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Thursday, July 26, 2007

UVa needs strategy to combat VT stranglehold

Rhetoric won’t do the job

By Doug Doughty

Doug Doughty

Doug Doughty's College Notebook Plus is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Fridays.

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Now that the football recruiting season is in full swing, scarcely a week goes by without antagonistic Roanoke sports-talk host Greg Roberts asking me about Virginia’s inability to recruit in-state talent.

If I’m doing the math correctly, 10 of the 15 players who have committed to Virginia Tech are from Virginia. None of the 12 players who have committed to UVa are from the state.

To me, the issue is not where the talent originates. There are roughly 50 Division I-A prospects in Virginia every year. If Virginia wanted to sign 25 in-state players, it could do so. And, these would be bona-fide Division I-A players, not necessarily ACC-caliber recruits, but there are various levels of I-A football. Mid-America Conference schools take a half-dozen Virginians every year.

More telling has been Virginia’s inability to beat Tech in recruiting – in state or out of state, but mostly in state. UVa has been among the finalists for three in-state players who already have committed to Tech – Jake Johnson, Peter Rose and Isaiah Hamlette – and Smithfield High School wide receiver Dyrell Roberts is likely to become the fourth.

Roberts is headed to Penn State on an unofficial visit and it’s not out of the question that the Nittany Lions could turn his head. He has said that he will announce his decision July 31 and all signs indicate he has chosen Tech over UVa. If he does not go to Tech, pending a change of heart, he probably would go to Penn State.

At one point, Roberts was considered a Virginia lean. That happens a lot. Virginia has a junior day during the basketball season, prospects get excited over the new basketball arena and UVa frequently wins in exciting fashion. After a while, reality sets in and they realize they need to visit other schools.
Most of the time, that includes a visit to Virginia Tech for the spring game and the gap is closed.

“Virginia peaks too early,” a good source observed recently.

Tech does not bring football recruits to campus for a winter football game. The Hokies’ rationale is that there are only so many times that a prospect is going to make the four- to five-hour trip from Richmond or Tidewater to Blacksburg and the spring game makes more sense from a football standpoint. The atmosphere at Cassell Coliseum is intimidating for an opponent but recruits are more likely to be wowed by UVa’s new John Paul Jones Arena.

That’s not saying Virginia should stop holding its winter junior day; it just accounts for the way that UVa’s early lead doesn’t always hold up.

The subject of in-state recruiting was raised at a recent “summer sitdown” that Groh conducted with media who cover the team. Groh’s contention was that Virginia has a model for the kind of student-athlete it recruits and that “this year there seems to be a smaller pool of guys who fit our model,” he said.

To some high-school coaches in Virginia, it seems that Groh is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. As recently as 2006, the Cavaliers signed a 24-member class that included eight players who did not enroll, most for academic reasons. In 2007, Virginia signed 24 players again, but this time all 24 qualified.

Obviously, there was a change in philosophy, but Groh has danced around that issue. He has always said of the 2006 class that the UVa staff knew what it was doing, that none of the defections caught the Cavaliers by surprise, but why would anybody knowingly sign eight players who weren’t going to qualify?

It would be a lot more refreshing if Groh would simply say, “We learned our lesson in 2006,” or to admit that Tech’s success and the continuity of its staff creates a major challenge. To constantly hold up academics smacks of sour grapes and doesn’t win many friends in the Virginia High School League ranks.

Virginia has a major PR problem in recruiting and it isn’t limited to football. In recent weeks, the state’s top men’s basketball prospect, rising Benedictine senior Ed Davis, committed to North Carolina. Before that, the Cavaliers were unable to land any of the seven in-state women’s basketball players who were ranked among the top 100 in the country by Blue Star.

Of course, North Carolina is not Virginia Tech or Old Dominion or VMI. A lot of schools have lost basketball recruits to the Tar Heels. Virginia Tech’s football program lacks the history of UNC’s football program; however, its success over the past decade is not to be discounted.  

Virginia has had enough great Virginians of its own – Shawn Moore, Herman Moore, Terry Kirby, the Barber twins – to know what in-state players can mean to a Virginia program. The only way to meet the challenge is head-on.

That doesn’t mean taking 25 second-tier Division I-A prospects. What it does mean is going into some critical areas or into some prominent high schools and identifiying a lower-profile -- but not necessarily less-talented – player who will make the Cavaliers more welcome on their next visit.

IT WAS INTERESTING to see that Maryland received a commitment Thursday from Kerry Boykins, a wide receiver from Oscar Smith in Chesapeake who picked the Terrapins over Virginia and North Carolina.

Boykins reportedly was blown away by his visit to Virginia earlier in the summer but recently had expressed reservation about the job status of Groh, who will be entering his seventh season in Charlottesville.

That speaks to another PR issue facing Groh. Groh could lose his job if the Cavaliers go 4-8 or 5-7, but what if Maryland were to go 4-8 or 5-7? Ralph Friedgen’s seat would be just as warm.
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