Cavs open workouts with voids in lineup

By Andy Bitter

Published: March 21, 2008

For two months, the Virginia football team made news for all the wrong reasons.
Three starters — quarterback Jameel Sewell, cornerback Chris Cook and defensive end Jeffrey Fitzgerald — aren’t in school anymore for academic reasons. Another contributor, cornerback Mike Brown, was kicked off the team after being charged with grand larceny last month.
It’s with that attrition in the backdrop that the Cavaliers began spring practice Friday, eager to put the focus back on what happens on the field, not off it.
“We’ve moved on beyond all that,” UVa coach Al Groh said in a teleconference. “Whatever those circumstances are, they are. And we’re just dealing with the players who are going to be on the field today.”
Unlike last year, Virginia enters the spring with a number of positions up for grabs. UVa lost 14 starters from a team that went 9-4 last season, including star defensive end Chris Long and all-ACC left guard Branden Albert, who entered the NFL Draft after his junior season.
The Cavaliers were hit especially hard on both lines. They must replace all three starters on the defensive line and three interior linemen on the offensive side.
“We have a number of positions that we would expect the competition to have the potential to be very intense,” Groh said.
Virginia should get a lift from two players returning from injuries — tailback Cedric Peerman and wide receiver Kevin Ogletree.
Peerman, who ran for 585 yards and five touchdowns in six games last season, had surgery for a Lisfranc foot injury in December. He’s been cleared to be a full participant this spring, but UVa may limit what he does.
“Ced doesn’t have anything to prove, whether it’s his toughness or his skill, how passionate he is about the team or winning,” Groh said. “But we do want to kind of get him re-activated. … So we’re going to kind of moderate how we immerse him into things just to see how it goes.”
Ogletree suffered an ACL injury last spring and missed the 2007 season. The redshirt junior, who led the team with 52 receptions and 582 receiving yards in 2005, increased his practice role during UVa’s Gator Bowl workouts in December. Now he’s completely back.
“(His return) really helps in a sense of purpose and direction,” Groh said. “Going into last spring, we certainly saw him as one of our really good weapons and firepower. Now that we’ve got him back with an extra year’s worth of training behind him, we hope (that’s) even more so.”
Ogletree’s presence should help quarterback Peter Lalich ease into the starting role. Lalich, a 6-foot-5 rising sophomore, completed 35 of 61 passes for 321 yards and two touchdowns while sharing time with Sewell last year. But with Sewell likely out for the 2008 season because of academic issues, the job is Lalich’s.
“Peter’s pretty poker-faced about things in general,” Groh said.
“But in conversations with Pete, he’s certainly looking forward to getting out there and getting to work on it, getting the maximum amount of turns in the scheme and getting a little rhythm into what he’s doing.”
Groh also said tailback Andrew Pearman is no longer with the program after having a reoccurrence of the health issues that caused him to miss the majority of the 2006 season.