David Wilson was emotional. He was fiery, ticked off and even cried a little. He didn't take Virginia Tech's 23-3 loss to Clemson in October well.
He told his teammates as much.
"The team got in there and just like a rage came over me and I was screaming at my team telling them we shouldn’t have lost that game," the running back recalled of the Oct. 1 matchup's aftermath. "'They’re not better than us.' And I told them we weren’t going to lose any more games. And I told them I mean it."
The Hokies haven't lost since, winning seven straight games to get back to the ACC championship game for the fifth time in the last seven years.
Wilson said he doesn't normally get like that, but something about the Clemson loss, one in which the Hokies didn't score an offensive touchdown, pushed him over the edge.
He stormed straight to the locker room, passing up any post-game handshakes at midfield. In the locker room, head coach Frank Beamer tried to tell him it was all right. Wilson wasn't hearing it.
"It was one of those moments where I felt outside of my body," he said. "I felt like I was watching me rage off. Whenever I get that mad, I get numb in my nose and I felt that. I know that’s not good when it gets numb right here."
Wilson had 23 carries for 123 yards in that game, but he felt like he had more to give.
"The reason I was real emotional was because it was the first time for me at Tech that I was really involved in a game that we lost," he said. "In the past, I’ve been a backup guy or a special teams guy and didn’t really have a part in the game. But that Clemson game, that was the first time I had a part in a team that lost."
What was the reaction to the speech?
"They were shocked," Wilson said. "I don’t know what their reaction was, but everybody was quiet, and I looked up and I seen everybody just looking at me with big eyes."
"It was real," running backs coach Shane Beamer said. "It was real and it was genuine. ... And he spoke for the whole team. We don't like letting a team come in here and embarrass us in our stadium like they did. And we said that night we'd like to get another shot at them."
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