Since taking over at Virginia Tech before the 2016 season, Justin Fuente has done the typical coaching reciprocal move of opening up offseason camps to a collection of programs. Just three hours northwest of Blacksburg in Huntington, West Virginia, coaches from Marshall often make the trip.
During his years as an assistant coach at Marshall, J.C. Price never needed a GPS to find his way to Virginia Tech’s practice facilities. A third-team All-America defensive tackle in 1995 for Tech, Price helped build the foundation of Bud Foster’s successful run as the Hokies’ defensive coordinator.
In the first couple months of the offseason, Fuente has seen quarterbacks and linemen coming and going from his program via the NCAA transfer portal. He’s seen further shifting on his coaching staff, but given what he knew about Price, Fuente realized it wasn’t much of a stretch to assume Price would be intrigued by the opening created when Deep Creek High alum Darryl Tapp vacated Tech’s co-defensive line coach role last week to take an assistant coaching job with the San Francisco 49ers.
“J.C. would come to those (camps),” said Fuente, who didn’t add any more class of 2021 players Wednesday at the start of the late signing period after signing 25 players in December. “I knew pretty quickly that J.C. would have interest in coming back to Virginia Tech.”
After nine seasons at Marshall, Price has returned to the state where he excelled as a hard-nosed pass rusher and run stopper, and where he started his college coaching career as a graduate assistant at Tech and an assistant coach for eight seasons at James Madison.
Hired Tuesday, his job description at Tech will include the title of defensive recruiting coordinator — a new role on Fuente’s staff. Running backs coach Adam Lechtenberg will be the offensive recruiting coordinator.
Recognizing that modern-day recruiting requires more than just evaluating players in person in an era when tools like video conferencing can consume time and resources, Fuente wanted to provide more organization for his program’s efforts by assigning recruiting coordinators.
“I know when I was (an offensive) coordinator, it was a little bit tunnel vision, and you can get locked into that,” Fuente said. “It’s just evaluating, preparing for spring … studying other people, preparing for the first four opponents, those things. There needed to be somebody else in that room that wasn’t the coordinator that kind of could help facilitate that side of the ball in a group effort because it is a little bit more now.”
While Fuente and his staff were done with the 2021 class months ago, he acknowledges Tech will remain active evaluating talent that could come in and help right away this offseason in the transfer portal.
Hendon Hooker joined Quincy Patterson as former Tech quarterbacks to exit Blacksburg via the portal, with Hooker going to Tennessee and Patterson heading to North Dakota State. Fuente said Hooker’s decision didn’t catch him off guard.
“I wasn’t surprised at all,” Fuente said. “I’m not going to speak to his decision. We had a couple conversations about it, but I wasn’t surprised.”
Tech has added center/guard Johnny Jordan from Maryland, safety Tae Daley from Vanderbilt, quarterback Connor Blumrick from Texas A&M and Cox High graduate Jordan Williams, a defensive tackle from Clemson, in the past six weeks.
Fuente said Tech will have to place a priority on adding transfer offensive line talent after losing Bryan Hudson and Doug Nester. Hudson transferred to Louisville on the heels of starting 12 games for Tech, while Nester went to West Virginia after starting 16 games for the Hokies.
“Yeah, it was disappointing,” Fuente said. “It is a little bit different. Those guys leaving hurt. I wish them nothing but the best. I want them to be incredibly successful and I hope they find what they’re looking for.”
Norm Wood, 757-247-4644, nwood@dailypress.com
