What a difference a week makes.
In Virginia’s 31-0 dismantling of Maryland Saturday, Cavalier fans cheered themselves hoarse, then scratched their heads trying to figure out what happened. Marc Verica was all of a sudden a veritable threat. The defense left Maryland defenseless. Cedric Peerman treated Scott Stadium to a running game that was fun and games. And, as for Maryland’s deep threat Darius Heyward-Bey — wayward he stayed.
Oh, and Mike Groh is no longer a foe.
The Cavs surely just leapfrogged out of the 119th spot of 119 Football Bowl Series schools in scoring offense. Now, Virginia fans will naturally try to answer the big question: Are Virginia’s early season troubles a hurricane or a monsoon? Did the Cavs just pass through the eye on their way to the other equally torrential side, or will the storm subside in favor of sunny skies?
I am a fan, and I’d love to say the former. As I try to grasp this positive outlook, however, a quote from Groh about how his secondary managed to hold playmaker Heyward-Bey and tailback Da’Rel Scott to 69 total yards strikes a chord and puts me in my place.
“Really all the credit goes to those guys [in the secondary],” he said. “They went out and made the tackles and beat the blocks.”
Of course, Groh did not mean to speak of his players in the context of what this game means for the rest of the season; he simply did what all coaches would have done, which is to give credit to his group for a positive effort after they were hammered by both opponents and the media in recent weeks.
And let me also add that Virginia showed a great deal of resilience Saturday. If you were like me, you came to Scott Stadium hoping the Cavs would make a game out of it against the surging Terrapins; winning by 31 points was such a fantasy it was laughable to think about.
Groh’s quote, however, is a reminder of Virginia’s rather sizeable Achilles’ heel: talent. You can have all the team chemistry, determination and heart in the world; the intangibles, however, don’t win football games in and of themselves. It’s not the work Groh does pacing the sidelines that matters so much as his visits to Ma and Pa of a four-star running back; quite a bit of that work over the last few years has been unraveled by unexpected departures, and Groh knows it.
“Our inventory is a little bit lower than what we expected at this time,” Groh said at his weekly press conference Sept. 16 following the team’s 45-10 loss to UConn. “If we had looked at some of these positions that were going to be stocked a year back and looked forward to this date, the inventory is not quite the same that we anticipated it was going to be, and when that happens, teams go through cycles, and we’re having to deal with those issues.”
So, when I look at the depleted Virginia roster, my optimism becomes equally depleted. I tend toward thinking that this game is a blip on the radar screen.
Let’s face it; as much as we would like to think Virginia deserves all the credit for raiding Ralph Friedgen’s “fridge,” it takes two to tango. Do you really think that the same Maryland team that won at Clemson a week ago and whipped California on national TV two weeks before that showed up to Scott Stadium Saturday? Don’t be blinded by your own loyalty to the Cavaliers.
But, I plead inwardly, what about momentum? Can the Cavs build off a throttling like this to get on a little streak of their own?
This point is even more ridiculous. If there’s anything that the last two games, and in fact the entire season, should teach us, it’s that momentum means zip. Reporters love to ask if Virginia can build confidence or momentum off a win or how the team will rebuild after a loss, and time and again, Groh responds rightly that regardless of last Saturday’s outcome, they simply move on to next Saturday with the same approach.
And why? A bad loss might deflate fans, but we learned Saturday that the players get just as pumped the following week. By the same token, an explosive win one week doesn’t mean the Cavs have righted the ship. Duke was the perfect storm. Maryland is the perfect rainbow that disappears all too soon.
“This is over pretty quick,” Groh said of the win. “By the time we get in our car, it’ll be time to fully commit to next week.”
Last week the Cavs were 1-3; this week 2-3. There’s not much more to it than that. They’ve still got the same deficiencies, the same flaws to try to overcome. This week, they got past those obstacles, but there are just too many “what-ifs” that Virginia has to satisfy on a weekly basis to put together a season that moves beyond mediocrity.
Every once in a while, Virginia will give fans a reason to cheer as the team did Saturday. But in sports, like in life, you get what you pay for; the talent that you put on the field reflects output. The performance pendulum may sway from game to game, but talent will bring this team and its fans back down to earth.
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