Thursday, April 05, 2007
Key to UVa football season may lie in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
Baseball staff knows all about Long
Doug Doughty
Doug Doughty's UVa Insider is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Thursdays in season.
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Editor's note: Doug Doughty is on vacation. His UVa Insider and Notebook Plus columns will resume next week.
People think I’m crazy when I say the key to Virginia’s 2007 football season will be its non-conference road games with Wyoming and Middle Tennessee State.
For one thing, people act like there’s no way Virginia could lose to Middle Tennessee State.
How soon they forget!
If a team could lose at home to Western Michigan and on the road at East Carolina in the same season, it certainly is capable of losing in Laramie, Wyo., and Murfreesboro, Tenn.
Heck, if Wyoming hadn’t missed an extra point in overtime, the Cowboys might have won in Charlottesville last year.
Virginia traditionally has played well at home, even last year. The Cavaliers were 4-2 at Scott Stadium last year and could – or should – have beaten Western Michigan and Maryland. Even after blowing a 20-0 halftime lead and losing to Maryland 28-26, the Cavaliers won their last three home games.
For the second year in a row, Virginia will play six road games – not a positive omen for a team that struggles on the road.
Virginia has home games next year with Duke, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech. I could see them going 5-1 at home, but in addition to Virginia Tech, against whom Al Groh is 1-5, the Cavaliers must face the two combatants in last year’s ACC championship game (Wake and Georgia Tech).
Road games are against Wyoming, North Carolina, Middle Tennessee State, Maryland, N.C. State and Miami. Sure, some of those ACC teams are beatable, but consider this: Virginia lost in its last trip to UNC, Maryland, N.C. State and Miami.
So, if the Cavaliers don’t beat Wyoming and Middle Tennessee State on the road, who will they beat?
Middle Tennessee State probably wasn’t as good as East Carolina last season, but the Blue Raiders received a bid to the Motor City Bowl before finishing 7-6. They are coached by Rick Stockstill, a former Florida State quarterback who is familiar with the Cavaliers from his days as a Clemson assistant and has five former ACC assistants on his staff.
In the spirit of full disclosure, it is also worth mentioning that Middle Tennessee State lost games at Oklahoma and South Carolina by the respective counts of 59-0 and 52-7. The Blue Raiders also lost to then-No. 8 Louisville 44-17 in Nashville, Tenn.
THERE ARE VARIOUS twists to the recruiting of Charlottesville schoolboy star Kyle Long, rated the No. 1 football prospect in Virginia by The Roanoke Times.
Long, son of NFL Hall of Famer Howie Long and younger brother of UVa preseason All-America candidate Chris Long, also has shown promise as a baseball pitcher at St. Anne’s-Belfield and has not ruled out the possibility that he will play baseball exclusively in college.
Virginia is recruiting the younger Long (6 foot 7, 295 pounds) for football and baseball. He was offered a scholarship for football at the earliest opportunity, Sept. 1, but so far he has not been offered for baseball.
That is not to say that Virginia does not like Long as a baseball prospect. If he were to commit for football, the UVa baseball staff would welcome his baseball involvement in any capacity.
If he played football and baseball, he would count against the football scholarship limit.
The only way he would count against the baseball limit is if he played baseball exclusively. Schools like Florida State have started to pursue him from that angle, but you’d have to believe the football staffs at those schools would be nosing around as soon as he arrived on campus.
UVa's Web site posters seem surprised that Virginia hasn’t offered Long a baseball-only scholarship, but coach Brian O’Connor has done due diligence. He already has been to two of Long’s games this season and has other scouting missions planned, with the bulk of the evaluation slated for the summer.
O’Connor already has four commitments for 2008-2009, one of them from Tunstall High School junior Justin Thompson, brother of current UVa pitching ace Jacob Thompson. There are very few full scholarships in Division I baseball; if it’s going to take a 75-percent offer to get Long for baseball, O’Connor wants to make sure he’s worth it.
Don’t mistake the absence of an offer to this point for negligence. O’Connor is fully aware of Long’s importance to the UVa program at all levels.
YOU DON’T USUALLY get much information about women’s recruiting in this column, but the Cavaliers are still waiting to hear from Jordan Jones, a 5-9 baskeball prospect from Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, Ga.
Jones signed with Texas Tech during the fall but was released from her letter-of-intent due to illness in her family. She subsequently has narrowed her choices to South Carolina, Wake Forest and UVa.
Jones is considered one of the top shooters in the women’s class of 2007. Collins Hill, led by Connecticut signee Maya Moore, finished 31-0 and was rated No. 1 in the country in the final USA Today poll.
