Brian Bluhm

• Age: 25
• Class: Graduate student
• Major: Water resources
• Hometown: Louisville, Ky.

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Brian Bluhm sometimes struggled to get some of his priorities straight.

Should he go to the Virginia Tech football game against Clemson, or stay home and watch his beloved Detroit Tigers in their first playoff appearance in years?

But the 25-year-old sports-crazy graduate student, who died in Norris Hall Monday, was clear on the most important things in his life.

“He was a Christian man who loved God first and everybody else after that,” said Matt Dunham, a Tech senior who knew Bluhm through Tech’s Baptist Student Union.

He called Bluhm a mentor.

Bluhm was a regular at Bible study and the group’s Tuesday night worship service, Dunham said.

After God came family and friends.

Baseball couldn’t have been far behind.

“He was always wearing that Tigers hat, that beat-up old Tigers hat,” Dunham said. The last time the two were together was to watch an opening day game between the New York Mets and St. Louis Cardinals at Buffalo Wild Wings.

Bluhm would often meet his old Tech friend Matt Conner, who now lives in Lynchburg, for Tech football games or Salem Avalanche baseball games.

“Under normal circumstances he was a quiet guy, but when it comes to sports, he’ll yell and jump and cheer with the rest of us,” Conner said.

He also had a catalog-like recall of sports statistics.

Bluhm was a highly regarded regular contributor to several baseball blogs, particularly those about the Tigers. Fellow bloggers posted numerous memorials about him this week.

“I never met him in person or spoke to him on the phone,” wrote Zachary Herman on one Tigers blog. “Still, I considered him an important person in my life and I am deeply saddened by his death.”

According to the Detroit Free Press, just before Tuesday’s Tigers game, the announcer asked for a moment of silence for all the victims at Tech, and mentioned Bluhm specifically.

If Bluhm knew his name was called over the loudspeaker at a Tigers game, Conner said, “he’d be smiling from ear to ear.”

Bluhm, who had lived as a boy in Troy, Mich., went to high school in Kentucky before coming to Tech. He earned a degree in civil engineering, and stayed at Tech for a masters degree in water resources.

He was nearly done, and already had a job lined up in Baltimore. He’d already found an apartment there, Conner said.

“He was really excited to finish up his thesis and get out in the real world,” he said.

— Matt Chittum