UVa plays it close to the vest

Don’t feel bad that Virginia’s football team is holding closed practices throughout the spring. It’s nothing personal.

The Cavaliers normally have a number of practice sessions open to the public during spring football, but this isn’t a normal spring for them. Virginia is putting in a new, no-huddle, spread offense and wants to keep things under wraps until the Sept. 5 opener against William & Mary.

While the annual spring game will be held a week from today, don’t expect to see coach Al Groh and new offensive coordinator Gregg Brandon open up the playbook. They’re not about to show any more than necessary to any extra sets of eyes in the stands.

I’ll never forget back in 1989 when former UVa coach George Welsh named myself, and then play-by-play man Warren Swain, as honorary head coaches of the spring game. Standing on the sidelines before the game, then-offensive coordinator Gary Tranquill leaned over and said, “We’re going to keep things very vanilla today because we think there’s some spies in the stands.”

The Cavaliers were to open up with Notre Dame in August, so they weren’t about to give Lou Holtz’s Fighting Irish any more information than necessary. That spring game probably was the lowest production ever for an offense that contained Shawn Moore, Herman Moore and Terry Kirby.

While the Cavs lost to Notre Dame in the Kickoff Classic to start the season, they did go on to become the only team in Wahoo history to win 10 games and won a share of the school’s first ACC football title.

Juice on the mend

Groh said Friday that senior tailback Mikell Simpson, who suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in the ninth game last fall, is looking like his old self in spring drills.

“There’s no sign of his injury,” Groh reported. “He’s more reminiscent of the Mikell of ’07 than of ’08.”

Virginia fans will remember that Simpson came out of nowhere in 2007 and nearly single-handedly beat Maryland on the road with one of the greatest individual game performances ever by a Cavalier. He went on to make the longest run ever by a running back in major-college bowl history when Simpson ripped off a 96-yard scoring run against Texas Tech in the Gator Bowl.

Inexplicably, Simpson’s season never took off last year, when he managed but 262 yards rushing and 66 yards receiving in nine games. Heck, back in that ’07 game against the Terps, Simpson amassed 271 all-purpose yards in that one game.

“Last year he didn’t look the same,” Groh said Friday. “He was trying to make too much out of every play. What we stress here is being a ‘one cut’ runner.

“There was too much shake and not enough bake,” Groh added. “He is back to one-cut running and has been more effective this spring.”

Quick hitters ...

Former UVa offensive coordinator Mike Groh is a graduate assistant for Nick Saban’s Alabama football team this year. ... Former Albemarle High star quarterback R.J. Archer is the new starting quarterback at William & Mary, which as aforementioned, opens its season at Virginia this September. Archer takes over for Jake Phillips, brother of former UVa tight end John Phillips. By the way, Archer was Phillips’ backup last season, having started one game and played in 10. Before that, he worked as a wide receiver for two seasons for the Tribe. ... In our rush to make deadline a few columns ago, we forgot to credit one of our readers, Captain Hoo, for tipping us off about UVa booster Paul Tudor Jones having gone to John Calipari’s home in Memphis along with other boosters of that school in an attempt to keep the coach, who eventually took the Kentucky job. ... New UVa basketball coach Tony Bennett said he once had an identity issue with the singer of the same name. “I took a private plane out of Pullman (Wash.), and the pilots, who came from Houston, asked someone on the plane with us if they were flying THE Tony Bennett ... wow. My friend said, yeah, it is the Tony Bennett, the coach at Washington State. They thought it was the singer. They were all excited and I let them down.”