TheACC.com recently sat down with Hokie linebacker Vince Hall to get his thoughts on his career and the football team's rematch with Boston College. Here is the link to the Q&A.

Volleyball player Felicia Willoughby was recently named the ACC’s Freshman of the Year after a vote of the league’s 12 head coaches. The Pleasanton, Calif., native has easily become one of the program's top blockers, as she tallied a team-high 1.51 blocks per game to lead the league this season, and is ranked 11th among all NCAA players this year. In collecting 172 total blocks this season, she broke Julie Neely's record of 167, set in 1986. Willoughby also holds the top spot on Tech's freshman list for total blocks, in addition to the freshman and single-season record for block assists, at 143. Here is a brief Q&A with Felicia:

• How exciting was it to be named Freshman of the Year? Was it something you thought you had a shot at or were you surprised?

“I was very excited to be named Freshman of the Year. Yes, I was suprised, since I never really thought about it. It's a great honor, but now I know that I will need to work even harder for the next upcoming season.”

• You set numerous records for blocks this season. What has been your knack for blocking more attacks per game than anyone else in the conference? What is the key to being a good blocker?

“Well, ever since I have been playing volleyball, I have never been that great of a blocker. Just working hard during practice and the feedback from the coaches have helped me a lot. Learning from my past mistakes and becoming quicker along the net, I believe, has helped me become successful. Being light on your feet, anticipating the play, and watching the setter and the attacker are the keys to becoming a successful blocker.”

• The team didn't fare as well as it did last season, but with so many young players, 2008 should see much improvement. What does the team need to improve on the most, and what are you personally looking to build on in the offseason?

“Yes, we did have a very young team. We have seven incoming freshmen next year that will bring a lot of talent and diversity to the team. I think the team needs to improve on its confidence. There were many games that we lost that we should have won. We need to believe that we can do it, and play to win – not to not lose. I think this just comes with experience. What I am personally looking to build on in the offseason would probably have to be upper body strength, and recovering from season injuries.”

The Nov. 23rd issue of Golf World hit the newsstands recently and the Virginia Tech golf team was selected as one of the "Newsmakers of the Year". The Golf World writer and photographer spent two days on campus with the Hokies several weeks ago and the story is a very special tribute to those lost on April 16th and how it impacted the team. Hopefully you will be able to see a copy of the magazine with all the pictures, but in case you can't get one, you can read the article itself on-line by clicking here.

Be sure to check out the men’s basketball game between the Hokies and Penn State on Wednesday night at 9:30 p.m. on ESPN2, which is part of the annual Big Ten/ACC Challenge.

A donation of $5 from selected tickets sold for tonight’s game at Penn State will go to the Jeremy Herbstritt Fund, which was set up after the events of April 16th in honor of the former Penn State student who was doing graduate studies at Virginia Tech at the time of the tragedy. The Herbstritt family, as well as victims of the April shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech will be honored prior to the game.

The Family Clothesline will present checks totaling $110,000 to the Herbstritt Fund and the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund. The Clothesline raised funds for victims of the shootings through the sale of orange shirts honoring the Virginia Tech victims prior to Penn State's Blue-White Football scrimmage in the spring. Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis and Virginia Tech head coach Seth Greenberg will each join a player in presenting the Herbstritt family with a special commemoration from each team prior to the game.

Women's cross country runner Tasmin Fanning recently earned Virginia Tech Athlete of the Week honors for the third time this year after placing 12th at the NCAA Cross Country Championships to become the women's program's fourth-ever All-American. He are Tasmin's thoughts on her accomplishment:

-Has it hit you yet that you can say you are the 12th best runner in the country? And that's it's the best any Hokie (woman) has ever done at the national championship?

“The accomplishment hasn’t quite hit me yet. I have to remind myself when I wake up. On the women’s side for the Hokies, this was the best finish yet, but I hope it sets a standard for all of us to improve on in the future.”

-Were you surprised at how well you performed? What were your thoughts immediately following the race?

“I wasn’t surprised at my finish, but more happily satisfied. I knew I could be All-American and compete with the best out there, but it was just a matter of actually doing it, or how well I could do it. After the race, I was tired, but very happy. I didn’t know my exact place, but I knew it was top 15, which exceeded my expectations, and all I could do was smile.”

-According to Coach Thomas, you kept improving your position as the race went on. How did you make that happen?

“In a field of 250 runners it’s important to get out well, but not to expend all your energy at the start to do that. I managed to get out in a pack towards the front, and rolled with that momentum for the first kilometer of the race. People started dropping off the pack, and I kept my composure and began picking some people off. With less than 2k to go, I was starting to feel tired, but I looked in front of me and some saw girls, and knew I could get to them. It was a lot of challenging myself to pass people even when I was tired, but I knew that they were, too, so why not make a move? Coach was giving me my placement throughout the race, so I always knew where I was. When he counted me in placement for All-American, there was no way I was going to lose that.”

-The team just missed out on qualifying for the second-straight year, so how important was it to represent Virginia Tech all by yourself?

“Not qualifying as a team was devastating. Last year we were 18th but we were not satisfied, and we were eager to come back this year to improve. We didn’t get that chance as a team, but I knew I could represent Tech well and show some people that had the team been there, we would have done some damage.”

    The Hokie football team will be sporting new T-shirts this week with two recent slogans on them. On the front is “6:01” and on the back is the phrase “A Minor Setback For A Major Comeback”.
    Both stem from Tech’s last loss, a 14-10 defeat at the hands of the team the Hokies face Saturday: Boston College.
    The “6:01” comes from the time in the fourth quarter when D.J. Parker intercepted Matt Ryan, but Tech failed to score and close out the game, keeping the door open for the Eagles’ comeback.
    The other phrase was coined by cornerback Victor “Macho” Harris in the locker room following Tech’s win at Georgia Tech in reference to the BC game and has been posted in the locker room since. It has been a rallying cry for the Hokies en route to their ACC Coastal Division Championship.
    Tech and BC meet Saturday in the Dr. Pepper ACC Championship at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m., on ABC and Brad Nessler, Bob Griese, Paul Maguire and Bonnie Bernstien will have the call. The winner of the game will earn an automatic berth in the FedEx Orange Bowl in Miami on Jan. 3, 2008.

The Hokie basketball teams will be spending the Thanksgiving break outside of the contiguous United States, as the men travel to Anchorage, Alaska, to play in the Carrs/Safeway Great Alaska Shootout, and the women visit Freeport, Bahamas, to compete in the Junkanoo Jam.

As a way to keep up with the Hokies and their travels, a pair of blogs will be set up on hokiesports.com that will be updated regularly by athletics communications officers Bill Dyer (Alaska correspondent) and Torye Hurst (Bahamas correspondent).

The men’s team arrived in Alaska late on Sunday night and the women’s team will  land in the Bahamas on Tuesday. Be sure to check the blogs each day to see how the trips are going.

For those who can't make it to the Tech-Mimai game tomorrow, here's a coverage map, as put out by ABC.

Kick-off is set for 3:42 p.m., with a possible five-minute slide in either direction, and the game will be televised in HD on ABC.

Be sure to join the rest of the Virginia Tech community on Saturday at approximately 10:30 a.m., just five hours before the Hokie football team takes on Miami, in a campus-wide event organized as a way to show the rest of the world Blacksburg’s appreciation for all it has received since the events of April 16.

The "Hokies Thank the World" event will bring together thousands of Hokies on the Virginia Tech Drillfield to spell out a message of thanks to the world in recognition of the global outpouring of support and love for the Virginia Tech community following the events of April 16.

The message of thanks will be recorded by ground, aerial, and satellite imagery and will be shared with the world through www.HokiesThankTheWorld.org. Visit the website for more information, and see you at the Drillfield on Saturday!

He cannot voice his thoughts the way many of us do. His muscles do not allow him to form words that, in turn, express his needs and thoughts, much less his wishes and desires. But he does speak in more subtle ways through eye movements; his 'voice' is seen by those who watch. This is how Brandon P. tells people about himself and what he likes. What he loves the most is the Virginia Tech football team. And several people have been listening – arranging for Brandon the trip of a lifetime.

An avid Hokies football fan, Brandon recently learned that he is going to see his favorite team play their last home game of the season, a sold-out game that had space for one more because of the efforts of several staff people at Virginia Tech and St. Mary's Home for Disabled Children in Norfolk, Va.

Cheerful and winsome, this 12-year-old boy heads to Blacksburg early this Saturday morning, Nov. 17, with three chaperones (Kathy Brobst, Jennifer Reasor and Shaun Stauffer) because some special people took the time to make a wish come true.

Those involved in the cooperation with St. Mary’s include Virginia Tech Associate Director of Athletics Tom Gabbard, Lane Stadium employee Pete Pool, The Inn at Virginia Tech’s Gary Crizer and Michelle Vann, and Virginia Tech Class of 2007 alum Peter Jacobs. St. Mary’s and Brandon, whose favorite Hokies are Branden Ore, Tyrod Taylor and Frank Beamer, wish to thank all who were involved in making this dream come true.

St. Mary's Home for Disabled Children in Norfolk serves the Commonwealth of Virginia and cares for 88 children with severe to profound disabilities. The Home provides quality care including specialized medical care, excellent educational services and a comprehensive activities program in a home-like environment for special children from birth to age 21, so each child can achieve his or her fullest potential.
 

TheACC.com recently conducted a Q&A with Virginia Tech men's soccer senior Scott Spangler about his path to Blacksburg, this year's successful season, and his work as a theatre arts major. Click here to check it out.

It was a busy game for head athletic trainer Mike Goforth and his staff, but he checks in with the following Sunday injury report:

Sean Glennon - grade 1 concussion; full on Monday
Vince Hall - cleared to play; full on Monday (wrist)
Eddie Royal - cleared to play; full on Monday (calf)
Ryan Shuman - blue on Monday; probable for Miami (ankle)
Kory Robertson - full on Monday (slight knee sprain)
Kenny Lewis - blue on Monday; will play Saturday vs. Miami (ankle)
Branden Ore - full on Monday (ankle)
Aaron Brown - out (shoulder)

For those who can't make it to the Tech-Florida State game tomorrow, here's a coverage map, as put out by ABC and ESPN. The game is also a reverse mirror game, meaning it could be shown on either ESPN or ESPN2 in another region, so check your listings.

Kick-off is set for 3:37 p.m., and the game will not be televised in HD on ABC.

Virginia Tech cracked the top 25 of the final Golf World/Nike Golf Division I Coaches’ Poll of the fall season. Compiled by Golf World magazine, Nike Golf and the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA), the poll is the final rankings until the start of the spring season. The Hokies, who had not received a vote in any of the three previous polls of the fall, are tied with Tennessee for 23rd in the rankings. Tech is one of seven ACC teams in the poll, by far the most teams of any single conference.

The Hokies entered the poll following victories in the team’s final two events of the fall schedule, the Bank of Tennessee Intercollegiate at the Ridges and the Landfall Tradition. In the other national polls, the Hokies are 32nd in the Golfweek/Sagarin poll and 23rd in the Golfstat.com NCAA Head-to-Head standings. Tech, No. 22 Indiana and No. 25 North Carolina entered the poll this week.

Virginia Tech will return to action in the spring Feb. 29 – March 2 at the Puerto Rico Classic.

A lot of fans have emailed in asking what exactly is a “reverse mirror game” like the ESPN.com Web site is listing the Tech-FSU and Illinois-Ohio State games as.

According to an ACC rep, “A reverse mirror is a term applied to an ABC regional telecast that is also televised on ESPN2. This is something the networks have started doing this year as they have regionalized ESPN2 coverage at different times. An ACC game would be shown in the ACC Region on ABC, but then would also be shown in the Big Ten region on ESPN2, Conversely, the Big Ten game is shown in the Big Ten region on ABC and in the ACC region on ESPN2.”

This works with other conferences as well, but these two are used as the example.

Women’s soccer player Ashley Kinser was recently named Virginia Tech’s Virginia Lottery Athlete of the Week, as well as the ACC Player of the Week, for her efforts in Tech’s upset of No. 10 Boston College this past Sunday. With her parents in attendance, the senior made her last game in Blacksburg a historic one for the Hokies as she scored two goals in the first seven minutes of the game to help the Hokies shut out the Eagles 3-0. Three days earlier, Kinser recorded an assist as Tech shut out Longwood, 4-0, and ended the weekend with a total of five points. Both victories give Tech its second-ever winning season and a chance for a NCAA Tournament at-large berth. Also, Boston College now becomes the highest-ranked program that Tech has defeated in its 15-year history. Here us a brief Q&A with Ashley:

• How exciting was it to score two goals in your final home game as a Hokie? Take us back to each of the goals and what was going through your mind.

“I couldn't believe it!! It was so exciting and I'm glad I could help make it a memorable day for all the seniors! The first goal was pretty much Marika Gray, who was beating them all day down the sideline. Her cross was awesome, the keeper got a touch, and I was in the right spot at the right time! The second goal was all Jen Harvey, who played me a perfect ball through. I want to thank my teammates and coaches for giving me the opportunity to experience such an exciting conclusion to my career.”

• You guys jumped out to an early 2-0 lead over the 10th-ranked team in the country, and held on to win for arguably the biggest upset in the history of the program. How did it feel to be a part of that, and what was it like as the clock wound down and you knew you would get the win?

“Our team put together the gutsiest performance I've ever been apart of. I'm so proud of my team and how they came out to play, for working hard for all 90 minutes. I was nervous at times that BC would sneak back into the game like last year, but with the fight our back line put in, they didn't have a chance. It felt amazing to be a part of such a team effort.”

• Even though Clemson had already clinched the final ACC Tournament spot the day before your game, what was the mindset of the team heading into the BC match?

“We went in with confidence from our last two games and had a lot of momentum going into the game. We never let the fact that we could no longer get into the ACC tournament have an impact on our desire to win that day. We still had a whole lot to play for, a winning season, a possible NCAA bid, and we wanted to finish the season off in the right way, just to name a few.”

Clemson defeated Duke, 1-0, on Saturday night to finish the ACC season with 11 points. Tech currently has eight points and with a win over Boston College would also have 11. However, the No. 25 Tigers (9-4-5, 2-3-5 ACC)  have the tiebreaker due to rules explained in an earlier post, so no matter what, they are going to the ACC Tournament.

Regardless of the outcome in tomorrow's game, the Hokies have set the record for the most points by a team to not earn a berth to the ACC Tournament in its current eight-team format that began in 2005 with the arrival of Boston College. NC State and Miami had the previous record of six points in 2005.

Despite the news, the Hokies (7-7-3, 2-5-2 ACC) will have much to play for on Sunday as they will have the opportunity to finish the season with a winning record for the first time since 2004 and remain eligible for a NCAA Tournament at-large berth. Also, they have the opportunity to upset the highest ranked opponent in program history against No. 10 Boston College.

Finally, seniors Heather Hallberg, Ashley Kinser, Erin Moore, Mary Elizabeth Newton and Gina Om will be playing in their final home game at the Virginia Tech Soccer Stadium. All five of these players have been in Blacksburg since Tech’s first year in the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2004 and have helped turn the team into a competitive program, both regionally and nationally. They led the program to its first ever NCAA Tournament trip in 2004 and its only two victories and three ties against top-25 programs.

Furthermore, with tomorrow’s game, the seniors have an opportunity to finish with another winning season after helping Tech record its first-ever winning season in 2004 with a school record 11 wins. In 2005, they helped set a program record by shutting out eight opponents.

The first 100 fans through the gates will receive a free Virginia Tech visor as part of the Senior Day celebration.

While playing a non-conference game against Longwood, the Hokies were hoping that at least one of three schools - Boston College, Duke and Clemson - would lose on Thursday night. Duke defeated Miami 4-1, while Florida State defeated Clemson 2-0. Boston College beat Maryland 2-0. As a result, only Clemson and Tech remain in the fight for a ACC Tournament berth.

Both teams are tied for the eighth and final spot with eight points. However, the Tigers have the tiebreaker due to rules explained in an earlier post. Clemson plays their final ACC game on Saturday at home against Duke at 7 p.m.  If Clemson wins, the Tigers will advance. However, if they lose or tie, the Hokies will control their own destiny on Sunday against No. 10 Boston College.

In other words, Tech needs a better result than Clemson to advance. An update on the story will be posted after Saturday's game is concluded.

The tournament begins Wed., Nov. 7, at the Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.