Given that only 90 colleges have women’s rowing teams and even fewer sponsor men’s programs, what are the chances that Virginia coach Kevin Sauer would have known Kevin P. Granata?

“I coached him at Purdue,” Sauer said Monday.

Sauer, who directed Virginia to an eighth straight ACC rowing championship last weekend, did so with a heavy heart after learning that Granata was among those who lost their lives in last week’s shootings at Virginia Tech.

“He was in my second varsity eight when I was coaching at Purdue,” Sauer said. “He won a bronze medal at the Dad Vail Regatta.”

Photos submitted by Sauer accompany a story on Granata on row2k.com, the largest Web site devoted to rowing. There was a moment of silence before the ACC rowing championships, where the Virginia women wore “VT” logos and black wristbands were handed out to all competitors.

Tech does not have an intercollegiate rowing program.

Granata was a professor at Virginia from 1997-2003 before coming to Virginia Tech. He and Sauer had talked of collaborating on a project.

“We had talked about doing some research together,” Sauer said. “He was a bio-mechanist, a bio-medical engineer, and he was interested in lower back pain and what back fatigue did to that. It never happened, but we got together a couple of times.”

Sauer said that Granata met his wife, Linda, when both rowed at Purdue.

“Kevin was an awesome guy,” Sauer said. “He was such a hard worker [as a rower] in college and obviously a very, very good student. When I heard what happened, I was just devastated, but then I realized he was the type of person who would have done what he did.

“He was in his office and he heard the gunshots, apparently, and came out. He didn’t stay in his office. He tried to help. A bunch of guys that I had coached called me to let me know. It was horrible.”