Cavs head to Sunshine State to take on Hurricanes

Published online on Wednesday, Nov. 04, 2009

In a Coastal Division clash, the 16th- ranked Miami-Florida Hurricanes welcome the Virginia Cavaliers to Land Shark Stadium for a pivotal ACC matchup.

The Hurricanes are coming off an emotional win, as they rallied past Wake Forest 28-27, in a Halloween thriller last weekend.

"Offense couldn't do anything, defense struggled in the first half," said head coach Randy Shannon. "And then finally we started getting turnovers and the offense started moving it a little bit, and that helped us out. And I think that shows you where this team can go and be at."

It was certainly a gritty effort and a nice bounce back for Miami, which was coming off a 40-37 overtime loss to Clemson the prior week. With the win, the Hurricanes kept alive their hopes in the Coastal Division race. Miami is 3-2 within the conference, including a win over Georgia Tech, and it trails both the Yellow Jackets and Duke, which have only one conference loss each.

As for the Cavs, they too are in the running for the division title, although their hopes took a hit with a 28-17 setback against Duke last weekend.

"A lot of kids played their heart out today to make it different, but there were just too many gift points," said coach Al Groh. "There were 10 points we can attribute to turnovers and a couple of mental errors that resulted in long plays."

Virginia has now dropped two straight on the heels of a three-game win streak and it sits 2-2 within the conference, but just 3-5 overall. A loss this weekend would mean the Cavs have to win their final three games just to become bowl eligible.

In terms of the all-time series, Miami owns a 4-2 edge over Virginia and that includes a 24-17 overtime victory in Charlottesville last season.

The Cavs had virtually no success moving the ball on Duke last weekend, managing only 196 yards of total offense. Furthermore, the offense turned the ball over twice and that included a Jameel Sewell fumble which was returned for a touchdown to push Duke's lead to 25-17 with just over three minutes remaining. It was another poor effort from this offense, which has scored just four touchdowns in ACC play this season.

Aside from the fumble and a pick, Sewell did his best to help Virginia move the ball and he threw for 86 yards and a score and added a second touchdown on the ground. Sewell has totaled 11 touchdowns (five rushing) on the season, but the Cavs are producing a mere 277.5 total ypg as a team.

The team's inability to gain yards consistently is by no means solely Sewell's fault, as the Cavs' ground attack has been inept. The team is gaining a poor 98.1 ypg on the ground with an average of just 2.8 yards per carry and that simply won't get the job done.

Virginia has one of the better pass defenses in the nation, but last weekend, the unit was torched for 343 yards by Duke. The Cavs, who are allowing just 175.2 ypg through the air this season, gave up several passing plays of 30 or more yards in the setback. The defense though, bent, but never really broke, and held Duke's offense to one touchdown, while rolling up six sacks.

"I'm very pleased with the way they responded," Groh said about the defensive line. "We had some schemes that we thought would get some pressure and they did a really, really good job all week of tuning, as well as of executing, during the course of the game."

Virginia had just 10 sacks heading into the game, so the effort was clearly a positive one. Nate Collins accounted for two of the sacks and he also finished with a team-best 10 stops in the losing cause. It was another solid effort from Collins, who paces Virginia with 57 tackles, eight TFLs and five sacks on the season.