Family ties run deep for Virginia Tech football

are sharing the same house again for the first time since high school, the two brothers have run into some issues.
Antoine insists on having a clean bathroom and no dirty dishes left in the sink. The latter request is one he says Derrick is struggling with.
“The deal is you cook it, you wash it,” said Derrick, a sophomore who is two years younger than Antoine but only a year behind him in college eligibility. “Those are his dishes in the sink, so he’s got to wash them.”
Two brothers squabbling over living arrangements shouldn’t come as a shock. But that those two siblings each weigh around 300 pounds, go to the same school, and will start side-by-side for one of the country’s best college football teams is one of the more unusual circumstances this year.
Except, that is, at Virginia Tech, where family ties to the program have become the
On this year’s roster alone, there are 11 players with a father or sibling that once played at the school, including four starters on defense. Since Coach Frank Beamer took over the program in 1987, he has coached at least 70 players with a father or brother who previously played for the Hokies, according to Virginia Tech’s sports information department.
“In a lot of cases the second family member was more highly recruited than the first one, could have gone to a lot more places and they chose to come to Virginia Tech knowing everything you could possibly know
That first one is gonna fill them in with what’s taking place here, so I think it’s a great compliment to our program when a second brother comes or a third brother comes.”
From 2002-’04, brothers Kevin and Jonathon Lewis played together as defensive tackles at Virginia Tech. In just the past decade, there’s also Centreville High graduates Blake and Brett Warren, who both played linebacker for the Hokies in 2004 and 2005 — their younger brother Beau was also the starting center for Virginia Tech last year — as well as brothers Orion and Cam Martin (2005-’08).

And though Antoine Hopkins took some criticism last year when the coaching staff noticed how much more energetic Derrick was at times, the dynamic has raised both their levels of play.
“By him being here, I had to kind of limit my mistakes, play a little harder,
redshirt junior from the Richmond area who started 12 games last year. “My mistakes turn into his success. He has me as kind of the test dummy for him. It’s just a great chemistry. I don’t have to talk a lot. I can just kind of nod and he knows what he needs to do.”
The famil