The last half of the college football season provides the opportunity for a team to define itself.
Yet, the “South’s oldest rivalry” — the matchup between North Carolina and Virginia football — can hardly be called a rivalry this decade.
From the start of his tenure as Virginia football’s head coach, Bronco Mendenhall instituted a phrase that became the mantra for Virginia football — “earned, not given.”
Junior quarterback Kurt Benkert entered Saturday’s game against Central Michigan with so-so numbers.
For the fifth straight year, Virginia will come out of non-conference play without a winning record.
While Saturday’s loss brought Virginia to 0-3, this particular defeat against Connecticut was much different than the other two. This one felt like the all too familiar heartbreaking losses of previous Cavalier football teams.
The five outliers who take it upon themselves to call the shots for the defenses of their respective teams are San Diego State’s Rocky Long, Arizona State’s Todd Graham, Vanderbilt’s Derek Mason, Texas Christian’s Gary Patterson and Virginia’s very own Bronco Mendenhall.
Five minutes into the fourth quarter Saturday, I found myself devouring another serving of those marshmallow fudge brownies in the press box to cope with a wide range of negative emotions.
Leading the way with stingy defensive play is certainly familiar for Cavalier fans.
Have you ever thought about how impressive Virginia athletics are? If you think about it, they’re something to be admired.
The former Brigham Young coach has a clear vision for the program. From day-one, his vision was explicit.
“Nothing was worse than spring football practice,” my dad, who suited up for Vanderbilt in the ‘70s, used to say.
Top-seeded Virginia got a taste of its own medicine Sunday night, and boy it sure was bitter. The Cavaliers (29-8) led No. 10 seed Syracuse 35-21 at the half, but the Orange (23-13) unleashed a torrid 25-4 run to win 68-62 and reach the Final Four.
It would be unfair to diminish coach Tony Bennett’s success the past two seasons. How far the Virginia basketball program has come since that fateful 87-52 loss against Tennessee Dec. 30, 2013 is truly remarkable.
To ease my stress, and hopefully yours, I find comfort in numbers — almost all of which favor Virginia through the weekend. Here’s a list of the most reassuring stats that I’ll be reading over and over again during the next 24 hours or so to keep me calm, cool and collected.
I came up with a ranking for each of the other 67 teams in the NCAA Tournament to whom we could lose — forget that the play in games already happened — in order of how grief-stricken I would be if our exit came against that team.
As 5:30 p.m. drew near on Selection Sunday, my roommate and I had to ask, could Virginia end up in Michigan State’s region again? After two hours of banter from Charles Barkley, Ernie Johnson and Co., we have our answer — and the answer is yes.
Saturday night’s ACC Tournament championship game seemed to be a matchup made in heaven — the top-two teams in the nation’s premier league slugging it out with conference dominance on the line. The dream slowly devolved into a nightmare for second-seeded Virginia.
To paraphrase Bane from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, last year’s team merely adopted close games as their ally. The 2016 team was born into them, molded by them.
For the second game in a row coach Tony Bennett emptied his bench. No. 2 seed Virginia played its reserves Thursday night in a 72-52 quarterfinal victory No. 10 seed Georgia Tech.
