Singletary set for post-surgery rehab
UVa's All-ACC selection looks to make full recovery from hip pro
By Whitelaw Reid / Daily Progress staff writer
May 10, 2006

Sean Singletary has watched a lot of basketball lately.
The University of Virginia point guard has been glued to the NBA playoffs on television. And, this past weekend, Singletary took in some AAU action when the Southern Invitational Tournament came to Charlottesville.

Since arthroscopic surgery to his right hip on March 30, the rising junior has been relegated to something of a couch potato.

But that will soon change.

Singletary is expected to be off his crutches by the end of this week. He will start an intensive rehabilitation - to be overseen by Virginia strength and conditioning coach Shaun Brown - shortly thereafter.

Singletary says he should be back on the court at full speed by late July or early August.

"Everything's going real smoothly," Singletary said. "I think I'm a little bit ahead [of schedule] at this present time. Everything's going just like we planned."

Singletary admitted that the hip pain he experienced late in the season was, at times, excruciating.

"It got worse as the season went on," he said. "It's just a relief to get it some rest."

Despite the nagging injury, Singletary was named to the All-ACC First Team. His ability to play through the pain was a main reason why Virginia was able to shock the preseason prognosticators (who picked UVa to finish dead last in the ACC).

Unfortunately, Singletary is growing accustomed to the rehab process. The Philadelphia native underwent shoulder surgery following his freshman season.

"I've never really had a spring or a summer to work on my game," Singletary said. "It's real frustrating, but you just have to take it for what's it worth and just get in the video room and become more of a cerebral player because I can't do much on the court right now."

To that end, Singletary - who said he's enjoyed watching the New Jersey Nets in the playoffs - has watched film of NBA point guards Chris Paul and T.J. Ford.

"I've been going over things with coach [Dave Leitao]," Singletary said, "and have just been learning a few things."

Singletary is looking forward to playing with incoming recruits Jamil Tucker and Will Harris. He said he has already talked to both players on the phone.

"They definitely will be impact players," Singletary said. "We're just anxious to get them on campus and get them into the swing of things."

With non-conference home games at the new John Paul Jones Arena against the likes of Arizona, Stanford and Gonzaga, plus a trip to Puerto Rico in December to play in the San Juan Shootout, Singletary said he's looking forward to the coming season.

"I think coach did a great job of scheduling games in the right places at the right times," Singletary said. "We have a number of home games we could definitely win. It's a tough schedule, but very winnable."

Singletary, who is finishing up final exams in psychology and biology, will be in Charlottesville all summer working with Brown, a former strength and conditioning coach with the Toronto Raptors.

Before the surgery, Singletary was looking forward to playing on the United States Under-21 squad. He admitted that not being able to do so is a little disappointing.

"It's OK, though," he said. "It's just another bump in the road. Now I have time to rest, which I needed from the season. It wasn't a big loss not playing in that. Now I can look at some film and become a smarter player."
 

UVa's Ward will play with cast
By Whitelaw Reid / Daily Progress staff writer
May 10, 2006

University of Virginia lacrosse player Matt Ward, the team's leading scorer, has a broken bone in his right hand - but it won't keep the senior captain from playing in the team's first-round NCAA Tournament game against Notre Dame at Klockner Stadium on Saturday.
"The swelling has gone down a lot," Ward said. "Right now it's a little painful, but it's not too big a deal. I'll be out there playing full speed."

Ward sustained the injury in the ACC Tournament championship game against Maryland on April 29. Ward said it occurred as he was taking a shot on a man-up opportunity.

"The defense was running out at me and ran into my hand," he said. "I felt like it sprained my wrist, but then it swelled up pretty badly the next day."

A subsequent X-ray revealed a hairline fracture. Ward plans on playing with a protective cast, which was created by the school's medical staff. It fits underneath his glove.

"I don't think it will be anything that hampers my ability to play out there," Ward said. "At this point right now, with the way our team's playing, it's lose or go home. It's not something I'm ready to sit on the sideline for, especially when it's not that painful."

Ward has a team-high 45 points (26 goals and 19 assists).

U.VA. NOTES
Richmond Times-Dispatch May 10, 2006

SECOND CHANCE? Of the football players who were academically suspended from U.Va. this school year, cornerback Philip Brown is the most likely to be re-admitted for 2006-07.

Brown, like two of the others, defensive end Chris Johnson and linebacker Devonta Brown (no relation), took classes at nearby Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville this academic year.

Marcia Johnson said last night that her son, who started four games at defensive end in 2004, will transfer to another school, though he hasn't chosen one yet. U.Va. coach Al Groh declined to put her son back on scholarship, Johnson's mother told The Times-Dispatch.

Philip Brown, a cornerback from Hampton, started three games for Virginia as a true freshman in 2004. Devonta Brown, like Johnson, is a graduate of Charlottesville High. His plans for the coming school year aren't known.

Final exams end Friday at U.Va. Most Virginia football players will be back for the summer-school session that begins June 13.

ON THE COURT: Don't be surprised if Virginia pursues Calvin Baker, the 6-2 point guard from Newport News who's leaving William and Mary. Baker intrigues the Cavaliers, a source close to the program said yesterday.

Baker, who helped Woodside High win two state Group AAA basketball titles, averaged 11.6 points, 3.6 assists and 31.4 minutes - all team highs - as a W&M freshman in 2005-06. He was named to the Colonial Athletic Association's all-rookie team.

In 2005, Baker shared The Associated Press' Group AAA player-of-the-year award with L.C. Bird High guard Tyrese Rice, who's now at Boston College. Rice made the ACC's all-freshman team this season.

Baker has indicated that U.Va., Clemson and Winthrop interest him most at this point.

"It's every kid's dream to play at the highest level, and I definitely feel I'm more ready to go to an ACC school than I was coming out of high school," Baker told the Daily Press of Newport News.

Baker played AAU ball for the powerful Boo Williams program in Tidewater. "Great kid, and a good student," Williams said yesterday.

IN THE CREASE: On March 25, a crowd of 7,440 - the largest ever for a lacrosse game at Klockner Stadium - watched Virginia hammer Johns Hopkins.

The Cavaliers were to have played host to Duke on April 15, but that game was cancelled when Duke shut down its team for the season. Only once since the Hopkins game, then, have the unbeaten Wahoos played at home: on April 22, against Bellarmine.

"So the field should be in good shape," U.Va. coach Dom Starsia said.

Starsia's team, seeded No. 1 in the NCAA tournament, meets Notre Dame in a first-round game Saturday at 3:30 p.m. at Klockner.

U.Va. had hoped to play at 7 p.m., partly to avoid a conflict with the 1 p.m. baseball game (Virginia vs. North Carolina) next door at Davenport Field. But ESPNU wanted to carry the lacrosse game live that afternoon, and what TV wants, TV gets.

If the Cavaliers win Saturday, they'll advance to meet Navy or No. 8 seed Georgetown in the NCAA quarterfinals May 21 at Towson University.

Virginia is familiar with both teams. U.Va., which eliminated Navy in last year's NCAA quarterfinals, scrimmaged the Midshipmen in October and again in February. The Cavs also scrimmaged Georgetown in February.

TOO EARLY TO TELL: Whether Virginia's leading scorer, Matt Ward, will play this weekend remains uncertain. The senior attackman hasn't practiced since breaking a bone in his right hand April 30 against Maryland in the ACC championship game.

"If you ask, he's going to tell you he's playing," Starsia said.

Still to be determined however, is what Ward would wear on his hand to protect the injury, Starsia said, "and how is that going to limit what he's going to do."

Ward, a three-time all-ACC selection, is a national-player-of-the-year candidate. If he's not available, then freshman Garrett Billings' role will increase. Billings doesn't start, but he's tied for third on the team in scoring with 35 points.

THE ENVELOPES, PLEASE: At U.Va.'s annual awards dinner for its athletes, the highest honors for 2005-06 went to D'Brickashaw Ferguson (football) and Brielle White (women's swimming). They were named Virginia's top male and top female athlete, respectively.

Ferguson, an offensive tackle from Freeport, N.Y., who was a first-team All-American in 2005, was the fourth player selected in last month's NFL draft. White, who's from Philadelphia, was the ACC women's swimmer of the year each of the past two seasons. She also was honored as the most valuable swimmer at this year's ACC meet and earned first-team All-America recognition four times.

ON THE DIAMOND: In Division I baseball, 13th-ranked U.Va. is tied with No. 1 Rice and No. 2 North Carolina for the most wins this season.

UNC is 39-8, Rice is 39-9 and Virginia is 39-10. The Cavaliers play host to the Tar Heels in a three-game ACC series that starts Friday night at Davenport Field. U.Va. is 26-2 at home this season.

- Jeff White

U.Va. bidding to be NCAA host
Team needs a strong finish; wins over No. 2 Heels would help
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER May 9, 2006

CHARLOTTESVILLE - Two years ago, sellout crowds packed the University of Virginia's Davenport Field to watch the first NCAA baseball tournament regional held in this state.

U.Va., which would love to play host to another regional this spring, will submit a bid to the NCAA this month. Third-year coach Brian O'Connor's club has a role in this process, and it's simple.

"We just gotta keep winning," O'Connor said. "We just gotta control what we can on the field."

Which is why this weekend is so crucial to U.Va.'s chances. North Carolina comes to town for a three-game series, which starts Friday night at Davenport Field. Temporary bleachers - about 500 seats in all - have been installed down the right-field line, and capacity crowds are expected for this ACC showdown.

In the latest Baseball America poll, UNC is No.2. Virginia, which has won 14 of its past 15 games, is No.13. The Tar Heels (18-6, 39-8) lead the ACC's Coastal Division, and the Cavaliers (16-8, 39-10) are second.

Sixty-four teams will advance to the NCAA tournament, and U.Va. is a virtual lock to receive an invitation. NCAA regionals will be awarded to 16 schools. To merit serious consideration, O'Connor said, Virginia probably must finish among the top four teams in the rugged ACC, which may send eight to the NCAA tourney.

"I think it's going to come down to how we do in the last few games and the conference tournament," O'Connor said.

Virginia plays an out-of-league game at Old Dominion next Tuesday night, then closes the regular season with a three-game series (May 18-20) against ACC foe Virginia Tech at Davenport Field.

The ACC tournament begins May 24 at Jacksonville, Fla.

From a school wishing to play host to an NCAA regional, a minimum bid of $50,000 is required. Most schools will promise the NCAA much more. U.Va. officials decline to say how much they'll bid, but they would consider it money well spent. The extra exposure helps in recruiting, O'Connor said, and history shows that host teams traditionally fare well in NCAA regionals.

"It's an investment in our program," said O'Connor, whose record at U.Va. is 124-45. "There's nothing that can do more for our program than to be able to host an NCAA regional."

In 2004, before Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College joined the conference, the ACC had nine members that played in one baseball division. U.Va. finished the regular season as the ACC's No. 2 team that year.

"The NCAA is always looking for new breakout teams in new places to put regionals, and there'd never been one in Virginia," O'Connor recalled. "So we were an absolute lock to get one."

This year, O'Connor said, "I think the bottom line is, it will come down to two things: How we finish in the league, and do [NCAA officials] want one in an area of the country where really nobody else can do it.

"There's nobody north of us who's having the kind of season we're having. The NCAA doesn't want all the regionals to be in the South. But you also have to be worthy."


 

Duke report draws retort from Durham
Manager: Police took case seriously
Michael Biesecker, Staff Writer

DURHAM - Duke University administrators appear to have based their response to rape accusations against lacrosse players on a cell phone conversation overheard on a hospital loading dock.
An internal report filed by a Duke police officer March 14, shortly after a woman told emergency room workers she was raped, says the accuser initially said she was attacked by 20 men before changing it to three men.

It also indicates that city police were skeptical that a serious crime had occurred, though it does not say which Durham officer made that assessment.

City Manager Patrick Baker said Tuesday that the Duke police report is based on what a campus police officer overheard a low-ranking Durham officer say on a cell phone early that morning outside Duke Hospital. The criminal investigation has been handled by Durham police.

"Their officer did not speak to our officer," Baker said. "He appears to have overheard half a conversation, and he didn't follow up."

Duke released the March 14 campus police report Tuesday. That came a day after a study found that Duke administrators were slow to act because their initial internal police report indicated Durham officers had said only misdemeanor charges were likely.

Baker, who spoke with police officials Tuesday about the chain of events, bristled at the implication that city officers did not believe the accuser. He said that the incident was classified as a sexual assault about 30 minutes after the woman arrived at the hospital and that investigators were quickly put on the case.

"Any assertion that the Durham Police Department didn't take this case seriously or indicated that it would blow over is completely contradicted by the facts and our actions," Baker said.

Baker said he has never received any indication that the woman said she was raped by 20 men or that she changed her story.

"I have no idea where that came from," Baker said. "I've had a lot of conversations with the investigators in this case and with officials at Duke, and at no time did anyone indicate the accuser changed her story. If that were true, I'm sure someone would have mentioned it to me."

Meanwhile, defense lawyers for the two lacrosse players arrested last month on rape and kidnapping charges said the Duke police report will help their case.

"The prosecuting witness has given a number of versions of what happened," said Wade Smith, an attorney for accused player Collin Finnerty. "It seems to me that this is an important moment in the case."

District Attorney Mike Nifong has declined to discuss the Duke report.

The one-page form says the woman, an escort-service dancer hired to perform at a team party that began March 13, was taken to the emergency room about 3 a.m. the next day by Durham police. It is the policy of The News & Observer not to disclose the names of those who report they were sexually assaulted.

Form's assertion

Signed by Christopher H. Day, a Duke University police officer, the form says the accuser "was claiming that she was raped by approximately 20 white males" at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd.

While Lt. J.O. Best of the Duke police department stayed at the emergency room, Day and two other campus officers went to the Buchanan Boulevard house, which was shared by three team captains and was the site of the party. When no one answered the door, the officers took note of the student vehicles parked outside.

The report goes on to say the "victim changed her story several times, and eventually Durham police stated that charges would not exceed misdemeanor simple assault against the occupants of 610 Buchanan."

There was no evidence that Day had direct contact with the accuser while she was treated at the hospital.

Duke police filed no charges, and the report indicates they identified no suspects.

Day's supervisors read his report and then briefed university administrators on the rape accusation, a Duke spokesman said Tuesday.

Efforts to reach Day and Best on Tuesday were unsuccessful. A Duke spokesman declined to give the name of the Durham police officer referred to in the report.

The study of Duke's response to the case released Monday was compiled by Julius Chambers, a former N.C. Central University chancellor, and William G. Bowen, a former Princeton University president. They concluded that Duke's administrative response to the situation was hampered by the reports that Durham police were skeptical of the rape accusations.

Administrators faulted

The study faulted administrators for taking at face value the report that the accuser had changed her story.

"Duke can't rely on secondhand reports about credibility," one law professor told Chambers and Bowen.

The study said administrators might have reacted differently had they known a female Duke police officer March 14 had tried to soothe the accuser, who was "crying uncontrollably and visibly shaken."

Baker said that neither he, Police Chief Steve Chalmers nor any other Durham city official was interviewed for the study, which he said was based solely on the campus police force's account of events.

"I find it odd the state of mind of the whole Police Department appears to have been accepted with no effort to verify that was indeed the case," Baker said.

(Staff writer Benjamin Niolet contributed to this report.)

 

Assessing lacrosse - without its many myths
The Virginian-Pilot
© May 9, 2006

Talk about watching what you wish for. Lacrosse people finally get their beloved game all over America's front pages. And now they can't get it off America's front pages fast enough.

You know the basics of the ugliness involving the Duke University men's team. The episode has dragged lacrosse kicking and screaming into national discussion - for all the wrong reasons. Reasons such as lacrosse's supposed "culture of privilege." Its players' sense of "entitlement." Lacrosse's "closed community."

As if there's a double-secret handshake you need to enter the lacrosse world, or at least the lacrosse party.

OK, bad joke, especially considering how furiously lacrosse lovers are defending the game against the Duke damage.

U.S. Lacrosse has bolted into spin control, distributing e-mails with talking points aimed to reclaim the game's honor and pride. Honor and pride, I've come to learn, are big deals in lacrosse.

Like a lot of folks, I've arrived late to lacrosse through my kids. Both play. And, yeah, maybe they're more spoiled than they need to be. But they aren't prep-schoolers, silver-spooners - not that there's anything wrong with either - or part of some bustling criminal element.

The point is, the last few years, I've seen for myself teams of regular kids learning how to pass, catch, cradle and shoot, not how to put on airs. If I'm supposed to be wallowing in elitism at a lacrosse game, I'm not seeing it.

Now, I'm no shill for U.S. Lacrosse. The fact is, I hate how lacrosse is robbing baseball fields of perfectly fine athletes. But I do buy it when the national governing body decries the "outdated stereotypes" being used to kick around lacrosse in the media.

Sure, school lacrosse is rooted in the Northeastern preps and parochials. But I also buy U.S. Lacrosse's contention that the game is far more "public" today than its reputation suggests, because, well, that's what it looks like to me.

Mark Kelly, too. As president of Hampton Roads Lacrosse, which runs ever-expanding youth and adult leagues, Kelly's a go-to guy when it comes to speaking for the sport, although he never played the game.

"I'm a swimmer," Kelly said with a chuckle. "Put my head under water and sing to keep from being bored."

But with college lacrosse-playing sons - Ryan Kelly plays for top-ranked Virginia - Mark Kelly has his eyes open wide enough to feel the huge body blow delivered by the Duke situation, one that won't easily heal.

That's the case because a lot of media coverage has promoted "the entitled few that play lacrosse," Kelly said. "But that really isn't the fact pretty much anywhere. It's growing in a wholly different direction."

Around here, that means a spike in public school club teams, boys and girls . And greater participation in Hampton Roads Lacrosse. And the addition of a Division III team at Christopher Newport University, a public college.

(Division III is the growth sector of men's college lacrosse, Kelly believes, because scholarship programs are hard to add due to Title IX's equal-funding requirements.)

That said, there's no doubt there was an above-the-law culture at Duke that spiraled out of control. The school forced out its coach and killed its program, although Duke plans to revive lacrosse next year under tight reins.

The rebuilding will be front-page news, hopefully requiring no spin control.