After 13 days off, U.Va. scrapes rust, squeaks by
By ED MILLER, The Virginian-Pilot
© December 18, 2002

CHARLOTTESVILLE — East Tennessee State came to University Hall Tuesday night having already beaten U.Va. this season.
U.Va.-Wise, that is, an NAIA Division II school in far Southwest Virginia.

The Buccaneers also defeated Division III Guilford and UNC Asheville in compiling a 3-3 record.

Those are hardly the type of wins that would give anyone reason to expect that East Tennessee would lead Virginia — the ACC version — at the half, and push the Cavaliers until the final minutes before falling 84-76 in front of 7,673.

Virginia (4-2) had not played in 13 days, since falling to Michigan State Dec. 4, and the rust showed in the first half. The Cavaliers committed 13 turnovers and had five shots blocked by the scrambling Buccaneers.

“They out-toughed us for about 25-30 minutes,” Virginia coach Pete Gillen said.

The Cavaliers took better care of the ball after halftime, committing just two turnovers, and got 14 second-half points from freshman Derrick Byars to finally shake East Tennessee (3-4).

“We tried to make them beat us from the perimeter and they were able to do it,” coach Ed DeChellis said.

Byars did most of it. The 6-7 swingman from Memphis scored 14 of Virginia’s 18 points in a seven-minute stretch midway through the second half. The Cavaliers trailed by one when Byars canned his first basket of that stretch. They led by 11 after he hit his final shot, a tip-in with 6:25 left.

Byars finished with 16 points on 6-of-10 shooting, including 3 of 5 from 3-point range.

“I had been feeling tentative,” Byars said. “This is all new to me.”

Devin Smith led Virginia with 18 points, and also made three 3-pointers. Each one was critical, because the Cavaliers had little success scoring inside against East Tennessee’s zone defense.

“We had to counter-punch,” Gillen said.

East Tennessee forced Virginia to adjust defensively also. Forwards Zakee Wadood and Tiras Wade combined for 23 first-half points. The 6-5 Wadood didn’t miss a shot, going 6 of 6 from the floor, and adding five rebounds, three blocks and six steals.

Smith, coming off a knee injury, had trouble staying with Wade. Sophomore Jermaine Harper, making his first appearance of the season after serving a five-game suspension, guarded Wade down the stretch.

Tim Smith, a freshman point guard from Newport News, gave the Cavaliers fits with his quickness. The 5-9 Tim Smith scored 17 points, most on drives to the basket.

“His heart is as big as this building,” Gillen said. “If we would have lost, it would have been because of him.”

Tim Smith, who starred in the Hampton Roads Pro-Am league last summer, played with Virginia point guard Keith Jenifer at Hargrave Military Academy, and outplayed his former teammate much of the night.

Jenifer committed three turnovers in the first half, and left the court to sarcastic cheers when he was replaced before halftime. Jenifer had four assists without a turnover in the second half, though.

“When Keith Jenifer plays well, we’re a pretty good team,” Gillen said.
 

Byars gives Cavs shot in the arm

Virginia freshman Derrick Byars scores 16 points, including three straight 3-pointers in the second half.

By DOUG DOUGHTY
THE ROANOKE TIMES

   CHARLOTTESVILLE - When it came time for somebody from Virginia to step forward Tuesday night, the Cavaliers' youngest player accepted the challenge.

    Derrick Byars hit 3-pointers on three consecutive possessions in the second half as the Cavaliers rallied for an 84-76 victory over upset-minded East Tennessee State.

    "That team can beat you in a lot of different ways," ETSU coach Ed DeChellis said. "If a freshman beats us, he's going to beat us. I know [Travis] Watson can. I know [Todd] Billet can. We were going to let somebody else beat us. With them, you've got to pick your poison."

    The Buccaneers (3-4) led by as many as nine points in the first half and were holding onto a 50-49 lead when Byars made his first 3-point field goal with 13:17 left.

    Byars, a 6-foot-7 swingman, scored 14 points in a 6:55 span during which the Cavaliers outscored the Buccaneers 18-6.

    Byars, a starter in the Cavaliers' first five games, came off the bench for the first time and finished with a career-high 16 points in 16 minutes.

    "I've been feeling a little tentative," said Byars, who had been playing more than 27 minutes per game. "It's a new experience for me. I talked to my high school coach, my dad, my mom, some people back home. They gave me a lot of encouragement."

    Byars missed his first 3-point shot and was 6-of-19 from behind the arc before nailing three straight, the last on a set play after a timeout.

    "People back home say I'm streaky," said Byars, the Gatorade player of the year in Tennessee last year, "but I led Memphis in 3-pointers last year with 111. Whether that's streaky or not, I think it's pretty prolific."

    The Cavaliers (4-2) shot 57.7 percent in the second half and committed two turnovers during the final 20 minutes, but, in the first half, they looked like a team that hadn't played in 13 days.

    "Are we the ugly stepchild or are we sleeping beauty?" UVa coach Pete Gillen said.

    The Cavaliers shot 41.9 percent in the first half and committed 13 turnovers. Even in the second half, UVa was outrebounded 20-11by an ETSU team that used only one player taller than 6-7.

    "They're a good team, well-coached, with a lot of guys back," Gillen said, "but we had to adjust to them. That's disappointing. We want them to adjust to us. We had to, like, counterpunch."

    UVa went with a smaller lineup that included 6-8 center Travis Watson and four perimeter players at one point. It was a five-point game, 81-76, with 25 seconds left.

    Sophomore guard Jermaine Harper, reinstated after a suspension that caused him to miss the first five games, played 23 minutes off the bench and was one of several players who took a turn defending ETSU star Tiras Wade, who had a game-high 23 points.

    "We're not going to beat anybody badly," said Gillen, whose team struggled to beat Long Island University 90-86 in its opener and only previous home game Nov.22.

    "That's the way it's going to be this year. If we're going to win this year, it's probably going to be ugly and probably going to be close."

Sound Bite
In '85, West Virginia felt Pep Band's sting
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Dec 18, 2002

When the second quarter ends at the Continental Tire Bowl, the football teams from Virginia and West Virginia will troop to their respective locker rooms, and the halftime festivities will begin at Ericsson Stadium.

Rest assured, the Dec. 28 halftime show in Charlotte, N.C., will bear no resemblance to the one that sparked such controversy the last time these teams met, Nov. 2, 1985 in Charlottesville.

On that damp night, before a crowd of 35,000 at Scott Stadium and a national-television audience on WTBS, U.Va.'s notoriously irreverent pep band performed a skit - a takeoff on the TV game show "Family Feud" - that outraged WVU fans and officials from our neighboring state.

"It created quite a firestorm," Todd Koerner recalled last week.

Koerner, who now runs a literary management company in California, was then director of the band formally known as The Award-Winning Virginia Fighting Cavalier Indoor/Outdoor Precision(?) Marching Pep Band & Chowder Society Revue, Unlimited!!!!

This was not the Pep Band's first brush with controversy, and it wouldn't be its last. In 1977, for example, at Byrd Stadium in College Park, Md., the band had performed a skit that portrayed Marvin Mandel, then Maryland's governor, as a jailbird, prompting University of Maryland officials to demand an apology.

The now-infamous skit for the '85 game with the Mountaineers matched the "Hatfields" of West Virginia against the "Fenwicks" of Virginia and suggested, none too subtly, that West Virginia lacked indoor plumbing, education and birth control. It also said the state was most closely associated with "toxic gas," a reference to leaks at a Union Carbide plant near Charleston, W.Va., around that time.

In a letter to then-U.Va. President Robert O'Neil, then-West Virginia State Treasurer A. James Manchin demanded a public apology for what he called the band's "shameful and shabby" portrayal of his state. Manchin also mailed copies of his letter to Charles Robb, then Virginia's governor, and to Paul Trible and John Warner, then Virginia's U.S. Senators.

"Logic would dictate that U.Va. knew the contents of its own halftime show and knew it was being broadcast nationally," Manchin wrote. "Therefore, it must have been a conscious and deliberate attempt to embarrass the people of West Virginia before a national audience.

"Such conduct does violence to the spirit of good sportsmanship and reflects great dishonor and discredit on an institution founded by a princi pal architect of our nation. Thomas Jefferson would surely hang his head in shame at the actions of his university for such callousness and egregious lies and distortions unleashed by a so-called institution of higher learning."

Koerner, who grew up in Reston, said he believes the final score - U.Va. won 27-7 - and the national-television broadcast fueled the West Virginians' fury.

"It was kind of much to do about nothing," Koerner said. "At the same time, now more than ever I recognize it as general frustration on the part of the West Virginia fans for losing the game. And the airing on national television of that show, where ostensibly the entire state of West Virginia was being insulted, was salt in the wound for all their alumni."

In the aftermath, Koerner said, the Pep Band "received a healthy dose of hate mail and, of course, heard from the various officials at [U.Va.]."

University officials admonished the band to "be a little more self-critical about the nature of our halftime shows," Koerner said, "but we didn't really take it too seriously. Frankly, we sort of enjoyed the notoriety, but that was just our nature, being stupid college kids."

U.Va. did more than scold its student-run band. About a week after the game, the university announced that, starting in 1986, the band would have to submit its scripts to an administrative review board of students, faculty, administrators and alumni. The board would have the power to censor jokes and skits it deemed inappropriate. Previously, the band's programs had needed only the approval of U.Va.'s sports promotions director.

Koerner said he still has a scrapbook of articles written about the West Virginia skit.

"I consider it a high point [for the Pep Band], because it was sort of exemplary of our nature," he said. "What we lacked in musical skills we hoped to more than make up for with humor, and we thought we accomplished that and then some with that particular halftime show."

Manchin, known as one of West Virginia's more flamboyant politicians, later generated controversy himself. In March 1989, West Virginia's House of Delegates voted to bring impeachment charges against Manchin in the wake of the loss of about $300 million in the state's consolidation investment fund. He retired before the state Senate could hold a trial. In 1998, however, Manchin was elected to the House of Delegates and still serves today.
 

Perimeter shooting helps Cavaliers pass the Bucs
Smith, Byars key U.Va. comeback
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Dec 18, 2002
CHARLOTTESVILLE - This time last year, Devin Smith was a freshman at a Kansas junior college. Derrick Byars was a high school senior in Memphis, Tenn.

They're roommates at the University of Virginia now, and their contributions last night let the crowd at University Hall, uneasy for much of the game, go home happy.

Smith, a 6-5 small forward, scored a team-high 18 points in U.Va.'s 84-76 victory over nonconference foe East Tennessee State, which led by four at the break. Byars, a 6-7 swingman, came off the bench for the first time as a collegian. He hit three 3-pointers - all in a 95-second span of the second half - and finished with a career-best 16 points.

The Buccaneers (3-4), who are expected to contend for the Southern Conference crown, chose to focus on stopping U.Va.'s big men, especially 6-8, 255-pound senior Travis Watson (12 points, 8 rebounds).

"You have to pick your poison," ETSU coach Ed DeChellis said. "We really tried to double the post and make them beat us from the perimeter, and they did it."

Smith made two treys and scored 10 points in the first half. Fourteen of Byars' points came after intermission.

A fourth-team Parade All-American at Ridgeway High, Byars made 111 treys last season, so his outburst was not out of character. Still, he entered the game shooting 33.3 percent from 3-point range and unsure of his role.

"I have been feeling tentative," he said. "It's a new experience for me, but I talked to my high school coach, my dad, my mom, some people back home, and they gave me a lot of encouraging words. So I went into this game very optimistic."

Byars, who missed his only 3-point attempt in the first half, made 3 of 4 from beyond the arc in the final 20 minutes. His first trey, with 13:21 left, gave the Cavaliers (4-2) a two-point lead. The next time Virginia had the ball, Byars connected again to make it 55-50. U.Va.'s following possession ended with Byars burying a 3-pointer for a 58-50 lead.

"I thought that was the difference in the game," Virginia coach Pete Gillen said.

Virginia's second-half ballhandling was crucial, too. Thirteen of the Cavaliers' 15 turnovers came before the break. Sophomore point guard Keith Jenifer, booed by some in the crowd of 7,673 after losing the ball three times in the first half, had four assists, four points, two steals and no turnovers after halftime.

The Cavaliers shot 57.7 percent from the floor in the second half. Still, they couldn't blow out the Bucs, who finished with a 39-32 edge in rebounds and often outhustled their hosts.

Tiras Wade, a 6-6 sophomore, led all scorers with 23 points. Junior forward Zakee Wadood totaled 18 points, nine rebounds, five blocked shots and three steals. Point guard Timmy Smith, a 5-9 freshman from Newport News, added 17 points and kept the Bucs in the game late.

After 6-9 sophomore Elton Brown, also from Newport News, made two free throws with 5:53 left to stretch U.Va.'s lead to 69-56, the left-handed Smith scored on three straight drives to cut ETSU's deficit to seven. Smith's three-point play with 27.9 seconds left made it 80-76.

"His heart is as big as this building," Gillen said.

Sophomore guard Jermaine Harper, who was suspended from the Virginia team last month after being charged with DUI, made his 2002-03 debut and scored seven points in 23 minutes.

 

Will off-Broadway Cavs be ready for ACC stage?
BOB LIPPER
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST Dec 18, 2002
Contact Bob Lipper at (804) 649-6555 or e-mail blipper@timesdispatch.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE Well, let's just say these guys aren't quite ready for Broadway.

Then again, "Cats" wasn't built in a day.

For sure, there were no curtain calls for Virginia's Cavaliers at the conclusion of last night's 84-76 win over East Tennessee State. The teams exchanged handshakes and brief hugs, the crowd filed out of U-Hall, Pete Gillen wiped the sweat from his forehead, that was it.

From the blah ending, you'd never guess the Cavs had to sweat several bags of plasma to get a handle on this matchup. The Bucs from Johnson City went from nine ahead in the first half to 13 down with just under six minutes to go - and never went away. They scored on seven straight possessions at that juncture - no testament to U.Va.'s born-again defense - and closed the gap to four with 27.9 seconds to go.

And finally ran out of steam and time.

"It was a very hard-fought game," Gillen acknowledged. "We had to adjust to them. That's disappointing. We want them to adjust to us as far as what we're doing. We had to, like, counterpunch."

Virginias don't book East Tennessees at home in the middle of December and at the end of semester exams to be pressed to the limit. True, the Bucs are expected to make noise in the Southern Conference this year, but making noise in the Southern Conference does not prompt Dickie V. to reach for his earplugs. Meaning this was supposed to amount to another dry run for the Cavs en route to more strenuous fare.

Scanning U.Va.'s schedule between now and show-us-what-you-got, ETSU rated somewhere north of Gardner-Webb (tomorrow), Liberty (Dec. 30) and Wofford (Jan. 2) and south of Rutgers (Saturday) and Georgetown (Dec. 28) as the Cavs gear up for their ACC opener Jan. 5 at N.C. State. Will the kids in orange and blue have their lines down by then? The short answer for that one is, "Who knows?"

This is maybe what develops when you throw together a cast and try to coax it into meshing on the fly. Of the nine Cavs who got minutes last night, four weren't in uniform in 2001-02 - and a fifth, sophomore guard Jermaine Harper, was seeing action for the first time after serving a one-month suspension.

So maybe we shouldn't be surprised by the uneven liftoff - the near-swoon against Long Island in the opener, the stunning upset of Kentucky in Hawaii, setbacks against Big Ten bullies Indiana and Michigan State, this latest struggle.

"I don't think we've established any stability or chemistry yet," said freshman Derrick Byars, whose trio of 3-pointers on three straight possessions gave U.Va. the lead for good 6½ minutes into the second half. "We're working on that. We've just got to be tougher and play with more intensity."

The Cavs were all over the map last night. They were error-prone before intermission but smart with the ball thereafter. They were lit up for five 3-pointers in the first half but limited the Bucs to 1-for-6 marksmanship from bonusland after the break. They rang up nine straight points for a 69-56 cushion then yielded eight in a row to the Bucs and had to grind from there to the final horn.

"We have to get tougher and be more physical," Gillen said. "That's my fault. I'm the head coach, and we have to do a better job with that."

One thing Gillen probably can't pull off is body transplants. The Cavs have enough large ones, but they're markedly slower than last year's edition. Whether that'll be a fatal flaw come ACC time is anybody's guess. Surrendering 16 offensive rebounds to the quicker Bucs wasn't a positive sign. Refining their decision-making - this is an outfit that can't afford to give away possessions - was.

"The first half we had 13 turnovers, the second half we had two," Gillen said. "Are we the ugly stepchild, or are we Sleeping Beauty?"

Mostly, they're a script in progress.
 

Virginia Wants the ACC To Reexamine Bowl Policy
By Greg Sandoval
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 18, 2002; Page D01

The University of Virginia, passed over by three bowl games for teams it either defeated or finished ahead of in the ACC, will ask the conference to examine the way it matches its football teams with bowls.

"I think for sure [the policy] needs to be reviewed," said U-Va. Athletic Director Craig Littlepage, who will bring the issue up at the ACC's winter meetings in February. "When the conference's second-place team is passed over multiple times, it's an example of some of the flaws in the system."

That system allowed the Gator, Tangerine and Peach bowls to choose North Carolina State, Clemson and Maryland, respectively, over the Cavaliers, who finished second in the ACC (tied with Maryland). The Cavaliers beat all three teams.

While Maryland tied Virginia for second by compiling a 6-2 conference record, N.C. State and Clemson finished fourth and fifth, respectively.

But a team's record is only part of how bowl executives choose football teams. To allow organizers the "flexibility" to create matchups that generate the largest fan interest, the ACC and several other conferences give bowl executives some room to mix and match teams, said ACC assistant commissioner Mike Finn.

Other factors considered are national rankings, geographic proximity to bowl sites and avoiding recent rematches.

"At the end of the day Maryland was ranked, and Virginia wasn't," Peach Bowl President Gary Stokan said.

Too often a bowl bid is determined by politics and the issue should be decided on the playing field, growled Virginia Coach Al Groh after watching Clemson and Maryland receive more prestigious bowl bids.

But Virginia was snubbed because of the widely held belief among bowl organizers that too few of Virginia's fans attend the school's postseason games, according to numerous bowl-game sources.

Virginia had a reputation among bowl executives for not "traveling well" and schools that don't travel well are often shunned.

As if to show the naysayers -- and the three bowls that overlooked them -- fans snapped up the 12,500 tickets the school was allotted after being invited to play West Virginia in the Continental Tire Bowl in Charlotte on Dec. 28. The demand prompted the school to request 7,000 more tickets, which it sold.

The Continental Tire Bowl announced yesterday that it sold all of the 73,258 available tickets.

"Virginia has laid to rest that non-traveling reputation with their purchase of this game," said Ken Haines, president of Raycom Sports, which operates the Continental Tire Bowl. "We could have sold 10,000 more seats."

Meantime, sales have been sluggish on the ticket allotments for Maryland and Clemson.

As of yesterday, the Terrapins had sold 12,000 of the 20,000 tickets it committed to selling for the Dec. 31 Peach Bowl in Atlanta, according to Stokan. The Terps will play Tennessee.

Clemson, which traditionally descends upon a bowl site with legions of fans, has sold less than 10,000 tickets to the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, according to published reports, where the Tigers face Texas Tech on Monday.

Both teams won the bowl bids partly on the strength of their history at attracting big crowds. Last year, 22,000 fans showed up in Miami on Jan. 2 to watch Maryland play in the Orange Bowl, its first bowl appearance in 12 years.

Stokan dismissed any suggestion that Maryland had not lived up to its billing.

"They were at 7,000 [sold] last Wednesday and in five days they [had moved a total of] 12,000 plus tickets," Stokan said. "That's a nice trend. There is no race to sell tickets in one day. [Maryland] told us that their fans buy late."

Maryland Coach Ralph Friedgen urged boosters to buy tickets in an e-mail last week.

Maryland said that its too soon to predict how many tickets it would sell, but administrators cited several factors that could affect sales.

"Our fans have been widely supportive of Maryland athletics over the last 20 months," said Dave Haglund, an associate athletic director at Maryland.

"They followed us to the Orange Bowl, the Kickoff Classic, and back-to-back Final Four appearances in basketball."