Richmond Times-Dispatch — Bronco Mendenhall has seen the mistakes that end up on TV. The gaffes in time management when coaches don’t call a timeout at the right moment, leave too little time for a game-winning field goal or leave enough time on the clock for their opponent to score and win the game.
Mendenhall, in his first season as Virginia’s football coach, wants to avoid those errors, choosing to make sure his team and coaching staff are prepared for late-game situations.
…
The Cavaliers even have a special coach assigned to the task, former UTEP offensive coordinator Patrick Higgins ’89, who is officially listed as a football analyst but is, in effect, Mendenhall’s game-management guru.
“What we’re trying to do is put the team, and the players and the coaches in stressful situations so when they meet those situations in a game, they’re used to it,” said Higgins. “We can be proactive instead of reactive on a lot of topics.”
That’s a simplified description of Higgins’ work at U.Va. Higgins, who holds a chemistry degree from William Penn to go with his master’s in exercise physiology from St. Cloud State, studies film, analyzes statistics and crunches numbers to determine what vexing situations might occur week to week.
