BLACKSBURG – Following its 17th practice of fall camp on Tuesday, Virginia Tech football head coach Justin Fuente, assistant coaches and players met with the media for a press conference. Read what Fuente and the others had to say below.
Tickets are still available for the Hokies' season opener against North Carolina on Friday, Sept. 3. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. ET, and will serve as Tech's annual Orange Effect game. Tickets are still available for the UNC game.
HEAD COACH JUSTIN FUENTE
Opening statement:
"It's great to wrap up camp just a few days ago and get started with the fall semester. It's been great to see students everywhere and see this campus come back to life. I hope we get to keep it like that for the entire semester. It's been really nice having a couple days of class and the festivities that have been going on. We're working towards our mock weekend. This week, we got one more day of shells tomorrow, and then we'll take the pads off for a couple days and enter our mock Thursday, Friday and Saturday routine. And then come back and get ready to start game week. I'm pleased with our ability to continue to kind of battle through. It's been probably as more of a camp, as least I remember here, which has been good for us. We've got some good work in. Now, it's kind of transitioned to in the morning where it's a little bit cooler. So, overall, just pleased at where we're at. We got to keep plugging along."
On the thought process on doing a mock weekend:
"Yeah, it certainly is. It gives us the chance to get our legs back a little bit. We've gotten a little recovery but we haven't filled our tank all the way back up in terms of recovery. And, usually after a mock weekend, you see a little more bounce in their legs. Certainly, their shoulders and joints feel better. It's not nearly as physically taxing, as it is mentally taxing. I think it's really good for the young guys that have never even traveled with us or played in a game here to just go through the routine a little bit. And that's so they're not worried about where they need to be or what they need to be doing when game week rolls around."
On takeaways from the second scrimmage:
"We did live kicking and I was pleased with that. I always enjoy that day because I get a chance to coach the scout team, but it's really my team versus [James] Shibest team, which is always fun. We play it up a little bit and genuinely enjoy it. I mean, year after year after year, you see guys that participate in the kicking scrimmages on my team that end up covering kicks and playing as the season goes along. We have basically 10 years of footage of guys from last place in here that participated in there, and I think that helps my squad when we go out there and go get live kicking. You always hold your breath because, you know, we only do it once a year for a reason. We made it out of camp healthy, which I feel great about and very fortunate for."
QUARTERBACK BRAXTON BURMEISTER
On the development of the quarterback room:
"They've been really good. It's been a good couple of weeks and I feel like we're just a really close-knit group. We communicate well with each other. I'll go out there and Knox [Kadum], Connor [Blumrick] and Tahj [Bullock] will tell me what they saw. And I'll do the same, with communicating and telling them what I saw, as well. So, I feel like we're just growing as a unit in general."
