Cavaliers aim to halt slide against Wake Forest
By Matthew Wurzburger | October 17, 2012The Virginia football team welcomes Wake Forest to Scott Stadium Saturday for a third straight ACC matchup.
The Virginia football team welcomes Wake Forest to Scott Stadium Saturday for a third straight ACC matchup.
Coach Mike London has mere moments to compose himself before he addresses his melancholy team in the locker room following losses.
The Virginia players exited the field in misery after Saturday’s 27-20 Homecomings loss to archrival Maryland that all but sent their bowl chances, like their new indoor practice facility, up in smoke. For all the moralizing rhetoric out there about the indomitable power of teamwork and persistence and a “can do” attitude, they aren’t enough to outweigh the torturous disappointment of coming up short.
The Virginia football team fell to Maryland, 27-20, for the team’s fifth straight loss, giving the Cavaliers’ their longest losing streak since 2009.
This Saturday marks a day of rich traditions as Virginia continues its storied rivalry against Maryland on the weekend of the 88th Homecomings.
Keeping with the theme of quarterback controversy that has filled recent Cavalier Daily sports pages, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the QB plight of this year’s NFL drama queen, the New York Jets. Hard Knocks or not, Rex Ryan and his team of colorful personalities always seem to find their way into the news somehow.
Duke redshirt sophomore quarterback Anthony Boone completed 18-of-31 passes for 212 yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions as the Blue Devils (5-1, 2-0 ACC) scored 28 unanswered second half points to give Virginia its fourth straight loss, 42-17. Despite outgaining Duke 461 to 395 yards, Virginia (2-4, 0-2 ACC) was defeated by 20 or more points for the third time in four weeks to match the worst start in three seasons under coach Mike London.
Virginia travels to Durham Saturday to face Duke in junior quarterback Phillip Sims’ first start of the season. Despite their recent three-game skid, the Cavaliers (2-3, 0-1 ACC) remain optimistic they can start October off on the right foot with a victory against the Blue Devils (4-1, 1-0 ACC). “We keep each other up,” sophomore running back Kevin Parks said.
For a team pegged at the outset of the 2012 season to steamroll opponents with a dynamic, versatile running game, Virginia has relied immensely on the aerial attack in the season’s first five contests. Through five games, the Cavaliers have attempted 193 passes while rushing only 165 times, a difference of 28 plays.
The Virginia football team is making a quarterback change. Coach Mike London hinted on his weekly radio show Monday night, the Cavaliers will give sophomore Philip Sims snaps with the first team this week in preparation for his first start Saturday against Duke — provided he recovers from a lower leg injury suffered in last week’s 44-38 loss to Louisiana Tech. The move follows another dicey performance from incumbent starter junior Michael Rocco against the Bulldogs.
Saturday’s 44-38 loss to Louisiana Tech featured the best and worst of an offense which has been too erratic to give the team’s inexperienced defense a fighting chance. With one of the top offenses in the country visiting Charlottesville in Louisiana Tech—the only team in the nation to score 50 or more points in each of its games—the Cavalier attack needed to be sharp throughout. Instead, the offense alternated between eye-opening stretches of execution and head-scratching periods of futility.
The Virginia football team returns to Scott Stadium Saturday for a showdown against offensively dominant Lousiana Tech.
During Virginia’s abysmal 56-20 defeat to Georgia Tech Sept. 15, many fans witnessed a phenomenon they had likely never seen before.
The Virginia football team travels to Fort Worth this Saturday in hopes of upsetting No. 17 TCU in front of a national audience.
The Virginia football team’s defense spent an exhausting week preparing for the intricacies of Georgia Tech’s triple-option offense in the lead up to Saturday’s 56-20 loss in Atlanta.
Like all good television, the NFL has its fair share of action and drama. But after the past two weeks, pencil this season in to sweep the Daytime Emmy Awards for the most dramatic soap opera on television. Yes, we’ve been treated to phenomenal performances in the first two weeks.
Fueled by the dazzling play of Quarterback Tevin Washington and a vaunted triple-option offense, Georgia Tech throttled Virginia 56-20 Saturday to hand the Cavaliers their first defeat of the season. A week after surviving a 17-16 heart-thumping contest against Penn State, Virginia (2-1, 0-1 ACC) sputtered badly in its first game outside the friendly confines of Scott Stadium.
The Virginia football team opens its ACC slate in Atlanta against rival Georgia Tech Saturday hoping for a more complete performance than the shaky 17-16 victory the team scraped last week against Penn State. In their two victories this season, the Cavaliers (2-0, 0-0 ACC) have cruised past coach Mike London’s former team, Richmond, and escaped by the narrowest of margins against Penn State courtesy of a last-second miss by Nittany Lion kicker Sam Ficken.
Before he became known simply as “The Kid,” sophomore tight end Jake McGee had a decision to make.
Nobody got his money’s worth from this highly hyped Penn State showdown. What we got instead is far more valuable: a genuine human drama that reinforced everything we truly love about college football.