Associated Press

Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen and Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer were graduate assistant coaches under the late Jerry Claiborne at Maryland in 1972.

A pair of old coaching friends -- Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer and Maryland's Ralph Friedgen -- will reunite today when the Hokies face the Terrapins at Byrd Stadium.

Beamer and Friedgen worked together as graduate assistant coaches under the late Jerry Claiborne at Maryland in 1972, then both moved to The Citadel, where they toiled en tandem as assistant coaches from 1973-78.

"Ralph and I have been close for a long time," Beamer said. "He's one of the best friends I have."

That said, friendship will mean nothing when the 20th-ranked Hokies and struggling Terps start knocking heads. In the cutthroat world of big-time college football, nothing is more important than winning games if you're the boss man.

While Beamer's goal is to guide the Hokies to a strong finish to a season that hasn't met most people's expectations, Friedgen's task is to steer his wounded club out of the depths of total despair.

"I think we're a lot better than what our record is," said Friedgen, whose team has lost four straight games and stands 2-7 and 1-4 in the ACC. "We easily could be 7-1 or 6-2. We's all hurting right now. We just can't seem to make a play when have to in order to win a game.

"We have a lot of young kids and it would be tremendous for us to be able to win these last three games and build some momentum for next year. I would love for them to experience some success here before the season is over."

That will be a tall order today. Just ask the Las Vegas oddsmakers, who had Tech (6-3, 3-2) listed a sizable 18 ¹₂-point favorite Friday.

Beamer knows what his old pal is going through. In his six first seasons at Tech from 1987-92, the Hokies finished with a losing record four times, the last being an ugly 2-8-1 campaign in 1992. Since, Tech has 16 consecutive winning seasons and gone to a bowl every year.

"It's no fun," Beamer said. "I've said many times, when you're winning in this business, it's a good profession. But when you're struggling to win, it's tough. Real tough. It's getting tougher all the time.

"The thing I know about Ralph is he's a really, really good football coach. He's been on both sides of the ball. He knows the game. There's no question about his ability to coach football. That's what I know."

Today's contest marks the first time this season that Tech has faced a team with a losing record. The Hokies are the only school among the nation's 120 FBS programs that has opened with nine straight opponents that own winning records.

The big thing left on the table now for the Hokies is to try to win their final three regular-season games. They have North Carolina State at home next Saturday, then close at arch-rival Virginia on Nov. 28. Pull that off and then tack on a bowl victory, and they can extend their run of winning at least 10 games in a season to six straight years.

"We'll be ready to go for sure," Tech senior linebacker Cody Grimm said. "The majority of our team is from up around that area, so there's going to be a lot of family members there. I'd say we're more excited for this game than a lot of other games. We're playing in front of a bunch of our family, a bunch of our friends."

One of the sub-plots to today's game is tied to Tech tailback Ryan Williams. The Hokies' redshirt freshman needs 157 yards to break Darren Evans' school-record freshman rushing mark of 1,265 yards set last season. Evans ran for a single-game, program-record 253 yards in Tech's 23-13 win over Maryland a year ago.

"I don't really worry about that," said Williams, who was named one of 10 semifinalists for the Doak Walker Award on Thursday. "As far as the [single-game mark] record and trying to chase it, I mean there were plenty of times where I practically came close to that record, but I was taken out early in the game."