Tech Talk Live Notes: A Stu Holt Appearance, Plus Mike Young Talks Hoops

On Thursday, Virginia Tech special teams coordinator Stu Holt and men’s basketball head coach Mike Young joined Zach Mackey and Mike Burnop on Tech Talk Live. 

Stu Holt

How about that game against Virginia? Did that rivalry live up to the hype that you thought it might be?

Everyone told me it was going to be a lot closer. I guess not. It was awesome to see our guys go out there and perform like that. It was fun to watch. I love watching our defense get after the quarterback. I appreciate him talking a little bit leading up to the game. I think that was a great motivator for our guys. They had six sacks and hit him countless times and that was fun to watch.

I know it was all over social media but how much was that a motivator?

Our guys were keenly aware, you know, and think Coach [Brent] Pry did a really good job. We’ve got a young team and we’ve got guys that came from other places and I thought Coach Pry did a wonderful job all week of having alums talk about the meaning, what the game means. Every day there was something a little bit different. Coach [Frank} Beamer came and talked with us, Coach [Bud] Foster talked with us. So, I thought that by the time it rolled around, the extra motivation in the early part of the week and then a full understanding of the expectations of our guys, everyone involved, the entire program, the expectation of what we were going to do, it was all kind of set for us by the time kickoff rolled around.

And getting that first three and out and then having the offense get off to the fast start, man, it makes such a big difference.

No doubt. If you follow us like everyone does, we’re so much better when we start fast and you could just tell that, when we started that way you can tell what we were going to do throughout the game. It was a great feeling to see our guys have success early. I certainly think that was a big factor.

I know Coach Pry has talked about it too but you guys have got a young group. You’re building this on the backs of high school kids in the state of Virginia and around the country. That momentum that builds and goes, is that kind of the ebbs and flows of a young team?

I think so and I think young and inexperienced kind of mean the same thing. A lot of times, you might have an older guy that’s been around but really hasn’t been in a bigger role that we’re asking for up to this point in his career. So the inexperience factor certainly is there at times, but I do feel like our guys have worked through that and it’s something they recognize and put forth a great effort to overcome.

I know obviously, we’re happy that you’re here tonight but Coach Pry and others are out recruiting, so just kind of touch base and tell everybody what the staff is doing now.

We have areas and then we also have concentrations of our positions. And then you mix in the portal, and all that’s coming along. So we’re spread out all over. It just happened to be that I’ve got three teams in my area, Southwest Virginia that are playing in the playoffs. So I’ll go by and see those guys tomorrow, wish them well. And then I’m going to make my way over to Kentucky. They have their state championships tomorrow evening, so I’m going to see a couple guys over there. So it just happened that I was here tonight. A lot of guys left today on flights. They’re all over our footprint. It’s a wide variety, it’s commits, it’s kids that we have committed. I’m ’25 and ’26 in high school. And then it’s also guys that are in the portal. Could also involve a junior college player. I mean, it kind of runs the gamut.

We see a lot of it obviously from the social media side and different things like that. Is it as crazy in the portal as it looks online?

I’ve got this tracker on my phone that is just a portal tracker and it’s been hit, it just rolls through all day long with transfers. I have to remind myself to turn it off at night because it’ll wake us up at night. It really doesn’t stop.

How cool is it though to be able to go to these teams, these families and whatnot and talk about that game and the boost that you get from winning that thing and being bowl eligible?

No question. I mean, as we looked at the progress that we’re making. I think every season there’s going to be things you know, there’s games, there’s moments you’d like to have back, but, you know, it’s the balance of let’s get enough momentum, enough positivity going and, you know, it was huge for us to get to the bowl this year to become bowl eligible. It really was a next step in where we’re headed, and I think that everyone was keenly aware of that, everyone was locked into our goals from Day 1 and so to be able to show that we’re making that progress that this thing is taking off and we’re doing it with a lot of inexperienced guys and guys that are gaining, learning, learning on the run, you know, invaluable. 

Can you walk us through Bhayshul Tuten’s return and kind of what the call was and how you guys set that up?

I couldn’t believe they kicked it to him. I mean, I was hoping that they would kick it to him. And then they did and I thought OK, we’ve got a shot here. What we’ve done in our kickoff return game, we ended up we were I think second in the conference and Bhayshul is third in the country in kickoff returns. Those guys have done a great job. We’ve had a study group all year, guys block for him. That particular return, we are a more boundary return that most people are going to kick it to one side or the other. They kick it to our right and we’re going to return it to the right boundary. It’s kind of a trap kind of scheme. And then we have a count off where you take it back across the field. And so we’re always, you know, looking once we’re running those boundary returns, we’re just kind of seeing how they’re playing it on the back side. Are they defending the entire field? So case in point early in the year against Florida State, they were really aggressive to the boundary and so we kind of set those guys up. And then we had the right guys at the point of attack. Stephen Gosnell, who’s a really good football player, and P.J. Prioleau was a really good player, Malachi Thoms. Those guys are kind of the guys that are getting it back to the field. And then the guys to the boundary are kind of doing their same job making it all the same, which makes for a really good counterplay, you know. Alan Tisdale had a great year playing defense. He played on one special team and that was it and he was a guy that comes across the field and seals the block to make it happen at Florida State. And then the other night in Virginia. I don’t know how many plays he had just played, but he was tired so C.J. McCray jumps in his spot and he does the exact same job, so credit to those guys for stepping up when they need to step up and to make it happen, and then Bhayshul, when you get in his hands, I mean, everyone sees it. He’s really hard to bring down. He’s got great vision. So once he’s got it in the field of play, we’ve got a chance to go.

How did you feel when he started putting his hand up in the air and he started rolling? And he goes up into the end zone. That was pretty special.

I couldn’t figure out why he got the penalty until I watched the offensive film the next day or really on the ride home. He had already gone in the stands one time and they let him get away with it. And then the next time he went up there, I thought it was awesome. I thought it was great. Other than the fact we had to kick off from the 20 which makes it difficult to cover but that’s OK. We made it through, so you can live with that. Coach Jimmy Feix, who was a longtime coach at Western Kentucky where I started my career, he would always tell our players when he came and talked to our players in preseason, he said the same thing every time he left. He said, ‘Guys just remember they call it play ball. They don’t call it a work ball.’ You know, have fun out there, you know, enjoy what you’re doing. And really, that’s the goal, you know. We’re on them and we want them to play well and disciplined and all those things, but at the end of the day, we want them to enjoy what they’re doing. And so to see the entire team when you have that kind of enthusiasm, the guys playing like that, it’s contagious amongst the team and you’re just going to keep playing well and it really is not going to matter if you give up a play. As a result of that you’re going to make five or six more because of that enthusiasm and they’re enjoying what they’re doing.

A lot of excitement around a couple of those return guys. We’re talking about Tuten but what about Tucker Holloway, who was one of the top returners in the country when it came to punt returns this year?

I think Tucker ended eighth in the country. The only part that we didn’t get done with Tucker was we didn’t get him in the end zone. You average 13 yards a return, you know, it takes a special guy back there. You have to have a lot of courage. You have to be a great decision maker. You have to have a lot of concentration. You use the word fearless a lot and in this game but he truly is fearless back there. He has a lot of confidence. He makes plays when there’s maybe not much of a play to be made, breaks a tackle. He’s a lot stronger. He’s a wiry guy, but he’s pretty strong. He’s stronger than he looks. So he had a great year.

And how about Peter Moore? The year that he put together too.

Yeah. He was disappointed in his 2022. You know, I felt like he didn’t punt as well as he’s capable, really came with a consistent approach. You know, week in and week out. We punted a lot less too and that’s a big key. We asked him to do a lot in 2022. He didn’t punt nearly as much this year. And he had a great year, had a great year. He put us in great field position. You know, and he just has this calmness about him. He has this confidence on game day that I think feeds the other guys around him.

How much of a spark can the special teams provide for a team? And can they get the momentum swing so quickly?

Yeah, it’s fun. I’ll be honest with you, coming here, I’ve done special teams my whole career and to have a chance to coach special teams at Virginia Tech, there was no way I was going to pass that up. I mean, this is the special teams capital of the country, and everyone looks at us for great special teams play, and to have that opportunity … And what’s great about our guys is there are so many examples through the years that you can show them of how we’ve turned games around and how we’ve made differences in games. Those examples are all over the building. They’re all over, anytime we want to do anything motivational, you know, and I challenge them, hey, let’s make our own highlights. You know, let’s put your highlight next to these in the past that have been so good, you know, with all the return guys and the blocked kicks, etc. I think about Boston College when we got the onside kick, that was, again, going on the road and playing well. Something that we had not done to that point in a consistent manner. Going in there with the right mentality, you make a play. You see how excited the guys are. That was the coolest thing of all was just seeing how excited everyone was on that sideline and you just feel like, hey, man, we’re getting ready to roll.

Kind of like the same thing at Liberty last year on the fake field goal right?

Yeah, huge play. We didn’t design it so much where John had to break a tackle. He bailed us out. But he did, he broke a tackle. got a first down and did a wonderful job and it was big momentum. 

That onside kick against Boston College, what went into that decision?

Each week you’re looking for where you can get an edge and to me what you’re looking for is what they’re going to give, you want to take what they’re going to give you. And we felt like, by their alignment, that was something they were giving us an opportunity to get, but it’s got to be the right situation. You have to practice it. I don’t know any head coach that’s going to make a call like that if you don’t practice it well. So practice, got to go well, kids got to have belief in what you’re doing. And then you just got to call it the right moment. And, you know, it all kind of came together. Kyle had a wonderful kick and Jaylen Jones, you couldn’t recover any better than he did. I mean, it was just a textbook. It was awesome. And that was a cool play.

Whenever you make decisions like that to go for the fake play, you want to make sure that no one knows right? Only you and the coach know.

Well, you want everyone to know. It’s just the way that it goes, like that was the Wake Forest game. And everything happens fast and you got to move fast. So in that particular one, we knew we had the fake, we knew we could run it but we needed them to comply, and so when you know I’d say to coach [JC..] Price, I said, ‘Hey, if they run their punt return team out there we need to look at this,’ but I really was expecting them to put their punt safe, which a punt safe team is really basically their defense. So they leave in their down linemen, they leave in their linebackers. They’re basically playing a defensive front. And so typically people do that to deter deceptive and that type stuff. When I saw them run their punt return team on. I said to the coach, ‘Hey, we’ve really got to look at this,’ you know, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s look at this.’ But again, it goes back to practice. We practice it well. And so he had confidence in it and he said, ‘Hey, let’s look at it now.’ It’s debatable whether he was thinking let’s look at it and then check back with me. I took it as let’s look at it, and so when I saw it was there and said yeah let’s run it. And so we ran and it worked out. But that was cool. That was a cool moment. And it was again fun to see those guys.

Your relationship with Coach Pry goes back to, what, 1998-99 at Western Carolina? You were a GA, he was the defensive line coach. Did you ever think back in the day that y’all would be at Virginia Tech together?

When you first start out as a graduate assistant, and in his case, his first full-time job, your focus is really just survival. It’s such a competitive business that you just want to do a great job day in and day out and put yourself in the best position you can to help your staff, help your head coach, help your players. But I did know that he possessed some very special qualities. He’s a great communicator. When he spoke, the guys were engaged and he could get their attention very quickly. And that’s easier said than done. There’s a lot of guys that are really knowledgeable that have a hard time holding the attention of the players at times. And at a very young age, he could get their attention. He could motivate them. I thought that our guys played really hard back then. And then through the years, we had not worked together since, so that was ’99. When I left to take a full-time job he continued on his path and then we had not been together until we came here, until he offered me a position here. I actually told him when I got here, and we went to a couple of staff meetings and kind of watched him interact with people and I told him after a couple weeks I was like, ‘Man, you’re doing a hell of a job.’ I said you really are. He was a pretty fiery guy and back in the day like most of us were in our 20s he’s a pretty emotional guy, you know, and it’s hard to be that way when you’re the head coach and you’re the leader of so many people. And I told him, I said, man, you’re doing really well. You know, with all this extra stuff you gotta deal with and he goes, ‘Yeah, man, I’ve been working really hard on that.’ But he’s outstanding. He’s a really good communicator. He really puts people at ease. He’s very direct, which I think is a great quality to have as a leader. Because you’re not sitting there wondering, you know, what’s the plan, where are we going? You know, it’s not gray at all. Instead, it’s this is what we’re doing and this is a recipe for success and I certainly enjoy being around him.

Going back there to that UVa game last Saturday. I know you’ve coached on the road many times before but how special was it to have the home support at UVa? And I know the fans stormed the field and the whole sideline was all Hokie fans behind them everywhere. How special was that?

It was awesome. I mean, it really was awesome and you know our fans in general. Everyone knows our home game, Lane Stadium, and it’s just such a privilege to have that type of fan base behind you. But then to take that show on the road and to take over the stadium … You know, like I saw a bunch of Lane North T-shirts and sweatshirts and, you know, that was really cool. And yeah, it was fun. I mean, you’ve just got so much support right there in a rivalry game away. I mean, you really don’t expect that.

I want to go back in time. So you played for your father in high school, what was that experience like there? Because then you end up going to North Carolina to be the long snapper so talk about that experience real quick. 

Well, my dad coached high school football for 45 years. He’s mainly North Carolina, he’s somewhere in the top 10 in wins for his career. He’s still with us. He’s 79 He comes to every game. You know, tailgates and has a great time, but playing for my dad, it was really actually pretty simple. My dad told me from the time I got to high school, he said, ‘Listen, we can do this one of two ways.’ He said, ‘You’re my son, I love you. If I see you stepping out of line, I can turn my head, let it go because you’re my son and just let that slide because I love you or I can be harder on you than anybody else here and then they see that I’m harder on you then everyone’s going to fall in line.’ He says, ‘Guess which one we’re going to do.’ So I’m guessing we’re going to do the second one. And it was a great experience. We won a lot of games. A lot of life lessons. Can’t really put into words everything that he’s told me over the years so it was a fun experience.

It had to be tough for that tight end room to have a guy like Nick Gallo go down early on in the season right?

It felt terrible for Nick. You know, just a really bad break. Right at the end of camp. You know, a guy that puts so much into it and when was voted a captain, was a guy that has everyone’s respect in the program. And really a guy we were going to lean on heavily in our room because we had such a young group and such a really tough deal, felt awful for him, still do. But he does have some football ahead of him if he chooses to do so. And then the young guys stepped up. I felt like everybody in the room stepped up and played well, particularly when their number was called and we needed to play. You know, we certainly made the play more often than not.

With your dad being a coach, you’ve been around the business. Did you always know you wanted to be a college football coach?

I actually thought I was going to be a high school coach. I walked on in North Carolina. I grew up in North Carolina. I went to a football camp at Clemson when I was young. And so I was this big Clemson fan and I kept telling my parents I want to go to Clemson and then my parents sat me down and explained in-state and out-of-state tuition to me. So then, all my choices became state. But I went and walked on at Carolina and the plan was my dad had told me you want to teach and coach in high school and you need to pick a major where you can get a job, where you get a teaching job. So I was an English major and I was going to teach and coach and then I just got around that staff. I was there when I played for coach Mack Brown. The first time he was there, and he had a really good staff. And I just kind of watched those guys like Jim Cavanaugh who was on his staff who spent a long time here. He was a great mentor of mine and a really great coach and good person. But they had a lot of guys on that staff that were just really good influences and I kind of started paying attention to them, kind of paid attention to what they did, and so I spoke with our offensive coordinator at the time who was a guy named Darrell Moody. Our defensive coordinator was coach Carl Torbush who unfortunately just passed here recently. But I spoke with both those guys and I said I’m kind of thinking about doing this college thing and they were nice enough to let me come into their meetings I was a specialist, so we didn’t really have a lot of position meetings, so I could go in their meetings and kind of learn how they did it and that was invaluable while I was in college and so, you know, I said let’s give this a whirl and see what happens. And so that’s kind of how it all worked out.

People take for granted the sequence of what happens in a special teams play like the snap, the hold and all that, but you’ve got to give a shout out to those guys that do all that the snapping and the holding.

Yeah, no doubt. And John Love as a first-year starter. John is ninth in the country in field goal percentage, he ended up being 20-for-22, knocked down some huge kicks for us. He had a game where he went 5-for-5 on field goals that were huge that day. And John will be the first guy to tell you that it can’t happen without the snap and the hold, and we’ve got Christian Epling and Pete Moore that’s the battery for field goals. Justin Pollock is a snapper for punts for Pete and it takes a lot of concentration. It takes a lot of mental toughness to do those jobs. And those guys certainly worked at it and did a great job for us this year.

Mike Young

Coach you’ve been all around the country it feels like as of late, has it been hectic?

Yes, it has been. We were in Orlando for what felt like two weeks and three really quality opponents down there. Come home, dust yourself off and head to Alabama for a rough road matchup last night. Get home at three in the morning, but it beats working for a living. Good to be back in Blacksburg. I can tell you that.

You had a couple of good wins down in Orlando and then the day off. Florida Atlantic, man, they were a good basketball team.

We had that stretch and we knew it was going to be four quality opponents: Boise State, Iowa State, Florida Atlantic, and then Auburn, would like to have done you know better. But two wins down there against Boise State will resonate late in the year and Iowa State, I think both those teams are NCAA Tournament teams. Florida Atlantic is very good. So is Auburn. Though we played a really good first half against Florida Atlantic defensively. Obviously, we didn’t have our best stuff in the second half and you start the way we started and you get your ears pinned back and we were behind and we couldn’t make up the difference. They were better than we were in that last 20 minutes.

That Iowa State game, you win 71-62 over the Cyclones. It felt like an overall really good game for the team. You played good defense you made a whole bunch of shots, out-rebounded, got a lot of free throws. How would you access performance?

I was so impressed with them coming in. Their head coach, T.J. Otzelberger, is a terrific coach and a good friend. I’ve known T.J. for a long time and they’re exceptionally well-coached. That was a good win. We got good play from a number of guys. And as I said earlier, that will be a game that we’ll look back to late in the year as one that could really help us. They’re good. They’ve got Iowa in a big game, in-state rival tonight or tomorrow. I’m interested to see that game, I was a little surprised they were up 21 against Texas A&M. If you didn’t hear that they were up 21 against Texas A&M in the first half and that A&M came back and got them by four. But a great win against a really good program. They’ve been to the NCAA Tournament every year that T.J. has been there.

Going back to that Auburn game, you knew you would be entering a hostile environment as the road team, but the game got very physical. It seemed like it got a little stressful for some of the guys, but the big guy, Johni Broome, was the one that did the damage. He had 30 points in the game, but the rest of those guys only shot 30%. But he was so talented.

We defended well enough. They got under us and you know you can’t play offense 25, 26, 27 feet away from the hole, you can’t initiate offense from there. You have to be in a working area, with entry passes into the post, screening angles. I didn’t realize that Johni Broome was the Preseason SEC Player of the Year, and I can certainly see why he was a man. Transferred from Morehead State, great hands, really active. He’s a load, and those guards [Aden] Holloway didn’t play great last night. He’s been very good. Though our perimeter defense was good, our transition defense was not as good as it needs to be. We missed some assignments there. But offense has always been pretty easy. It was not easy last night. Auburn had something to do with that.

What about Brandon Rechsteiner? He struggled with the pressure against FAU on Sunday but then all of a sudden three days later did a real nice job against that pressure it seemed like with Auburn.

I see him coming into his own. As young people, a lot of times, you know, less is more. Just make the easy pass. Just make the easy play. He did a much better job with that last night. He had a big shot, a circus shot to end the half. He defended his spot. He was a good team defender. He took care of the ball. He didn’t try to do too much. I hope that’s a step in the right direction for him. He’s a good basketball player. Going to be a good one for us for a long time. Certainly to your point, last night was a positive step for him.

And how about Jaydon Young too? 

Three made threes, had one in the first half. We were talking about it in our staff meeting today. It looked like he belonged, he’s got to be more physical. That’s a part of being a freshman and growing up and understanding what this level is all about, but I thought he really helped us, and we needed him with MJ Collins out of the lineup due to that injury. He’ll be back on Sunday. But Jaydon Young certainly put himself in position to have a bigger bite of the apple as we move ahead. Now with both those young guys there’s going to be some peaks and valleys, there are going to be some times they look like freshman and there is going to be times that they played really well, but the more plays they see and the more game time they have under their belt will only aid them as we head down the path.

I know you guys had that Saturday off to talk with some of the guys too. You guys got an opportunity to be able to watch some of that football game too.

The majority of our team got together to watch that game. And we’re all huge fans of all our athletic teams, but to be down there 2-0 ahead of the championship game and having a chance to catch your breath and see the Hokies take on that bunch down the road and whip their hind end was a lot of fun for all of us. So proud of Coach Pry and his coaching staff, those players. 6-6 is not going to be good enough around here but I’ll tell you what, they’re heading in a good direction for that program. And excellent coaching and those kids played their guts out all season. 

How about the facilities that the ESPN events have there from the practice facilities to the hotel you stayed at?

Well, it’s Disney Mike, you know, they’ve got plenty of money. The two of us could have a nice complex with what kind of money they’ve got, but it was exceptionally well done. The hotel, the meeting space, food for our team, the practice facility, as you said, first class in every regard. We will do an ESPN event almost every year. I think we’re going to Fort Myers next year for our exempt tournament that is not an ESPN event but well done and a great experience for our program.

Even leaving to go over to the meeting rooms you had to leave about five minutes early. It’s like a mile and a half walk. The complex was huge.

The walk didn’t bother me nearly as much as all the people I was running into. It was fun. With the other seven teams I guess everybody stayed in the Gaylord and, you know, to see so many friends through the halls and on the walk to and from the meeting space was a lot of fun. That was great. 

How fun was it to see Sonny Smith last night and talk with him? 

It was special. I was looking for him. I knew he was still doing the radio. They’ve got a banner in the rafters with his name on and his many accomplishments during his time in Auburn. He was a new teacher coach at Old Dublin High School. My dad was there teaching history. Sonny is a really smart man. Sonny was the basketball coach, dad was an assistant football coach and baseball coach. So we’ve known him and his wife, Jan, Steve, his son, Sherri, his daughter, for many, many years. I went down and worked at his camp a couple of times during the summer. I’ve known Sonny Smith for a long time and for him to pop in about an hour and a half before tip-off and I’m sitting there with Kevin Giltner going over a couple of scouting reports prior to the team coming in. And he walked in and it was great to have a chance to introduce him to most of our staff, a great coach, a great man and was a real mentor to me, you know, through the years.

What has stood out to you when looking at this Louisville team ahead of Sunday?

You know, big again, they were big last year but Skyy Clark in the backcourt, who was at Illinois last year, is a good player.  Mike James is back at small forward, we had Field in the post. JJ Traynor. They should have won the Texas game. And they had some bad luck down the stretch and they outplayed Indiana a couple of games ago in an exempt tournament. So we’ve got our hands full. You know, we amp it up here a little bit with ACC play beginning in December and we look forward to getting into it. 

It’s also got to be nice to have a home game and having the students back right? 

Holy cow, I’d say so. We don’t have to go on the road again until December 31, New Year’s, so it’ll be good to be home. Might get some things spread out here. We’re going to have an uptick with our play. We look forward to that.