John McDonnell/THE WASHINGTON POST - “It’s a great thing to see that the maturity part starts to catch up to the execution part. Because sometimes it hasn’t always been that way,” Virginia Coach Mike London said.
Three weeks ago, it was brought to Virginia Coach Mike London’s attention that only two ACC Coastal Division teams could reach the conference title game by winning their remaining regular season contests: his Cavaliers and four-time ACC champion Virginia Tech.
“Maybe a couple years from now you talk about winning out and running the table and controlling our own destiny,” London said then. “That’s for teams that have been there and done that.”
Since then, London’s program has ventured into something of a time warp. These are still the Cavaliers who have neither been there nor done that, yet they continue to perform like the team many people in and around the program expected to see not this season, but several years from now. After all, Virginia had lost twice as many games as it had won over the previous three seasons.
On Saturday, the No. 24 Cavaliers will host No. 6 Virginia Tech, an in-state rival the Cavaliers have not conquered since 2003. The winner will have run the figurative table and thus advance to face 18th-ranked Clemson in next Saturday’s ACC championship game.
When asked what he would have said had he been told two years ago that Virginia would be on the brink of playing for a conference title in 2011, Chris Slade, a former Cavaliers linebacker and current sideline reporter for the program’s radio broadcasts, responded: “You’re crazy. You’re on drugs. You been drinking too much. I never in a million years would have thought that.”
But this fall — London’s second at the helm — the Cavaliers (8-3, 5-2 ACC) have rewritten a script laid out not only by their coach, but by nearly every rational follower of the program. Slade said he figured Virginia would go 7-5 at best this season.
The Cavaliers already have snapped nearly every negative trend associated with their program at the season’s outset. They won consecutive ACC games for the first time since 2008. They won in November for the first time in four years. They defeated Florida State in Tallahassee for the first time ever. They are bowl-eligible. They remain in the hunt for a Bowl Championship Series bid on the final Saturday of the regular season.
Said Virginia Athletic Director Craig Littlepage, “Honestly, I would not have been able to make that prediction” in August.
Closing the gap?
When London took over in December 2009, many observers figured Virginia would be able to revitalize its standing in recruiting circles and compete with Virginia Tech for the state’s top high school talent in short order. That London and his assistants have done so has not been a surprise.
But a win Saturday over the Hokies (10-1, 6-1) — who have won 11 of their past 12 meetings against Virginia — would be astonishing, primarily because of the wide range of ramifications.
According to Richard Morgan, the football coach at Oscar Smith High in Chesapeake, Va., a Virginia triumph over Virginia Tech would enable the Cavaliers to craft a new message to recruits: “See, we have closed the gap. We’re the same as Tech now.”
Conversely, Morgan said, “if Virginia Tech wins the game, they’re going to say: ‘There’s still a difference between us, guys. Come to Virginia Tech and play for the [ACC] championship.’ ”
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