With anybody, if you can get some athletes in space, you have a good chance for success."

Obviously if Denard gets into space bad things are going to happen.

The Wall Street Journal rates Virginia Tech as "The Best" among college football uniforms, and the same goes Michigan.

Virginia Tech: The panelists made it clear that Virginia Tech's maroon-and-orange color scheme was a bit unusual—but that they liked it. The orange-and-white stripe on the shoulders drew special praise. "It's an odd color combo, but it works. It's atypical, and the stripes I love," Shellhammer said.

However, Maryland is included on the list, so I don't think it's very credible. I will say this, #ALLMAROONEVERYTHING would be the best uniform of the bowl season, sorry Oregon.

Ticket update: On Monday, Jim Weaver mentioned on Tech Talk Live the Hokies have sold just shy of 14,400 tickets. However, the recent bump in sales isn't due to fans opting to pay more money and buying the tickets from Tech.

Virginia Tech has actually sold 10,243 tickets and, through the school's proxy program, fans have purchased another 409 tickets that will be distributed to military personnel and various New Orleans charity organizations.

Sandy Smith, Virginia Tech's assistant athletic director for ticketing services, said Tuesday an additional 4,000 tickets will be distributed to military personnel with the cost being picked up by a combination of the school and the ACC, because both would have to cover the cost of unsold tickets anyway.

In a surprise to no one who has watched bowl games played to an audience of half filled stadiums this winter, schools are having trouble selling bowl tickets. Some fans don't go to games, others do it on a budget. For example, Clemson has a fantastic traveling reputation and has only sold about half of their 17,500 Orange Bowl tickets. Their fans will show up in Miami, but they'll get their ticket via the secondary market because it's cheaper.

Finally, I hope this man ends up on the Hokies. At the very least he'd be a one man hit squad on kickoffs.

The Frankinator plans to meet with him after the Sugar Bowl and he was training with J.R. Collins.