At this time last year, one of the Cavaliers’ biggest question marks was if one tailback could emerge as a reliable ballcarrier.

The Virginia football team reported for training camp in Charlottesville on Monday, ready to take the field and erase the memory of a tumultuous offseason marred by arrests, academic suspensions and dismissals.

Cornerback Mike Brown was dismissed from the Virginia football team, according to a two-paragraph release put out by the school Sunday.

Authorities said two University of Virginia football players were arrested during the wee hours Saturday at a downtown Charlottesville nightclub.

A quarterback with the University of Virginia football team has been charged with underage possession of alcohol, marking the latest in a string of headaches for the Cavaliers.

GREENSBORO, Ga. — Virginia was picked to finish fifth in the ACC’s Coastal Division by the assembled media at the ACC Kickoff on Monday. Cavaliers coach Al Groh was neither surprised nor concerned.
“Our team probably continues to labor to get much respect in this conference,” Groh said.
Despite winning nine games in 2007, tied for second-most in school history, Virginia was hit hard by offseason attrition both expected (Chris Long and Branden Albert heading to the NFL) and unexpected (academic suspensions to starters Jameel Sewell and Chris Cook and the transfer of rising star Jeffrey Fitzgerald).

GREENSBORO, Ga. — When the Cavaliers begin fall practice on Aug. 4, their quarterback situation will be just the way they left it at the end of spring — up for grabs.

Fifth-year senior Scott Deke and sophomores Peter Lalich and Marc Verica will vie for the job, which was vacated after two-year starter Jameel Sewell received a one-year academic suspension from the school last winter.

“What counts is what happens in competitive practice, and that’s just a small window of competition compared to games or anything else,” Virginia coach Al Groh said at the ACC Kickoff on Monday. “You have to have some criteria from which to make judgments and therefore slot the players, so whatever goes on the practice field is the only vehicle to do that.”

The Virginia football team will go retro when it hosts Richmond on Sept. 6 in the season’s second week, wearing throwback uniforms and helmets to honor 10 years of Cavaliers football from 1984-93.

CHARLOTTESVILLE—As signing day for football approached in February, fans and media members across the commonwealth raised this question time and again:

Why can’t U.Va. recruit in-state?

FULLERTON, Calif. — Cal State Fullerton’s Cory Arbiso limited Virginia to one run in a complete-game effort as the Titans, the No. 5 national seed in the NCAA tournament, eliminated Virginia from the NCAA Fullerton Regional with a 4-1 win Sunday.

To call Manhattan, Kan., the Charlottesville of the Midwest would be a stretch. The football program at Kansas State, however, is strengthening its ties to the University of Virginia.

When Branden Albert declared himself eligible for the NFL Draft shortly after the Gator Bowl, he was outwardly confident that he would be a first-day pick. Inwardly, he thought he had first-round potential.

CHARLOTTESVILLE—On his right arm is a colorful tattoo of his surname over an Irish flag. For a young man from the Boston area, where roots to Ireland run deep, that’s not out of the ordinary.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — Most of the players had already headed to the locker room following Virginia’s football practice on Sunday, but there stood Cedric Peerman, on two healthy feet, politely answering a litany of injury-related questions that had to have been growing tiresome.

Prior to Al Groh’s Wednesday teleconference, Virginia announced that redshirt freshman linebacker J’Courtney Williams is no longer a member of the team. 

CHARLOTTESVILLE — Kevin Ogletree has always been an athlete, a fiery competitor first and foremost. His body had never let him down, so when the Virginia wideout got the grim diagnosis at this time last year — an MRI revealed a torn left anterior cruciate ligament, ending his 2007 season before it began — he didn’t accept it.
He sought out alternatives as surgery loomed. Even after he went under the knife, he was the last person to rule himself out for the season, despite the eight-plus months of rehab ACL injuries normally require.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — When Sean Singletary decided last June to return to Virginia for his senior season, Cavaliers fans exhaled in unison, thankful that the program didn’t have to plunge into what would surely have been a rebuilding phase.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — Shortly after the last of his 27 points dropped in Bradley’s 96-85 win against Virginia in the College Basketball Invitational semifinals, guard Jeremy Crouch sat at the John Paul Jones Arena press room dais and spoke about how much of a matchup nightmare the Braves’ 3-point happy offense can be for an opposing defense.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — It’s trendy to bash the inaugural College Basketball Invitational as a watered-down postseason event. But even the CBI’s most ardent critics can’t deny that the tournament has had some exciting finishes.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — The Cavaliers were thinking overtime at best. Get a defensive stop, secure the rebound, hear the horn and win it in the extra five minutes.
Sean Singletary didn’t want to wait that long.

Few fans — and for most of the game, few Cavaliers — appeared to have anything invested in Virginia’s opening-round matchup in the College Basketball Invitational last week.
Perhaps an opportunity to advance to the inaugural tournament’s final four will draw more interest from both parties.

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.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — As far as March basketball is concerned, it’s certainly not the NCAA Tournament. The NIT is a prize by comparison.
But the new College Basketball Invitational is still postseason play, and after Virginia’s 66-64 come-from-behind victory against Richmond in the first round at the John Paul Jones Arena on Tuesday, it means one thing.

Dave Leitao was not one of the few people who stayed up until Monday’s early-morning hours to find out Virginia’s first-round opponent in the College Basketball Invitational.
“I don’t last that long,” UVa’s coach said.

The Virginia men’s basketball team will play in the inaugural 16-team College Basketball Invitational. That’s provided the National Invitation Tournament doesn’t come calling tonight.
On Saturday, the Cavaliers (15-15) accepted a bid to participate in the newly created CBI, two days after an opening round loss to Georgia Tech in the ACC Tournament. However, if the NIT extends an invitation to Virginia — an unlikely scenario considering UVa’s résumé — the school will accept that bid.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Possession after possession, Georgia Tech bombed away from the 3-point line, unchallenged in most cases and unbothered whenever the Cavaliers managed to get within an arm’s length.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — The players towered over him. They always have and always will. But on this day, they were especially intimidating. Sean Singletary, then a 7-year-old with a growing appetite for basketball, didn’t want to play in the league with kids three years his senior and twice his size. They were too big, too physical, simply too much for the wide-eyed youngster.

CHARLOTTESVILLE - Visitors to TheSabre, Virginia’s Internet fan site, logged on Wednesday afternoon as ESPN Classic aired the Cavaliers’ 2001 victory against Duke. Some of the members went as far as to post a running play-by-play on the message board as if the game were live, all the way to Adam Hall’s game-winning put-back in the final second that sent University Hall into a frenzy. 

For two months Lars Mikalauskas sat, nursing a shoulder injury while watching his frontcourt teammates struggle, some playing out of position, some playing too soon, some doing both.