After Saturday?s deflating blowout football loss to Southern Cal, Virginia?s sports weekend only got worse Sunday.
Defense was the name of the game at Turf Field this weekend. The Virginia women?s field hockey team put on a suffocating defensive performance, beating William & Mary 5-0 Friday and following that up with a 4-1 victory against Providence Sunday.
There are many strategies that are preached to David when playing Goliath on the gridiron.?Just keep hanging around for three quarters ? at the end anything can happen.? ?Slow the tempo of the game down and keep the offense off the field.? ?Don?t give up the big play on defense.? ?Take advantage of the opportunities given to you.? ?Lace the other team?s pregame meal with arsenic.? We?ve heard them all.Saturday at Scott Stadium, none of those things happened.
The Virginia women?s volleyball team started its season off on the right foot this past weekend, winning all three matches on the way to claiming the crown at the JMU Days Inn Invitational in Harrisonburg.
Here is a secret most University students don?t know: The most riveting sports game this weekend may not take place at Scott Stadium.
I?m a fan ? but I?m very much a realist. I know Southern California is ranked third in the Associated Press poll and second in the USA Today/Coaches poll.
If Virginia fans don?t have an exact grasp of how good the USC team that Virginia will face Saturday is, let Virginia coach Al Groh put it in simple words.?They have clearly been in a league of their own during the decade of 2000 on,? he said.Over the last six seasons, USC has won two national championships, three Rose Bowls, two Orange Bowls, six straight Pac-10 titles and 70 of 78 games, including a 44-6 record in Pac-10 play.?This is the most talented college football team since when I had to do pre-draft work on the Florida State teams in the middle 90s ? Warrick Dunn, Peter Warrick, Marvin Jones, [Andre] Wadsworth, Reinard Wilson, Samari [Rolle] ? those guys,? Groh said.
The Virginia field hockey team opens the 2008 campaign with things old and new.Home games against long-time, in-state rival William & Mary at 2 p.m Friday and against Providence, an opponent the Cavaliers have not faced seen 1992, at 3:30 p.m Sunday at the Turf Field open another season in the young Virginia career of coach Michele Madison.Though the NCAA Tournament sits on the far side of a demanding schedule, the No.
While most University students have been slowly easing themselves into the routine of classes and extracurricular activities, the women?s soccer team has already played two exhibition games and one regular-season game.
The Virginia men?s basketball team travels to Montreal this weekend for a set of three exhibition games against opponents from the area.
Amazing. Priceless. Interesting. Weird. Star-struck. All of these are adjectives used by former Virginia athletes to describe their experience at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Saturdays have gotten much more complicated for me.For quite literally my entire life, every Saturday in the fall has been filled with the pomp and circumstance of game day, either at Scott Stadium or huddled around our TV if the Orange and Blue was on the road.
For the eighth straight year the Virginia women?s soccer team enters the season ranked in the top three in the ACC, a women?s soccer powerhouse conference.
Imagine you are hiking and you come to a hill. The path goes right over the hill to the other side. Most hikers wouldn?t think twice about going up and then down the hill to the other side.
The Virginia women?s field hockey team is looking to veteran leadership to steer an underclassmen-dominated roster.Coach Michele Madison is in her third year coaching at Virginia and 20th year overall after coming from Michigan State.
Rebuilding year. It?s one of those taboo terms college coaches avoid like the plague. After a disappointing 12-8-2 season in 2007 that included a 1-5-2 record in ACC play, however, the Cavaliers? 2008 season has been all but labeled as such.
If you are even the most casual of sports fans, you are probably planning to go to Saturday?s football game.
Nine current and former Cavaliers contributed to a total of three gold medals and two bronze medals in this summer?s Olympic Games, and all return home with memories to last a lifetime.
?I think every year and every season our expectation and our goal is to win the ACC Tournament and win the national championship,? senior goalie Celeste Miles said, following the Cavaliers? last exhibition game.Goals and expectations are, of course, a constant theme in sports ? either for an upcoming game, or even a whole season.
