Aaron McFarling

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Aaron's blog

• Monday: Hokies finally get one to fall; Threats from jail; Warming up pitching arms and engines

BATON ROUGE, La. -- About 20 minutes before kickoff, the rain came. A fierce rain. A tropical rain.

Precipitation, we're told, is the great equalizer. It softens the turf to slow the quick, slicks the ball to make the sure-handed awkward. Ostensibly, this would give underdog Virginia Tech a better chance at winning.

But as the rain pelted the crowd of 92,739, nobody seemed to mind. The fans simply roared a little louder.

They knew what the rest of us were about to find out: Nothing could equalize these teams.

The Hokies stepped up in class early this year, and the results were devastating. The offense wasn't ready, the defense couldn't hang, and No. 2 LSU blasted the Hokies 48-7 at festive Tiger Stadium.

The imagination, the hope, the semblance of competitiveness -- all of it arrived too late. By the time freshman quarterback Tyrod Taylor shed his redshirt and jogged onto the field, the hosts led 24-0. Taylor did what he could, dazzling us with the spontaneity of his runs, impressing us with the strength of his arm. But for too long, he'd been the hero waiting outside a clogged phone booth, frantically checking his watch while the building burned.

And it burned big time. Flames licked the clouds with every Matt Flynn-to-Brandon LaFell pitch and catch, every Jacob Hester burst up the middle, every flanker screen that got slammed shut by LSU's angry front seven. The Hokies needed more than a quarter to get a first down. And the Tigers needed less than 5 minutes to make Tech's defense look flimsy and unprepared.

Positioning. Remember that? We heard about it all week, that the most important thing Tech's defense could do to counter LSU's speed was to control gaps, communicate and get to the right spot. But too often, the right spot was vacant, unless you count the leaping LSU receiver or an opportunistic running back.

We saw things happen Saturday that we almost never see occur against Tech's defense. And LSU's 598 total yards sting even more, because they were compiled in a variety of humbling ways.

There was a drop-back quarterback slicing through the center of the line and scoring a rushing touchdown. There was a running back leaping over one of his own blockers, cutting back across the field and outsprinting Tech's secondary, pursuit angles be darned. There was Tech's defensive backfield getting fooled, following the wrong guys and never catching up to the right ones.

The bright spot was Taylor, who provided a glimpse of the future when he relieved a struggling Sean Glennon to begin Tech's sixth series.

And that's what we have to call them -- series -- because they certainly weren't drives. Punt, punt, pick, punt, punt, punt -- that was the maladroit drumbeat of Tech's offense in the first half.

The biggest reason for this? LSU's defensive front against Tech's offensive line was every bit the mismatch most thought it might be. The Hokies tried to compensate with quick passes and flanker screens, and none of it worked.

Somebody needs to run the ball, whether it's Branden Ore (whose 28 yards matched the number on his jersey) or Taylor (44 yards on nine rushing attempts). The Hokies are nothing without a rushing attack, and their seven points were proof of that again.

At least the rain didn't last. By midway through the first quarter, the skies had cleared.

Unfortunately for Tech, so had any questions about which team belonged among college football's elite.