“You probably can count on two fingers the amount of fumbles that Cedric [Peerman] has had.”
Virginia coach Al Groh’s words for Peerman described the first occasion Peerman had fumbled the ball away to the opposition, or at all, in his Virginia career. The game-ending play reflected the contest’s heartbreaking nature for the Cavaliers; with Virginia needing a touchdown to keep the game alive in overtime, Peerman fumbled at the Miami 18-yard line, which granted the Hurricanes the 24-17 win.
“We’ve been on the other end of that type of deal before,” Groh said. “It’s heartbreaking to our team.”
Following the fumble, a group of Virginia players gathered around Peerman, who had been the spark that lifted the Cavaliers to four straight wins preceding this game.
“We’re going to rally around him,” senior outside linebacker Clint Sintim said. “He’s the heart and soul of this offense as well as this team, and I don’t suspect anything like that will frequently be happening to a guy of his caliber.”
On top of the comeback loss, the Virginia program now faces the news that junior running back Mikell Simpson — who suffered a left shoulder injury on Virginia’s final play of the third quarter — is out for the season.
“I would say that that’ll be it for him for the year,” Groh said.
Perhaps in testament to the game’s emotional intensity, several players who factored into the loss did not appear for postgame interviews. Groh made it clear in his postgame conference that these players did not appear at the coaches’ discretion.
Peerman was not the only Cavalier who wished he could have a play back that might have changed the game’s outcome. Capping a drive from Miami’s own 5-yard line that lasted for 7:06 late in the fourth quarter, Miami freshman quarterback Jacory Harris was chased out of the pocket by Sintim and threw up a prayer of a pass to the back of the end zone in the vicinity of freshman wide receiver Laron Byrd, who was defended by both senior safety Byron Glaspy and junior corner Vic Hall. Glaspy fell, however, and the 5-foot-9 Hall, even after interfering with Byrd, was simply overpowered by the 6-foot-4 freshman, as Byrd ripped the ball out of the air to claim the game-tying touchdown.
“It was one of those anything-can-happen plays,” Groh said.
Though Sintim’s pressure on Harris forced a difficult throw, the linebacker said he should have done better to keep Harris in the pocket.
“I was out-leveraged on that play,” Sintim said. “It wasn’t a sense of, I don’t know, ‘Pride,’ or ‘Good job,’ or whatever you want to call it. It was more ... ‘I could have been in better position, I could have helped stop that throw.’”
Groh emphasized that Harris’ mobility was a problem for Virginia throughout the afternoon.
“One of our principal things going into the game was, keep the quarterback in the pocket,” Groh said. “Let him go any place, but don’t let him get outside.”
Even following the drive that tied the game, however, Virginia had a chance to put the Hurricanes away. With 55 seconds on the clock and the ball on Virginia’s 36-yard line following a good kick return from junior Kevin Ogletree, sophomore quarterback Marc Verica hit senior wide receiver Cary Koch for a 22-yard reception. On the ensuing play, Verica scrambled for 10 yards to the Miami 32-yard line but had the ball stripped by freshman linebacker Sean Spence, and Miami defensive back Bruce Johnson recovered the fumble.
Though Virginia kicker Yannick Reyering had already missed two kicks from 38 and 47 yards earlier in the game, Groh said he had converted from as deep as 50 in practice, and therefore the Cavaliers were in Reyering’s range when the fumble occurred.
“You can say I should have gone down,” Verica said. “But really what it came down to was not securing the ball in a crucial game situation.”
Verica completed 27 of 41 passes for 240 yards and a touchdown, but the sophomore was inaccurate at key moments. Misses of both wide receivers junior Kevin Ogletree and senior Maurice Covington who had a step on their defenders into the end zone were among the errant throws Verica had to open receivers.
“We definitely had some things there that we didn’t take,” Groh said.
Verica also had another key mistake with Virginia in field-goal range. With the ball at the Miami 27-yard line early in the fourth quarter, Verica was chased down and sacked by sophomore Allen Bailey for a 12-yard loss, and Virginia was forced to punt.
“You’d like to say, ‘Look, if there’s any circumstance in the game, you can’t take the sack in that circumstance,’” Groh said. “But we’re sure that under the circumstances in which it happened, it will leave an indelible mark on Marc [Verica].”
With their chance to lock down the Coastal Division title blown, the Cavaliers must now regroup for the final stretch of the season that includes road matchups with Wake Forest and Virginia Tech.
Players and coaches noted, however, that Virginia already has faced and overcome adversity this season.
“It may or may not quite accurately reflect my innermost feelings, but the team usually takes its leaders from those people up front,” Groh said. “It’s our job to be the ones to come back the strongest.”
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