Some odds and ends from the Hokies’ updated roster
Virginia Tech updated its roster on HokieSports.com last week, which isn’t groundbreaking news except that there are a few interesting tidbits in the new jersey number selections and some other roster stuff.
A lot of these are freshmen last year who were assigned a number after redshirting. A few others are switches. I thought I’d go through them.
The Hokies start spring practice on March 27.
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No. 2 – Donovan Riley (switched from No. 31; wearing Michael Cole‘s old number)
No. 4 – DE Ken Ekanem (same as J.C. Coleman. This was the case last year too, although an offseason rule change seems like it would prevent this — the fourth bullet point at the bottom)
No. 7 — Nobody. My guess is they’re probably saving it for an incoming freshman, since it’s a fairly prominent number at Tech.
No. 9 — QB Brendan Motley (Randall Dunn‘s old number)
No. 13 — CB Davion Tookes
No. 15 — WR Joel Caleb
No. 16 — QB Carlis Parker
No. 21 — WR Mark Irick
No. 23 — WR Der’Woun Greene (also of note: he’s listed as a flanker and not a cornerback, where he finished up last year)
No. 25 – RB Jerome Wright (Martin Scales‘ old number)
No. 28 — RB Chris Mangus (Alonzo Tweedy‘s old number)
No. 31 – CB Brandon Facyson (Riley’s old number; also he’s listed as a cornerback to start, which was expected but I don’t think ever formally announced)
No. 43 – DE Seth Dooley (Jeron Gouveia-Winslow‘s old number)
No. 44 — LB Devin Vandyke
No. 45 – PK Brooks Abbott (used to be No. 21, now wearing Joey Phillips’ old number)
No. 49 — TE Dakota Jackson
No. 51 — C Jack Willenbrock (Bruce Taylor‘s old number)
No. 53 — DE Jarontay Jones
No. 60 — DE Woody Baron
No. 62 — DT Ross Ward
No. 67 — OT Parker Osterloh (Michael Via‘s old number)
No. 71 — OT Jonathan McLaughlin (Vinston Painter‘s old number)
No. 72 — OT Augie Conte
No. 75 — OT Adam Tarashcke
No. 83 — WR Charley Meyer
No. 85 — WR E.L. Smiling (used to be No. 23; now wearing old number of P Hunter Windmuller, who is still on the roster but not assigned a specific number)
No. 86 — TE Zack McCray (was No. 95 as a defensive end; now wearing Eric Martin‘s old number)
No. 87 — DE Dewayne Alford (wearing old number of Justin Taylor, who changed his)
No. 93 — DE Justin Taylor (wearing old number of P Ethan Keyserling, who is still on the roster but not assigned a specific number)
No. 94 — DT Alston Smith
No. 95 — DT Nigel Williams
There are a couple other items of note:
– WR Josh Stanford and LB Deon Clarke are both listed as redshirt freshmen. If you’ll remember, they had to file a waiver to get last season as a medical year because they both played. Stanford caught a pass against Austin Peay but suffered a knee injury that kept him out for the year. Clarke played in the first three games before suffering an injury (although it never appeared on the injury report).
Players are required to have been injured in the first half of the season and played in less than 20 percent of the team’s games to qualify for a medical hardship waiver. The rule rounds up, so even though 20 percent of the Hokies’ 13 games is 2.6, that rounds up to three, which would keep Clarke under the threshold.
Now, Tech hasn’t confirmed that the redshirt requests have been approved by the NCAA, but they are listed that way on the roster.
– Both QB Brian Rody and LB Josh Trimble are back on the roster. The walk-ons, if you’ll remember, were suspended indefinitely after being arrested for making what amounted to a homemade works bomb. The charge was reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor in January and both were sentenced to community service.
– I hadn’t heard any reinstatement news on OLB Dahman McKinnon at the end of last week, although now that his felony hit-and-run charge was reduced to a misdemeanor (and just a $100 fine when all was said and done), I’d expect his reinstatement to come sometime before spring practice starts March 27.
– Long snapper Joe St. Germain is not on the roster, for reasons that I’m not sure. It’d odd, since he was awarded a scholarship in January. I’m not sure what the case is there. (UPDATE: St. Germain was added to the online roster. Must have just been a data entry error.)
– Here are a few other walk-ons from last year that aren’t on the roster right now. Not sure if it is permanent or just an accidental omission: LS Logan Baker, OT Darian Fisher, FB Justus Hoffmann and WR David Mellstrom.
– I don’t believe any of the heights and weights are updated.
March 10, 2013 - 10:01 AM
goodness we are into the weeds today. Wow! Have to say that I am impressed. I can’t say that I think this information is blog worthy but on the other hand I compliment you on digging DEEP into the weeds. Never know what might be important to the ardent fan base.
No B.S., Andy you are a bear for research and detail. It makes your coverage great overall. Thank you.
Hey, AB refuses to ever let it be said he’s not feeding the football fans info. Some are better than others, but he did this for a Sunday, and almost no other RT person would be putting in that time without also expecting off comp time during the week.
Andy does a great job of keeping interest piqued twelve months a year when there’s really only about eight month’s worth of material. I appreciate the heck out of his efforts.
Im just trying to keep track of all of the players coming and going. Interesting info.
Andy…interesting…you are part of my morning readings down here. I appreciated you providing me with my early morning Hokie fix…keep it up!
It would be interesting to find out what the deal is on Joe St Germain. It might be the obvious – Jimmy Turk territory – or perhaps something else. Info on such matters has always been extremely difficult to extract from Merry since the late 80′s.
I’ve never understood the duplicate number thing. There’s 99 numbers out there.
Good job Andy! Always enjoy your writing.
St. Germain has been added back now. Probably a webmaster error that he was originally omitted.
walk-on Tyler Barfield also appears to be missing.
Andy, we like you being a bear of research animal but what’s wrong over on the HS database? Link says it is working but no worky for me. Can you wake those guys up? Need to check some hs baseball results
I think they’re reworking the HS site now that we’ve updated the website. I know it’s still going to be there. They’ve had a lot going on with the switch and HS basketball playoffs.
I see where UVa has signed to do four games with BYU. Two home/two away. On top of the Boise games. Interesting that they can accomplish that, while we get to hear Jim Weaver’s lies about scheduling. It’s more than obvious that Frank Beamer & Jim Weaver, who share equally the planning on schedules, shove directional Michigan schools down Hokie fans’ throats, or else only schedule the real teams at ‘neutral’ sites, at an added expense to Hokie season ticket holders.
The first day that Jim Weaver’s replacement arrives can’t come soon enough. Even one of his hand picked stooges would have to be an improvement. Mostly because they’d work at least 4-5 days a week, unlike now. Hey, Weaver is only making $600-776K a year, what do you expect for that? A 40 hour work week?
Is WR Christian Reeves still with the team?
Would like to know, I believe he may have transfered.
I’ve asked and gotten no response yet. FWIW, he’s on the updated roster.