UVA’s Colter Phillips catching on at Tight-End

Perhaps nobody benefited more when U.Va. ditched the spread offense than backup tight end Colter Phillips.

The spread offense relies less on the tight end position, meaning that when there was one, the job went to junior Joe Torchia. But now the Cavs are running with two tight ends, creating more blocking up front.

“The first two games there were no two-tight end sets,“ Phillips said. “Then in the Indiana game, I had 30 snaps, so I think that game was when we really started to utilize both tight ends and run the offense that we ran last year.“

Last week, he had two catches for 20 yards, as well as a kickoff return. Torchia played through a shoulder injury that the team initially thought might require surgery.

But for all the talk of tight ends at U.Va., it’s a position of diminishing importance nationally. Coach Al Groh said that especially in the Midwest, as the spread catches on, there are fewer of the players available.

“They’re increasingly hard to find,“ he said of the Texas recruiting scene. “All those body types are playing defense.“

Virginia has a mostly clean bill of health heading into its game with Duke.

On the team’s weekly injury report, linebacker Aaron Clark and defensive lineman Matt Conrath were ruled out—they have injuries that will sideline them for multiple weeks.

No players were listed as doubtful or questionable, though. Among the probables is defensive end Nate Collins (leg) and linebacker Cam Johnson (knee).

Tomorrow’s game will be the third of the season shown exclusively online at ESPN360.com, the Internet arm of ESPN’s college football broadcasting.

Vice President Damon Phillips said that the games shown on the site aren’t being taken off television.

“These are games that would go untelevised if we didn’t pick them up,“ he said. “There are only so many games we can show on the network, and what we’ve done is made this part of the solution.“

Ratings numbers aren’t available for this year, but in 2007, the Web site TVover reported that the site was seen by an average of 134,000 people a month. Phillips said that growth in the past year has been “in the triple digits,“ which still would represent a significantly smaller audience than a televised game gets.

The online operation also has the ability to customize which commercials are shown based on which region of the country the viewer is in.

In Richmond, Verizon and Comcast provide the service.