Virginia Tech planned to make some moves during the spring portal, but no one necessarily expected 11 new transfers during the spring transfer window. Of those 11, three of those were surprisingly defensive tackles.
This was despite the fact that the Hokies already had a returning starter in Kelvin Gilliam, a spring riser in Kemari Copeland who earned the Hokies' Spring Defensive MVP award, a promising redshirt freshman ready for playing time in Emmett Laws, and a winter transfer addition in Arias Nash.
So why did the Hokies add three defensive tackles during the spring window? Here's what defensive coordinator Sam Siefkes had to say recently to the TLP's Tim Thomas.
"My biggest thing I think just from a recruiting philosophy is that ‘big people win games.’ And that was one of the things that I wanted to continue to address is bringing big people into this program because that is a fundamental philosophy that I have that I feel like if you have big people, it's hard to it's hard to replicate that and so I wanted to bring in those three guys specifically because I think they had attributes that could help aid to what we're doing from a front standpoint," Siefkes said.
