UVA was favored to finally beat VT and lost in the most painful way

At so many points, it looked like this would be the Hoos’ year. As always, it was not.

Virginia Tech preserved two streaks it cares about with a 34-31 overtime win against Virginia on Black Friday. The most obvious: Tech’s 14-game win streak against UVA is now a 15-game win streak, and UVA still hasn’t won this game since Nov. 29, 2003. The other big one: VT’s 25-year bowl streak, which the Hokies and NCAA say is the country’s longest active streak.

Oh, wow, was it painful for UVA. Even more than you’d have thought.

The Cavaliers were down 14-0 in the first quarter. They chiseled away for a while but had a hard time breaking through. They were still down 24-14 early in the third.

But then they did something UVA football rarely does: They came through in a huge moment, getting a few stops and finally going up 28-24 with seven minutes left. They tacked on a field goal later and led by 7 with 2:41 left.

For another team, that might’ve been the end of the exciting part of the story. That team would’ve just won. But Virginia is not that team. The Hokies tied the drive on a drive that included three plays in a row where one of their players caught a 50/50 throw, another caught what appeared to be a throwaway by QB Ryan Willis, and then someone recovered a fumble in the end zone to knot the score at 31-all.

For a sense of how absurd the tying touchdown was, note that Virginia Tech (the team in maroon, you know) scored on a play that produced this still:

The game progressed to overtime. Virginia Tech had the first possession of OT and kicked a field goal on it. On the Hoos’ counter-possession, they fumbled to lose.

Of course they did.

It’s a crushing blow for UVA, which shouldn’t have even needed to make such a big comeback so it could blow the game in the first place.

One of Tech’s two first-half touchdowns came on a blocked punt recovery. UVA had no points at half, because Bryce Perkins and freshman receiver Tavares Kelly took this outrageous coverage bust or whatever it was ...

... and turned it into an incomplete pass, on a drop after an under-throw. And this is maybe the ninth biggest reason this L will sting for a long time in Charlottesville.

People will barely even remember it, because UVA just covered it up with more sadness.

UVA was really, honestly supposed to win this game. The perpetual underdog in a lopsided rivalry was the favorite, per both Vegas and the computers.

In Vegas sports books, the Hoos were 4-point favorites at kickoff, after the line moved around slightly during the week. They hadn’t been favored since 2003, making this the most disorienting point spread in a Hate Week chock full of weird spreads.

S&P+ gave them a 61 percent chance to win and projected a 4.6-point margin in Blacksburg, an extra jarring thing in a year in which Virginia Tech has not been Virginia Tech.

Tech had gone through a bunch of roster attrition, including losing QB Josh Jackson to injury and pretty much an entire defense’s worth of players to various things. Two weeks prior, the Hokies were on the receiving end of one of the most spectacular destructions in Power 5 history in a loss to Pitt. Absolutely everything said this was supposed to be the Hoos’ year, and it was not. When will it be? Maybe never. I don’t know.

For Tech, the bowl streak’s not out of the woods yet.

Virginia Tech had a game against ECU canceled amid Hurricane Florence in September. They’ve only played 11 games, they’re 5-6. They scheduled a 12th game for next Saturday at home against Marshall, a team that ranked a few spots higher in S&P+ entering this week. The Hokies could absolutely lose that game, but for now, their streak remains active.

That’ll be another part of the pain for UVA.Had Tech lost, the Hokies were going to cancel the Marshall game. The Hoos could have snapped their losing streak and quite literally convinced their rivals to cancel the remainder of their season. That would have been an unprecedented rivalry dunking-on, and they let it slip through their fingers.

(Tech’s bowl streak is impressive on its own, but I am obligated to note here that Florida State, not VT, has the real longest active bowl streak, and the longest ever. The Noles have played in bowls 36 years in a row, but the NCAA and Virginia Tech use a vacated game to pretend FSU’s streak actually never got this long. Believe that fiction if you please.)

One thing’s certain and indisputable after this game, though.

Virginia Tech owns Virginia.

No one can pretend the Hokies have just been leasing the Hoos’ psyches for 15 years, not that many people were doing that before this result. UVA will win this game whenever VT decides it doesn’t care, which will probably be never.