Thursday, October 11, 2007
Sports columnist Aaron McFarling: Knights enjoyed big night
Aaron McFarling
Recent columns
- Tar Heels will come in mad vs. Virginia
- Cavs’ Zeglinski needs to break out of slump
- Loss to Oak Hill is one Galax will never forget
- Job recognition? Bet that Aiken doesn't want it
Aaron's blog
BUENA VISTA -- Here, at long last, lie the solutions to Virginia Tech's offensive woes:
1. Quarterback Tyrod Taylor needs to get married. Immediately.
2. The offensive linemen need to learn how to tie a wide variety of knots and survive in the wilderness.
3. The coaches need to expand their horizons. They need to start tapping Arizona and Utah and California for recruits. They need to bring in guys who know a foreign language and have traveled internationally.
It's just that simple. Do those three things and the Hokies will be putting up 500 yards a game in no time.
Only kidding, of course. But it's a formula that's worked well at Southern Virginia University, where 10 football players are married (four of them with children), seven players have their Eagle Scout badges and 22 states -- many of them west of the Mississippi -- are represented on the 75-man roster.
This eclectic group put up 854 yards of total offense last week against Kentucky Christian. Eight-hundred fifty-four! Do we even need to tell you that's a school record?
"That's a pretty good day," SVU running back Hayes Page said with a smile.
You bet it is, Hayes. In other news, Bob Barker was a pretty good game-show host.
Page, who played at Nelson County High School, set an SVU rushing record last week with 251 yards on 24 carries. Quarterback Luke Taylor, a junior out of Mesa (Ariz.) Community College, threw for 504 yards and EIGHT touchdowns.
Wait until his wife hears about that!
Taylor has been married for two years, and like about two-thirds of the SVU football players, is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Last November, as he was wrapping up his second season at Mesa, he got a call from SVU coach Mike Smith telling him about an opportunity to play quarterback at his school out East.
After one visit to the Buena Vista campus, Taylor was sold.
"Family comes first for me," said Taylor, 24. "That's just how it is. We were trying to find a place where it would be a football team that I would want to be a part of and a place where she could handle being. I just had to make sure she was good. She loved it out here, and I love it, too. So that's why we came."
While wife Nicole has been working at the school and taking classes part time, Taylor has posted 2,216 passing yards and 22 touchdowns in seven games, ranking him second nationally in passing efficiency among NAIA quarterbacks. Just as importantly, they've fallen in love with Southwest Virginia.
"It's beautiful out here," said Taylor, a native of Litchfield Park, Ariz. "I'm not used to this. I'm used to cactus and rocks and dead grass."
He smiled and pointed down to a patch of brown grass.
"I guess this grass is pretty normal right here," he said.
It's normal for this municipal field off Magnolia Avenue in downtown Buena Vista where SVU practices. The turf here takes a lot of punishment -- as soon as SVU wrapped up practice on Tuesday, a pee-wee team began its workout -- but the Knights aren't picky. For now, they split their home games at Parry McCluer and Amherst County high schools, but they hope eventually to raise enough money build an on-campus stadium.
Even still, the 5-year-old football program is growing in notoriety, particularly among LDS members.
"More and more kids just call us on their own," said Smith, who's in his second season at SVU and first as head coach. "They say, 'I heard about you. I'm looking for a school to go to that can prepare me for an LDS mission.' Or they've been on a mission and they want to go to a school that has our kind of honor code, which is tough. Our honor code is no drinking, no smoking, no premarital sexual relations of any kind."
Receiver McKay Dunn had just returned from an LDS mission in Korea in 2004 when he decided to join his younger brother, lineman Taylor Dunn, at SVU. A native of Friendswood, Texas, Dunn considered walking on at BYU but decided against it.
"I mean, I'm 5-foot-10, 200 pounds," Dunn said with a smile. "A short white guy. What do they want another receiver like that for?"
SVU wanted him. Dunn started immediately, and last week, the senior made a record 13 receptions for 223 yards and three touchdowns, becoming the first SVU player to have 1,000 receiving yards in a single season.
Meanwhile, Dunn's brother has returned from his two-year mission to Germany, and the two are playing together once again.
"I'd say we have a wide disparity of maturity," Dunn said of the team. "We have a lot of freshmen, and there's a lot of married guys. I'm not the oldest guy on the team. I'm 25, and there's three 26-year-olds. They all went on missions and are playing in their fourth years. So it's cool knowing that we're a pretty mature team in that aspect."
SVU is 3-4 going into this weekend's game at Frostburg State. And while another 800-yard game seems to be asking a little too much, the Knights are averaging a robust 514 yards a game and are playing with plenty of confidence.
"It's fun when everybody does what they're supposed to do," said Taylor, the QB.
"A lot of things just fell our way. It's nice when you can throw the ball 8 yards to Hayes, and he can run the ball another 70. That kind of helps you out a little bit as statistics go, I guess. It's nice when you're surrounded by good athletes, your O-line does the right stuff. You can't beat that when you've got time in the pocket."
Hmm.
Tyrod can stay single, nobody needs to earn a merit badge and the Tech coaches can continue to do just fine plucking studs from eastern Virginia.
But this whole time-in-the-pocket thing? That's something the Hokies actually might want to try.
