AHHHH THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!

Okay, so maybe not everywhere. We’ve got some bees coming into Charlottesville this weekend, as the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets come to town to try to mess up our OctGROHberfest party. Nice try, winged insects.

I’ve never liked Georgia Tech, ever. I don’t like their silly car, their silly mascot, or their silly song that sounds remarkably like our song “Rugby Road.” I bet they stole it from us; those engineers were never very creative. Most importantly, a certain GT running back who shall remain nameless said at Media Days that the girls at GT just aren’t very attractive. Clearly, this is important to the outcome of the game.

This game is going to be huge. Simply ridiculous. Who would have ever thought that U.Va. would be atop the Coastal with a perfect conference record after the disastrous start to the 2009 season? Not me. This week, Virginia Football 2.0 will have their first real test since the mindblowing turnaround that is the month of October.

Speaking of Mr. October, that’s not what Groh’s players call him. According to LB Denzel Burrell, the players call him “Jeezy.” As in “Young Jeezy.” As in the rapper. Al Groh is nicknamed after a rapper. He also likes Kanye West and makes hip-hop references. I’ve mentioned this before, but I just can’t get over it.

This should be a pretty exciting game. I’ve had friends asking me about it all week long. “Are we going to win this weekend?” What do I look like, a deck of Tarot cards? My college football pick ‘em record is less than stellar this season (I picked FSU to win the Atlantic Division *wah wah waaaaaaaaahhh*), so I have zero faith in my prediction abilities at this point. I will say that I think we CAN win this game. Say what you want about Al Groh as a coach, but the man is a defensive genius. If anyone can stop this whacked out offense, he can. I’m not saying we WILL win, because there are just too many intangibles, but I think we can, I think we can, I think we can.

On the subject of intangibles (or tangibles, whatever), I’ll let you know as soon as I can tomorrow about the injury report. FYI, they don’t release it until 90 min after Thursday practice ends. We are waiting on updates on Jameel Sewell, Mikell Simpson, and Matt Conrath. Yesterday’s depth chart lists true freshman Will Hill in the starting DE spot, so we may not have Conrath for the game. Again, this is pure speculation on my part; tomorrow we get the official word.

You have all  heard by now about GT and Paul Johnson’s triple-option-wishbone-spread-macarena-grey poupon-fried-turkey whatever by now. I don’t need to tell you it’s dangerous. Even the oh-so-high-and-mighty Virginia Tech (is my contempt plain enough, here?) fell before the onslaught of the Bumblebees. However, we beat them last year, and we can do it again at home. Marc Verica, if he is indeed our quarterback (he’s always THE PEOPLE’S QUARTERBACK), beat GT last season. Our defense has proved week in and week out that it can hang with the best of them. This is within our reach. “Well, certainly it is a smoother week than it was last year.  At least we have a set of ideas going into the week, whereas last year it was really well into the week before, one, we had to just go to the practice field and see it,” Groh said. “Well, now we can watch the game video and see things that worked, and we can also see things that were really an issue.  It wasn’t all perfect.  We had a lot of issues during the course of the game.”

The biggest improvement Georgia Tech has seen has been in the play of its QB Josh Nesbitt. He has made the triple threat credible, and ‘08 ACC POY Jonathan Dwyer hasn’t had to carry the load himself. The one thing that made me smile while watching the GT-VT game last weekend was the number of botched pitches the Jackets had. Our front three guys are going to gobble those up, om nom nom.

Tech hasn’t won in CVille since 1990, and I don’t intend to give them that satisfaction. What am I going to do, you ask? Well, I’m taking time out from the press box this week (I know, I’ve said this before) to sit in the stands and cheer the team on. I figure the team needs one more voice in the stands, rather than one more journo in the box mooching off all the free coffee (you know who you are). It’s my sorority’s parents weekend, so I’m headed to a fun tailgate before the game. I’ll be sure to take plenty of photos to share with you all later. Be on the lookout for tweets from the game. I’ll be heading to the postgame press conference as well, so watch for updates from that.

Most importantly, I’ll be making a sign for this week’s game. See if you can spot me on TV!

Coach Jeezy says: “About as good as challenge as we could look for this week in an opponent.  Sure could make a pretty strong argument, the hottest team in the ACC with a unique system of play in two of the three elements of their team.  Much is made of the uniqueness of the Georgia Tech offense, but they do some very, very creative things with their special teams that makes their special teams amongst the very most effective and the most difficult to prepare for any particular year.  We had the same issue last year, and they were really kind of ahead of the curve on a lot of things that they’re doing with their special teams, and as a result they frequently gain a big field position advantage in each one of the turnarounds, which then puts this ground-eating offense in a very advantageous position to start with.”

Blair Says: I’m not giving a score, because it’s too close to call. Keys to a win are : 1) Win the turnover battle. 2) Contain GT’s running game. 3) PUT SOME POINTS ON THE BOARD! Remember, 44 points still wasn’t enough for Everyone’s Favorite QB Christian Ponder to beat the Jackets.

Wahoowah!