UVa Football Preview: Cavs turning to recent recruiting classes

CHARLOTTESVILLE — The results from the media’s preseason balloting arrived just before the ACC coaches did in Georgia last month at the conference’s annual gathering. When informed of his team’s predicted finish — fifth in the Coastal Division — Virginia coach Al Groh, as he always does, brushed it off, finding such prognostications useless.

“Our team probably continues to labor to get much respect in this conference,” he said. “We’ll let other people deal with what the perception is. All we deal with is in reality.”

The Cavaliers had many real results to hang their hats on in a surprisingly successful 2007 season, just like analysts had many real reasons to expect a precipitous fall in the standings after a turbulent offseason that involved unexpected attrition on all fronts.

Chris Long was NFL-bound for sure, but UVa took a hit when left guard Branden Albert followed him into the draft. Two key starters — quarterback Jameel Sewell and cornerback Chris Cook — were issued full-year academic suspensions. As a final blow, the player expected to pick up most of Long’s slack at defensive end, Jeffrey Fitzgerald, transferred to Kansas State after academic issues of his own.

Groh, naturally, sees the departures differently, thinking of this as the perfect opportunity for younger players to make a name for themselves.

“When Chris Long and Branden Albert were getting ready to start, I don’t recall there were any people saying, ‘Oh wow, this is incredible. These guys are going to start,’” Groh said. “Now everybody is saying, ‘What are you going to do without these guys?’

“So there are players coming up who are going to have the same opportunity as those players did and go from no-name players in the eyes of people who don’t know to being people everybody is saying, ‘What are you going to do without (them)?’”

The Cavaliers aren’t lacking for candidates. Two years of redshirting almost every member of the incoming freshman class has given Virginia a talent pool deeper than any Groh has had in this, his eighth year in Charlottesville.

Long and Fitzgerald are gone at defensive end, but unproven players like redshirt freshmen Matt Conrath and Zane Parr have shown promise.

Cook had star potential at cornerback, but sophomore Ras-I Dowling, who filled in admirably for him last year, appears to have just as high of a ceiling.

Along with Albert, UVa lost seniors Jordy Lipsey and Ian-Yates Cunningham and must replace its entire interior offensive line. But fifth-year senior Zak Stair, redshirt freshman Jack Shields and sophomore B.J. Cabbell cut their teeth together as a unit on the second team last season and relish an opportunity to get in a game.

Sewell is out at quarterback, but that merely opens an opportunity for sophomore Peter Lalich, the team’s best quarterback prospect since Matt Schaub, to seize the job.

Virginia also welcomes back from injury two offensive playmakers — tailback Cedric Peerman and wide receiver Kevin Ogletree — with all-ACC potential.

The skeptics will wonder if this team can duplicate the same kind of chemistry and numerous clutch plays that were so vital to last year’s success in tight games.

For the gloom-and-doomers out there, consider this: Groh’s only two nine-win seasons at Virginia came when expectations were ridiculously low:

- Picked to finish eighth out of nine teams in 2002, the Cavaliers and ACC player of the year Matt Schaub went 6-2 in the conference, tying for second and going on win the first of two Continental Tire Bowls.

- Picked to finish fourth in the Coastal Division last year, Virginia reeled off an unprecedented string of close victories to win nine games and make the school’s first New Year’s Day bowl appearance since 1994.

“I’ve never been on a team like that in my life,” outside linebacker Clint Sintim said. “Just to win the number of games that we did by the amount of points that we did was just ridiculous.

“I’ve got a lot of memories from that team, but it’s a new year, a new day, and we’re just going to try to continue to push and make this year special too.”