Wow!  See, I told you that winning on Thursday night will do you some good.

The Hokies shot up five spots in the coaches' poll, from #15 to #10 (gulp), and in the other poll, the one we don't care about, we moved up three spots, from #17 to #14.   Both polls are linked on the HokieCentral home page, if you want to take a look.

So, once again, the ludicrous gap between the AP and coaches poll has shown up.   It's one thing when you're ranked #21 and #25, but when you're ranked #10 and #14, that's silly.  We go through this every year, so it's nothing new to Hokie fans.

I'm guessing that the latest disparity (moving up three versus five) has to do not only with last weeks' rankings (15 and 17) and the dynamics of the two polls, but it also probably has to do with how sportswriters and coaches view what they saw Thursday night.

Coaches are appreciative of defense and special teams play, and they tip their hat to the Hokies for putting together a great D and special teams that can turn the outcome of a game like Tech's can.  Coaches see what they saw Thursday night, and they are truly impressed.  Plus, every coach in the country understands that just moving the ball at all with our crippled offense is a marvelous feat.

As for sportswriters (sorry Doug, Randy, and Jeff), they look at Thursday night's game and say, "Sure, the defense and special teams are good, but that offense stinks."

Hence, the difference.

But when you get right down to it, I'm not focused on polls right now.  They don't mean much at all, at this point.  They're nice, but what really matters are the next six games, and more importantly, that gauntlet of WVU - Syracuse - UVa that still has to be run.

If you haven't seen my recent posts on the message board, I'm having a whale of a time accessing my HokieCentral email and posting HokieCentral updates right now (it's a miracle that you're even reading this).  There is a problem with my web hosting service that is out of their control, and I'm not sure how long this is going to go on.   Please be patient with me while this lasts.

In the meantime, the HC updates may be infrequent.  I'll try to do my best.   And handing out passwords may be slow, as well, depending upon whether I'm able to even retrieve email.

Not only that, but that nasty thing called "The Real World" is intruding (no, I don't mean the MTV show).  As you homeowners know, it's planting season, and Mrs. HC and I are in the midst of planting some shrubs, azaleas, mums, and bulbs.  This is going to be eating up my evenings this week, and after a busy week, we're going to make the annual pilgrimage to Penn State this coming weekend.  So I'll be missing the Temple game as well, which I hate, because I'm dying to see my Hokies in person again.   But that's the price I pay for marrying a Nittany Lion (geez, I hope I spelled that right).

So, if your password request doesn't get processed, or News and Notes updates are non-existent, or your membership is a little slow getting processed (you did send yours in, didn't you?), it's just a temporary thing.  I'm gathering my energy for the late-season push, much like I hope our Hokies are.

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