Starting time for season opener set
From Staff Reports / Charlottesville Daily Progress
July 23, 2005

Virginia football’s season- and home-opening football game against Western Michigan on Sept. 3 is slated for 6 p.m. at Scott Stadium.

The game will not be televised.

UVa has sold out of season tickets for the second consecutive year. However, a limited number of single-game tickets are still available for the Western Michigan contest. Tickets can be ordered online at virginiasports.com or by calling the Athletics Ticket Office at 1-800-542-UVA1.

In addition, UVa’s game at Syracuse on Sept. 17, is scheduled to begin at noon. The game will be televised by either ESPN or ESPN2.

Starting times for the Cavaliers’ remaining games will be announced at a later time.
 

Singletary back to lead Cavs
By Jerry Ratcliffe / Daily Progress Sports Editor
July 19, 2005

If you’re a new coach hoping to rebuild an ACC basketball program, it’s hard to beat having Sean Singletary as your main building block.

There’s not a coach in the country who wouldn’t love to have the sophomore point guard from Philly on his squad. Not only is Singletary talented, but he’s made from the right stuff.

You can’t outwork him. You can’t be more poised and mature for that age. You can’t be any more of a leader than the ACC’s runner-up as Rookie of the Year last season.

This has been an interesting off season for Singletary, plagued all of his freshman campaign with a nagging left shoulder separation, an old high school football injury. Virginia fans will remember the trouble it gave the rookie, popping out of place from time to time.

No longer.

“It was always there,” Singletary said this week of the old injury, which was surgically repaired earlier this year. “It won’t bother me anymore.”

His recovery kept him out of action for about two months as he dropped from 175 pounds to 162. But all that’s history.

Back in action

He is back to 182 and working out every day, spending time with his returning teammates and the newcomers in coach Dave Leitao’s program.

“The freshmen look real good,” Singletary said. “There’s a lot of talent in that group and they’re all hungry.”

While we don’t pretend to know Leitao that well as of yet, our initial impression is, they had better be hungry or be willing to ride the pines. That goes for the upperclassmen as well.

In a program fueled by discipline, defense and rebounding, any lack of talent can be overcome by extreme hustle, one of the blueprints of Leitao’s success.

“I know a lot of people will doubt us,” Singletary said of this coming edition of Virginia basketball. “But we have a lot of young guys on this team and they’re all willing to learn.

“I think we’re going to have better chemistry. Last year, we had a lot of things going on,” Singletary said. “Now we’re going in the right direction.”

Of course, last season was Pete Gillen’s last as coach. As hard as he tried, he just couldn’t get things turned around. Virginia finished last in the ACC before turning over the challenge to Leitao.

Looking forward

With Singletary returning with a year under his belt, it’s a bonus for Virginia, which will require his type of on court leadership in a drive to exit the ACC cellar.

He was the only Cavalier to start every game last season and ranked first among league freshmen in assists (3.9) and steals (1.66), second in minutes played (29.9), and third in scoring (10.5). Among all players in the conference, he finished sixth in assist/turnover ration (1.61).

No wonder he finished as runner-up for ACC Rookie of the Year. In fact, this columnist was among many who voted Singletary as the winner instead of North Carolina’s Marvin Williams.

Yes, Williams was more talented, as evidenced by him bolting directly to the NBA after the season. But Singletary was the heart and soul of Virginia hoops last season. He played much more of a role for the Cavaliers than did Williams for the Tar Heels.

Singletary said more than once that while he had to run the gamut against some of the nation’s best point guards - Wake Forest’s Chris Paul, UNC’s Raymond Felton, Georgia Tech’s Jarret Jack, and Maryland’s John Gilchrist - that the thing he didn’t expect coming in was to bear as much leadership as was placed upon him once the season progressed.

He never complained. Never stopped hustling. He just produced and drew raves from opposing coaches and his own during the process.

“It was like being thrown in the fire,” Singletary said in looking back on the experience. “But last year helped me a lot, going up against all those great guards. I wish I could play against them all again this year.”

Now that the four players aforementioned have migrated to the professional ranks, the sophomore Singletary has suddenly ascended to among the ACC’s elite at his position.

But that’s OK. He didn’t play like a freshman, nor will he play like a sophomore.

Leitao has to feel confident knowing that his program’s immediate future is in this point guard’s hands.
 

Will ACC media stand behind Hokies?
UVa-bound QB has Schaub ties
By Doug Doughty
THE ROANOKE TIMES

With the ACC set to convene Sunday in Hot Springs for its annual football media day, what I’ll be waiting for is Monday afternoon’s release of the preseason poll.

When the Virginia Tech contingent made its first appearance at the ACC’s Football Kickoff last year in Greensboro, N.C., the Hokies were the media’s choice for sixth place.

All the Hokies did was win the ACC football championship in their inaugural season, and, in most preseason publications, Tech has been ranked higher than Miami and Florida State this year.

Old habits are hard to break, however, and it remains to be seen if the ACC media can bring itself not to pick Florida State or Miami. It was the Seminoles who got the nod last year, although Florida State was scheduled to play at Miami.

I would be inclined to pick Tech this year because the Hokies have Miami in Blacksburg and do not play Florida State, although it has been the nature of the Tech-Miami series that the home team doesn’t always win.

In a recent “podcast” on Roanoke.com, Tech beat man Randy King picked the Hokies to win every game and, while I was eager to goad him, I agreed with his reasoning. If oddsmakers were to handicap every Tech game at this point, the Hokies would be the favorites in every outing.

Neither King nor I really expect the Hokies to go 11-0 or 12-0, which would include a victory in the championship game in Jacksonville, Fla., but, honestly, who can beat them? N.C. State in the opening game in Raleigh, N.C., is as dangerous a game as any.

Tech will play two rivalry games on the road, at West Virginia and at Virginia, teams that beat the 2003 Hokies team in the same venue. Of course, a lot can happen between now and Week 5, when Tech visits Morgantown, W.Va., and especially Week 10, when Scott Stadium is the Hokies’ destination.

I didn’t make a prediction on Tech and King didn’t make a prediction Virginia, which I had at 8-4 (7-4 plus a bowl victory). I see the Cavaliers losing at Miami, going 1-1 in their road trips to Syracuse and Boston College, going 1-1 in their October road trips to Maryland and North Carolina and splitting home games with Florida State and Virginia Tech.

WE STOP HERE to ask if anybody would be willing to drive Roanoke talk-show host Greg Roberts to Hot Springs. Roberts has been asking for a ride from The Roanoke Times contingent “because the lease is about to run out on my car,” he said.

“Tell Roberts that if he worked more than three days a week, he could afford to buy a car,” Virginia Tech assistant athletic director John Ballein said.

Or, if he worked more than two hours a day.

VIRGINIA’S NEED FOR a quick answer from Drexel Hill, Pa., quarterback Marc Verica came into clearer focus when Boston College took a commitment from 6-foot-5, 182-pound Stone Mountain, Ga., quarterback Ross Applegate.

The Cavaliers were interested in Applegate and knew that he was set to visit Boston College over the weekend of July 15-17. Since BC had made a scholarship offer to Applegate and Virginia had not, the Cavaliers wanted to make sure they could get Verica before abandoning their pursuit of Applegate.

Verica accepted Virginia’s offer on the same day it was extended, July 14.

“They said they had passed over another kid for me,” Verica said.

It didn’t take him long to accept. When asked how long Virginia had been his first choice, he responded, “Always.”

“They were actually the first school to send me things in the mail,” Verica said. “Coach [Bob] Price was actually the first coach to visit me at my school. They were always in the back of my mind.”

That goes back to a time when Verica was on a “select” team and he had the same quarterback coach, Ernie Forchetti, that [ex-UVa quarterback] Matt Schaub had in high school. He actually coached my dad in college [at Kutztown State].”

Verica, whose top three included Wisconsin and Michigan State, joins a succession of Virginia quarterbacks from Pennsylvania that includes Dan Ellis, Schaub and third-year sophomore Kevin McCabe.

“Pennsylvania has a rich tradition of quarterbacks and this year was no exception, with Devlin and [Jeremy] Ricker and me and Frazier,” Verica said. “I was following the recruiting of Devlin because I knew Virginia was one of his top schools and Virginia was one of my top schools.

“When I saw he committed to Miami, that really opened up the doors for me,” Verica said. “I’m actually kind of excited that Devlin and Ricker [committed to Maryland] are in the ACCs and I’m in the ACC, so we’re all going to compete in the future.

“I definitely wasn’t the household name that they are. I come from a run-oriented offense [at Monsignor Bonner]. When I went to the Nike camp, I think I showed that I can compete and that I’m as good as the other kids out there.”

The top-rated quarterback in Pennsylvania, 6-4 Zach Frazer from Mechanicsburg, has committed to Notre Dame. Devlin and Ricker are rated 2-3.

ACC adds twang to bowl slate
Alliance with Music City Bowl in Nashville will create another postseason matchup with SEC
By JON SOLOMON
Staff Writer

Another ACC-SEC bowl game matchup is on the horizon, this time in Nashville, Tenn.

The Music City Bowl is finalizing plans to join the ACC’s bowl rotation in 2006. ACC commissioner John Swofford wants to increase the league’s tie-ins from six to seven or eight once the current contracts expire after this year.

“We’re in the final process with the ACC and SEC,” Music City Bowl executive director Scott Ramsey said Thursday. “I think we’re comfortable enough to finish it up within the next week or so.”

The Music City and the Big Ten Conference recently ended their partnership.

The ACC and SEC are paired at the Peach Bowl in Atlanta.

“The Music City Bowl could be an excellent future addition to the ACC bowl lineup,” Swofford said in a statement on the bowl’s Web site. “We look forward to hopefully concluding the discussions with the Music City Bowl in the very near future.”

The ACC will retain affiliations with the Gator, Peach, Champs Sports and Meineke Car Care (formerly Continental) bowls.

The conference has spoken extensively with the Liberty Bowl (Memphis, Tenn.) and Emerald Bowl (San Francisco).

“We’re very, very interested and trying to establish a relationship with the ACC,” Emerald Bowl executive director Gary Cavalli said. “We are talking with two other conferences, and I think this will be resolved in the next week.”

Liberty Bowl executive director Steve Ehrhart said he has not spoken with the ACC for one or two weeks.

“We still have a great partnership and relationship with the Mountain West,” Ehrhart said. “The ACC, Big East and SEC all knocked on our door. We’re willing to listen to see what they have to offer.”

Although the Bowl Championship Series added a fifth game, meaning leagues might lose two teams to the BCS bowls, Florida Citrus Sports chairman Tom Mickle described a seller’s market during bowl negotiations throughout the country.

“Three or four bowls wanted to step up, and most conferences improved their payout ,” said Mickle, who operates the Capital One and Champs Sports bowls.

“Everybody was really after the same four conferences (SEC, ACC, Big 12, Big Ten) in our neck of the woods. You felt like you had to get in that top five pecking order (within a conference’s standings) to have a great game.”

Bowl officials familiar with the ACC’s activity estimated the new payouts per participating team would be: Peach ($2.5 to $3 million), Gator ($2.25 million), Champs Sports ($2 million), Music City ($1.5 million), and Meineke Car Care Bowl ($1 million). With the increase in payouts from the ACC’s top five bowls, the conference’s per-team payout could increase as much as $3.6 million.

Which slot in the conference standings the ACC sends to specific bowls has not been finalized. The Gator and Peach are expected to retain the top picks, although who picks first is unclear.

The Gator Bowl, held in Jacksonville, Fla., will pair the ACC against the Big East, Big 12 or Notre Dame from 2006 to 2009. The game currently matches the ACC vs. the Big East or Notre Dame.

The Big 12 and the Big East or Notre Dame will rotate every other year as the ACC’s opponent. The Gator will have the No. 2 Big East team and No. 3 Big 12 team in a joint agreement with the Sun Bowl.

The Peach Bowl has made a strong push to get the ACC’s top team after the BCS selections are made. The game is expected to remain an ACC-SEC matchup.

The Champs Sports Bowl increased its payout from $750,000 and replaced the Big 12 with the Big Ten.

The Orlando, Fla. game could have dropped to No. 7 in the ACC pecking order without the additional sponsorship money.

Currently, the Champs Sports Bowl matches the No. 4 ACC team vs. No. 7 Big 12 team. Starting in 2006, the game will get the Big Ten’s No. 4 or 5 team in a joint agreement with the Alamo Bowl.

The Meineke Car Care Bowl, held in Charlotte, N.C., will continue to match the ACC against the Big East. Executive director Will Webb said the ACC is trying to be more flexible with matchups, particularly for the middle-tier bowls.

Ramsey described the Music City Bowl as “a natural fit” for the ACC because of its geographic rivalry with the SEC.

This year’s game is Dec. 30 at noon at the Coliseum, home of the Tennessee Titans. The game will be televised by ESPN. Ramsey prefers a day game on Dec. 31, but that would interfere with the NFL’s schedule.

The Music City Bowl, now entering its eighth year, paid $1.1 million per team last season. The Alabama-Minnesota game last year ranked the Music City eighth in ratings (3.1) and sixth in attendance (66,089) among the 23 non-BCS bowl games.

'Hoos ready to step it up
Inside ACC Nation
Chris Graham
chris@augustafreepress.com

The countdown to the 2005 Atlantic Coast Conference season has been ongoing for some time now.

"When I did the ACC baseball championship in May, I got off the plane, and there's a big banner in the airport, and it had the electronic countdown, '194 days to the ACC Championship,' " said Mac McDonald, the voice of University of Virginia sports.

"I knew at that time that this was going to be something that was going to be really, really special," McDonald told the "ACC Nation" radio show.

"As Coach (Al) Groh has said, and he's a pro guy who has participated in divisions, you win your division, and you'll be in the national-title picture, because you'll be playing in the ACC championship game. I think there's going to be a lot of excitement for that. We've got the ACC tournament in basketball, and now we're doing this for football," McDonald said.

The excitement reaches from Florida to Massachusetts - and doesn't bypass Charlottesville in the slightest on its way. The UVa. football program sold out its season-ticket allotment this year for the first time in school history.

"Every year, the last two or three years, there's been another record sale, another record sale, another record sale. When you do close to 40,000, when you see that kind of excitement, and the fact that people are really supporting this program now, are really getting on the bandwagon, it's a great thing to see, definitely," McDonald said.

After a disappointing 1-3 finish in 2004 - which included November losses to Miami and Virginia Tech and a second-half collapse against Fresno State in the MPC Computers Bowl - it's going to take some work to match the expectations of the fans to the results on the field.

"There's a fine line between 8-3 and 10-1," McDonald said. "When you look at it, a couple of punt returns against Miami, if you stop them, you have a great chance to win that game, and if you get a touchdown against Virginia Tech in the red zone early, go into the locker room with the lead, and then don't blow it in the red zone in the fourth quarter and have to settle for a field goal, we might win in Blacksburg. Four or five plays can separate a season sometimes. People start to jump on that and magnify that.

"You've got to make those plays in those games to get those wins that people call the big wins. That's why Coach Groh has said, now, we win our division, and let everything else take care of itself," McDonald said.

"The end to the '04 season lingered for a while," McDonald said. "But the offseason workouts were good. The spring was really, really good. Al was down about seven or eight guys this spring that he would have liked to have participate, but a lot of guys stepped in that you wanted to see and wanted to watch. Marques Hagans' shoulder got better. He had a fabulous spring. Chris Long played like a man-child.

"There were a lot of positives. But you don't know until you get into a game situation how good you're going to be. I think this is a very, very good football team, that's quicker, more athletic, and has a lot of positives going for it," McDonald said.

U.VA. NOTES
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Jul 20, 2005

PARTING WAYS: Men's lacrosse standout Joe Yevoli is not expected to return for his final season at Virginia.

A three-year starter on attack, Yevoli recently was granted the release he'd requested from his scholarship. He redshirted this past season because of a back injury and graduated in May with a bachelor's in sociology.

Yevoli, ACC rookie of the year in 2002, was named a second-team All-American in '03 after helping the Cavaliers capture the NCAA title. Back problems limited Yevoli's production in 2004, but he leaves U.Va. with career totals of 82 goals and 48 assists.

In Division I men's lacrosse, a team has a maximum of 12.6 scholarships to divide among its players. Virginia coach Dom Starsia committed significant scholarship money to several recruits last summer before he knew Yevoli wouldn't play in 2005.

As a result, Starsia said, U.Va. wasn't "going to be able to do for Joe financially [in 2005-06] what we'd done in the past. There might be some better financial options for him [at other schools]."

Yevoli, who's from Massapequa, N.Y., is home on Long Island working at a lacrosse camp. He'll be immediately eligible at the school to which he transfers. Attempts to reach him for comment this week have been unsuccessful, but a family member said Johns Hopkins is among the schools Yevoli is considering.

From the team that lost in overtime to eventual champion Hopkins in the NCAA semifinals May 28, U.Va. will return all of its starting midfielders and two of its top three attackmen. Candidates to start alongside Matt Ward and Ben Rubeor on attack are likely to include touted incoming freshmen Gavin Gill and Danny Glading. Also, Foster Gilbert, who had seven goals and seven assists for Virginia in 2003, is back after taking a year off from lacrosse.

"I feel very comfortable about where we are on attack," Starsia said.

IN THE GYM: Men's basketball coach Dave Leitao in all likelihood will have two scholarships available for 2006-07, and his targets include post players Duke Crews, Jon Mitchell and Shamari Spears. All are rising 12th-graders.

Crews (6-7, 235) is from Bethel High in Hampton. Mitchell (6-7, 235) attends Mount Vernon High in New York, whose graduates include Chicago Bulls guard Ben Gordon. Spears (6-5, 230), who's from Salisbury, N.C., attends Blair Academy in New Jersey, where Chicago Bulls forward Luol Deng starred.

Spears has scholarship offers from several high-major schools, including Boston College and St. John's, but none yet from his favorite.

"U.Va. is his top choice," Blair Academy coach Joe Mantegna said. "Good chance he will go if they offer."

Dave Telep, national recruiting director for Scout.com, ranks Crews 45th and Mitchell 84th in the nation's Class of 2006. Spears didn't make Telep's top 100.

ON THE GRIDIRON: U.Va. won't play East Carolina as often as Virginia Tech will in coming football seasons, but the Cavaliers are scheduled to meet the Pirates twice in the near future. Virginia and ECU will meet in Greenville, N.C., in 2006 and in Charlottesville in 2008.

HANDS OFF: Deep Run High football coach Lenny Pritchard is a former U.Va. letterman, but he tried not to let his allegiance to his alma mater influence Sean Gottschalk's decision.

"That really had nothing to do with it," Pritchard said. "The fact of the matter is, I'm not going to school for the kid. He's going to school for himself, and he had to make the best decision for himself.

Gottschalk, a rising senior defensive end, committed to Virginia last week. His father has a graduate degree from U.Va., as does Gottschalk's mother.

"In all honesty, that's the best fit for the kid," Pritchard said. "That's got everything he wants academically and athletically."

QUICK DECISION: When Pat Devlin committed to the Miami Hurricanes this month, U.Va. turned its attention to another quarterback from Pennsylvania, Marc Verica, a rising senior at Monsignor Bonner High in the Philadelphia suburbs. The Cavaliers had Verica rated higher than another quarterback interested in them, Ross Applegate, but planned to pursue Applegate if Verica wasn't ready to commit.

After getting an urgent text-message from U.Va. quarterbacks coach Mike Groh, Verica said, "I called him and he said, 'If we offered you right now, what would you say?'"

Verica told the Cavaliers what they wanted to hear, committing late last week. He also has a scholarship offer from Wisconsin and said he expects to receive one soon from Michigan State.

U.Va. entered June with one commitment for 2006 -- from Glassboro, N.J., linebacker George Johnson. Since then, the Cavaliers have added 11 players to their recruiting class. -- Jeff White