Virginia lost its 16th one-score game in the Mike London era on Saturday with a 26-19 defeat against Pitt. It also marked the 12th straight road loss. No fun. The Sampler takes a piece by piece look at it anyway, starting with a little trend report and film study.

Unprepared, Uncertain, Undisciplined?

First, I wanted to address a trend that popped up on the message boards frequently during and after the Pittsburgh game. During the loss to the Panthers, the Hoos called three timeouts on offense – twice in the second half, which left only one timeout in the bag to try to engineer a game-tying drive – and picked up a delay of game penalty as well.

The first half delay of game penalty pushed a 3rd-and-Goal play outside the 10-yard line, while players remained in the huddle with only nine seconds on the play clock just before a third quarter timeout. UVA fans decried the disorganized feeling of the offense after the quartet of moments against Pitt.

It wasn’t a one-game hiccup, made all the worse by the fact that it followed a bye week. No, it’s an ongoing issue in the Mike London era. This season, Virginia has called nine timeouts on offense (on non half-ending drives) and drew three delay of game penalties. That’s an average of 2.4 times per game that the offense was so out of sorts that it became costly. Only the Boise State game featured a clean slate, but there were plenty of other problems to go around in that one.

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