With no indication how long it will hold up, the Virginia and Virginia Tech men’s and women’s basketball teams have opened the season with a combined record that is seemingly
untouchable.
The UVa men are 8-0 and the Cavalier women are 10-0. In Blacksburg, the Tech men are 8-1 and the Hokie women are 8-0.
So, between them, the ‘Hoos and Hokies are a combined 34-1.
It’s a little better than football, where Tech and UVa were a combined 6-15.
Back in the state
Danny Rocco will be introduced Thursday as the new football coach at Virginia Military Institute. Most recently, he was an analyst on the staff at Penn State.
Rocco’s most recent stint as a head coach was at Delaware, where he was 31-23 over five seasons, including a 7-1 season in 2020, when the Blue Hens reached the FCS national semifinals. He previously had been the head coach at Liberty and Richmond with a stop as an assistant at Virginia.
Rocco has been a coach of the year on five occasions.
Moving days
Quarterback Brennan Armstrong, who has played in five seasons at UVa, can’t return to the Cavaliers but has entered the transfer portal. One of his UVa targets, Dontayvion Wicks, has made himself eligible for the NFL draft.
Virginia Tech and Virginia have more than a dozen players entering the transfer portal. Meanwhile, the NCAA announced on Wednesday that Virginia football players who were in their final year of eligibility this season have been granted another year following the shooting that claimed the lives of teammates Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry.
Phil Jurkovec, the No. 1 quarterback at Boston College for the past three seasons, is transferring to Pittsburgh, where he will join his former BC offensive coordinator, Frank Cignetti. It will be the third program for Jurkovec, who began his career at Notre Dame.
Pittsburgh’s quarterback this past season, Kedon Slovis, has reentered the transfer portal after earlier transferring to Pitt from Southern Cal.
West Virginia quarterback J.T. Daniels, who passed for 2,107 yards and 13 touchdowns this past season, is back in the transfer portal, having made stops at Southern Cal and Georgia before heading to Morgantown.
Coaches, too
Scott Satterfield, the head coach at Louisville for the past two seasons, has accepted the head-coaching position at Cincinnati, which is moving to the Big 12 Conference following the 2022 season. He replaces Luke Fickell, who is taking over as the head coach at Wisconsin.
Satterfield was 25-24 in four years at Louisville after five years at Appalachian. It appears that Jeff Brohm, a former Louisville quarterback who has been the head coach at Purdue for the last six years, will replace him.
The Cardinals also have changed men’s basketball coaches in the past year and are 0-8 under new head coach Kenny Payne this year.
Connections
The James Madison football program has added a wide receiver, Phoenix Sproles, who twice played against the Dukes in his career at North Dakota State and had 61 receptions for 888 yards in his days in Fargo.
When the Virginia women’s basketball team played host to East Carolina, the Cavaliers were reunited with fourth-year Pirates coach Kim McNeill, a Bassett (Virginia) product who had previously had served as a UVa assistant from 2011-16. McNeill also was a head coach at Hartford.
Making progress
Former UVa baseball pitcher Andrew Abbott from Halifax County has been cited as the Cincinnati Reds’ top pitching prospect for 2022. In his final three starts of the summer for Double-A Chattanooga, Abbott, a left-hander, struck out 21 batters in 16 innings.