Brian Armstrong vividly recalls the first time Dominique Davis crossed, or, more precisely, soared above his radar screen. It was the winter of 2005 and Armstrong, then the brand new football coach at Kathleen High School in Lakeland, Fla., happened to wander into the school’s gym where he became  instantly fixated on a skinny sophomore he saw hanging on the rim.

“I asked some kids who that was and they told me it was Desmond Clark’s little brother,” Armstrong recalled.

Anderson’s next question — why his name wasn’t anywhere to be found on his football roster – was obvious. He was told that unlike his illustrious older brother, who starred at Kathleen before moving on to Wake Forest and a NFL career with the Chicago Bears, Davis was a basketball player first, a track and field star second, and that he left the gridiron exploits to Desmond and his two other older brothers. Luckily for Boston College fans far and wide, Armstrong didn’t leave it there.

Armstrong coaxed Davis on to the football field that following fall and just three seasons later, Davis will be behind center for Boston College’s biggest game of the year Saturday when BC battles Virginia Tech in the ACC championship game in Raymond James Stadium (1 p.m. ABC), just a half an hour west from the same field where it all started.

“When you consider that this is just his fourth year playing football, it really is pretty amazing,” said Armstrong, and it is hard to disagree.

Initially, Armstrong had the lanky Davis penciled in as a wide out. In retrospect, it was like putting Vince Wilfork in with the backs and quarterbacks at practice.

“We had him working with the receivers in the beginning hoping to utilize his height and speed. Then one day he was throwing the ball around and …”

Two seasons, 4,407 yards, 39 TDs, and a pair of conference titles later, Davis’s considerable basketball and track resume has been pushed to the bottom of the page. Suffice it to say, Armstrong felt BC came up with a major steal when they inked Davis in his senior year.

“Given what he accomplished, I was pretty surprised that there wasn’t more interest out there,” said Armstrong who has since moved on to become the offensive coordinator at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Mt.

“BC was by far the biggest program that was interested. There was Boise State, but after that it was mostly low and mid majors. I guess everybody is looking for that finished product and it was just his second year playing QB. Most of the guys they were looking at had been quarterbacks since the fifth grade.”

As steep a trajectory as his football career has followed, the last two weeks have only surpassed that arc. Red-shirted his first fall on the Heights, Davis’s Saturdays this fall had entailed little more than charting plays. That was until two weeks ago at Wake Forest when starter Chris Crane was lost for the year with a broken collarbone and all eyes were quickly shifted to that same kid who had been minding his own business in the Kathleen High gym three years ago.

Like another QB down in Foxboro has proven, Davis said the key was being ready to trade, at a moment’s notice, the baseball hat for one without a visor and with a facemask.

“Being a backup - that’s what you have to expect,” said Davis. “You don’t know when or where your time is going to come, but you have to be ready to hop in. My time came (against Wake Forest) and now I’m ready to take my team to the championship.”

He looked every bit the wide-eyed freshman early on in that game with a pair of  fumbles which were returned for Demon Deacon TDs.  It was what he did in the game’s final five minutes that has the Eagles one win away from an invitation to the Orange Bowl.

Trailing 21-16, Davis orchestrated a 70-yard drive in which he hit his roommate, Rich Gunnell, for 36 yards on a huge third-and-13 play and Brandon Robinson for another 21 yards to the Wake Forest one yard line. On the next play, Davis sneaked in for the decisive TD with 3:45 left.

A week later, Davis did just what the Eagles offensive coordinator Steve Logan needed him to do – play mistake-free football – and let BC’s ravenous run defense do the rest as he helped lead the Eagles to a 28-21 win over Maryland and an appointment with the Hokies in Tampa. With a week, as opposed to seconds, to absorb the game plan, Davis completed 12-of-24 passes for 134 yards, two TDs and no interceptions.

“Going through a whole week of preparation really helped a lot,” said Davis. “It was a lot easier. Coach Logan spent a lot of time with me and sped up everything in practice which really helped. When I finally got out there, things were all slowed down.”

Facing a VT defense which never slows down and which picked off Crane three times in Tech’s 28-23 win over the Eagles at the Heights in October, it’s a safe bet that virtually every track in Davis’s IPod has been replaced by the soothing sounds of Logan. He’s spent virtually the entire week either in the film room or in Logan’s office trying to cram a season’s worth of X’s and Os into two weeks. While Gunnell is undoubtedly enjoying having a single for the week, he also has ultimate confidence in his soft spoken roommate to take care of business.

“He’s a young guy and he’s got some things to learn, but we all have confidence in him,” said the Eagles’ leading receiver. “We as a group are just trying to pull around him because this is his time now and this is his team now.”

Like Gunnell, Armstrong says he wouldn’t be surprised to see Davis and the Eagles make it three in a row Saturday.

“He’s just a quietly competitive guy,” said the coach. “He’s very serious and almost calculating out on the field. The bigger the game and the bigger the stage, he just has the knack for playing his best.”

With a pirate ship as the backdrop and upwards of 60,000 screaming, predominately Hokie fans wrapped around it, you couldn’t ask for a better stage than Raymond James Stadium Saturday.

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One BC player who has undoubtedly been brought up early and often in the Hokies’ offensive meetings this week is BC linebacker Mark Herzlich. The junior, who leads BC with six picks, two of which he returned for TDs, and 98 tackles, was named the Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year Wednesday.  It is a great honor for Herzlich, who is also a finalist for the Butkus Award, but it is clear that he has more pressing things on his mind right now, namely a VT team that dashed the Eagles’ designs on a major bowl bid in this very game last year.

“Last year we had a great team, but the thing is we didn’t reach our goal,” Herzlich said. “We didn’t win the ACC championship and we didn’t go to the Orange Bowl. If you don’t make it to the Orange Bowl, you’re just another team in the ACC. You did a good job, but you’re not noticeable. This year we want to be noticeable and get to where we want to go.”

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Remember when the Commonwealth Classic was not just a game, but an event? New UMass basketball coach Derek Kellogg does. Kellogg, who played with Marcus Camby on a Minuteman squad that won four straight Atlantic 10 titles, played during the apex of the Boston College-UMass basketball rivalry in the early 90s. Back then the two team’s annual get together had to be moved to the Fleet Center just to accommodate the overflow crowds that the game produced. While it would be great to see the game once again  reach that stature, Saturday night’s contest in Amherst (8:30) could  be rather one-sided in the Eagles’ favor. The Minutemen (1-5) have lost five straight and, throw out an 80-58 loss to Memphis, Kellogg’s squad hasn’t been exactly facing world beaters. In their last three games, UMass has lost to Jacksonville State, Wisconsin-Green Bay and Toledo. On the other end of the spectrum, BC heads into the contest at 5-2 (0-0 ACC) after turning back a tough Iowa squad, 57-55, Tuesday.

Finally, with enough gold to help balance the budget of a small third world country, Michael Phelps was a no-brainer for Sports Illustrated’s vaunted Sportsman of the Year, but it was nice to see SI’s Kevin Armstrong cast his ballot for BC hockey coach Jerry York.  Putting aside his stellar record which included his third national championship last year and 810 wins overall (second on the all-time list), Armstrong hit on York’s “purity in winning and teaching” as an even more important attribute.  He singled out York’s decision to take his Eagles for a two-our visit at Walter Reed Army Medical Center prior to the obligatory photo op with President Bush last June as typical of his leadership.

Bob Albright covers Boston College athletics for WEEI.com.