BLACKSBURG -- There are the stories.

Six drunken guys waken a woman as they urinate on her Giles Road house in the middle of night.

A family sitting on its porch is threatened with rape by a roving band of drunks emerging onto Progress Street from bars a block away.

Such incidents are the source of tension -- and legend -- in this town of about 25,000 college students and 15,000 other residents.

Then there was the reality of Blacksburg after Thursday's Virginia Tech-Boston College game.

A town police officer went to the emergency room with an injured foot after a car-cop collision on South Main Street.

One young woman wished she wasn't handcuffed and arrested after being pulled over in a golf cart.

If it was Miami, it would have been a wild night. That's what reporters and photographers stationed throughout Blacksburg on Thursday night heard again and again.

Despite good conditions for a wild party night -- nice weather, a comfortable 30-10 win for the Hokies and lots of traffic at downtown bars -- neighborhoods were, if not completely quiet, very definitely calm.

10:35 p.m.

Big Al's was filled with students who hadn't scored tickets to the game, cheering on the Hokies as the team put the finishing touches on Boston College.

Tech senior Mark DeAngelis and his roommates, fellow Tech senior Justin Oksanen and Radford University student Eric Ceglowski, reminisced about crazy downtown scenes they'd witnessed. But they didn't have many plans besides watching the game Thursday.

According to several students at the bar, the night game routine goes something like this: The early student tailgaters set up by 1 p.m.; the university shuts down at 4 p.m. as faculty and student parking is given over to fans; by 8 p.m., students are either at the game or in front of a TV. Either way, there's plenty to drink. Some students tape mini liquor bottles to their legs before going to the game. Some women place them in their bras to avoid inspection.

Later, of course, there are bars or parties to go to.

"You go wherever the wind takes you," DeAngelis said.

"Wherever the WIN takes you," Oksanen chimed in.

11:10 p.m.

Bob Canter and his pregnant wife, Diana, arrived on foot from a Thursday night date at the Lyric Theatre. Canter's teenage daughter from a previous marriage had been watching the family's 18-month-old son.

Canter has put a lot of work into this Giles Road house, which was built in 1927 and rented to students before he bought it. Now his wife worries about baby Noah playing in the yard.

"We've had drunk drivers hit the fence before," she said.

Canter has a thing about student drinking. "They've thrown bottles at our house, thrown rocks at us. I've spent $5,000 in the last two years in fixing vandalism," Canter said.

His usual routine is to sit on his porch in the dark with a baseball bat, telephone and flashlight, ready to protect his property.

He has weapons stashed at nearly every entrance: a piece of rebar on the porch, a baseball bat in the basement, a monkey wrench by the back door.

"It's like homesteading in hostile territory."

11:30 p.m.

"Now we'll get more calls," Blacksburg Rescue Squad EMT Leslie Hendrickson said. "People have more reason to celebrate. If we had lost, they'd be all sad and everything."

The rescuers sat in chairs in front of the squad building on Progress Street to watch passers-by, especially the inebriated ones. Finally, a call came, a fall related to a possible mugging.

An ambulance wove through post-game traffic, heading for a frat house on Roanoke Street. Five minutes later, EMTs talked to a shaken young woman.

"Somebody grabbed me on the back of my jeans," she explained, her voice trembling. "They grabbed me and I just kicked. I don't know what happened but they left and I just ran."

"So what's hurting you right now?" EMT Torah Privett asked.

"Nothing," the woman replied. "I mean, I mean, I've just never had that happen before."

Convinced that the woman hasn't suffered a head or other serious injury, the rescue team left her in the care of police.

It would turn out to be a quieter night than the eager squad member expected.

Midnight

In the past, rowdy nights around Woolwine Street have left mailboxes doorless, residents red-eyed and lawns empty of ornaments and furniture, said longtime resident Richard Wade.

"Just about anytime they win it's a lot of noise for the rest of the night and early in the morning," he added. "At 2 and 3 in the morning, they're always yelling and screaming -- I don't know what it is, but it's always something."

Wade had watched the game in a green armchair, feet in slippers, cigar in hand. He anticipated another sleepless night.

"You'll hear 'em," Wade said of student partyers. "They don't really get riled up until midnight, but cold weather or not, you'll hear them, because this was a big game."

But midnight on Woolwine came and went without any yelling, screaming or property destruction.

A couple of blocks away, groups of students gathered on decks in the Chase and Roanoke Street apartment complexes. But the revelry was kept to a minimum and the sound didn't carry to the corner of Woolwine and Lee streets.

Despite the resounding win, the only thing to keep Wade awake Thursday night was the clicking of a reporter's boot heels.

12:20 a.m.

Ellis Monroe, hands in his Virginia Tech jacket, paced beside his car, which was parked in the middle of South Main Street.

Vehicles stacked up in both directions as a handful of police officers directed traffic.

"I certainly wouldn't do anything to hurt anybody," he said. "I had my left signal on."

The police officer whose foot Monroe had just run over had left for the emergency room a few minutes before.

"I was trying to make a left turn and he came up on me. I didn't see him. They wear those black uniforms," Monroe said. "I was just trying to get my grandson home from the game."

12:30 a.m.

Police Chief Bill Brown and Lt. Bruce Bradbery sat in the Blacksburg police station talking about what did not happen. Both had been at work since 7:30 a.m., preparing for a worst-case scenario.

Since 5 p.m., dispatchers had answered 82 calls. In the same time period a week before, when Tech played an away game at the University of Maryland, dispatchers fielded the exact same number of calls.

The fans, in short, were good.

But Brown said the Miami game next week could be a different story. "If we win that game, they are going to be a little wild," he said.

Still Brown said there are only a few fans who make problems. "You always have that minority that is climbing trees, throwing news boxes in the road. ... Those kids make the rest of them look bad," he said.

So far, the department had made 18 arrests, most at the stadium, all on charges of drunk in public. Tech police made 33 alcohol-related arrests.

12:35 a.m.

The line outside Top of the Stairs was about 30 yards long and growing. One desperate reveler attempted to climb a tree to the deck and was ushered away by security, accompanied by shouts of, "He's just looking for birds!" and "Cut the tree down!" from the line.

Tech senior Chase Payne planned on stopping in for a drink and maybe going to one other bar, but didn't think there would be much rowdiness. Certainly nothing like the Louisiana State game three years ago.

"It was something I'd never seen before," he said. "Main Street was blocked off by cops in riot gear, people were screaming, then I looked over and saw the Hokie Bird with a [LSU] Tiger in a noose. That's when I knew I'd arrived."

1 a.m.

Wedged between Lane Stadium and Main Street, the Harrell Street neighborhood becomes a parking lot during Hokie games with cars crammed onto every front lawn, back yard or other patch of unoccupied ground.

That makes for some commotion, but this corner of Blacksburg is hardly ever truly quiet -- game or no game. The neighborhood has earned its reputation as one of the loudest, rowdiest, hard-partying parts of "the Burg."

And in the middle of it all on Thursday night, like every other night, was Elizabeth Smith.

Wearing a No. 7 Hokies jersey underneath a light jacket, Smith stood on the front porch of her conspicuously well-manicured house watching the cars that had taken hours to arrive all try to escape at the same time. Her own lawn held dozens of vehicles.

Smith has lived in the house since 1967, so she's watched the neighborhood change as students moved in and families moved out. There are only a handful of full-time residents left.

"They can get a bit noisy sometimes," Smith said, but they rarely cause any problems.

Most clean up after themselves, she said. One local student helped her rake her large, corner lot Thursday before the cars arrived. Some even call her "grandma."

Smith eventually went inside and closed the door for the night. The cars that packed Harrell, Houston, Warren and Center streets had vanished by midnight.

There were still the merry sounds of a few scattered house parties or die-hard tailgaters. But by about 1:15 a.m., what is arguably the loudest neighborhood in Blacksburg was pretty quiet.

1:30 a.m.

A golf cart with a college-age woman at the wheel zoomed down Progress Street with a Blacksburg police cruiser close behind.

Officer Gary Green hit the lights and pulled the cart over at the corner of Watson Avenue.

"Where did you get the golf cart?" Green asked, after explaining the cart had no lights.

"From my roommate," the woman replied.

Green called dispatch.

"10-4, a green golf cart -- E-Z Go," he said into his radio.

Pause.

"It's a green golf cart," Green repeated.

Then Green handcuffed the woman and put her in the back of his cruiser. Tiffany Anne Neumann was charged with being drunk in public. Green said he suspected the golf cart was stolen. From the looks of the construction equipment on the back of it, the cart probably belonged to an apartment complex, he said.

Green drove it to the side of the road while another officer chuckled at the sight.

1:45 a.m.

John Melia had sat in his living room, a beer at his elbow, Tech and Boston College on the radio. "This is how we enjoy the game," he said.

His part of the Progress-Bennett Hill neighborhood is transforming in an opposite direction from surrounding streets, Melia said, going from an extended dorm room back into a place for families and professionals.

Melia and his wife were Tech students. They rented their house to Tech students for six years before they moved in.

"Is it getting worse or am I just getting older?" he asked, standing on the sidewalk in front of his house as a white Cadillac flying two Virginia Tech flags parked a few feet away.

The driver looked at the sign that said the spot was for church services only.

"Do you think it's all right to park here?" he asked his passenger.

Apparently, they decided it was. They walked to the Sigma Nu house on the corner of Progress and Wilson.

A little later, the Cadillac driver returned. He didn't seem to notice the parking ticket on the windshield as he moved the Caddy into a no-parking zone nearer the frat house.

1:55 a.m.

After a night that brought her from Big Al's to Top of the Stairs, Erin Lundblad and her friend were ready for the night to end. Standing in the cold air on College Street waiting for a cab, the two women frantically dialed their cellphones trying to find friends to pick them up.

"Do you want me to call Brian?" Lundblad asked.

"I want to get home; I've got to work at 8 a.m. tomorrow!" the friend answered.

2:15 a.m.

"It's been pretty quiet. I'm pleased," Bob Canter said as he rinsed out coffee cups in his kitchen.

The neighborhood's problems go in cycles, he said. Right now it seems to be in an upswing. New, more diligent landlords have bought the rental properties surrounding Canter's house. And they keep a tight rein on their student tenants, he said.

Higher fines for noise violations passed by the town council seem to have helped some, along with the neighborhood enhancement programs, Canter said.

But he still wishes the police, to whom he complains often, would patrol more.

Canter looked tired.

"I'm not as preoccupied with it as I was two years ago," he said.

***

Wait -- here are more sights and scenes we heard and saw on Blacksburg's Thursday night:

7 p.m.: Parties that did not happen

“It’s kind of fun. It’s like a party,” said Teri Hoover, who lives on Draper Road where Tech fans sometimes have post-game tailgate parties. Still, she and her husband, Chuck, have placed drums in front of their driveway to make sure they don’t get blocked in by all the parked vehicles.

“A lot of us have taken measures to stop that by using cones and garbage cans and stuff like that,” she said. “It has gotten more and more extensive as the stadium has gotten larger.”

On this night, she need not have worried. Maybe it was the low temperatures, but nobody has a tailgate party on Draper Road tonight. It does take nearly an hour for all the parked vehicles to clear out after the game, but residents along the street all appear to have turned in for the night by then.

7:45 p.m.: The game begins

In the lounge of the Blacksburg Rescue Squad, some volunteers watch the big screen as others study in front of laptop computers.

The hours pass. Leslie Hendrickson curls up on the sofa and naps.

At halftime, Tovah Privett, a 21-year-old EMT, arrives.

“No calls tonight?” she asks.

“That’ll change,” she says in response to shrugs from the other volunteers. “There’s too many people in town for nothing to happen. Too many people. Too much alcohol.”

10:55 p.m.: Enter Hokies

Ten minutes later the Hokies scored their last touchdown of the game. By Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” was blasting at Big Al’s and the bar went from full to suffocating in a matter of minutes.

“Late night all depends on who you know, I guess,” said Tech senior Erin Lundblad.

Lundblad was sporting eye black and a Tech sweatshirt, typical attire for a game night. Her friend, senior Chet Schutzki, had orange and maroon face paint on.

“Next week’s gonna be full body,” he said. “Always full body paint for Miami.”

11 p.m.: Paved with good intentions

“Please donate to St. Jude’s Children’s Cancer Research Hospital,” Melissa England calls out to fellow Virginia Tech students as they stream past on Blacksburg’s Main Street after the game. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but we’d love it if you did.”

She meets with some success. Dollar bills begin filling a jar held by Erica Davis. Both Tech students are members of Delta Delta Delta, and they are taking a turn soliciting contributions for a good cause.

“It’s just sometimes,” England says. “We only do it twice a semester. We don’t want to be rude. We don’t want to ask for money all the time.”

“Everybody’s usually in a good mood because we won,” Davis adds. “It’s hard to ask for money from college students when we’re all, like, broke, you know.”

They call out to a male student they know, asking where he is going. He tosses a remark back over his shoulder that he’s probably going to hell.

“Not if you donate, you won’t,” England calls back.

11:25 p.m.: Not looking for a fight

A group of four students is escorted out of Big Al’s while another group waves goodbye.

Dan Korpman is among the group that stays in the bar. The partying for him started with a tailgate at 3:30 p.m. He doesn’t anticipate a late night.

“Game days are so long that people don’t typically stay out late,” he said.

He didn’t know the details about the group that he waved goodbye to, but they had some problem with one of his friends.

“They pushed me outside and we took it inside,” said 2005 graduate Jon Langman. “And it don’t happen in here. We’ve got too many boys.”

Passing around shots of tequila, glimpses of frat-boy wit and praise for the Hokies, the group was plenty rowdy. But they weren’t looking for any trouble.

“You’re out here to have a good time, not get in a fight,” Langman said.

12:18 a.m.: Car vs. cop

The call came in for an accident at Country Club and Main. Apparently, a police officer directing traffic had his foot run over by a car.

EMTs Torah Privett, Leslie Hendrickson and James Harris run the call. Acy Collins took the wheel of the ambulance. When they arrived at the scene three minutes later, the officer was sitting in the median with his shoe off.

“Of all things,” he said, “I could have been shot, but — no — I get run over by a freakin’ Cadillac.”

The rescue workers remove a gurney from the ambulance but the officer refuses to be rolled away. He hobbles into the vehicle for transport to Montgomery Regional Hospital.

Privett applies a cold compress to his injured foot as Hendrickson takes his vitals.

“It was an older gentleman not paying attention,” the policeman says. “He looked at me while he was running over my foot.”

“I’ve had my foot run over a lot,” Harris says, nodding.

At the hospital, the officer hobbles into the emergency room where he will be X-rayed and treated. Hendrickson fills out the paperwork for the call and the other EMTs sign it off.

They all pile back in the ambulance and head back to Blacksburg. Since there are no incoming calls, they all agree on one thing: a 7-11 stop.

They’ll carry cheesy nachos, Mountain Dews, cookie dough and milk “back to home” at the rescue squad building.

1 a.m.: Hearing the game in snippets

“Fifty-five channels with nothing on,” says James Gunter, a security guard at the Kent Square parking garage. His office has TV screens showing 55 places throughout the building.

“The garage sold out tonight, and it’s the second time it’s done that this season,” Gunter says. Game night usage seems a lot higher than last season, he says. “Everybody’s been very nice, very cordial. Some of them said the score could have been higher,” he says, but, to him, “a win’s a win.” And 30-10 seems to him a pretty satisfactory score.

Gunter, who lives in Radford, works his 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. security shift at the building six nights a week. He never gets to see a game, but he hears parts of it over Station 105.3, The Bear, when he’s not patrolling inside the building.

“I’ll never get any closer than the radio, but that’s fine with me,” he says.

1:15 a.m.: Bar-hopping in a limo

Some students are getting chauffeured to restaurants or bars in style, aboard a Lincoln Towncar stretch limousine operated by Hooptie Ride of Blacksburg. On this night and early morning, Chandler Vest is the driver and business is pretty good.

“It varies. It just depends on if we win. Obviously, we do better if we win,” he said. So he hopes Tech will continue its no-loss season.