Good morning Hokies on this Transfer Portal Window Opening Monday! Yes, the transfer portal window has officially opened with the Hokies set to be quite busy as they likely will have room to add 10-15 players via the portal this offseason. Things will happen quickly in the portal as teams look to evaluate and land talent with time to spare before spring enrollment. Teams also are able to immediately sign transfers unlike previous cycles which should change things as well.

In other news, Football is headed to the Duke’s Mayo Bowl for the first time since 2019 where they’ll take on Minnesota. This is the first time that the Hokies and Golden Gophers have faced off in football.

Women’s Basketball was road warriors this week, picking up a dramatic win at Georgia 70-61 thanks to outscoring the Bulldogs 24-8 in the fourth quarter. While they suffered a road loss at No. 8 Duke 81-59 on Sunday, this was still a good week overall for the Hokies that will have them still right on the heart of the NCAA Tournament bubble.

Men’s Basketball saw a couple tough home losses to Vanderbilt and No. 18 Pittsburgh, with the Hokies leading the Panthers for over 30 minutes of this game before Jaland Lowe led Pitt to a great escape at the very end. Wrestling shined in Vegas with Caleb Henson winning the 149 title at the prestigious Cliff Keen and other Hokies pulling their fair share of upsets including Eddie Ventresca. Expect several Hokies to be on the rise in the new rankings this week.

As we enter the offseason, we are going to shift from our “Postgame Highlights” segment to “The Week in Review Highlights” to touch on a few of the most notable moments from across Virginia Tech sports this past week. But before we get there, let’s dive into our headline story.

Where Things Stand With The Portal

To start, I want to timestamp that this is as of early Monday morning so by the time you’re reading this, some things likely have changed by the time you’re reading this.

Virginia Tech has seen four scholarship players and two walk-ons announce their intentions to enter the transfer portal. This will certainly increase greatly in the coming days especially in regards to walk-ons given that the football roster maximum is dropping from 120 to 105 and teams can give out scholarships to all 105 players, up from 85. I expect the Hokies to give out scholarships to most if not all of those 105 spots, with Whit Babcock’s comments last week of VT adding 40-45 scholarships in the wake of House lining up with achieving just that while also being able to meet Title IX requirements.

Like every team, the Hokies will certainly look to get to work quickly in the portal. I would expect that you will see visits pop up quickly for this weekend and next, and any other opportunity Tech can find to get transfers on campus ASAP. Visits will also get canceled quickly as either new targets emerge or other targets commit elsewhere as we saw last year when Tech went from being set to host several offensive linemen to only having two visit during that same five-day span with one of them being Montavious Cunningham.

I expect the trenches to be an area of focus for the Hokies, especially with Tech losing five guys from their two-deep on the defensive line. Don’t be surprised to see the Hokies take around three defensive linemen this transfer class at least while I’d like to see the Hokies do the same on the offensive line. Landing a proven running back who can at least be a bridge to young guys like Jeremiah Coney also seems like a high priority for the Hokies this cycle along with bringing in a veteran or two in the defensive backfield.

The new 105 number also will give Tech more flexibility to bring in young talent to improve depth as we saw successfully with Kaleb Spencer last cycle.

Expect VT to pursue some former in-state recruits who are either looking to bounce back like Kelvin Gilliam and Kaleb Spencer (APR was already having success at Florida and starting games when he came to VT) or looking to make a jump up like Da’Quan Felton or Ali Jennings.

A couple guys who fall into the first category include Clemson S and 757 native Sherrod Covil Jr, and Michigan State WR and Richmond native Aziah Johnson. A couple in-state natives looking to make a jump up include Kent State DE Kameron Olds from Richmond and Marshall RB AJ Turner from the 757.

The Week in Review Highlights

Hokies of the Week: Virginia Tech Wrestling shined at the prestigious Cliff Keen this past weekend led by Caleb Henson and Eddie Ventresca. Henson won the crown at 149 with an impressive run in the tournament capped off by a win over Nebraska’s Ridge Lovett, the 1 seed at last year’s NCAA Championships who Henson took down on his way to the title. Ventresca came up just short at 125 but he beat two top six ranked opponents on his way to the final. In the process, Ventresca showed that he not only is a serious All-American threat, but should be considered a potential national title contender for the time being.

Stat of the Week: It’s pretty simple, having 17 turnovers and giving up 17 points off those turnovers is usually a recipe for disaster. That was the case for Virginia Tech as their upset bid against No. 18 Pittsburgh fell apart late on their way to 64-59 defeat, in part as the accumulation of turnovers giving Pitt extra opportunities allowed them to linger long enough to close well led by one of their two star guards, Jaland Lowe.

Quote of the Week: The Whit Babcock interview obviously took some headlines on Friday including one moment that had some wondering when they missed Kelly Woolwine being named Virginia Tech GM. Well that’s because Babcock was only referring to how Woolwine in his role running Triumph NIL is serving as an unofficial general manager in a way given the NIL negotiations that Woolwine oversees. This was confirmed to myself after the interview per source.

Here’s the full quote as transcribed by Tech Sideline’s David Cunningham.

“I thought that was a really creative and good move for Stanford. We do have a general manager role currently; it will start to look much more like a front office part. The model that we will use may not be similar to Stanford’s, but it is similar to some other top-tier programs in our league and across the country, but we’re really pleased with our collective and Triumph [NIL], and Kelly Woolwine serves in that general manager role now. When I say general manager role, he is really good with our negotiations with the prospective student-athletes, with the current student-athletes, with the parents, with his relationship with our compliance office, with the coaches. We will keep that model. Now we will build out around that.”

More notable is the fact that a couple successful front office Hokies are also helping advise Babcock on how to build a front office like structure within the athletic department.

“Another group that will be involved and is in player evaluation, portal evaluation. We’ve got a lot going on. It will be much more data-driven, maybe like the ‘Moneyball’ book back in the day. But now that you have a revenue-share cap, what positions are going to be worth what? How do you measure return on investment? We’re also fortunate that we have Hokies in general manager roles now. [Tampa Bay Rays president of baseball operations] Erik Neander will be advising us, [senior director of player personnel] Jeff King with the [Chicago] Bears and some others, so I really like our system, I like the data part of it. There’s still the eyeball test, but when you have a cap and you spend money strategically, we’ve got to be able to operate like a front office, evaluate return on investment and evaluate who’s the best fit to go and recruit for us.”

That’s a pretty good duo, especially Neander who has done a tremendous job leading Tampa Bay to four 90+ win seasons with five playoff appearances in their past seven seasons and their worst year being 80-82. That for a franchise consistently in the bottom five of payroll is quite impressive and the type of person you should want to consult for building out a front office structure. Jeff King has also received plenty of praise in NFL circles in the past and understands well VT’s two revenue programs and what it looks like to win having played both football and men’s basketball.

Monday Notes

Two ACC Teams to the CFB Playoff: Clemson and SMU are both heading to the CFB Playoff after Clemson earned an auto bid with their 34-31 ACC Championship victory while the Mustangs held on for the last at-large bid over Alabama.

Bowl Destination Set: For the first time since 2019, Virginia Tech is headed to the Duke’s Mayo Bowl on January 3rd in Charlotte where they will face Minnesota for the first time ever in football. The commission which runs the Charlotte bowl game has always enjoyed hosting VT in their events including the Ally Tipoff on the Women’s Basketball front the past two years. With Duke landing in the Gator Bowl, things became pretty clean for the Duke’s Mayo to get to take the Hokies for this matchup. Now what remains to be seen is who will be part of this VT team for this game in terms of guys who choose to opt out to prep for the draft or play one more game.

Decision Day Looms for JUCO CB Keshawn Davila: #1 JUCO CB Keshawn Davila is set to make his decision on December 12th per On3 with Virginia Tech among his final three along with Arkansas and UCLA. While the Hokies are a serious contender, the Razorbacks feel like the team to watch given the fact that they got a visit from him this weekend, his last visit before his decision. While that is far from a guarantee of landing a recruit, data points to an advantage for the last visit.

Jaden Schutt Finding His Rhythm: One encouraging development for Virginia Tech Men’s Basketball over the past few weeks has been Jaden Schutt. The Duke transfer was expected to be the Hunter Cattoor for this team and surely enough, Schutt is starting to find his rhythm from three-point range. He’s made at least two threes and shot at least 40% from three-point range in each of his past three games including a 5-11 performance against Vanderbilt and a 4-10 performance against No. 18 Pittsburgh. Schutt giving the Hokies a consistent three-point shooting threat could start to open things up for VT.

The Week Ahead: Here’s a look at the Virginia Tech Athletics schedule from now through Sunday.

Thursday (12/12)

• Men’s Basketball vs North Carolina A&T (7pm in Blacksburg)

Sunday (12/15)

• Men’s Basketball vs Navy (12pm in Blacksburg)
• Women’s Basketball vs Radford (4pm in Blacksburg)

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