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Virginia and Maryland may not have seen eye to eye on several close calls Saturday night in College Park, Md., but Terrapins’ coach Ralph Friedgen made a statement after the game that nobody was challenging.

“You really don’t see anyone overrule too many calls anymore,” Fridegen said.

Anybody who watched Thursday night’s game between Virginia Tech and Boston College would have to agree.

There were replays following two of the three touchdowns in the Tech-Boston College game and the call on the field was upheld in both cases.

On Tech’s first touchdown, the ESPN broadcasting crew thought that wide receiver Eddie Royal did not have complete possession of the ball until he was out of bounds, but after five or six replays, it was hard to say there was “irrefutable evidence.”

A review also upheld a sideline interception by the Hokies’ Brandon Flowers.

Through the eighth week of ACC games, play had been stopped 87 times for reviews, supervisor of football officials Doug Rhoads said earlier this week. Those reviews, which lasted an average of 1:40, resulted in 18 reversals (20.7 percent).

“Over half of them are catch-no catch,” Rhoads said. “And, this doesn’t count all the booth reviews when you don’t stop the game.”

If the replay booth doesn’t stop play, the coaches have the option of making a challenge at the cost of a timeout if the challenge is not upheld. There have been 17 coaches’ challenges and three reversals.

One of the reversals was in the North Carolina-Virginia game, where a 48-yard Chris Gould field goal was ruled no good, then reversed upon review. Rhoads has said that he had no knowledge of a field goal or extra points being reversed previously.

Reviews played a big part in the Maryland-Virginia game, won by the Cavaliers 18-17. The first review came on the spot following a fourth-and-4 pass from UVa’s Jameel Sewell to Mikell Simpson. The second was on Simpson’s 1-yard plunge for the winning touchdown.

The spotting of the ball, an overlooked aspect of most games, has been critical in two Virginia wins. The first was at Middle Tennessee, where the Blue Raiders’ final third-down play came up inches shy of the first-down marker and caused MTSU to punt.

If either spot had favored Virginia’s opponent, given the unlikehood of calls being reversed, the Cavaliers probably would have lost both of those games.

“Either supervisors or officials in general forget the impact of what [the spot] is,” Rhoads said. “The point of emphasis on spots is, you do that every time. That’s 175 times per game.”

If the officials are off by an average of 2 inches per spot, that’s 10 yards per game. If they’re off by 6 inches per spot, that’s more than 30 yards per game.

Rhoads thinks officials have gotten better at spotting the ball “because of the scrutiny of TV,” he said.

“In the old days, you’d be sitting in a room, looking at 16 mm films and you’d go click-click-click-click-click and think, ‘They missed the spot,’ he said. “But you could miss it by a yard and it wouldn’t show up.

“Even the digitized lines that the networks put on there, they’re not 100 percent accurate, but they sure help us. We’re more right than wrong, but I still show it to them on the weekly video.”

Rhoads said he had watched the final five minutes of the UVa-Maryland game as many as 100 times.

“They’re five plays on that final drive where officiating plays a role and there was no video evidence to indicate that any of those calls are incorrect,” Rhoads said. “I think they were a little hesitant on the touchdown and a few seconds run off but it was not excessive.”

On the sideline play where Mikell Simpson stretched out for a first down, there were four TV camera angles provided by ESPN and two provided by the school,

“The one view that is never able to be established is down the Virginia sideline,” Rhoads said, “but I see two officials and that head linesman right there, right where he’s supposed to be, and his eyes focused on the ball. And the side judge is down the sideline, right where they’re supposed to be.

“I can sell a lot of stuff if they’re where they were supposed to be.”

IT WAS INTERESTING to see Virginia Tech take a commitment this week from Edison High School wide receiver Ben Barber, who has moved to quarterback, because that’s also been the case with Jeron Gouveia from Stone Bridge.

Gouveia, who committed to Tech during the summer, has played a variety of positions at Stone Bridge but is viewed as a defensive back by the Hokies. Gouveia had seen time at running back, wide receiver and safety before regular Stone Bridge quarterback Patrick Thompson suffered a thumb injury.

Gouveia rushed for 68 yards, passed for 67 yards, had 44 receiving yards and scored two touchdowns in a 27-7 victory over previously unbeaten Madison. Gouveia’s younger brother, Kyle, is a ninth-grader who is listed as a quarterback.

Patrick Thompson, a junior, is the son of Stone Bridge coach Mickey Thompson, a one-time UVa lineman. Patrick Thompson’s twin brother and classmate, Zach, had two sacks against Madison.

THESE THOMPSON TWINS are not to be confused with the 1980s British rock band of the same name who scored a hit with the 1984 single, “Doctor! Doctor!” That’s not to be confused with the Robert Palmer hit, “Bad Case of Loving You,” which featured the refrain, “Doctor, doctor, gimme the news.”

Robert Palmer is best known for the video that accompanied the song, “Simply Irresistible,” and featured chorus lines of female dancers dressed and made up identically. Palmer died in Paris in 2003.

Presumably, both sets of Thompson twins are thriving.