Virginia Tech will look to snap its two-game losing streak on Saturday afternoon when Georgia Tech visits Blacksburg, Va., for an Atlantic Coast Conference matchup.
For the second straight week, the Hokies (4-2, 1-2) lost a close game. Ethan Grunkemeyer gave Virginia Tech a 20-19 lead over Cal on a 1-yard touchdown run with 1:15 remaining on Saturday, but Ashten Emory’s 2-yard TD run with 18 seconds left lifted the Golden Bears to a 25-20 victory.
Virginia Tech fell to Pitt 35-33 the previous week.
On Saturday, the Hokies’ defense committed two 15-yard penalties, including a pass interference call, on consecutive plays on Cal’s game-winning drive.
“If you have a penalty during play, those typically are going to happen,” Hokies coach James Franklin said. “They’re aggressive penalties, and we’ll deal with those. But when you have a pattern, that’s a different story … and I think there’s a little bit of a pattern with pass interference and playing the ball in the air.”
The Hokies’ offense ranks third in the ACC with an average of 37.7 points per game. Grunkemeyer, who followed Franklin to Virginia Tech from Penn State, leads the league with 1,734 passing yards and has thrown 12 touchdown passes against just two interceptions.
The Yellow Jackets (2-3, 1-1), meanwhile, edged Duke 28-25 last Saturday on Trelain Maddox’s 1-yard touchdown run with 54 seconds to go.
Georgia Tech’s defense is the ACC’s fourth-worst, giving up an average of 388.8 yards per game. On Tuesday, it suffered a big blow with the sudden retirement of linebacker Kyle Efford due to repeated injuries to his right arm. He made six tackles against Duke.
That was his first game in a month. Still, Yellow Jackets coach Brent Key said he believes Efford’s short comeback will provide a spark for the second half of the season.
“This man willed himself to play until this team turned the corner, until this team got out of the rut that they were in,” Key said.
Offensively, the Yellow Jackets are led by quarterback Alberto Mendoza, who has thrown for 1,193 yards and completed nearly 70% of his passes this season.
Defensively, Virginia Tech has limited teams to per-game averages of 86.5 rushing yards and 2.7 yards a carry, fourth-best in the ACC. That unit will be tested by Georgia Tech running back Justice Haynes, who has rushed for 462 yards on 5.3 yards a carry this season.