Author: Macon Gunter

Virginia outgained Maryland by 135 yards and limited the Terps to minus-2 yards on the ground. Kevin Parks ran for a career-high 129 yards against the nation’s No. 7 run defense, and the Wahoos allowed just 2-of-13 third down conversions.

For all it did right Saturday, UVA managed to find a way to lose its fifth consecutive game, a 27-20 Homecomings loss before a less-than-capacity crowd. If Virginia falls to Wake Forest next week, the losing streak would match its longest in 30 years.

“I understand that we live in a culture of wins and losses and things like that,” UVA coach Mike London said. “It’s not from a lack of effort or a lack of trying. I understand that. I am more resolved and resolute to help these young men experience success on the field, as they are in other areas of their life.”

Maryland’s Stefon Diggs – a former UVA recruiting target – returned the game’s opening kickoff 100+ yards for a touchdown. A Phillip Sims interception on the ensuing possession led to another score, and Virginia trailed 17-0 at the end of the first quarter (after surrendering the final 28 points to Duke a week ago).

“We want to play well on the field, and we will play well on the field,” London said. “We’re going through some adversity here on the football field. That’s what happens. The worst thing we could do now is start pointing fingers and blaming and things like that.”

Virginia’s weakest link Saturday was its special teams. The unit allowed the game’s opening score, committed penalties on returns and coverages, regularly lost the field position battle, and had a short field goal blocked.

Said London: “Those are the things that continually have to be evaluated by our coaches: Who’s doing it and if they’re doing it well. If they’re not doing it, we need to make sure we can give an individual an opportunity to play well and give us a chance. It will be no different looking at this tape again to see if there’s something scheme-wise or something player-wise that has to be addressed. We will do that.”

The Cavaliers’ quarterback play has been inconsistent, no matter the signal caller. Sims completed fewer than 50 percent of his passes for just 139 yards against Maryland. He added a touchdown and an interception before giving way to Michael Rocco in the fourth quarter. The junior led Virginia on an 81-yard touchdown drive that pulled the team to within 7 points with 4:10 remaining. But Rocco missed a wide-open Khalek Shepherd on the Wahoos’ next possession, a play that very well could have gone for a game-tying touchdown.

“It’s tough whenever it’s so open,” Rocco said. “If I could have it back and put it right on his numbers I would. It’s a game of inches, sometimes it goes your way sometimes it doesn’t.”

UVA’s defense, which has now held its last four opponents below their season averages for total offense, turned in its best performance to date. The Terrapins netted just 3 points on drives that started on their end of the field.

“Coaches just keep telling us to stay positive, and that if we think it, it will happen,” said freshman defensive end Eli Harold, who finished with 3 tackles for loss and a forced fumble. “You have to speak things to existence. I often struggle a little bit with that, but the defense just needs to keep it up. We can’t give them a lot of opportunities. We didn’t get what we wanted, but we fought and we got on the ball a lot. That’s big, and we did what we could do.”

Virginia’s matchup Saturday against Wake Forest will likely be the final time the Wahoos are favored to win a game in 2012.

In November 2002, during the week leading up to his team’s game with UVA, then-Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen famously said: “We expect to beat teams like Duke and Virginia.”

Smart.

That Saturday, UVA crushed Maryland, 48-13. Friedgen was fired in 2010, having lost more games than he won against the orange and blue.

At halftime of a UVA-Maryland basketball game in March 2011, Randy Edsall, Friedgen’s successor, announced to the Comcast Center crowd: “Here at Maryland, we don’t lose to Virginia.”

Brilliant.

Eight months later, UVA dominated Maryland, 31-13. (And Virginia’s basketball team hasn’t lost to the Terps since Edsall took the microphone, either).

Maryland doesn’t like Virginia, and the feeling’s mutual. Luckily for Mike London, we can throw out the records when these two get together Saturday.

UVA (2-4, 0-2 ACC) is mired in a four-game losing streak during which it has been outscored by 87 points. The ‘Hoos have lost four of five to Duke (Duke!), including last week’s embarrassing 42-17 setback. Since starting 2-0, London’s team is allowing more than 42 points per game and ranks dead last nationally in turnover margin.

Maryland (3-2, 1-0 ACC) surpassed its 2011 win total a week ago when it came from behind to beat Wake Forest, 19-14. Edsall went just 2-10 last season, his first in College Park after jettisoning UConn. The natives remained restless after Maryland needed a fourth-quarter touchdown to get by William & Mary in its opener, 7-6, but the Terps have shown steady improvement from week to week.

Virginia has won 15 of the last 20 meetings dating back to 1992, but Maryland has taken two of the last three in Charlottesville, including a 42-23 win in Mike London’s first season at UVA.

Louisiana Tech quarterback Colby Cameron could not draw Virginia offsides on 4^th-and-1 with 1:45 remaining, his team desperately clinging to a 44-38 lead. Coach Sonny Dykes called timeout, and UVA trotted its punt return team onto the field.

Dykes didn’t oblige. Punter Ryan Allen stayed on the sideline, and Cameron lined up behind center.

Virginia inserted a twelfth player and was whistled for a substitution infraction, its 16^th penalty of the day.

“From a technical standpoint, they put their punt team on and we put our return team on,” said UVA coach Mike London shortly after the game. “Khalek Shepherd went to the back to receive the punt. Somewhere along the way, I guess they decided to bring their regular offense in.”

Teams are given three seconds to remove an extra defender from the field. Doug Rhoads, the ACC’s supervisor of officials, said Sunday that UVA’s twelfth man was on the field for as many as 11 seconds after the Bulldogs approached the ball.

“You have to be allowed the opportunity to substitute your correct personnel into the game,” London said. “As they brought their regular offense in, Khalek was 40-50 yards away. Normally it is the technique of the umpire to stand over the ball and allow the substitutions to take place. We ran one of our corners on the field, because their regular offense was there. But, 50 yards downfield was our punt returner, who should have been given the opportunity to leave the field. The official counted 12 players on the field, outside of the absence of knowing what’s going on with the personnel going in and out. A penalty is called. That’s the technical aspect of it, my interpretation of how it went down.”

Virginia led 24-10 in the second quarter and had crossed midfield when Sean Cascarano committed a dead-ball personal foul penalty. On the ensuing 2^nd-and-18, Michael Rocco threw an interception that glanced off the hands of Dominique Terrell. Two plays later, Louisiana Tech scored the first of 34 unanswered points.

UVA’s two-touchdown lead became a 44-24 deficit in the span of 20 minutes, 15 seconds.

In relief of Rocco, Phillip Sims threw fourth-quarter touchdown passes to Jake McGee and Adrian Gamble and looked poised to complete an improbable comeback before the decisive penalty.

“It was real tough,” said the Alabama transfer. “It’s pretty much everyone’s dream to be in a situation like that: two minutes left and the chance to help your team come out with a victory. Coming into the locker room and seeing the look in our eyes, you never know what may have happened with that time left. It’s a hard pill to swallow.”

Rocco’s streak of 18 consecutive starts will likely come to an end Saturday in Durham. The embattled quarterback led his team to eight wins a season ago, but UVA is just 1-5 in its last six games against FBS competition. Rocco has thrown a league-high eight interceptions in 2012.

Virginia last lost three consecutive games in 2010, Mike London’s first season on the job. Louisiana Tech improved to 4-0, its best start since 1975.

“It’s just that the way it ended in the last two minutes with substitution infractions, you hate for that to happen,” said Sonny Dykes. “You hate to see a game end that way. We wanted to get into an open set and try to draw them offsides and they had their kick returner out and I can understand why. They assumed that we were going to punt the ball. At that point, I didn’t feel comfortable punting the ball as we were having ongoing discussions on whether to punt it or go for it. I pretty much knew we were going to go for it.”

It is Virginia’s most pivotal game of the season, and it comes against a team averaging 54.7 points per game. Louisiana Tech’s air-raid offense ranks in the top 25 in every major statistical category. The Bulldogs are the nation’s only team to have put up 50+ points in each of its games this season: LA Tech beat Houston 56-49, Rice 56-37, and Illinois 52-24. Conversely, Jim Reid’s defense allowed 83 combined points in losses to Georgia Tech and TCU.

That’s the bad. The good is that Louisiana Tech can’t stop anybody. Its defense ranks 115th in the country and is allowing nearly 500 yards of total offense per game. On paper, points should not be at a premium.

It will be Virginia’s first-ever meeting with LA Tech (of the Western Athletic Conference), but the game’s circumstances are reminiscent of a season ago. Then, Virginia was 2-2 when it hosted WAC-member Idaho. Had the Vandals converted a 2-point conversion on the game’s final play, the Cavaliers would have fallen to 2-3 before welcoming No. 12 Georgia Tech to Scott Stadium a week later. Instead, UVA escaped with a 21-20 overtime win and won six of its final eight regular season games, including an upset of the then-unbeaten Yellow Jackets.

Third-year coach Sonny Dykes is the mastermind behind the air-raid offense popularized by Hal Mumme and Mike Leach. UVA last faced the scheme in the 2007 Gator Bowl, a 31-28 loss to Leach’s Texas Tech team. Dykes is 16-12 in Ruston and led the Bulldogs to the 2011 WAC championship and an appearance in the Poinsettia Bowl, which they lost to TCU, 31-24. Dykes took over for Derek Dooley, who accepted the University of Tennessee head coaching job in 2010. Dooley, who also served as Louisiana Tech’s athletic director, was a wide receiver at Virginia from 1987-1990.

Virginia will wear throwback jerseys Saturday, modeled after the 1968 team that featured ACC Player of the Year Frank Quayle. Quayle served as UVA radio’s color commentator for 29 years before retiring after last season’s Chick-fil-A Bowl. His No. 24 is one of only six numbers to be retired by the football program.

It will be UVA’s final non-conference tilt of the season. The ACC schedule begins in earnest next week when the ‘Hoos travel to Duke.

Virginia gained 297 yards of total offense on Saturday. Georgia Tech gained 210 on its first four plays.

The Wahoos trailed 14-0 four minutes into the game, 35-7 at halftime, and 56-20 when it mercifully came to an end. Paul Johnson’s spread-option attack netted 594 yards in all, the most a Virginia team has given up in more than a decade.

“It’s a humbling experience when you come in and get beat like that,” said UVA coach Mike London. “When you don’t execute well on defense or offense, things like that happen.”

Virginia last surrendered so many points in 1999, a 63-21 loss to Illinois in the MicronPC.com Bowl. Not since 1975 had UVA given up more points to a conference opponent. (Wake Forest topped a Sonny Randle-coached team, 66-21, 37 years ago).

The Ramblin’ Wreck racked up 461 yards rushing but drew first blood on a 70-yard touchdown pass from Tevin Washington to Zach Laskey on their opening offensive play.

“That was just luck,” Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson said. “It’s the matchup. You get the guy on the linebacker, and he played the out route and we ran a wheel route. It was a great throw by Tevin and a great route by Zach.”

An inexperienced UVA defense allowed seven additional plays of 20 yards or more. Tech running back Orwin Smith ran for 137 yards on just six carries. Washington added 93 yards on the ground. Eight Yellow Jackets averaged at least seven yards a clip.

Conversely, Cavalier tailback Perry Jones totaled just 15 yards on five carries for an offense that failed to produce 100 rushing yards for the second consecutive week. A year ago, Jones amassed 149 yards as Virginia upset No. 12 Georgia Tech, 24-21.

“We got handled today,” London said. “They did a good job executing every phase of their offense and defense. My hat goes off to them.

“Ultimately, the responsibility lies with me with the product that’s out on the field. I didn’t do a very good job of getting the team ready to play this team.”

Cavalier quarterback Michael Rocco finished 15-25 for 143 yards, a touchdown, and two interceptions. Phillip Sims entered the game with 12:32 to play and his team trailing 49-7. The Alabama transfer completed six of eight passes for 56 yards and two touchdowns.

UVA (2-1) travels to No. 17 TCU (2-0) this Saturday, before returning home to face Louisiana Tech (2-0).

As spotter and statistician for the Virginia Sports Radio Network, it is my job to know relevant personnel, follow the football, and relay information to our on-air voices. There are countless perks to the gig, with one exception: Georgia Tech week.

Paul Johnson’s triple-option, spread offense is designed to deceive. On any given play, there are at least three potential ball carriers, and in just two games this year, 15 different Yellow Jackets have logged at least one rushing attempt. They have run the ball a total of 113 times in 2012 and tried just 30 passes.

Last week, Georgia Tech amassed 469 rushing yards in a 59-3 win over hapless Presbyterian. The Wreck has ranked in the top five nationally in rushing offense in each of Johnson’s four seasons in Atlanta.

A  Mike London-coached Virginia team has faced Tech’s triple-option attack twice before. Last season, it was UVA that won the rushing battle, 274-272, en route to a 24-21 upset victory over the 12th-ranked and unbeaten Jackets. Perry Jones ran for a career-high 149 yards on 18 carries.  Georgia Tech took the other meeting, 33-21, in Atlanta in 2010.

In its season opener, GT fell to Virginia Tech in overtime, 20-17, in a game it led with less than a minute to play. It will look to avoid an 0-2 hole in conference play, while Virginia attempts to start 1-0 in the ACC for the first time under London. The game will be televised nationally by ESPNU. Kickoff is set for Saturday afternoon at 3:30.