Associated Press

File March

If Mike London thinks his Virginia football players have been starved when it comes to season-opening victories, he ought to check out the records of his UVa coaching predecessors.

They've experienced a famine of biblical proportions.

The last Cavaliers coach to begin his career with a victory was Bill Elias, whose 1961 UVa team defeated William and Mary 21-6.

Elias was succeeded by George Blackburn, Don Lawrence, Sonny Randle, Dick Bestwick, George Welsh and Al Groh. Four of them lost their first two games and Welsh, who became the winningest coach in school history, went 0-5 to open his UVa coaching career in 1982.

London will seek to reverse that trend when the Cavaliers take the Scott Stadium field for a 6 p.m. kickoff against Richmond, a school whose colors London wore as a player and a program he has served as head coach for the past two seasons.

"I would not be human if I sat here and said it's another game," London, 49, said earlier this week. "It's not another game. That's my alma mater. I spent years there as a coach and a player and I won championships there with that team, and there are coaches on that staff [who coached under him]."

The match-up is replete with connections. The man who hired London at Richmond, school president Dr. Ed Ayers, formerly had served as UVa's dean of arts and sciences. Six current Richmond coaches were at UVa last year, including head coach Latrell Scott, and three Virginia coaches were at Richmond, including London.

That doesn't include support personnel such as UVa strength coach Brandon Hourigan and director of player development Steve Atkinson, both of whom had worked at Richmond. And, while UVa defensive coordinator Jim Reid was not at Richmond in 2009, he was the Spiders' head coach from 1995-2003.

London will make his debut as Virginia's head coach in the same setting where he made his debut as Richmond's head coach. One week after Southern Cal came into Scott Stadium and thrashed the Cavaliers 52-7 in 2008, Richmond opened its season in Charlottesville and fell 16-0.

"When I left here and went to Richmond, I wasn't looking at the schedule [before] it dawned on me that, 'Hey, I'm coming back to Charlottesville,'" he said. "It was the same thing coming here. You turn around and it's just the reverse, the opposite two years later. I have to look at it as just another opportunity to win a home opener."

London should know the feeling. When he was an assistant coach at UVa from 2001-2004, the Cavaliers won back-to-back openers. They made it three in a row in 2005, after London had left to become the defensive-line coach with the Houston Texans.

However, a 26-14 loss in the 2009 opener was the fourth in a row and was made even more demoralizing because it came against a Division I-AA opponent, William and Mary. It was the Cavaliers' first loss to a Division I-AA foe since 1986.

In the interim, UVa had beaten Richmond four times, but the William and Mary game has taken away any feelings of invincibility.

"We are going to have to be able to match and exceed whatever excitement and enthusiasm [the Spiders] bring because this is a very good team," London said. "You know, all things considered, we are a team that lost to Duke last year and Richmond was a team that beat Duke."

The Spiders have won 24 games over the past two seasons, including 17 in a row during one stretch, and have won their last 12 road games.

"I think that a lot of those kids ... have not had opportunities to be recruited by a, quote, BCS school," said London, referring to the upper echelon of Division I-A. "And sometimes that's a motivating factor for them, because they start out wanting to be recruited and things just worked out that it didn't happen that way.

"Sometimes you think at the BCS level that you have the best of the best athletes that are out there and sometimes that may be the case. But a lot of times it's not. The history of Richmond's program, even before I got there, was a level of success. Having been there, I can tell you there's a mindset of, 'Coach, we can play and win and be in every game.' "

KEYS TO THE GAME

Win the turnover battle. The Cavaliers lost four fumbles and were intercepted three times in a 26-14 loss to another Division I-AA team, William and Mary, in the 2009 opener. UVa quarterback Marc Verica wasn't intercepted in that game but has an 8-17 touchdown pass-interception ratio for his career.

Avoid big plays. Richmond sustained extensive graduation losses on the offensive line but has some marvelous receivers and a transfer quarterback with a tremendous upside. It does not appear that UR has the kind of running game to control the game on the ground.

Solid special teams. Chris Hinkebein has retained kickoff duties and has the leg strength to kick the ball into the end zone, when he isn't hooking the ball out of bounds and giving possession to opponents at the 35. UVa return and coverage teams are unproven.