Now that the glow of Friday night’s win over Cal has started to subside, I find myself thinking about what a coaching masterpiece the game was by interim head coach Philip Montgomery.
Remember back to 2020, the next to last year of the Justin Fuente era. After some disappointing losses (including an awful one to Liberty) the team went up to Pitt. They looked lifeless, particularly in the second half. Like a bunch of young men who weren’t having fun, who didn’t really want to be out there, and were just clocking in for the 1 PM shift.
Not surprisingly, they got beat 47-14, and if there was any doubt whether this was an isolated incident, they followed that up with a 45-10 loss to Clemson.
Brent Pry seemed to have the same problem this year, starting at halftime of the game with Vanderbilt and continuing right up to the press conference where they fired him. Players seemed in a fog, somehow knowing they weren’t going to win, and trying to do the right thing when they inwardly didn’t believe it would make a difference.
That’s the thing about sports I’m not sure everybody quite understands. After you get through all the preparation, scouting, drills, practice, etc., it’s still a game, and you still have to believe you have a chance. Just about every competitive person I’ve ever seen (including myself) has this common trait: You either need to see some chance to win, no matter how small, or you’d rather not participate. Competitive people are just not wired to go out and battle with no opportunity to claim victory.
The person who can rally everyone to believe enough to give all the effort they have in the face of some daunting odds is a pretty fair manager or coach. Not everyone can do it, and I believe some are just born with it. Fuente seemed to have lost the ability. Given all of his one-score losses, I’m not sure Pry ever had it.
But look at what Montgomery has accomplished in just 5 games: On a Saturday night in Raleigh, he somehow got what remained on the roster to believe they could go into the lion’s den and beat N.C. State. It wasn’t so much Xs and Os, but faith and fire in the belly. The skill to motivate people to reach just beyond their comfort and skill level is the very definition of coaching, and Montgomery’s ability was on full display that night.
Much to the surprise, I might add, of many. It’s nothing personal to Philip, but to many he was chosen as an interim caretaker, keeping the seat warm until the Hokies hired a REAL coach.
Friday night, the situation wasn’t any better. He had even less of a roster to work with as close to a dozen players opted for the transfer portal. While the crowd at Lane showed up as it always does, some left at halftime including what seemed like the entire student section. The quarterback wasn’t playing great at times, and when the Hokies trailed 20-10, there was a general air of “well, at least in the first quarter we tried.”
If you had asked me at halftime if I thought the Hokies would come storming back and win in two overtimes (or for that matter would John Love miss a potential game-winning field goal at the end of regulation) I’d have laughed at you. As I always do, I hoped for the best. But I was adequately prepared for the worst.
That never happened. I saw a team as fired up to play in the second half as if the season just started 5 minutes ago. I once had a coach who at a critical junction of a game said “we’re only going to run plays we know can work” and we ran basically our 5 favorite plays. That’s what Montgomery did in the second half, taking any potential confusion out of the equation and reducing it to a battle of wills between players.
It worked.
This doesn’t mean Montgomery is now a leading candidate to be the next coach. Far from it. But one of the skills missing from the last two head coaches has been that ability to know what buttons to push on different players at different times to get them to play at or above their talent level. It’s what they meant when people said they’d run through a wall for Green Bay coach Vince Lombardi.
Montgomery showed what that skill looks like Friday night. He made them believe they could do what many of us thought they couldn’t.
It’s something to be noted. Respected.
And greatly appreciated.
It is interesting that Coach Montgomery has gone 3 – 2, and his teams have outscored the opponents over that five game stretch.
Two of those wins were one-score games. I believe Pry was 1-12 in one score games, so he’s doubled the one-score wins of his predecessor…
Great writing, Dave, as always!!