Williams moves on

BLACKSBURG - Ryan Williams sat in his room, surrounded by darkness, thinking about the play. Thursday night turned into Friday morning, and his fumble from Virginia Tech's 20-17 loss Thursday to North Carolina kept tumbling through his mind - an unending cycle of regret.

Williams, the Hokies' redshirt freshman tailback, took a handoff on third down and 6 with about two minutes left in the game. He cut right, toward a hole.

Just as Williams passed tackle Tydreke Powell, he reached across Williams' waist and knocked the ball out with his left hand. Carolina recovered and milked the clock before kicking the game-winning field goal.

Williams felt so devastated by his fumble - his first on a run this season - that he didn't fall asleep until 8 a.m. Friday.

"That play just ran through my head over and over again," Williams said. "When I say over and over again, I mean over and over again. If I wasn't tired, I probably still would be up thinking about the play."

After a day to purge his memory, Williams said he had recovered from the fumble, if only because doing so will determine if he plays as impressively in Tech's final games.

Williams slept just two and a half hours Friday morning. When he woke up, "that play, that was the first thing I thought about," he said. "It still makes me sick to my stomach. But the difference now is that I've come to terms with it."

While doing that, he skipped classes Friday. "I couldn't stomach looking at people's face, the same people who look at me every day and tell me how proud they are of me and tell me I'm their favorite player on the team," he said. "To look in their face and know I may have disappointed them in some way, I just couldn't do it."

When he went out Saturday, those people encouraged him. "They gave me a hug, gave me support," he said. "I was apologizing to them because I still feel bad about it."

When cornerback Rashad Carmichael noticed Williams with his head down in the locker room, told him, "It's a long season. One fumble, it's not going to kill us. What's more important than that is how are you going to come back from it?"

Running backs coach Billy Hite, in his 30th season on the job, tried to offer Williams some perspective, by saying that all of his best backs have fumbled at some point.

"That's not going to be the last time that it happens to you," Hite told Williams. "A lot of guys who make the second-effort runs, it happens to them sometimes, too."