Youngsters’ performance gives Cavs a fresh outlook
The Virginian-Pilot
© December 29, 2002
CHARLOTTE
Score one for Virginia’s freshmen.

For that matter, score 42. That’s how many points Cavaliers freshmen accounted for in U.Va.’s 48-22 Continental Tire Bowl blowout.

Four touchdowns were scored by freshman Wali Lundy, one on a pass from redshirt freshman Marques Hagans, who also returned a punt 69 yards for six points. With extra points and two field goals, first-year sidewinder Connor Hughes added another 12.

But that’s only half the story for U.Va., which had its way with West Virginia after the first quarter of Saturday’s game. The Cavaliers’ defense, with four freshman starters, frustrated the Mountaineers’ running game, which was ranked No. 2 in the nation.

Lundy was the game’s MVP, while freshman Darryl Blackstock, whose second-quarter interception led to a U.Va. touchdown, was in the West Virginia backfield almost as often as Mountaineers quarterback Rasheed Marshall.

In the final game of a surprisingly good season for U.Va., Al Groh started nine freshmen on offense and defense, 11 if you count Hughes and punter Tom Hagan.

In August, Groh said he would throw the kids into the fire. He said he had no choice. Some took this as a sign that U.Va. would be burned. It didn’t happen. The Cavaliers came into this bowl with eight victories. They leave it feeling like they’ve sent a message.

“Way back in the beginning, when I said I was going to play these guys, people said I was crazy,” Groh recalled. “But these players are talented and they’re hungry and they have an expectation to play well.”

Perhaps none expected more of themselves than Blackstock of Newport News. Experience he may have lacked. Confidence, though, was never a problem.

“A team’s a team. A game’s a game,” he said. “You either ball or you don’t.”

With the kids playing major roles, U.Va. caught a lot of people off balance by finishing in a tie for second in the ACC.

“Freshman ain’t nothing but a classification,” Blackstock said. “If you can get the job done, you do it. Don’t wait.”

Now the Cavaliers wait to see what others make of their season and the resounding victory over a West Virginia team that came into the game a five-point favorite.

“I think,” said junior cornerback Almondo Curry, who had a third-quarter interception, “we’ll be a big target next year.”

A bigger one, anyway.

On offense, U.Va. returns every starter but Billy McMullen. The Cavaliers were asked to adjust to McMullen’s loss prematurely when U.Va.’s all-time leading receiver left the game with a dislocated elbow on the team’s first possession.

His teammates seemed unfazed.

“That says a lot,” Groh said, “about the players’ reliance on each other. We just went on and played.”

They dominated, really.

“We never, ever got them in third and long, I didn’t think,” said West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez.

Anytime U.Va. was pressed, junior quarterback Matt Schaub did whatever was necessary— avoiding the rush, finding a secondary receiver, even scrambling for a touchdown — to keep the Mountaineers at bay. Working behind a line of four freshmen and two sophomores, Schaub looked very comfortable.

And then there was Lundy, who may turn out to be something special.

No running back this bowl season has enjoyed a better, all-around game. He ran for 127 yards from scrimmage, and gained another 76 on five receptions. He scored twice on the ground, and twice on passes. He broke off a 31-yard run for one touchdown, after earlier turning a routine screen pass into a 48-yard highlight clip.

Putting an arm around his freshman running back, Groh said, “He’s going to be a big-time back.”

Lundy, said Groh, is “confident, but humble.” As if to prove his coach right, Lundy stopped short of guaranteeing U.Va.’s emergence next season as a big-time player.

“We could be,” he said. “But we have to work for it.”

Groh nodded in agreement.

“We can’t assume just because the season ended the way it did,” he said, “we can pick up where we left off next year.”

No guarantees, then. But high expectations.

At the Tire Bowl, U.Va.’s football future rolled closer into view.
 

Win comes in typical fashion for Cavaliers

UVa coach Al Groh says it took his players a little time to adjust to the tempo of the game.

By DOUG DOUGHTY
THE ROANOKE TIMES

   CHARLOTTE, N.C. - When the teams left the field following a game-opening West Virginia field goal Saturday, the Virginia fans cheered.

    The Cavaliers had seen this before.

    In four games this year, UVa opponents have marched down the field after taking the opening kickoff and settled for a short field goal. The Cavaliers came back to win three of them, including the inaugural Continental Tire Bowl, in which UVa routed 15th-ranked West Virginia 48-22.

    "It took us a while to get the tempo of the game, not so much the tempo of the players but the players we were playing against," UVa coach Al Groh said. "We didn't do much tricky. We just tried to take on blocks and beat blocks."

    West Virginia (9-4) gained 160 yards in the first quarter and had the ball for more than nine minutes and ran 24 plays to the Cavaliers' 14. That has been a familiar pattern for a UVa team (9-5) that was outgained in 11 of its 14 games this year.

    Virginia was outgained again Saturday, 459-391, but the Cavaliers scored 31 straight points after falling behind 10-7 at the end of the first quarter. The Mountaineers, ranked second in the nation in rushing, amassed 244 yards on the ground against the nation's 105th-ranked run defense, but it was inconsequential.

    Linebacker Angelo Crowell had sloughed off Virginia's poor statistics by saying the Cavaliers were happy with their run defense inside their 20-yard line. UVa opponents attempted 13 field goals this year between 20 and 29 yards, including Todd James' 27-yarder that opened the scoring Saturday.

    UVa's final game followed a familiar pattern in other areas. The Cavaliers, picked for eighth in the ACC this season, were the underdogs in 10 games but won six of them. The Cavaliers were underdogs in each of their last six games, but went 3-3, including victories by 35 points over 18th-ranked Maryland (48-13) and 26 points over West Virginia.

    Virginia defeated four Top 25 teams: West Virginia, Maryland, No.22 South Carolina and No.19 N.C. State. Florida State is the only other ACC football program to beat as many as four ranked teams in the same season.

    Freshman tailback Wali Lundy was named most valuable player Saturday after scoring four touchdowns and accounting for 239 all-purpose yards. There was no shortage of heroes for Virginia, which got a touchdown pass and a punt return for a touchdown by backup quarterback Marques Hagans.

    Full-time quarterback Matt Schaub, who completed 16 of 22 passes for 178 yards and one touchdown, was equally dangerous with his feet as his right arm. Schaub was not sacked and carried seven times for a career-high 39 yards and one touchdown.

    The Mountaineers may have thought they had Schaub trapped in the backfield with fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line early in the second quarter, but he found an opening and crashed over the goal line to give the Cavaliers a lead, 14-10, they would not surrender.

    "They say he may not be as fast as some other quarterbacks," WVU coach Rich Rodriguez said, "but he's fast enough to get out of trouble and make a play. That's what he did today."

    The Cavaliers broke the game open early in the third quarter, when they called a screen pass to Lundy, who was detained in the backfield. Schaub unloaded the ball just as he was about to be sacked, Lundy gathered it in and bounced off tacklers en route to a 48-yard touchdown that made it 35-10.

    "It's not what we wanted to do," Schaub said. "I had a guy in my face, Wali wasn't where he was supposed to be, but it all worked out. That's the kind of day it was."

    The half ended with West Virginia insisting that there should be two seconds on the clock after a 54-yard pass to Miquelle Henderson, who went out of bounds at the UVa 4. Groh rushed his team off the field while a Western Athletic Conference officiating crew conferred and ruled that time had expired.

    "Obviously, whoever was running the clock didn't hit the stop button soon enough," Rodriguez said. "I thought there were two seconds left and I thought it was a correctable error, but I may be wrong about that. I'm not sure how that works."

    One statistic that was in Virginia's favor all season worked to the Cavaliers' advantage again Saturday. For the third time in five games and the fourth time this season, UVa did not have a turnover.

    Virginia played eight seniors, one of whom, All-ACC wide receiver Billy McMullen, was lost to a dislocated elbow in the first quarter, "but this game was not so much about the future," Groh said. "This has been a remarkable team. It really has been."

Continental Tire Bowl Victory
Finally, respect for U.Va. WVU underestimated surprising Cavaliers
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Dec 30, 2002

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - West Virginia lost by 31 points to Maryland, then unranked, in early October. Virginia mauled then-No. 18 Maryland by 35 in late November.

Even so, the West Virginia players never seemed particularly concerned about facing U.Va. in the Continental Tire Bowl. The 15th-ranked Mountaineers, after all, had lost only one of their previous seven games, and that was to top-ranked Miami.

Rest assured, WVU never imagined it could lose 48-22 to the unranked Wahoos, which is exactly what happened Saturday at Ericsson Stadium.

"I think we underestimated them," said senior Avon Cobourne, the Big East's all-time leading rusher.

The Mountaineers (9-4) weren't the only ones who made that mistake. Media members who attended ACC Football Kickoff at Pinehurst, N.C., in late July picked U.Va. to finish eighth in the nine-team league.

All the Cavaliers did was tie for second in the ACC with Maryland. Once again, however, they were slighted. Passed over by the Gator, Peach and Tangerine bowls - each of which selected an ACC team Virginia had beaten - second-year coach Al Groh's club landed in the inaugural Continental Tire.

U.Va. entered as a 5-point underdog to WVU. It left with a 9-5 record and became the only ACC team other than Florida State to beat four ranked opponents in a season. The Seminoles, of course, were top-10 fixtures until their recent decline. U.Va. hasn't been ranked this season.

"We feel like we should be ranked in the top 25 now, and if we're not, then the heck with it," linebacker Merrill Robertson said. "How many ranked teams do we got to beat to prove that we're good? We beat a couple good ranked teams by over 21 points."

Robertson, an L.C. Bird High graduate, was one of three senior starters (along with safety Jerton Evans and linebacker Angelo Crowell) on U.Va.'s defense Saturday. On offense, all-ACC wideout Billy McMullen was the lone senior on the two-deep, and he dislocated his left elbow less than three minutes into the game. Another senior starter, offensive tackle Mike Mullins, had season-ending back surgery last week.

Cavaliers with eligibility remaining include junior quarterback Matt Schaub, the ACC player of the year; sophomore defensive end Chris Canty, who missed the bowl game with an injury but was second-team all-ACC; redshirt freshman tight end Heath Miller, a second-team all-ACC pick; linebacker Darryl Blackstock, who had an interception and two pass deflections against WVU; and tailback Wali Lundy, who amassed 239 all-purpose yards and scored four touchdowns to earn the MVP honor in the bowl.

Blackstock and Lundy are among eight true freshmen who started for Virginia against WVU. Another six played during the season, though two of those (cornerback Marcus Hamilton and defensive lineman D.J. Bell) will apply for medical redshirts.

From the day U.Va. hauled in its heralded recruiting class last winter, Groh said he planned to play many of its members immediately. Conventional wisdom holds that most first-year players need redshirt seasons.

"I think there was a somewhat of an unspoken feeling that this guy's either kidding himself or he's crazy: He can't play that many young players," Groh said.

The kids played, and the class sparkled, despite the absence of two of its most celebrated members: linebackers Kai Parham and Ahmad Brooks. Equally important, the newcomers meshed with Virginia's veterans.

"When I first got here in the summer, [the freshmen] were all together, and we all said that we just wanted to help the team," Lundy said. "We didn't want to come in and try to run over the team."

Parham, whose play in practice this month drew raves, redshirted because of a back problem that bothered him early in the season. Brooks, USA Today's national defensive player of the year in 2001, failed to meet NCAA eligibility requirements coming out of Hylton High and spent the fall semester at Hargrave Military Academy. He'll begin classes at Virginia next month.

"I came here to have a good team," Groh said. "I think we're on the way to being a good team. I think we're going to have another strong class come in. I think there are going to be a lot of those guys in the games, helping us, next year. And if we keep doing that for a while, then I think we have a chance to be a real good team for a long time."
 

Cavaliers' offense earned strong TV ratings
JERRY LINDQUIST
TUNING IN Dec 30, 2002
Contact Jerry Lindquist at (804) 649-6323 or jlindquist@timesdispatch.com

Thoughts, afterthoughts, in-between thoughts:

In this season of nondescript, "who cares?" postseason games, Virginia's Cavaliers used the Continental Tire (yuk!) Bowl for what should be a successful audition for more prime network face time. The final score between a couple of teams that combined for eight losses coming in barely registers on the college game's Richter scale. But the Hoos made a lot of friends in TV-land with their imaginative, anything-goes offense. ESPN studio host Chris Fowler was almost giddy after the game, praising coach Al Groh's wide-open style.

Trev Alberts preached caution prior to kickoff that Groh "needs to call some better defensive plays." But when the 48-22 rout of West Virginia was over, Fowler gushed, "I don't want him to change what he's doing on offense."

Alberts pointed a finger at West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez, saying "the worst thing he did during bowl week" was whine the 15th-ranked Mountaineers didn't deserve to be in Charlotte, N.C.

"Don't ever say you should be in a better bowl," Alberts said.

Fowler, Alberts and fellow studio panelist Mark May agreed that big things will be expected of the Cavaliers, who return just about everyone. Said May, who predicted WVU would win: "Virginia is nothing but a program on the rise. They're scary."
 

WVU licks wounds, looks to ’03

Monday December 30, 2002

By Dave Hickman
STAFF WRITER
 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — All season long, particularly during his team’s good times, a common and cautionary theme ran through Rich Rodriguez’s remarks.

His West Virginia football team still has a lot of work to do.

So, then, after the Mountaineers were humbled by Virginia Saturday in the first-ever Continental Tire Bowl, Rodriguez had every right to say, “I told you so.’’

And he pretty much did.

“At no point have we said we’ve arrived,’’ Rodriguez said following West Virginia’s 48-22 loss to Virginia. “We haven’t arrived until we can play poorly and still win.’’

Obviously, that wasn’t the case Saturday.

A team that this season made a most remarkable turnaround — going from 3-8 to 9-3 during the regular season and earning a Top 15 national ranking in the process — certainly didn’t throw that all away with this one game. In reality, subtract only a handful of plays from the game played in front of an Ericsson Stadium-record crowd of 73,525 and the game might have been a nail-biter.

Still, Virginia uncovered more than a few Mountaineer flaws, including breakdowns on defense and, once again, the kicking game. Defensively, West Virginia was befuddled by a multitude of gimmick plays thrown at it by the Cavaliers. The special teams gave up a punt return for a score, committed and penalty that handed Virginia another score and again couldn’t keep kickoffs in bounds.

But more than anything else, Virginia demonstrated a simple edge in talent. Second-year coach Al Groh has assembled back-to-back recruiting classes that accounted for at least 25 players on the team’s two-deep. Fourteen true freshmen and eight redshirt freshmen played for the Cavs this season.

“When you recruit players like that, they don’t do you any good standing on the sideline,’’ said the former NFL head coach. “Play them.’’

Whether Rodriguez — or Groh, for that matter — can consistently come up with those kinds of recruiting classes remains to be seen. Forty of the 53 players listed on the WVU offensive and defensive depth charts for the bowl game (some positions went three deep) were leftovers from former coach Don Nehlen, who either had them on campus or had gotten commitments from them which Rodriguez then honored. The only Rodriguez scholarship recruits who established themselves as starters this season were wide receivers Miquelle Henderson and Derrick Smith, free safety Jahmile Addae and nose tackle Ernest Hunter, although a handful of others made periodic starts.

That will certainly change next season when West Virginia loses no less than 15 starters — seven each on offense and defense and punter Mark Fazzolari.

Gone on offense are wide receivers Smith (he played just one year after arriving from junior college), Henderson and A.J. Nastasi, linemen Lance Nimmo, Ken Sandor and Zack Dillow and, of course, tailback Avon Cobourne, the school’s all-time rushing leader.

On defense, seven of the eight players who man the box (everyone but the free safety and two cornerbacks) are gone — linemen David Upchurch, Jason Davis and Tim Love, linebackers James Davis and Ben Collins and strong safeties Angel Estrada and Jermaine Thaxton.

So where does that leave Rodriguez and his staff? Well, they certainly aren’t starting over, because a wealth of backups received substantial playing time this season. And some of the Mountaineers’ best players are returning.

On offense, quarterback Rasheed Marshall continues to improve and become even more multidimensional. Cobourne leaves a big void, but Quincy Wilson is ready to fill it — that is, if he can fend off three talented freshmen who were redshirted this season, plus highly acclaimed junior-college transfer Kay Jay Harris.

The three losses on the offensive line are big, but Ben Timmons was a pseudo starter this season and Justin Williams played the entire game at Pitt. Geoff Lewis, Rod Olds and two redshirted freshmen — Dan Mozes and Jeremy Hines — are also in the mix. All three tight ends and both fullbacks will be back.

On defense, the one remaining player in the front eight is a good one around which to build — All-Big East linebacker Grant Wiley. The secondary returns intact with Addae and cornerbacks Lance Frazier and Brian King, assuming the latter can overcome his continuing wrist problems. The corners will be even better if Anthony Mims can finally stay healthy.

Hunter can anchor the defensive line and Fred Blueford and Ben Lynch have experience. If Kelvin Dubouse remains academically straight, he and redshirted Rachid Stoury and Craig Wilson will factor into the position.

Adam Lehnortt and Scott Gyorko both played some middle linebacker this season and Leandre Washington should step in for James Davis. Mo Howard is also there. At the safeties, true freshmen Adam Jones and Mike Lorello are the front-runners and Lawrence Audena can play strong or free.

And who knows what the incoming freshman class will bring? Rodriguez just signed a seven-year, $6 million contract, and the assumption is that school officials would not have gone out on that limb if they didn’t believe he can elevate both the talent level and, as a result, the team.