Before each of Virginia’s football games, Jermaine Hardy takes a sheet of paper out of his duffel bag, looks at it and says a prayer.

On the page are photocopied pictures of Angela Arrington (his mother’s niece) and her three daughters. All were shot to death April 4 in their home in Roanoke, and Arrington’s boyfriend has been charged with their murders.

“They were my fans. When I came back home, they’d always say, ‘I saw you on TV. I saw you on TV.’” Hardy said. “So after it happened, I dedicated the season to them.”

In the wake of his family’s tragedy, Hardy is having a triumphant season. The junior safety, in his first year as a starter, leads the Cavaliers (5-3, 3-2 ACC) with 69 tackles and is tied for second with two interceptions.

Most importantly, he has been a rock of stability at a position decimated by injuries, even though he spent his first two seasons at cornerback.

“I think for a first-year safety, his progress has been very good,” said UVa coach Al Groh. “His play is reflective of his preparation. He’s up there [in the McCue Center] all the time looking at tape.”

Hardy says the transition wasn’t too difficult, considering he played safety at William Fleming High School and at Hargrave Military Academy. At 5-foot-11 and 208 pounds, he has the size to play safety, plus he proved he could tackle as a cornerback.

“In the 3-4 [defense], corners have to come up and play the force. We have to be more physical. We’re not just cover corners,” said Hardy, who has made at least six tackles in each game, with a high of 12 against Clemson. “That helps in being a safety. …

“I think I’m pretty much a sure tackler. I don’t get the explosive hits. I get them down, though.”

Hardy made 48 tackles and two interceptions as a reserve cornerback last season, playing mainly in nickel packages and on special teams. With starters Almondo Curry and Jamaine Winborne returning for their senior seasons, Hardy asked Groh last winter if he could try safety.

It’s a good thing Groh said yes. In the second game, starter Willie Davis suffered a season-ending injury. The top backups, Jay Dorsey and Robbie Catterton, also have been banged up, so Hardy has been the only healthy safety in the regular rotation.

Last Saturday against Troy State, Groh used Winborne at safety along with Hardy. Both played well in the 24-0 victory and will start again Saturday at N.C. State (6-3, 3-2 ACC).

Groh said he likes having a pair of safeties with cornerback experience, especially against spread offenses like the Wolfpack’s.

“That’s very advantageous to us,” Groh said. “In the case of the game we’re playing this week, there will be more four- and five-receiver sets than there will be two guys in the backfield.

“Lots of teams are striving to have what you’d call a cover safety, that is, a guy who has close to corner ability. If you have two former corners, you have that much more flexibility with it. It enhances the ability to play man-to-man and make other adjustments, so for this particular game it’s to our advantage to be able to do that.”

Hardy doesn’t have blazing speed, but he has the hands of a good cornerback. He made a one-handed interception on the sideline in the waning moments last Saturday to preserve the shutout. Three weeks ago, he picked off a pass at the goal line against Clemson. He also had an apparent one-handed snatch overruled against Florida State two weeks ago.

“I feel like I can still check people as a safety, so it gives me more coverage skills,” Hardy said.

Now, with Winborne, who has 27 career starts at cornerback, joining him at safety, “it makes us faster,” Hardy said. “It’s like we’re playing a dime [defense] all day with four cornerbacks.”

Hardy says he prefers playing safety because “I like to take charge and tell people what to do.” He has taken on something of a leadership role in the secondary, which included a pregame pep talk last Saturday for redshirt freshman Tony Franklin, the new starting cornerback.

“I said, ‘Calm down and take some breaths,’ because he was really hyper,” Hardy said.

For his own motivation and inspiration, Hardy talks to his mother, Debra Hardy, and thinks about the four relatives who were killed while he was going through spring practice.

“It was tough on us. Burying four people at the same time was so hard,” he said. “We’re still getting through it, but my football family has helped me, too.

“When I first told [Groh] about it, he told me I could take off and go home. But I knew if I did that I’d just be depressed. I wanted to stay here with my friends and play football. That helped me deal with it then. Still does.”

 

The last two years of Pete Gillen’s coaching career have been the toughest of his 29 years in the business. Last season was particularly rough as his Virginia basketball team collapsed down the home stretch for the second straight year and finished

16-16.

If that wasn’t enough to disturb Gillen’s sleep patterns, the fact that his team appeared unruly and undisciplined, downright insubordinate at times gave Wahoo fans a bad perception of what was going on within the confines of University Hall.

A fresh start

Alas, with a new season on the horizon, Gillen is hopeful that’s all water under the bridge. When he introduced his new team - minus many of the headaches from a year ago - to state media a few days ago, the veteran coach took the blame for what happened last season and predicted a new attitude would at least change public perception about his program.

Since then, the Cavaliers were predicted to finish eighth in the ACC preseason media poll over the weekend. Undaunted by prognostications, Gillen is working hard to prove the experts wrong.

I will follow

It all starts with leadership, a key ingredient missing from last year’s Virginia team.

“You’ve got to have leadership and we didn’t have that last year,” Gillen said. “I’m not going to mention names but we didn’t have the leadership that we needed.”

Gone is the graduated Travis Watson in addition to sophomore point guard Keith Jenifer who was shown the Rotunda door by the university after a series of incidents. Jermaine Harper also transferred after the season as did Nick Vander Laan. Five new recruits are in the fold this season and players such as Todd Billet, Majestic Mapp, Devin Smith and Elton Brown have taken leadership roles with the team.

“I feel better about it because of the character of the team,” Gillen said. “Not that all those guys were murderers or muggers. But I feel better about the overall quality and character of our guys.”

Gillen’s mea culpa

Gillen accepted the blame for some of the misconduct and promises it won’t happen again. Under new direction, the players have recommitted themselves to raise their efforts both on and off the court.

“We had kids at Xavier and Providence that had wrinkles, but those schools were a little more flexible,” Gillen said. “But Virginia is Virginia. Our school has higher standards than a lot of schools and that’s the way it should be.”

The coach said he and his staff preached the right things to last year’s team but certain individuals wouldn’t listen. This year, Gillen said he’s going to continue to emphasize X’s and O’s but will also work outside the lines to help deliver his message to the team.

“We’ll probably deal more with the mental side of the game,” the coach said. “I’d probably be a better coach if I knew nothing about basketball - sometimes you guys think that

I don’t already - and knew more about psychology.”

He admitted that he has to do a better job of selling his points about discipline and work ethic and teamwork, remaining poised, playing hard-nosed defense, never letting up and all those methods to Virginia’s players.

So far, it’s paying off. There hasn’t been a sniff of trouble since the season ended.

Brown has been one of the biggest benefactors of the new attitude. Gillen isn’t allowing any facial hair, only part of Brown’s transformation from an overweight, out-of-shape player who openly pouted every time he was pulled from games to a straight-laced, clean-cut, in-shape, leader.

“Being a sophomore last year, I felt like I shouldn’t say anything when things went wrong,” Brown said. “I felt like I shouldn’t have to worry about other players. Then I realized you’ve got to worry about everybody on your team because these are the guys you’re spending most of your day with ... these are the people who are going to help you win games.”

So many things went wrong with Virginia’s team last season off the court that it greatly affected what happened on the court.

“Some people would get in players’ faces last year and told them what not to do but those players just looked at them like, ‘You can’t tell me what to do, I’m grown,’” Brown said. “Well, you saw where it got us ... 16 and 16 and second round of the NIT. Nothing. I think all of us coming back realized that too late.”

Too late for last year maybe but not too late for this group of players who seem to welcome the boot camp mentality.

“This year I’m a leader and I’m getting in their face,” Brown said. “If they don’t like it, then oh well. But I’m in their face every day, saying, ‘Look, you need to do this, you need to go to class, don’t go out to that bar this time of night, be in by 12, sit in the house and don’t go to that party.’”

Billet has been a real glue for this team as has been Mapp. Both have set the proper examples to follow and gained the respect of all their teammates.

“Billet didn’t feel it was his team last year,” said Gillen. “There were some seniors there and he didn’t want to rock the boat. Devin [like Billet, a senior this season] has shown leadership. He’s a tough guy and if you give him grief, he’ll elbow you in the head.”

This Virginia basketball team knows the odds are stacked against them, that the ACC is supposed to be tougher from top to bottom this year than the past two and that being picked next-to-last can be tough to overcome.

“Our guys want to win,” Gillen said. “They’re not happy with 16 wins.”

If nothing else, the positive energy has created a better work atmosphere for the coaches and players every day and given fans a glimmer of hope that this season won’t be such a bummer.

This season Virginia basketball will be more about what happens on the court and not in court.

 

RALEIGH, N.C. For those majoring in human development with a minor in football legacy-building, be advised that Philip Rivers walked when he was 9 months old and already was stringing sentences together six months later. In that sense, he got an early start on the two-minute drill.

You probably know Rivers as the quarterback who's methodically shredded the ACC record book during his four glittering seasons at N.C. State. But he's also a fast-track hurdler with a history of leap-frogging his biological clock. He left high school one semester shy of his senior prom. He got married after his freshman year at State. He became a father the summer between his sophomore and junior years.

What makes Philip run? A motor that purrs in overdrive.

"I don't know if I'm impatient, but I guess I've always wanted to hurry up," Rivers was saying recently. "I always wanted to be doing something. If there's an hour left of daylight, I want to be playing something instead of just sitting around inside. That's the way I was as a kid. It seems like a normal, steady speed to me."

He was the precocious child his teacher-mom pushed to see how quickly he could master tasks. He was the organizer of neighborhood hide-and-seek. He was the barely 18-year-old novice who arrived at State in January of 2000 after graduating ahead of schedule from Athens (Ala.) High, signed up for courses in English, geology, sociology and math, made the acquaintance of his elders - star linebacker Levar Fisher dumped him during a snowball fight - and proceeded to vault the depth chart.

"He was third-team after the first day of spring practice," said State coach Chuck Amato. "He was second-team after the second day of spring practice. He was first-team after the third day of spring practice. At the end of the spring, he was the leader of the offense. Halfway through his freshman year, he was one of the leaders of the team."

Or, as QB coach Curt Cignetti put it, "We knew as a staff after the first practice he had to be the guy. It was obvious right away he was something special."

That holds still. Saturday, against Virginia at Carter-Finley Stadium, Rivers will make his 46th straight start. He is the ACC career leader in passing yardage (11,901) and touchdowns (82). From his rookie-season debut against Arkansas State through last week's 23-for-31 effort at Duke, he's completed 62.5 percent of his throws. From the moment teammates sized him up, they realized they were in rare company.

"As a receiver, you always try to learn from the older guys, but I learned most of my stuff from Phil," said wideout and fellow Alabamian Jerricho Cotchery. "That's how smart he is. He knows the responsibilities for every position. He knows the different coverages. Oh, I'll definitely miss him. If I have another relationship like this, I'll be surprised."

Surprised, likewise, expresses State's mindset at being 6-3 and out of the ACC race. The Pack dropped its second start at Wake Forest, fell the following Saturday at Ohio State in double overtime, flopped at Georgia Tech three weeks later, has been skating by of late - this in the aftermath of a 11-3 campaign that had some people thinking national-title run. The team is back to earth. The quarterback dusts himself off daily.

"I think with the quarterback position, you can beat yourself up about it regardless of what happens," Rivers said. "Even in games we won, I made mistakes. When you lose the game, you drive yourself crazy with the mistakes you made. That's the way I am, the competitor I am."

Thing is, Rivers is the least of State's worries. He threw for 992 yards and nine touchdowns in those three losses. It's just that injuries to deluxe tailback T.A. McLendon and several other headliners on offense have combined with a leaky defense to place too much of a burden on Rivers' bionic right arm.

"One man can't carry a football team - and he almost has," Cignetti said. "But quite frankly, our football program is not at the level where we can overcome the loss of five-six NFL-quality football players. He can only do what he can do."

He's a coach's son. Steve Rivers, who's since relocated to a high school in suburban Raleigh, remembers Philip as a 4-year-old at practices in Alabama, struggling with a football he could neither grip nor throw without pushing it from his body. Steve believes that's where his son got his unorthodox motion. Georgia coaches tried to change it during a summer camp. State teammates affectionately called Rivers "Noodle Arm" early on. He grinned and kept chuckin'.

"It's not the norm, the way he throws," offensive tackle Chris Colmer said. "But he gets the job done. If you ask me, more people should throw like Phil. He's got such a quick release."

At home, life moves at a slower pace. There's wife Tiffany - they met in middle school - and daughter Halle and schoolwork and the underpinnings of a future to carve out.

"Everything is in place for him," Colmer said. "He's got his head on so straight, it seems. I don't know the word - it's like it's almost unfair a kid has it so well together."

Four years ago, when the new coach met his new quarterback, Amato said Rivers was 18 going on 28. The assessment hasn't changed much.

"Nothing surprises me of what he takes on," Amato said. "He doesn't flinch about anything. He is so far advanced. I may never coach another player at any position with the qualities that young man has."