Hokies Matchup With Alabama Now Official

Virginia
Tech’s 2013 season opening game with Alabama became official yesterday. The
Hokies will play the Crimson Tide in the 2013 Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game, in the
Georgia Dome in Atlanta, in a rematch of the 2009 season opener. The Tide won
that game 34-24 and went on to win the national championship.

The date and time of the game have not been set, and it will be televised on
ABC or ESPN. The 2013 game will coincide with the scheduled opening of the
College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, which is relocating to Atlanta from
South Bend, Indiana.

In order to accommodate the game, the Hokies will make room on a 2013
schedule that already had twelve games. David Teel reported previously that
Tech’s scheduled 2012 and 2013 games with East Carolina will be shifted out to
2016 and 2017. That opens up a home game for the Hokies in 2012 and replaces a
2013 date in Greenville with the Alabama game. The 2012 opening will probably be
filled with a Division 1-AA (FCS) team.

The Hokies’ 2013 out of conference schedule now features no true road games.
In addition to playing Alabama in Atlanta, the Hokies have home dates against
Pittsburgh, Marshall, and Western Carolina. Tech’s only true road games will be
ACC games.

In-conference, the Hokies 2013 schedule is home against
BC-UNC-Maryland-Miami, and on the road against FSU-Virginia-Georgia Tech-Duke,
making the 2013 schedule a compelling one in all aspects. The Hokies have a
great neutral site game, good home games in conference and out of conference,
and a tough ACC road schedule.

The TechSideline.com Future Football Schedules Page has been updated with all
of this information, as well as the previously reported information that the
Hokies’ 2014 road game against Maryland has been moved to M&T Bank Stadium
in Baltimore.

The 2011-2012 men’s basketball schedule has not been officially announced,
but various news items have leaked out about opponents. The
latest news is that the Hokies have scheduled a
home-and-home series with BYU, which will begin this season in Blacksburg, with
the Cougars visiting Cassell Coliseum on January 25th, 2012.

BYU is the most recent addition to a promising 2011-2012 schedule that should
be much better for Virginia Tech’s strength of schedule rating, a huge component
of the RPI. The Hokies will play home games against Kansas State (#18 in the RPI
last year), St. Bonaventure (#126), and ETSU (#92), and they’ll travel to play
Oklahoma State (#62), Rhode Island (#102), and Minnesota (#81). The Hokies are
also playing in the preseason NIT, where they could encounter one to three more
top-50 caliber teams, such as Syracuse (#21), George Mason (#25), or others.

In a
recent interview with Bill Roth, Tech head coach Seth
Greenberg talked about avoiding teams ranked beyond #250 in the RPI, saying,
“We’re going to shore up our ‘middle schedule’ and try to eliminate teams
from the far right who are 250 [in the RPI] and below.”

Last year the Hokies played seven games against teams ranked #250 in the RPI
or worse (two of which were against ACC foe Wake Forest, ranked #263). The
Hokies also played Mount St. Mary’s, which finished #230 in the RPI. The weak
RPI teams helped drag down the Hokies’ RPI rating, which was #66.