Hokie ClubBLACKSBURG – Michael Brewer threw three touchdowns passes and Brenden Motley threw two to highlight Virginia Tech’s intrasquad football scrimmage at Lane Stadium on Saturday morning.
Virginia Tech’s first-team defense only allowed one score – which came in a goal-line situation that gave the offense the ball at the 4. On that possession, Brewer threw a 3-yard touchdown pass to tight end Bucky Hodges, who made a one-handed grab of the ball on the play.
Brewer also threw a 7-yard touchdown pass to receiver Kevin Asante and a 19-yard touchdown pass to receiver Cam Phillips. Motley threw a 14-yard touchdown to tailback Trey Edmunds and a 5-yarder to Isaiah Ford.
Tech’s offense finished with 278 yards on the day, with 225 of that come through the air. In all, Tech completed 18 of 37, with five touchdowns and just one interception. The interception came on a reverse pass in which Ford tried to hit Phillips, but was intercepted by Greg Stroman.
The Hokies’ lone score on the ground came from receiver Demitri Knowles, who scored from 9 yards out on a reverse against the second-team defense.
“I thought there were some good things out there,” Tech offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler said. “I thought there were some bad things that weren’t as good as last week. But I think there were some things that, with our 1’s in particular, we did good.
“The thing that you see with our team is that we’re scoring. We scored last week. I’ve been a part of these scrimmages where you couldn’t get it from point A to point B ever. So you see some explosions, which is huge. At times, the 1’s ran the ball well. I didn’t think our 2’s ran it well. But there were some things we saw in the throw game that were good.”
Defensively, the Hokies recorded 13 sacks and 20 tackles for a loss. Redshirt freshman backer Raymon Minor had two sacks and Woody Baron had 1.5. Baron, Andrew Motuapuaka and Terrell Edmunds led all plays with five tackles.
“I thought the young guys really improved from Saturday to Tuesday and then particularly from Saturday to Saturday,” Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster said. “It’s the same thing when you get guys playing their first ball game. You expect a big improvement from week 1 to week 2, and I think you saw that with some freshmen and some guys that made mistakes last week, they didn’t do that this week.
“We’ve improved. We’re not where we need to be, particularly in the back end. We gave up some cheap plays in some man situations. We need to be better in those. But our effort was good because our passion and emotion was there. You can’t play good defense without having some emotion.”
Tech will go through two practices this upcoming week and then wrap up spring practice with the annual Maroon-Orange Spring Game next Saturday at 2 p.m. Admission is free. Hokie Village, the pregame festival that debuted last fall, will be opening at 10:30 that morning and closing at 1:15 p.m.