Virginia Tech's football coaching staff dodged a second bullet Thursday when it was announced that Murray State, which had been pursuing Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster for its head coaching job, hired Oklahoma assistant Denver Johnson instead.

With Clemson unsuccessful in their attempts to woo Ricky Bustle away from Tech, this means that the Hokies can head into the stretch run of recruiting with their coaching staff intact. With most colleges filling thier coaching vacancies at this point, this should be the end of the attempts to raid the Tech coaching staff ... at least until next year.

Boy there's nothing like watching Tech versus Liberty on the Liberty Broadcasting Network.

Check your sarcasm meter on that one, because it should be off the scale. It figures this game would be tape-delayed, because I would have given anything to hear Bill Roth's voice calling the game as opposed to the "I Love Liberty" drones who did the announcing on TV.

For those of you who couldn't watch the game on HTS, I'm not kidding - it really was produced by the Liberty Broadcasting Network. We were treated all game long to fawning admiration of Peter Aluma and the other Liberty players, endless Liberty University promotional commercials, and an interview with Jerry Falwell during halftime. Falwell displayed his prodigious knowledge of college basketball when he expressed surprise at the 21-17 half time score, because "both teams are run and gun teams."

Now there's a man who's still living in the 1980's.

I should have known we Hokies were in for a rough viewing night when the play-by-play announcer called Ace Custis by the name "Ace Curtis" the first two times he mentioned him.

Despite the lousy announcing, the presence of Peter Aluma in the post, 9000 rabid Liberty fans, and some of the worst reffing I've ever seen (how many piddly hand-check fouls can we call on Troy Manns?), the Hokies put Liberty away in the second half and won the game, 59-47.

Next up for the Hokies is a game at St. Joseph's, 7 pm Saturday.

One quick miscellaneous note - the basketball and football helmet graphics on Hokie Central's home page are now clickable links that will take you to the basketball and football pages, respectively. Have a nice weekend!

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