I was talking with an athletic department staffer recently, and that staffer recalled seeing Justin Fuente speak to a crowd of Hokie fans recently.

“And he was very optimistic,” the staffer told me. “He was very positive and excited about next season.”

I paused. “He knows he’s pretty much lost his entire defense, right?”

That brief discussion was the seed of one line of thought. Another was the thought that the Hokies are becoming more “Fuente’s team” this year, nearly three years after he was hired. The big contributors in Fuente’s first two seasons were all Frank Beamer’s guys, with the exception of one very important player: Jerod Evans. Other than Jerod, looking up and down the stat sheets for 2016 and 2017, you see one Beamer guy after another.

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