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I'm not going to grab a shovel and start throwing dirt on this season just yet, but this game reactivated the fears and failures of recent seasons and even activated a few new worries. It wasn't so much that the Hokies lost; it was the way they came completely and totally unglued in the face of adversity, from the coaching staff all the way down through the entire roster of players.

This was a rude spanking that the Hokies received from WVU, and though I have watched most of the game film, this analysis won't be very technical in nature. I'd rather talk about some larger philosophical issues, and what this game represents to the Hokies.

Where to start? Everybody, from the players to the coaches to the refs to the ESPN commentators, had a bad game. From the time Bryan Randall dropped the first snap, to the Hokies committing three penalties and throwing an interception on the first drive, you suspected this wasn't VT's night. And you were right.

Statistically, WVU pulled a near-repeat of last year's 21-18 win in Blacksburg. Last year, they ran for 263 yards on 46 carries; this year, it was 264 yards on 59 carries. Last year, they had 124 yards passing; this year, 162. Last year they had 20 first downs; this year, 21.

Based on the way WVU tailbacks Quincy Wilson and Kay-Jay Harris cut through the Hokie defense (48 carries, 255 yards, 5.3 ypc, 2 TDs), Virginia Tech didn't learn much in the last year about how to stop the WVU offense.

The Hokies did learn how to completely lose their composure in the face of adversity, though. It started with penalties and turnovers, and then it escalated to personal fouls and confused behavior from the coaches, followed by the coaches finally mailing it in with 6 minutes to go, when they punted on fourth down with the score 28-7.

But truth to tell, the Hokies had lost it long before that. They deflated early in the third quarter, when Rasheed Marshall dropped a WVU-record 93-yard TD pass behind VT Rover Michael Crawford and into the arms of Travis Garvin, who raced untouched to paydirt and a 21-7 Mountaineer lead.

From that point on, frustration turned to resignation and angry lashing out by the VT coaches and players, who racked up four personal fouls and one well-publicized head slap in the next ten minutes. Down by just two scores with 25 minutes left to go after Garvin's long TD, the Hokies failed to compose themselves and instead became totally unraveled. And I am completely running out of ways to say "came unglued," "lost their composure," etc. already, just eight paragraphs in.

But where this game was really lost, I thought, was in the first 13 minutes. In that 13 minutes, the following happened:

• Bryan Randall dropped the first snap from scrimmage, a bad omen.

• The Hokies had two turnovers: Randall threw an interception on the first possession and threw an option pitch behind Kevin Jones on the second possession, resulting in a fumble recovery by WVU.

• VT committed 7 penalties, one of which was declined.

• The Hokies only lined up with ten guys on offense and wasted a timeout.

• Tech surrendered a 12-play, 90 yard drive, and a 3-play, 36 yard drive for touchdowns.

• WVU led 14-0.

Once Tech was down by two scores, frustration, confusion, and concern set in. You could see it in the faces of the VT coaches, led by Frank Beamer, whose furrowed brow was camera fodder for ESPN from the early part of the second quarter onward. The frustration on the face of the coach of the nation's #3 team was the type of football theater that ESPN lives for, and they had so many close-ups of Beamer during this game that I can tell you what he had for dinner, because I could see the tiny particles of food stuck in his teeth.

This game saw the return of many of the shortcomings that doomed the Hokies to a late-season slide last year, only this time around, VT can't blame youth and injuries. They're one year older and a lot healthier than they were when this game was played last year.

Despite that, we saw the following:

• Arm-tackling. The ESPN commentators talked about it, Kay-Jay Harris talked about it before and after the game, and the Hokies did it. They consistently hit WVU runners with their arms and shoulders, instead of driving into them, wrapping them up, and taking them to the ground.

• Ineffective defensive tackles. They made a few plays here and there, mostly Jonathan and Kevin Lewis (4 tackles each), but on one play, Jason Lallis got pushed 9 yards downfield.

• Linebackers that were out of position and didn't get any penetration. Amazingly, the trio of Robinson, Baaqee, and Manning had 37 tackles between the three of them (it sure didn't seem like that many), but just 2 TFL's for 2 yards in losses, and they were often nowhere to be found when WVU ran the ball up the middle. But the LB's aren't all to blame � see the next bullet point.

• Defensive ends that weren't a factor in the game. Darryl Tapp appeared to play more than Cols Colas, and Tapp got mauled, blocked down, and overall was a liability. Without DE penetration on running plays, the WVU runners were not forced inside on off-tackle runs, and the linebackers didn't know whether to defend the inside or the outside � and often chose wrong. Wilson and Harris often had two holes to pick from, and only one VT linebacker to fill them.

• A free safety (Jimmy Williams) that was invisible. On Garvin's 93-yard TD, Williams bought the play-action fake and didn't help Crawford out in coverage, but geez, what do you expect JW to do? Backpedal from a WVU team that was abusing the Hokies with the run? No. Play-action exists for a reason: to freeze defenders momentarily. It almost always works, and in this case, it ensured that Crawford and Garvin were man-on-man, without any interference from that pesky free safety with the great wheels. That said, Williams didn't play the run particularly well, either.

• A Rover (Michael Crawford) that was also ineffective, not to mention getting beaten deep by a wide receiver in single coverage. (That has happened at least twice before, when UConn's Feldhausen ran past him for long gain, and Syracuse's Johnnie Morant did the same.) But asking a Rover to cover a wide receiver one on one is suicide, and every team with VT tape knows it. WVU knew it and cashed in on it.

• A QB with no confidence who was having a bad night. Remember that ON/OFF switch I talked about a few articles back? Definitely in the OFF position for this game. While Bryan Randall was a pretty accurate 14-of-22 (63.6%), he threw three picks and fumbled four times, mostly dropped snaps. And he had a fifth fumble that was ruled a dead ball before he dropped it (a terrible call, by the way).

• An offensive coordinator who went into his shell with the Hokies down by two scores. Bryan Stinespring, who had made so much progress, reverted to runs up the middle, short passing routes, and very little misdirection. The Hokies ran a fullback dive on 2nd and 18, ran the delayed handoff on 3rd and 1 (it was stuffed), threw a 5-yard pass to the tight end on 3rd and 10, and didn't try to burn a hard-charging WVU defense at all with misdirection. On that 3rd and 1 just mentioned, a naked bootleg by the QB probably would have killed the 'Eers, who flooded the gaps with linebackers.

There's probably more, but that sums up a lot of the problems VT had in this game.

What I found to be most disconcerting was that the VT coaches didn't keep their cool when things went south. Leadership is a hard-to-define but tangible thing, and ideally, it will come from your players. Guys like Cornell Brown, George Del Ricco, Jim Druckenmiller, Al Clark, Corey Moore, Michael Vick, and Lee Suggs are guys who would all step up and make plays when needed.

But sometimes, the players don't make the plays, and in fact, they make negative plays. At that point, it's up to the coaches to set the tone, keep things on an even keel, and put their players in position to succeed.

What could the coaches have done? I'm not sure. I can make some suggestions, but every time the Hokies got anything going, a penalty would kill it. But I sure would have liked to have seen some cool, collected faces on Frank Beamer and defensive coordinator Bud Foster, instead of the confused, angry, shell-shocked looks that ESPN delighted in showing. I would have liked to have seen Beamer talking into his headset a little more, instead of standing open-mouthed at VT's latest penalty, fumble, or interception.

I would have liked to have seen more coaching, instead of head-slapping. While I don't think the head-slap to Wilford was a big deal (it's FOOTBALL, people), it was out of character for Beamer, indicating that he lost his self control. And that's a bigger deal to me than him slapping Wilford's helmet and telling him to get his head in the game -- or whatever that was about. (My guess? Beamer was getting on EW's case about something, EW was sassing a bit too much, and Beamer popped him on the head to snap him out of it. That's just my guess.)

In short, I would have liked to have seen VT's coaches meet adversity head-on, with a "Let's climb this mountain" attitude, instead of the "This mountain's falling on us!" attitude. True leaders relish adversity and the chance to prove themselves. Remember Michael Vick standing on the sidelines, calmly and coolly looking at the plays on his wrist band, after WVU took their 20-19 lead in the 1999 game? Vick later said he "lived" for moments like that.

That's leadership. To hell with the cannon arm and lightning-fast feet. It was Vick's leadership that we loved. Ditto Druckenmiller and Moore. When you hit a leader in the mouth, he smiles, spits out a tooth or two, and then punches you back � harder.

The good VT teams of the past had more than one guy who stepped up at crunch time and made plays. The problem with this game is a problem that has plagued the Hokies since Vick left after the 2000 season: a lack of on-field leadership. I can name, right off the top of my head, ten guys who are either seniors or star players on this team, but did not step up in this game and "make a play" to turn the tide, or even worse, made negative plays or committed penalties: Randall, Jake Grove, Ernest Wilford, Nathaniel Adibi, Mikal Baaqee, Vegas Robinson, DeAngelo Hall, Jimmy Williams, Michael Crawford, Carter Warley � even the normally reliable Doug Easlick missed a few blocks.

These are the guys that you rely on to carry the team, play well, and keep a cool head during hard times, and none of them did it. And some of those guys have been playing in the VT system, and starting, for a loooong time.

Who did play well? I thought KJ, though he looked a little more sluggish than usual, came to play. He averaged 7 yards a carry on his first six carries and had 39 yards of total offense on four straight plays on VT's first drive, before the Hokies turned it over. Once VT got down two scores and continued to commit penalties that put them in long-yardage situations, KJ disappeared from the game plan.

I though Keith Willis played well, but tight ends can't lift and carry a VT team. I thought Justin Hamilton did well, and until his last disastrous punt (17 yards), Vinnie Burns was money, averaging 47 yards on his first four kicks. I thought Cols Colas played a decent game, though for some reason, he sat a lot while Darryl Tapp was abused (I'll need to see the Hokie Huddler's depth chart to know for sure what number of snaps Colas got in the game).

But the bottom line is, this team needed its leaders to step up, and no one did.

Have I beaten that point to death yet?

There's a tendency at this point to see the things in this game that we saw down the stretch last year, and to push the panic button and predict losses to Miami, Pitt, and Virginia (I will never predict losses to Temple or BC, though they may happen).

I'm reminded, though, of an experience I had during VT's last basketball season. After seeing a 3-1 VT men's team lose to Wofford at home, I emailed a friend of mine who's a close follower of the program and went off. He responded to my email with a phone call, and he had an interesting comment: "I hear you, but let the season play itself out first. Then evaluate the whole season."

That was good advice, and the Hokies showed some promise at times. Despite the nasty loss to Wofford, at one point VT was 10-11 with victories over Virginia and Connecticut.

Of course, they tanked, losing seven of their last eight to finish 11-18, and head coach Ricky Stokes was fired. But the point is, they were not as bad as they looked against Wofford.

In much the same way, this football team is not as bad as they looked against West Virginia (good lord, who is? Temple?). Again, the tendency is to see the soft defense and the lack of leadership shown against WVU and write this team off, but I'm going to take my friend's advice and let the whole season play itself out.

After all, I'm the same guy who thought after the 51-7 thrashing of Syracuse that this Hokie team had put it all together. Bryan Randall had a defining moment against Texas A&M, and the defense had slowly but surely (I thought) addressed its deficiencies as the season went on. I truly thought they were ready to make a run. I told people privately that the Hokies were going to whip WVU and then beat Miami.

That was an overreaction to the positive side, and I'm not going to let this game make me overreact back in the negative direction. Do I have a gut feeling which way I think this season's going to go? Yes, I do. But before I make grand sweeping statements about the ability of the players and the coaches, and the state of the program, I'm going to see how the Hokies finish.

It was reported that John Ballein, Associate AD for Football Operations, appeared on Greg Roberts' radio show in Roanoke Thursday and said that the team and staff had gotten together for a meeting Thursday, and it was "the most emotional meeting" of Ballein's fifteen years at VT. Tears were shed, including by Beamer.

How will this team respond? One thing is sure: they have to play with emotion. They have to play lights-out, hard, raucous football for 60 minutes. These guys can't show up and go through the motions and play tentatively (as they did against WVU), or they'll absorb at least two more losses, maybe more.

Keep an eye on the team and see who shows up for the Miami Hurricanes a week from Saturday. Will it be the team that whacked Syracuse? Or the one that fell apart against WVU? Neither, but obviously, the closer to that SU team, the better.

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