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UVA INSIDER FOR FEB. 26

It will be interesting to see which Mike Scott shows up as 3 ½-point underdog Virginia entertains Miami at 8  tonight at John Paul Jones Arena.

Scott, a 6-foot-8 junior, leads the Cavaliers in rebounding (7.3) and joins Sylven Landesberg as one of UVa’s two double-figure scorers (10.6), but his numbers have fluctuated more than he or head coach Dave Leitao would like.

Scott had 18 points and 10 rebounds Feb. 15 in an 85-81 upset of then-No. 12 Clemson, then came back six days later and had six points and one rebound in a 72-67 loss at North Carolina State..

Some of that had to do with playing time. Scott has been coming off the bench in recent games, but he logged 40 minutes against Clemson. Presumably, if he had been playing better, he would have played more than 23 minutes at State.

Scott has had 10 or more rebounds in eight games, including seven double-doubles (he had nine points and 10 rebounds in one game). However, he had zero rebounds in 17 minutes against Boston College and two rebounds in 23 minutes at North Carolina. That was followed by an eight-point, nine-rebound outing at Florida State.

“You can also equate it to how he gets up and down the court or how he aggressively posts up or plays post defense,” coach Dave Leitao said earlier this week. “There are those times, mentally, when he’s not as locked in.

:”When you’re looking at a game [on tape], you can see a correlation between all those things not happening and  not rebounding, too. What we’re trying to do is concentrate on [the mental] part of it. It’s obviously concerning.”

Another interesting statistic for Scott is his high percentage of offensive rebounds. He has had more defensive rebounds than offensive rebounds in only nine of 23 games, topped by a Jan. 15 game with North Carolina when he had seven offensive rebounds and no defensive rebound.

WHILE SEARCHING for information about UVa’s first football recruit for 2010, running back Kevin Parks, I came across the Salisbury Post game story from the North Carolina Class 3A championship game between Parks’ team, West Rowan, and West Craven.

For those unfamiliar with the geography, Rowan County is located between Greensboro and Charlotte on I-85. Salisbury is the county seat and West Rowan is located in Mount Ulla. New Bern is the county seat of Craven County, located closer to  the shore.

West Craven entered the game with a 15-0 record but was a 35-7 victim of West Rowan, which finished 15-1. Parks rushed for 219 yards and scored three touchdowns in the championship game, including an 81-yard touchdown run on his first carry of the game. It was the longest run of his career.

"What makes Parks so tough is his low center of gravity," West Craven coach Clay Jordan said after the game.. "You don't think of 5-8 kids being power backs, but he's a power back. Strong legs. Breaks tackles. The best we've seen — by far."

Parks, who goes by “K.P.,” will enter his senior year at West Rowan with 7,121 rushing yards and 99 touchdowns. Only four players in state history have scored 100 touchdowns in their career. He would need 3,121 yards as a senior to break Toney Baker’s state record but second place (T.A. McLendon, 9,038) is well within reach.

Parks, whose father is a West Rowan assistant, was the leading rusher in North Carolina this year with 2,864 yards and he scored 43 touchdowns.

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