Hello Hokies! While there is plenty of action happening on the field, the transfer portal is starting to heat up with FCS grad transfers starting to jump in as their seasons end along with some players from schools who have fired their coaches. Tech has already gotten busy extending a pair of offers that we’ll discuss in a minute.
Meanwhile, Men’s Basketball had probably their best 20-30 minutes of the season against Michigan given the quality of the opponent, but the Hokies just ran out of steam against a more talented Wolverine team on their way to a 75-63 defeat. Nonetheless, it was a reminder that this team is going to fight and that Mike Young still knows how to coach basketball.
The Midweek Rundown
Transfer Portal Offers: Virginia Tech has extended their first two public offers of the 2024 transfer to VMI’s All-SoCon First Team OT Tyriq Poindexter and Western Carolina’s All-SoCon Second Team OT Derek Simmons. The Hokies are the first Power 4 offer for Poindexter, a Roanoke native who already says that VT is “high” on his list. He would definitely be a guy who you’d hope could at least come in and compete for the starting offensive tackle job opposite Xavier Chaplin, but I do wonder if the Hokies may slow play a little here and let the transfer portal develop some, especially once it fully opens December 9th. However, I could also see Tech moving quickly to lock him down knowing they could take 2-3 portal guys given the 105 scholarship target rather than 85.
Meanwhile, Simmons has already received a whole host of Power 4 offers and clearly is viewed more highly by most, including by PFF which has given Simmons higher grades than Poindexter the past two years even though their pressure rates this year are very similar. A school to watch with Simmons is Pittsburgh as their OC Kade Bell was at Western Carolina prior to this season and his father Kerwin Bell is the head coach of the Catamounts. That’s a connection obviously worth monitoring.
Injury Questions Continue: During his weekly press conference, Brent Pry shared with reporters that both Kyron Drones and Collin Schlee are questionable, and seemingly hinted he doesn’t expect them to be able to practice much if at all this week. Pop Watson will get first team reps this week and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t Watson given how Drones doesn’t seem to be getting healthier and head injuries are always big unknowns in terms of Schlee.
Xayvion Turner-Bradshaw Changes Positions: In the most surprising news from Brent Pry’s press conference, he revealed that Xayvion Turner-Bradshaw has changed positions from WR to what I assume would be CB rather than safety given his size. This move did come a little out of left field, but XTB had been behind Takye Heath on the safety depth chart for a while with Keylen Adams jumping Heath into the two-deep and seemingly having the versatility to work on the outside and at slot. We’ll see if a position change can help XTB find some playing time after getting buried in a deep WR room.
Tim Sands Discusses House Settlement Cost Increase: During a recent Board of Visitors meeting, Tim Sands discussed the additional costs that the House Settlement, which will allow revenue sharing for athletes, will cause for Virginia Tech and others. His remarks seem to hint that one way he’d like to alleviate that is by raising student athletic fees which are currently the lowest in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the $400-500 dollar range, which the average fee for the other public schools in VA being well above $1,000. If he doubled the student athletic fee, that would cover much of the roughly $20 million maximum cost of the House Settlement. Good work by VT Scoop’s Doug Bowman on getting this together.
National Honor for Rose Micheaux: Following her double-double against Rutgers and triple-double against Elon, Rose Micheaux was named to the USBWA National Team of the Week. Micheaux has found her stride under Megan Duffy averaging 15.2 points and 9.7 rebounds in only 25.0 minutes per game while shooting 60.6% from the field this season.
Peyton Falzone Visiting Another Big 10 School: 2026 four-star QB commit Peyton Falzone out of Pennsylvania is visiting another Big 10 school this week in Iowa according to On3’s Blair Sanderson. This comes as Falzone has taken trips to Ohio State and Penn State this fall since his commitment to the Hokies. It seems reasonable to say that Falzone’s commitment may be a soft one for the time being.
Bhayshul Tuten Surpasses 1,000 Rushing Yards: Until his injury against Georgia Tech, Bhayshul Tuten was set to cruise past 1,000 rushing yards this season. While that injury slowed things down for him (and likely took away some award finalist opportunities), the Hokies’ star tailback still surpassed the 1,000 rushing yard mark on the season against Duke this past weekend. He’s the first to achieve that since Khalil Herbert did back in 2020, with that success certain to be used on the transfer portal recruiting trail should VT go that route to find his replacement, as I believe will be the case for this offseason.
About Maalik Murphy’s Unique Celebration: After his opening passing touchdown against VT, Duke QB Maalik Murphy threw up double middle fingers in a little bit of an odd celebration. However, it has been revealed (via Rivals’ Conor O’Neill) since then that the gesture was intended at Duke’s offensive coordinator after Duke’s OC said that Murphy could flip him off if he could hit the deep post route pass after failing to do so in practice. And sure enough, Murphy followed through hitting the deep post route for the opening touchdown and then taking his offensive coordinator’s words literally.
