It was just a few minutes into his first team meeting as Virginia Cavaliers head coach that Bronco Mendenhall realized the scope of his job.
Mendenhall loves reading, and he’s recently finished a book on body language, the way people communicate their feelings through how they carry themselves. What he saw in front of him spoke volumes.
"The entire message was dejection and despair," Mendenhall said. "They were desperate to have answers to win, and they certainly weren’t confident."
Perhaps that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Virginia is just 15-33 in the past four seasons, the sixth-worst record in the Power 5 during that stretch.