A week after starting the season with a disappointing 34-27 overtime loss at Vanderbilt last weekend, the Virginia Tech football team returns to Blacksburg for its first home game this week. When the focus shifted from 2023 to 2024 and a quick glance at the schedule was enough to have many people expecting the Hokies to go 1-0 against Marshall.

Well, they’ll be 0-1 when the ball kicks off at Lane Stadium, and the Thundering Hurd are the team that’s 1-0 after a season-opening win over Stony Brook last weekend. It was an impressive 45-3 win over the Seawolves and a fast start on offense for a team that went through a lot of turnover in the offseason with the transfer portal.

Virginia Tech will look to quickly bounce back from the loss to the Commodores and avoid a major disaster with a win over Marshall, who beat the Hokies 24-17 at home last season. As we inch closer to kickoff, here’s a final look at the odds and a prediction.

When the odds for this game were released last Sunday, DraftKings also had the Hokies as double-digit favorites at 16.5 points. They were double-digit favorites against Vanderbilt last weekend and we all know how that turned out. At the time of this writing, Virginia Tech is now a 20-point favorite, which seems a bit high.

A few things I want to see before this game: Can the Hokies defense recover from last week’s performance and do a better job of stopping the run, as Marshall will attack them early with that. Also, can they get off the field on third down and can they force some turnovers? Those are two major key factors in my opinion.

How early do they attack on the offensive side to start the running game? Early last week it was short passes, but head coach Brent Pry said this week he wants to make sure they are aggressive early and throw the ball to open up the running game. We’ll see. I want the Hokies to get in the win column, but not cover the spread.

Prediction: Virginia Tech 38, Marshall 23