Thursday, April 19, 2007
Cavalier spring game as lackluster as ever
Receiver issues not a matter of recruiting
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's UVa Insider returns for the 2007 football season next Thursday, August 16.
Now that Randy King has informed me that we’re wrapping up Virginia and Virginia Tech insiders for the summer, I’m guessing it would be a good idea to formalize some of my impressions after spring football practice.
I didn’t learn a thing Saturday during the Cavaliers’ annual spring game and that’s probably the way coach Al Groh wanted it. It was one of the most boring UVa spring games on record and that’s saying something.
“It’s hard to put together any cohesiveness,” Groh said. “The gameplan is very limited. What we did on Wednesday for 146 plays [in a scrimmage] is a lot more like what the team is trying to be next season.”
For the second year in a row, the winning points in the spring game were scored by a walk-on. In 2006, it was a last-minute field goal by Noah Greenbaum; this year, it was a touchdown catch by Simon Manka.
Greenbaum scored four points – a field goal and and an extra point – this past season. If Manka surpasses that total in 2007, he will have more of an impact than a lot of people would project.
In starting this story, I wrote over the UVa Insider from April 26 and was surprised to see the approach that story took. It focused around the kickers and how Ryan Weigand had boomed a 50-yard punt on his first attempt of that but had followed that with a few “clunkers.”
It sounds just like last Saturday.
We can assume that the Cavaliers will go into the regular season with Chris Gould handling field goals, extra points, kickoffs and punts inside midfield. Weigand would handle all of the other punts.
We can assume that because that’s how Virginia ended the 2006 season, not because of anything that occurred in the spring game. Gould didn’t even kick off the ground; his activity was limited to three “pooch” punts.
When asked about special teams earlier this spring, Groh noted a number of areas, including 29 Gould punts downed inside the 20-yard line, in which he was pleased in 2006.
Then, he added, “The performance of our kickers has to improve. Hey, no matter how well you block and tackle, the difference in a conference [where] a lot of teams are essentially the same team is, ‘Can you end up with a couple more points than they do?’ “
In a news conference after the spring game, Groh noted that the Cavaliers had signed a place-kicker, Chris Hinkebein, who will be joining the team for preseason drills. Hinkebein is not an option in the punting game.
In a perfect world, Hinkebein would be redshirted next year, but Groh will be less likely to go with the status quo if his kickers are on the same 12-for-21 pace they kept last year. Both Gould and Greenbaum will be seniors; in fact, Greenbaum will be a fifth-year senior and it will be interesting to see if he returns.
“I’m going to start meeting with all of these guys on Tuesday,” Groh said Saturday. “Not just with Noah, but with any other player, I’m not going to give too much of an assessment before I meet with the players individually.”
You could draw the conclusion from 7-0 score that the defense was/is outstanding and the offense wasn’t/isn’t very good, but you have to take several things into account.
The No. 1 quarterback, a guy who passed for 1,392 yards in nine starts last year, wasn’t in uniform. Neither were the top two returning receivers, wideout Kevin Ogletree and tight end Tom Santi. In all likelihood, Ogletree, who underwent reconstructive knee in early April, won’t play next season.
However, Sewell and Santi both could have played Saturday if the game had meant anything.
My guess is that Santi will catch 40 balls or more in 2007 and the other tight ends will be heavily involved, possibly even redshirt freshman Joe Torchia, who was very active in the spring game. However, based on the spring game, there should be plenty of opportunity for several wide-receiver recruits to compete for playing time.
Walk-ons Cary Koch and Staton Jobe had received praise for their work earlier in the spring, but they didn’t get much separation Saturday. Maurice Covington, probably the No. 1 returning wide receiver in Ogletree’s absence, reminds me of Fontel Mines because of his height but, like Mines, he has yet to prove he can stretch defenses.
Virginia nemesis Greg Roberts asks how UVa got in this situation and how the Cavaliers failed to recruit any big-time wideouts. But, actually, the Cavaliers did recruit them; they just didn’t sign any, losing Maurice Stovall (Notre Dame), Dwayne Jarrett (Southern Cal), Doug Dutch (Michigan) and Derek Williams (Penn State).
Virginia faded early in the Williams sweepstakes, but, at one point, the Cavaliers were the team to beat for Jarrett. The Stovall family thought enough of UVa to send daughter Enonge to play for the Cavalier women’s basketball team (after missing the 2006-2007 season, she will return for 2007-2008).
You could say that Virginia Tech’s wide receivers have been a lot better than Virginia’s receivers in recent years, but look at who we’re talking about: Josh Morgan, Eddie Royal, Justin Harper, Josh Hyman and David Clowney?
The Cavaliers blew the recruiting of Royal and his Westfield High School teammate, Sean Glennon. Not offering Glennon was the first step toward losing Royal; then, when the Cavaliers hesitated in offering Royal for academic reasons that turned out not to be an issue, they lost ground they would never make up.
Royal became a SuperPrep All-American and, along with Glennon, one of the top five players in the state. The Hokies did a good job in recruiting both of them, but Clowney was an afterthought who didn’t get an offer till late January and almost anybody could have had Harper coming out of Hargrave Military Academy. The same for Hokies stud defensive back Brandon Flowers, another Hargrave product.
Academics prohibited Tech or UVa from getting Hyman out of high school and UVa probably could not have gotten him out of high school, but when you look at the five above-mentioned receivers, Hyman had the fewest receptions in 2006.
With Fork Union coach John Shuman available to corroborate my information, I can’t say if Morgan would have had any problems with UVa admissions, but I don’t remember any attempts by Virginia to get involved with him. (The Fork Union freezeout, you might call it). It doesn’t matter, though. The point is, the fact that Tech has had good wide receivers and Virginia hasn’t is not a matter of recruiting.
I’m not saying it’s a matter of luck, either, but some of Virginia’s best wide-receiving groups have included walk-ons like Patrick Jeffers, Tim Finkelston, Keith Mattioli, Bryan Owen and Derek Dooley. Most of those walk-ons played with great quarterbacks like Shawn Moore or for teams that had pass-blockers like Ray Roberts or Mark Dixon.
Just wait. If the rest of the operation holds up in 2007, an otherwise nondescript UVa receiving corps could look a lot better.
