Line play throws Groh for loss
By Doug Doughty

When a patchwork Virginia offensive line got better every week during the 2002 season then regained the services of veteran center Kevin Bailey, it was reasonable to expect big things from that unit in 2003.
You could say that UVa football coach Al Groh has been "perplexed" by the play of the offensive line, but that wouldn't be strong enough.

"I would say 'unhappy,' rather than 'perplexed,'" said Groh in a Sunday teleconference.

When asked for an explanation, Groh continued, "I'm looking for it."

Among other things, Virginia has not started the same combination in consecutive games since Week 3. At North Carolina State, it was sophomore left guard Brian Barthelmes who couldn't play after suffering a bout of food poisoning on Thursday night. True freshman Ian-Yates Cunningham, who replaced Barthelmes, made his first start.

Bailey started for the second game in a row at center - he earlier had started a game at left guard - but spent much of his afternoon on the sidelines after hiking a shotgun snap over Matt Schaub's head, leading to a quick State touchdown.

Former starter Zac Yarbrough, who did not play against either Florida State or Troy State, replaced Bailey against the Wolfpack.

Bowl clarification

ACC assistant commissioner Mike Finn said that an ACC team with a 6-6 record will be eligible for a bowl with which the ACC has affiliation but not as an at-large team to a bowl with which the ACC is not affiliated. In other words, a 6-6 ACC team would be eligible for the Humanitarian Bowl in Bosie, Idaho, but not the Diamond Walnut Bowl in San Francisco.

Big play disparity

Virginia (5-4, 3-3 ACC) has allowed a scoring pass of 75 yards or more in three of its four losses, including a 75-yarder from Philip Rivers to tight end T.J. Williams on Saturday in a 51-37 loss at North Carolina State.

UVa has given up at least one play of 50 yards or more in each of its losses, including plays of 50 and 52 yards in a 30-27 overtime loss at Clemson. UVa, on the other hand, has had one play of 50 yards or more all season - a non-scoring 63-yard pass from Matt Schaub to Ryan Sawyer against N.C. State.

By the numbers

Three UVa players have more than 70 career receptions, none of them wide receivers. Junior tailback Alvin Pearman has 91, including 37 in the past three games; sophomore tight end Heath Miller has 79 and sophomore tailback Wali Lundy has 76.

Miller and Pearman, with 46 and 45 receptions, rank second in Division I-A at their respective positions. Miller last week broke Bruce McGonnigal's school record for receptions by a tight end in a season (42).

All in the family

Andrew Pearman, younger brother of Alvin Pearman, has carried 187 times for 1,821 yards and 27 touchdowns for Providence High School and leads the Charlotte, N.C., area in rushing. Andrew Pearman, who committed to the Cavaliers in the summer, has scored 32 touchdowns (including receptions and returns) in 11 games.

On Ward

Giles County football coach Steve Ragsdale said it his understanding that doctors have done what they can surgically to relieve head trauma to ex-Spartans standout and UVa walk-on Carson Ward, victim of a beating Saturday morning outside a fraternity.

"Shoot, you certainly don't expect something like that to happen," Ragsdale said. "That's the kind of stuff you see on CNN. You don't think it could happen to somebody you know. I think everybody's in a holding pattern right now.

"At this time, there's not much anybody can do. It's just a matter of time, waiting to see how he's going to recover."

 

Boston College ACC entry date still uncertain
11-5-03
By Rob Daniels, Staff Writer
News & Record

GREENSBORO — The Big East Conference on Tuesday announced the addition of five members for the 2005-06 school year, but the ACC may not have to wait that long to add departing Big East member Boston College, league sources said.

Virginia Tech and Miami are leaving the Big East for the ACC on July 1, 2004, and Boston College doesn’t know whether it will be able to get out in 2004, ’05 or ’06. That matter may not be resolved for a couple of weeks, but isn’t necessarily tied to the announced Big East membership date for its newest schools.

Cincinnati, Louisville and South Florida will be all-sports members and De Paul and Marquette will participate in all sports except football starting in 2005-06, Big East officials said. All five are leaving Conference USA.

The departure date for BC is important to the ACC because unless the NCAA votes to change its rules, the Greensboro-based league needs the Eagles to reach the 12 members required to conduct a potentially lucrative annual conference championship football game.

In September, a committee recommended the rejection of the ACC’s proposal to permit a championship game with 10 or more members. The vote was 18.5 to 8.5 against the idea.

“The cabinet noted that the Football Issues Committee did not support the proposal and agreed that the proposal may not be beneficial to the current conference environment,” the committee said in announcing its decision.

The ACC said it would try to expedite formal and final consideration of the measure, but there is no reference to the proposal on the summary of the most recent NCAA Management Council and Board of Directors meeting.

The league’s best — and perhaps only — opportunity to stage a championship game in December 2004 is to get Boston College liberated from the Big East.

Consultants estimate the game could generate a $7 million net profit for the ACC’s members.

With or without Boston College, the Big East will have at least the minimum of eight football-playing members necessary to retain eligibility for a BCS spot in 2005. The legislation requiring eight members takes effect Aug. 1, 2005.

But the seismic activity spurred by ACC expansion is so widespread that no league is certain it can set its 2004 schedules in time to accommodate all the shifts. So, the holdup remains.
 

Cavaliers' Blackstock Draws High Marks
Linebacker's Improvement Mirrors Defense's
By Jim Reedy
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page D03

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Nov. 4 -- Before each practice last season, Virginia outside linebacker Darryl Blackstock got a new assignment from his position coach.

Whatever you do today, Danny Rocco would tell his rookie pupil, don't get blocked by the tight end. I don't care if you get everything else wrong; just focus on perfecting that one detail.

Each day was something different: Don't get beat on the curl pattern. Make sure you force the ball back inside on outside running plays.

"Just little stuff," Blackstock said. "He gave me little stuff every day to work on and eventually it just all added up."

After a high school career as a dominant but one-dimensional defensive end at Heritage High in Newport News, Va., Blackstock was aching for that kind of detailed instruction. He knew he had a lot to learn about playing outside linebacker, a position Coach Al Groh says is the most complicated in Virginia's 3-4 defense. He didn't want to be just a pass rusher.

Blackstock's numbers last season -- 10 sacks, 107 tackles, 1,040 plays -- are proof that he didn't exactly stumble through his freshman year. But he and the coaches who have seen him this season say he is a much more complete player now.

"Everything he does is better than it was a year ago," said North Carolina State Coach Chuck Amato, who spent 18 years coaching defense at Florida State. "And guess what? Unfortunately he's going to get even better. There's no question about it. He's got all the tools and he's playing with so much confidence."

Blackstock has discovered he gets as much enjoyment from perfecting the nuances of his job as he does from piling up individual statistics, though he has 61 tackles and five sacks through nine games this season. His overall improvement has helped the Cavaliers allow 4.5 fewer points per game this season.

"It's like sacrificing yourself for your other teammates," said Blackstock, 20. "I trust in my teammates that they're going to be there. . . . I'd rather play a complete game and win. That really excites me more than anything. . . . I've matured with the position a lot. Last year I was just like, 'All right, it's my turn to blitz. Yeah, yeah, I'm going.' Now . . . I want to do everything right."

As last season wore on, Blackstock made mental notes of all the weaknesses in his game he needed to fix. In case he needed extra motivation, Rocco had all his mistakes and errors edited together into a blooper reel. Dozens and dozens and dozens of plays where Blackstock just plain messed up.

"I watched that film a lot," he said.

Against Florida State, for instance, Blackstock got run over by bruising tailback Greg Jones. It was an obvious sign Blackstock needed to add muscle to his 6-foot-4, 215-pound frame. He spent the spring and summer eating four protein-packed meals a day. No junk food. Few snacks. Lots of peanut butter.

Despite losing weight during a springtime bout of pneumonia, he bulked up to 243 pounds without losing any of the speed that helped him lead the nation's freshmen in sacks the previous year.

Ask Western Michigan quarterback Chad Munson if the extra weight helps. Two months ago, Blackstock knocked him literally out of his shoes and the game with a mild concussion.

Blackstock added a handful of moves to a pass-rush repertoire that had previously consisted of simply running past blockers. He learned how to watch film and spot an offense's tendencies, how to decipher before the snap whether the play is going to be a run or a pass.

"He's engrossed himself in the defense and really learned more about the game," Virginia quarterback Matt Schaub said. "Not just relying on his athleticism, but knowing his responsibilities and reading his keys and reacting a lot sooner."

That's the only way, Groh said, Blackstock can become one of the nation's best outside linebackers and earn an NFL career.

"He wants to be a real good player," the coach said. "He wants to be a three-down player. Those outside linebackers, as their career goes on, if all they are is a pass rusher, they become a one-down player. . . . Those guys who are the real superstars, those are the guys who are three-down players."

 

Best Teams Get Best Bowl Games, Right? Maybe Not
By Barry Svrluga
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 6, 2003; Page D07

The next four weekends will determine which ACC team goes to what bowl, and almost nothing -- aside from Florida State's near-certain participation in the Bowl Championship Series -- is settled.

The formula, when everything is sorted out, would seem simple to solve. The system is set up so that the Gator Bowl, Jan. 1 in Jacksonville, Fla., has the next choice of an ACC team after the BCS. The Peach Bowl in Atlanta has the next choice, the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando the next, the Continental Tire Bowl in Charlotte the next and the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, Idaho, the last ACC slot. So it would seem easy: the second-place ACC team should go to the Gator, the third to the Peach and so on.

Not so.

"Bowl games, in general, are not about who the best team is," Gator Bowl President Rick Catlett said yesterday. "It's about economic development in your community. That's always going to continue to be our focus."

Maryland last year fell victim to the system. North Carolina State finished a game behind the Terrapins in the ACC, and the Terps beat the Wolfpack in their head-to-head meeting. Yet when the bowl bids went out, the Wolfpack went to the Gator Bowl and the Terps to the Peach.

Now, the same kind of hodgepodge could exist again. With the season in its final month, Maryland, N.C. State and Georgia Tech all have just two league losses. Clemson, Wake Forest and Virginia each have three. Nearly anything could happen in the middle of the pack.

"We're bowl-eligible," Wolfpack Coach Chuck Amato said yesterday. "Now, it's a matter of [saying to the players], 'Where do you want to go? It's in your hands.' "

Except it's not. Say the Wolfpack, which will host Maryland Nov. 22, beats the Terrapins and finishes second in the standings. There's a strong possibility that the Gator -- which spurned the Terps last year -- could select Maryland this time, thus leaving the Peach Bowl to take N.C. State.

Such an arrangement would prevent each bowl from hosting the same team two years in a row, and allow the fans of each team -- not to mention the players -- to have a different experience.

"Ultimately, is it in Maryland's best interest and our best interest to have them back and for them to come back?" Peach Bowl President Gary Stokan said. "I would think they would probably prefer to go to another bowl game and have another bowl experience. Stereotypically, that's the way of the bowls."

Catlett said he had no problem bringing a team to Jacksonville two years in a row, and the Gator has done it before, with both North Carolina and Georgia Tech. But as the bowl committees begin meeting in earnest over the next few weeks, some perceptions have changed.

"From our perspective, the fact that Virginia or Maryland hasn't played in our bowl game would be part of the discussion that we have," Catlett said. "Maybe three or four years ago, there was an unknown about Maryland and how [many of their fans] would travel. That's probably been wiped out over the last two years. The same thing is probably true about Virginia."

So as these last few weeks play out, and the standings become less muddled than they are now, keep in mind that the determination of which team goes where will be made by folks like Stokan, Catlett and ACC Commissioner John Swofford, not necessarily by what happens on the field.

"Coaches are always trying to play themselves into bowl games," Catlett said. "They'll say, 'We beat them, so we should go to this bowl game.' Except it doesn't always work out that way."

Father vs. Son

Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden and son Tommy, Clemson's coach, will face each other for the fifth time Saturday in Clemson, with a little bit more riding on the game than usual. The Seminoles are not only poised to win the ACC title and play in a BCS bowl, but could slide into the national championship game should Southern California slip up. Tommy Bowden, on the other hand, has the Tigers teetering on the brink of a third straight mediocre season, and the buzz about his job security -- or lack thereof -- is swirling in South Carolina.

"The toughest thing right now, on me and the family, is playing a game where you want to win it and he wants to win it," Bobby Bowden said. "I need to win it, and he needs to win it. That's tough."

FSU has won each of the previous four meetings between father and son.

Maldonado Out

As expected, Maryland tailback Sammy Maldonado is out for the remainder of the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

Friedgen said starter Bruce Perry, who sprained his left ankle last week, has reported for treatment and will be further evaluated as the Terrapins approach their next game, a week from today against Virginia. If Perry is unable to go, Josh Allen would be the starter, and either Mario Merrils or J.P. Humber would back him up. . . .

Amato is doing a little lobbying for his quarterback, Philip Rivers, who he thinks belongs as a finalist for the Heisman Trophy. Rivers completed his first 17 passes and finished 29 of 34 for 410 yards and four touchdowns in a win over Virginia last week. "If he can perform like he did last week the next two games, his numbers have got to qualify him to go [to New York for the ceremony], because his numbers will be just outrageous," Amato said.
 

ACC NOTES
Richmond Times-Dispatch Nov 6, 2003

CINDERELLA STORY: Wake Forest finished with a winning record in each of its first two seasons under coach Jim Grobe, but few observers would have been surprised if the team had fallen under .500 in Year 3.

"Absolutely," Grobe said. "I told our football team this week that I was one of their detractors [before the season]. Not many people thought we could win many games this year, and I was one of them, especially early in the season."

Happily for Grobe, his Demon Deacons (3-3, 5-4) have exceeded expectations. They opened the season with a comeback victory at Boston College and then knocked off N.C. State, a league title contender.

That start has "given us a chance to have a good season," Grobe said.

The Deacons stumbled during one stretch, losing three of four, but bounced back last weekend to hammer Clemson 45-17.

"They kind of surprised me early," Grobe said. "I'm not sure I'm as surprised now, because I felt if we did a good job teaching them blocking and tackling, we could be a good football team by the end of the year."

Wake visits North Carolina (0-5, 1-8) on Saturday afternoon. If the Deacons dispatch UNC, they'll be bowl-eligible and will have beaten every other Division I-A team in their state. Wake defeated N.C. State 38-24, East Carolina 34-16 and Duke 42-13.

LATE PUSH: Philip Rivers' hopes of winning the Heisman Trophy seemed dashed after N.C. State dropped three of its first six games. Wolfpack coach Chuck Amato, however, believes his senior quarterback could re-emerge as a legitimate candidate if Rivers' hot streak continues.

Rivers, the ACC's all-time leading passer, completed 29 of 34 attempts for 410 yards and four touchdowns last Saturday to help State beat Virginia 51-37 and extend its winning streak to four. A few more performances like that, Amato said, and "his numbers will be just outrageous."

For the season, Rivers has connected on 72.2 percent of his passes for 3,318 yards and 25 TDs. He's only been intercepted six times.

"If he can keep doing what he's doing, he's got a chance, and so do we," Amato said.

RETURN IMMINENT? Virginia, one of three ACC teams idle this weekend, hopes to have junior tight end Patrick Estes back for its Nov. 13 visit to Maryland. Estes, a Benedictine High graduate, hasn't played since hurting his right knee Oct. 18 against Florida State.

Estes' knee won't get its first real test until practice tomorrow, Cavaliers coach Al Groh said yesterday, "but we're hopeful of that circumstance, yes."

HUGE LOSS: Sophomore safety Willie Davis hasn't played for Virginia since suffering nerve damage in a violent collision with a South Carolina ball carrier Sept. 6. Groh said he realized "almost immediately" that Davis' absence would be a tremendous blow to the Cavaliers' secondary.

"This guy's one of our very best players, and he's a uniquely talented player for the position," Groh said.

U.Va. entered the season with little depth at safety, and even if the team had been well-stocked at that position, Davis' injury "removed a player capable of playing at a very, very high level."

Davis, who's from Wilmington, N.C., recently had surgery, but it's unclear if he'll play football again.

"We just have to wait and see how his recovery goes," Groh said. "We're not ruling in anything, we're not ruling out anything."

HOT SEAT: This was billed as a make-or-break season for Clemson coach Tommy Bowden, and his prospects for returning in 2004 don't look promising.

For the third straight season, his team is 5-4 after nine games, and the Clemson faithful aren't happy. The Tigers trailed 45-0 after three quarters last Saturday. Up next for Clemson (3-3 in the ACC) is a home game Saturday with third-ranked Florida State (6-0, 8-1).

Bowden's record in five seasons at Clemson is 24-17.

"I don't really know if his job is in jeopardy or not, but I think the fans want him out of here," reserve tailback Reggie Merriweather told reporters in Clemson.

"I think it's going to be a big change for us if he does leave. But from a coaching standpoint, it's got to be hard. You're trying to win games, and the team's really not producing for you." - Jeff White