When Virginia lost three starters to cramping in the second half of its 3-31 loss to Duke Saturday, all Virginia coach Al Groh could do was wonder if his team could handle any more blows to a roster already thinned by personnel losses relating to legal and academic issues.
Against Duke, the losses of senior outside linebacker Clint Sintim and sophomore cornerback Ras-I Dowling appeared to be the backbreaking blow. After both Sintim and Dowling went down on the opening play of Duke’s first drive of the second half, the Blue Devils went on a scoring frenzy, stretching a 3-3 halftime score to a 24-3 lead by the time the two returned with 10:47 left in the fourth quarter.
Both players were having exceptional performances before they were forced to the sideline; by halftime, Dowling had two interceptions while Sintim had two sacks and a tackle for a loss.
“It certainly wasn’t helpful to our efforts yesterday to lose those guys,” Groh said. “Clint had three sacks and seven pressures [in the whole game]; how much more would he have had if he would have played the other 20 plays that he missed?”
As Virginia moves forward, the question asked of Groh at his teleconference Sunday was: How does he prevent this from happening again? Groh said this is a situation he has considered since well before the team stepped onto the field this season.
“We had a pretty lengthy discussion here during the summer with [Virginia athletics co-medical director] Dr. [John] MacKnight and Kelli Pugh, our trainer, actually regarding steps to avoid cramping,” Groh said. “Acclimating the body to those circumstances and hydration steps leading up to it — all those preliminary things.”
So why did three players — all of whom did not have a history of cramping, Groh said — suffer such problems Saturday? The humid weather in Durham may have had something to do with it.
“What we have not had very much of — as we talked about on other occasions, too — even throughout training camp was the type of humid weather generally associated through this region through August and September,” Groh said. “And while the temperature [in Durham Saturday] wasn’t unusually high, it was pretty thick out there, so clearly that did have an effect.”
Dowling’s difficulties may have been the most understandable, as this was his first full-time action of the season after being limited in the first three games by a leg injury. Groh said he thought his young corner finally got his speed back against Connecticut, and with two weeks to rest before Duke, Dowling certainly looked back to his old self while chasing down two interceptions and holding Duke star wide receiver Eron Riley without a catch in the first half. His shift to high gear, however, may have been too much, too fast.
“He did not participate in the first two games, missed the better part of training camp, played 20 plays in the third game and then played 50 plays yesterday,” Groh said. “His is more a case of catching up on some of the work that he did not get in training camp — at least, we would surmise that to be the case.”
Sintim’s cramping was perhaps the most curious, as he is, as Groh put it, “one of the most finely trained players on the team.” Though Sintim and Groh both noted that he received intravenous fluids before the game, in addition to at halftime and after he went down, Sintim said the pregame IV was nothing out of the ordinary.
“I always get [an IV] before the game because I know I sweat a lot, and I don’t want to get dehydrated,” Sintim said. “I really don’t know why I was cramping.”
In-game cramps are just one of the Cavaliers’ worries coming off the 3-31 walloping that Virginia suffered to Duke Saturday, in the Blue Devils’ first ACC win since November 2004 — but keeping some of the team’s biggest defensive playmakers in the game is certainly a priority.
“Not to say that two people make the team, because that’s definitely not the case,” Sintim said. “It was just unfortunate circumstances.”
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