Fewer than 25 percent of all major collegiate athletic departments made money in 2007-08.

a closer look Coach Mike London, seen during UR’s win over Montana in the FCS championship game in December, is finding recruits earlier than normal this offseason. Thirty years ago, Mike London was a notable football prospect in Hampton. The recruiting competition that concluded with London choosing the University of Richmond didn’t begin until after he played his final game for Bethel High School.

The Virginia Cavaliers opened the baseball season with 19 consecutive wins, and they haven’t lost many games since then. Which begs a question: Aren’t they a little young to be doing this?

ESPNU isn’t the only network that will carry tonight’s game between the University of Virginia and San Diego State in the NCAA baseball tournament. It will be shown live on Comcast SportsNet, too. Second-seeded U.Va. and No. 3 seed SDSU meet at 7 p.m. EDT in the first game of the double-elimination regional at Irvine, Calif. CSN also will broadcast Game 4 (11 p.m. tomorrow), Game 5 (7 p.m. Sunday) and Game 6 (11 p.m. Sunday) from that regional. The other teams in Irvine are top-seeded UC Irvine and No. 4 seed Fresno State, the defending NCAA champion.

BLACKSBURG As Matthias Treff watched the javelin sail out of his right hand and through the Florida air, he got that excited feeling, the one that made him fall in love with this niche sport when he was a teenager back home in Germany. He used to relish the satisfaction of seeing the javelin land farther and farther away every time he threw it. He came to learn that the success of a throw depended largely on the javelin’s flight—the straighter the better. And this one looked straight, all right.

Hometown: Burgthann, Germany Ht/Wt: 6-3, 220 pounds
  Notable: In his only college competition, Treff threw 239 feet, 10 inches at the ACC championships last month, winning the event by 17 feet. It broke his personal best of 232-2, which he set two years ago. It also was the second-best mark in school history, behind Jacobus Smit’s 242-9 in 2005. . . . Heading into today’s NCAA East Region meet, Treff’s 239-10 ranks second in the region and sixth in the country. He will guarantee himself a spot in the NCAA national meet by finishing in the top five today.

ANNAPOLIS, Md.—The top-seeded University of Virginia men’s lacrosse team humbled No. 8 seeded Johns Hopkins 19-8 this afternoon in an NCAA tournament quarterfinal at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.

Virginia’s collegiate teams did a pretty good job of making the grade, according to the NCAA’s latest report on academic progress. Ten schools—George Mason, Hampton, James Madison, Liberty, Longwood, Richmond, Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth, Virginia Tech and William and Mary—had a total of 33 teams earn public recognition for being in the top 10 percent in the Academic Progress Rate (APR) in their respective sports. Last year, 25 teams were honored.

BLACKSBURG Whenever Virginia Tech’s softball team walked onto the field earlier this season, sophomore pitcher Kenzie Roark began an inner dialogue that continued for most of the game. “I’m good,“ she’d tell herself. “I’m here for a reason. I’m gonna strike these people out.“ Looking back, Roark dubbed this strategy “fake it ‘til you make it.“ She had to fake it. She wasn’t as confident as she was in high school, when she led Mount Juliet (Tenn.) to two state championship games. Now she had to confront the pressure of being the No. 1 pitcher on a Division I team.

Bad news for the 16-team field in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs. “I still feel like I can play a lot better,“ said James Madison quarterback Rodney Landers, who was named yesterday as the offensive player of the year in the Colonial Athletic Association. Landers was one of three Dukes honored by the league’s 12 coaches, along with JMU’s Mickey Matthews as coach of the year for leading his club to the CAA championship and the No. 1 seed in the playoffs.

James Madison football coach Mickey Matthews hasn’t softened his view of the way his Dukes performed in last season’s 17-16 home loss to the University of Richmond. “We didn’t show up on offense last year against them,“ Matthews said yesterday. “You’ve got to give some credit to Richmond. I thought Russ [Huesman, defensive coordinator] did a good job of defending us, but we absolutely stunk the place up offensively.

CHARLOTTESVILLE—University of Virginia football players Will Barker and Dave Roberts have been acquitted of petit larceny. Barker, 21, and Roberts, 19, were arrested in late July at an after-hours nightclub in Charlottesville. They were alleged to have stolen beer from a cooler at Club 216, and each was charged with petit larceny, a misdemeanor. Judge Robert Downer found them not guilty yesterday in Charlottesville General District Court.

William and Mary’s Jonathan Grimes was honored as national special teams player of the week by The Sports Network after totaling 324 all-purpose yards in the Tribe’s 38-28 defeat of Villanova. Grimes finished with 105 yards receiving, 161 yards in kickoff returns and 58 yards rushing. The Colonial Athletic Association named him rookie of the week and special teams player of the week as well.

CHARLOTTESVILLE—If he’d been a one-game wonder, a comet visible for only a few hours, the drop-off would not be so mystifying. But Mikell Simpson’s star didn’t fade last year after his you-had-to-see-it-to-believe-it performance at Byrd Stadium, where the tailback from Harrisburg, Pa., came off the bench to pile up 271 all-purpose yards and score two touchdowns in Virginia’s 18-17 comeback victory over Maryland.

CHARLOTTESVILLE—Free speech lives again at the University of Virginia. A day after meeting with student leaders and upholding the university’s ban on signs, banners and flags at all U.Va. sporting venues, Athletic Director Craig Littlepage announced yesterday that the policy had been repealed. The policy, widely criticized when it was implemented days before U.Va.‘s Aug. 30 football opener, has “become a distraction and has taken the focus away from supporting our student-athletes,“ Littlepage said in a statement.