Disciplined play belies Tech’s youth

By Nathan Warters
Media General News Service
Published: September 24, 2008

BLACKSBURG — Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer was asked during his Tuesday media conference if he’d ever had such a young team play as disciplined as the current Hokies have.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a team this young,” Beamer answered with a laugh.
Tech’s disciplined play of late belies its relative youthfulness. It’s one of the least penalized teams in the nation, in terms of total penalties and penalty yards, and it’s winning the turnover battle, too.
Is it any wonder the Hokies — who dressed 34 freshmen and sophomores for Saturday’s game at North Carolina — have been able to grind out big wins the last two weeks against physical foes Georgia Tech and UNC?
“I think it goes right back to penalties and turnovers,” Beamer said. “I think that affects that final score. We had a couple of turnovers here in the last ballgame, but I think the lack of those and the lack of penalties is the reason we were able to get two conference wins.”
Tech, one of only eight teams nationally that hasn’t lost a fumble this season, has won both the penalty battle and the turnover battle in each of its last three games. It had only two games all of last season in which that happened.
“We’re just playing a lot smarter,” Hokies defensive end Orion Martin said.
Beamer said he stresses “intelligent recklessness” in practice. He wants his players to be aggressive up to the whistle without the costly errors.
“It’s something the coaches instill in us every day,” Tech offensive guard Nick Marshman said. “We do up-downs if you jump offsides, and it’s not just you personally, it’s the whole receiving unit that was in there or it’s the whole offensive line unit that was in there. We go back and do five or six quick up-downs and go right back in there and start practicing.”
Tech has been penalized only 17 times this season for 96 yards. North Carolina came close to matching that Saturday in its 20-17 loss to the Hokies.
The Tar Heels were flagged 14 times for 121 yards, including critical penalties during two of Tech’s three second-half scoring drives.
“When the other team gives you the opportunity, you need to take advantage of those. It’s basically free yards,” Marshman said.
Which is why the Hokies can’t afford to commit penalties or turn the ball over. They’re young, and they don’t have quick-strike capabilities on offense, not yet at least, to make up for lost yardage.
“We’re not a team that can win a game with six or seven penalties or even two or three,” Marshman said. “We’ve got to make sure we keep it at zero or one. We can’t have four or five penalties a game and try to win these games. We’ve got to make sure we keep these penalties down and keep the mistakes down.”