Cavs could play spoiler

How strange that Boston College and Virginia have been members of the ACC for five years and have met only once on the gridiron leading into Saturday’s visit by the Eagles to UVa’s Scott Stadium.

The two teams met on a rainy day in Chestnut Hill in 2005, with then-18th ranked BC pulling out a 28-17 win over the visiting Cavaliers. That was the last time the two conference members met.

Since then, Virginia has played four other nonconference schools (Wyoming, Pittsburgh, East Carolina, and Connecticut) more times than it has faced ACC foe Boston College. Similarly, BC has played Notre Dame more often than it has UVa.

No stranger to UVa

While the Bostonians have never been to Scott before, a couple of their coaches have. In fact, they lived here.

BC’s head coach, Frank Spaziani, who local media used to refer to as simply “Spaz,” was a member of Virginia’s staff from 1982 to 1990. We’ll have a more in-depth look at Spaziani’s career at UVa later in the week.

BC’s offensive coordinator Gary Tranquill was also on George Welsh’s UVa staff, twice, from 1987 to 1990, and again in 1999 and 2000.

So, for both coaching staffs, preparation for this week’s game will be like preparing for a nonconference team.

Spaziani was a member of Tom O’Brien’s staff five years ago, serving as the defensive coordinator, which could give him a little familiarity with Al Groh’s Cavaliers. While Spaz is the third BC head coach since that first encounter in ’05, Groh said faces may have changed but the system has primarily remained the same.

A familiar system

“We don’t have a lot of personal competitive familiarity with them, but through all the changes that they have had up there, they maintain a lot of continuity in their style of play,” Groh said Monday at his weekly press conference. “The defensive system is similar to what we faced when we went up there. Spaziani’s [overall] system is reflective of what was in place at that time.”

The Eagles are 6-3 overall and 3-2 in the ACC’s Atlantic Division, just a loss behind division leader in the win column.

Not bad, considering they were picked dead last in the ACC preseason media poll back in July.

Thanks to former pro baseball player, 25-year-old Dave Shinskie’s leadership at quarterback (our beat writer Jay Jenkins will have a feature on him later in the week), BC has found enough offense to win.

However, the Eagles have yet to win a road game this season, having dropped all three road trips to Clemson, Virginia Tech and Notre Dame. The game at South Bend was really the only close contest BC has played away from home, holding a lead on the Irish late in the game before losing.

Still, Spaziani’s team has had an extra week of preparation for this week’s Virginia game, a luxury at this time of the year.

Groh knows what to expect from BC. One thing hasn’t changed and that’s style of play. The Eagles, going back to O’Brien’s decade of winning in Boston, have always been big and physical. That’s still the case.

“This sounds like a funny thing to say, but [BC is] a visually pleasing team to watch play,” Groh said. “In other words, they got a system, they’re very fundamentally sound in their scheme.

“They’re very fundamentally sound in their execution, they have certain things that they want to accomplish and they’re going to play the game on those terms,” Groh continued. “So, they’re going to try to force the other team every week to out-execute them and not give anything away. They’ve been quite successful in doing that.”

While Virginia can’t win its division in the ACC’s Coastal, the Cavaliers can have a say in who wins the Atlantic.

Because the Cavaliers play BC this week, then division-leading Clemson on the road the following week, Virginia has the opportunity to spoil somebody’s title chase.

“Knowing that the same thing doesn’t appeal to 100 different guys, sometimes we dangle a few different hooks out there each week and see what it might take for each individual player,” Groh said of possible motivation for the upcoming games. “So, if we can see ourselves in that division for the next two weeks, then maybe that will bring us to the top of the bottle. I’m sure, now that it is brought up, I just put [playing the spoiler’s role] on my checklist.”