UVa men look to rebound from loss
By Andrew Joyner / Daily Progress staff writer
January 5, 2004

For the second time in a week, Virginia is faced with the task of rebounding from a lopsided loss. It’s a Monday morning trend that no team wants to face.

What might be more disheartening for the Cavaliers is that both losses followed fairly similar scripts.

In both a Dec. 28 loss to N.C. State and Saturday’s loss to Providence, the Cavaliers allowed their opponents to shoot well, didn’t shoot well themselves and committed costly turnovers.

After not allowing an opponent to shoot better than 45 percent en route to its 8-0 start, Virginia has now allowed its last three opponents to shoot better than 50 percent from the floor.

“We have to do a better job defensively. We put a lot of effort into it. … We also have been committing too many turnovers that are leading to layups,” said UVa coach Pete Gillen after Saturday’s contest.

Perhaps nothing makes a poor defensive effort more visible than when the opponent’s own defense forces you into cold shooting.

That was the case in both games as Virginia shot a combined 9 for 41 from the 3-point arc in those contests.

Providence used its active 2-3 zone against Virginia and it resulted in a 37.1 percent shooting effort from the Cavaliers.

“We tried to attack the zone. We got some good looks and shots but we got too hesitant and tentative. … We have to do a lot better job against the zone,” Gillen said.

UVa sophomore Derrick Byars, who was 1 for 8 from the floor for two points Saturday, said that solving a zone defense and scoring effectively against it is something Virginia must do to become a better team.

“It’s something we obviously have to work on. Teams we’ll look at this game and we’ll start seeing more zone,” Byars said.

The Cavaliers’ next test against zone may indeed come this evening against William & Mary, a team that has effectively used a 2-3 zone at times.

“We will have to respond. It’s an in-state game. They’ll be excited to play us. We’ll have to respond. We’ll have to be ready to play,” Gillen said.
 

Hokies will need to adjust
Published January 4 2004
David Teel

Let's start with some gruesome details. During its first 108 football seasons, Virginia Tech lost one game in which it scored 40 or more points. During the last 16 months, the Hokies have lost three such games.

This season, Tech's final two opponents - Virginia and California - combined for 13 second-half possessions. Those possessions yielded 10 touchdowns, one game-winning field goal, one punt and one kneel-down to kill the clock.

There's plenty more, but first a suggestion: radical overhaul.

Two consecutive years of late-season defensive failures, lowlighted by last Friday's 52-49 Insight Bowl loss to Cal, are not isolated. They are inexorably linked and evidence of personnel, strategy and recruiting issues that demand head coach Frank Beamer's immediate attention.

Now the hanging judges out there, and you know who you are, believe Beamer ought to fire his entire defensive staff. I don't buy it. Housecleaning would be counterproductive, a knee-jerk reaction that ignored years of game-day and recruiting-trail successes.

Did coordinator Bud Foster, Lorenzo Ward (secondary), Charley Wiles (line) and Jim Cavanaugh (outside linebackers and strong safeties) distinguish themselves this season and last? Absolutely not. They did not teach well during practice or adjust well during games. Blame them, blame their students, blame their boss.

But fire Foster and his lieutenants? With a combined 37 seasons at Tech, record-setting defenses on their resumes and established relationships with high school coaches throughout the state? No.

Alter schemes? Change personnel? Recruit differently? No question. Given the magnitude of the Hokies' shortcomings, to do otherwise would be negligent.

Virginia Tech was 6-0 this season, albeit against its lesser opponents. But no amount of schedule backloading, no amount of Quincy Wilsons, Larry Fitzgeralds and Matt Schaubs, excuses the defensive breakdowns that caused the Hokies to lose five of their final seven games, including the last three.

Linemen missed tackles and failed to pressure quarterbacks; linebackers missed tackles and botched assignments; backs missed tackles and blew coverages - all literally and figuratively falling down on the job.

The result: Tech, which ranked among the nation's top 15 in scoring defense six times between 1995 and 2001, looked clueless and clownish, yielding 121 points combined in year-end losses to Boston College, Virginia and Cal. That's five more points than the 1999 squad allowed in 11 regular-season games.

And have we mentioned 2002? Last season the Hokies won their first eight games, only to lose four of their last six. The culprit then, too, was defense, witness the 50-42 overtime defeat at Syracuse and 56-45 loss at Miami.

Syracuse and Miami last year. Cal this year. In 1,633 games from 1892-2001, Tech lost once when scoring 40 or more - 50-49 at Rutgers in 1992. Now it's happened three times in the last 18 games.

That morsel not unsavory enough? Then chew on this: The Insight Bowl was the highest-scoring, non-overtime bowl game ever.

It's true. From Rockne to Stoops, from Raisin to Rose, no coach, no bowl, has seen a team score so many points in regulation and lose.

Trail 21-7 after one quarter? No sweat. Disregarding a kneel-down to end the first half, Cal scored touchdowns on six consecutive possessions.

Lose top receiver Geoff McArthur to a broken arm? Don't fret. Seldom-used reserve Chase Lyman torched the Hokies for 149 yards and two touchdowns, which were 42 yards and two touchdowns more than he'd produced during 13 regular-season games.

Most of Tech's problem is personnel. Beamer and his staff have neither recruited nor developed players to match the caliber of linemen such as Corey Moore and John Engelberger, linebackers such as Ben Taylor and Jamel Smith, backs such as Anthony Midget and Pierson Prioleau.

So even with six defensive starters scheduled to return for 2004, expect wholesale personnel changes, even if it means using freshmen. Hey, Virginia did it, and rather than regress, the Cavaliers have progressed on defense during the closing stages of the last two seasons.

Also expect alignment changes. Beamer said after the Insight Bowl that Tech might discontinue its use of a whip (outside linebacker) and rover (strong safety-linebacker combination) in favor of a more traditional 4-3-4 look.

Regardless of alignment, Beamer needs to re-evaluate practice and conditioning routines. Late-season fades speak to fatigue - mental and physical. They also speak to a lack of faith, in the system and one another.

That lack of faith was most evident on third downs, football's defining moments. Cal converted 13 of 17, Virginia nine of 18.

The litany of numbers goes on, but we've been graphic enough. You get the point. Does Frank Beamer?
 

Trip tests Tribe
W&M faces Virginia tonight as part of a tough road challenge
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Jan 5, 2004

CHARLOTTESVILLE - William and Mary's basketball team bused from Williamsburg to Pittsburgh on Friday. After losing to 15th-ranked Pitt late Saturday afternoon, the Tribe boarded the bus again and headed south.

It pulled into Charlottesville around 1 o'clock yesterday morning. W&M meets Virginia at University Hall tonight, then plays Colonial Athletic Association rival UNC Wilmington in North Carolina on Wednesday.

"Pretty tough little road trip," said Tony Shaver, the Tribe's first-year coach. "I'm not sure Duke or North Carolina or Kentucky or anybody would want to face that schedule, but we're looking at it as an opportunity and really want to go out there and compete hard."

Shaver, who enjoyed tremendous success at Division III Hampden-Sydney College, has never coached in University Hall, but he's familiar with the arena. As a reserve guard at UNC, where his coach was Dean Smith, Shaver visited U-Hall. He's dropped by more recently with his son Austin, a first-year student at U.Va.

W&M fell to 4-6 with its 70-55 loss to unbeaten Pitt, but Shaver was encouraged by his team's play.

"The best thing was, we really competed hard," he said. "In all honesty, I don't think this is a team that's fully understood how hard you've got to compete to really be successful."

Virginia lost Saturday afternoon, too, shooting terribly in an 84-69 loss to visiting Providence. The Cavaliers are favored to win tonight, but sixth-year coach Pete Gillen knows his team can't afford to coast against W&M.

"Those games are always emotional," Gillen said. "We have to respond and be ready to play."

These state rivals haven't met since November 1997, when W&M's coach was Charlie Woollum and U.Va.'s was Jeff Jones. But the current staffs have several ties.

Shaver's assistants include Dee Vick, who worked for Tommy Herrion at the College of Charleston last season. Herrion was Gillen's top assistant before leaving for Charleston, S.C. Another W&M assistant is Ted Jeffries, who was a four-year starter at center for U.Va.

"We think Ted's a secret weapon," Shaver said. "He may even get some playing time tonight."

At U.Va., Matt McKeag is a student manager. The son of a former Virginia letterman and team captain, McKeag played for Shaver at Hampden-Sydney last season.

"I know Ted played [at U.Va.]," Shaver said, "but Matt's probably given them a better scouting report on me."

In 17 seasons at H-SC, Shaver led the Tigers to eight Old Dominion Athletic Conference titles and 11 appearances in the NCAA tournament. His record there was 358-121.

Obviously, Shaver said, Division I has "bigger and better athletes" than those in Division III, but he hasn't been overwhelmed by the transition to major-college hoops.

"I've felt very comfortable with the coaching part of it," Shaver said. "Maybe a difference is we're not going into games as favorites now," unlike at Hampden-Sydney.