Groh-Rocco Relations
Posted: January 25th, 2007, 10:51 pm
From our friends at the Roanoke fishwrap:
No hard feelings between Groh, Roccohttp://www.roanoke.com/sports/uvainside ... /xp-101730
Lynchburg shuttle of some concern
By Doug Doughty
Virginia football coach Al Groh and his former assistant, Danny Rocco, have almost identical recollections of the conversations they held over the Christmas holidays.
Rocco, who has just completed his first season at Liberty, said he might have spoken to Groh as many as five times. Most of the conversations applied to Marshal Ausberry, a former Cavalier offensive lineman who enrolled at Liberty this week.
Ausberry is the third former UVa player to join Rocco in Lynchburg, following offensive tackle Eddie Pinigis and defensive end Vince Redd. Pinigis was a second-team All-Big South selection this past season.
“Look, if they’re not of primary importance to us here, I’d like to see them helping him out,” Groh said this week. “There’s nobody we’d rather see do well than Danny.”
Redd was dismissed from Virginia’s team last spring and could not have rejoined the Cavaliers without great difficulty. Pinigis lost his starting job at UVa during the preseason of 2006 and, when he didn’t get much satisfaction in a face-to-face meeting with Groh, bolted on the eve of fall classes.
The departure of Ausberry, who started 11 games during UVa’s 2005 Music City Bowl season, was a slightly different story. He would have been welcome to return as a fifth-year senior in 2006 and would have provided depth and flexibility for a veteran Cavaliers’ offensive line.
Will this be the last UVa player to Liberty for a while?
“We’ll see,” Groh said. “As I wrapped up the conversation with Danny, I was like, ‘Hey, Danny, this is fine, but I want to make sure this doesn’t become a trend and everybody sees this as a way out.’
“I could see one guy telling the other guy, ‘Hey, you know, this is a great deal. Just come on down there and do this.’"
It’s easy to visualize that kind of conversation between Ausberry and Pinigis, fellow UVa starters for a period in 2005.
What makes the Ausberry situation a little more palatable for Groh is that Ausberry at least has a UVa degree.
“He’s a veteran player who played for us the year before and did a nice job for us,” Groh said. “What changed his situation was, [Jordy] Lipsey came on so strong in training camp that he was clearly one of the best five linemen.”
Lipsey started every game at center after a preseason battle with Ian-Yates Cunningham.
An undersized Lipsey can’t play guard, “but Cunningham can,” Groh explained. “Cunningham went over and played better at guard than Marshal did. So, that changed that circumstance.”
But, Ausberry “is a veteran player, who we’ve trained, who knows the system, who was always one play away from going in,” Groh continued.
Virginia was remarkably injury-free in the offensive line this year. That might not be the case in 2007.
“He would have given us the opportunity, if the circumstance had come up, to keep us from playing a young player a year earlier than we wanted to,” Groh said. “But, frankly, I was a bit surprised, when he was first offered the opportunity, that he said he would come back under those circumstances.
“Then, he said came back at Christmas and said, ‘I’ve been thinking about this and I think I’m going to graduate and go to Liberty.’ I think it would have been a shame, as I’ve told a couple other guys, ‘Hey, I’m all for football, but in the grand scheme of things, to play 10 or 11 games at that level and give up a degree from Virginia is not a great, long-range deal.'”
Along those lines, Groh said he has spoken recently with quarterback Kevin McCabe, hero of the Cavaliers’ overtime victory over Wyoming this past season. McCabe, benched before halftime in his first UVa start, has said he wants to spend his fifth season of eligibility at a lower level, but McCabe is enrolled for the spring term at Virginia.
“He’s going to stay through his graduation here, then play at one of those Pennsylvania teachers’ colleges,” Groh said.
McCabe will not take part in spring drills at Virginia, Groh confirmed.
There are a number of former Virginia players at various stages of eligibility and it would not be surprising for one or more to surface at Liberty. That group includes defensive lineman Chris Johnson, defensive back Phillip Brown, wide receiver Bud Davis and defensive back Robbie Catterton.
It would not bother Groh to see any of them at Liberty and he’s not losing sleep over the players who have left to date.
Gone from a prospective fifth-year senior group in 2007 are McCabe; Ausberry; scholarship long snapper Tyrus Gardner, whose academic ineligibility might be challenged in an appeal, and seldom-used nose tackle Keenan Carter, who has applied for the NFL Draft.
“Marshal was accurate in his assessment that, unless something happened, he probably wasn’t going to play,” Groh said. “I can understand why a guy would say, ‘Look, I’ve got one more year in front of me; I’d like to play in the games.’
“As it works out here, we have to manage numbers in a little different way than other places,” Groh said. “If you can gray-shirt guys [and bring recruits in at mid-year], there is no limit to how many players you can take.”
Virginia hasn’t allowed a recruit to enter at mid-year since Ahmad Brooks in 2003, after he had spent the fall of 2002 at Hargrave Military Academy. Brooks battled academic issues throughout his three-year UVa career, although he was never ineligible.
When teams gray-shirt, they have the option of counting a player toward the class he joins or the class that will join him.
“You never stop taking a good player,” said Groh, explaining that if a player puts a class over the 25-scholarship NCAA limit, “you just tell him to come five months later. Here, that’s just not a circumstance.”
“Since we always have to be cognizant of the numbers, if you’re put in the position of trading one year for four or five, then sometimes we’ll make the decision for the younger guy.”
