Virginia Tech took an early 7-0 lead at Duke on Saturday afternoon, and there was some hope that the Hokies were finally going to put it all together and play their best football game of the season. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

Tech died a slow death in Durham. The Blue Devils didn’t run the Hokies off the field. Instead, they asserted their dominance little by little over the course of four quarters, and while it never really seemed like Tech was out of it until Duke went up 24-7, my basic thought at by the end of the game was, “We never really had a chance in that game, even though it seemed like we did through the first three quarters.”

That’s how I felt after the game, and that’s how I feel on Sunday after looking at the box score, watching the highlights, gauging other people’s opinions, etc. That was a pretty “meh” game. I picked Duke to win by 17, and the Blue Devils won by 17. It wasn’t as high-scoring as I expected because the Tech defense hung in there, but in the end, it was the result that most of us thought was coming.

That’s seven losses in a row for the Hokies for the first time since 1951. Frank Beamer turned five years old that year.

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