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It's time for Virginia Tech to forget its 0-2 start and the embarrassing loss to James Madison: The Atlantic Coast Conference schedule is at hand.
And one of the Hokies' toughest opponents is first up.
Virginia Tech travels to Boston College on Saturday to play the Eagles for the sixth time in four years. The former Big East foes met in back-to-back ACC title games after joining the conference, and they are even at 4-4 head-to-head since 2003 (the Hokies won both conference championship games).
Virginia Tech has only lost five road games since joining the ACC, and two of them were to Boston College.
''We still realize there's another championship to be played,'' Virginia Tech running back Darren Evans said. ''To win that, or to go to that game, would take everybody; it would take the offense and the defense, and we learned from the two losses that we do need everybody. We do need to keep our heads high and play as hard as we can.''
The Hokies (1-2) began the season with a No. 10 ranking and notions of a bigger championship on their minds. But they lost 33-30 to third-ranked Boise State in the season opener, a defeat that was disappointing but not in itself fatal to the Virginia Tech dreams of finishing high in the rankings.
But then the Hokies lost to James Madison, a Football Championship Subdivision team. A victory over East Carolina managed to get them back on track, and this weekend they open the ACC schedule against a team that has proven to be one of their toughest opponents.
''Coming into the season, they had their national championship-caliber team,'' Boston College offensive lineman Rich Lapham said. ''When you start 0-2 it was definitely a little surprising. But I don't see Virginia Tech ever giving up. Just because they started 0-2 doesn't mean they're going to throw away their whole entire season.''
Safety Wes Davis said that he was impressed with Virginia Tech after the Boise State game, even though the Hokies lost. The James Madison game was ''another one of those throwaway games,'' he said, in which the rain, a short week and the letdown over the opening night loss might have hurt Virginia Tech.
So he's not reading a lot into their 0-2 record.
''I don't know how much they're going to look at that tape, or how much we can look at that tape and say, 'That's Virginia Tech,''' Davis said. ''But what I do know from my past experiences is that they have NFL-caliber players, good coaches and a good pedigree to go along with it.''
And he's having trouble learning a lot from the Eagles' last matchup with Tech, when the fifth-ranked Hokies beat BC 48-14 in Blacksburg.
''It was one of those games that we got beat so badly it was hard to take a lot away from it,'' Davis said.
The Eagles beat Weber State and Kent State before having last weekend off. Linebacker Mark Herzlich, who missed last year's game while undergoing treatment for cancer, says the extra practice time made him stronger and he's ready for an increased workload.
''We got pretty much destroyed last year,'' he said. ''We have that game in the back of our mind for motivation, but it's a different team now, a different season and no one's going to go out there scared, really. Virginia Tech's a great team, but we're confident in our ability as well.''
In last year's game, BC quarterback Dave Shinskie was 1-for-12 for 4 yards. The former baseball minor-leaguer, a 25-year-old freshman at the time, also threw two interceptions and was sacked twice for a passer rating of minus-22.
That's right, minus-22.
''Last year I was out of my element,'' he admitted. ''It was my first start on the road at a stadium like that. Blacksburg is a tough place to play, even for a fifth-year senior. It was my first football game playing in front of 80,000 people. I felt like everyone was on my back. ... I'm not like that anymore. This year I feel it's a lot different.''
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AP Sports Writer Hank Kurz Jr. contributed to this story from Blacksburg, Va.
