Cavs working to reassure recruits

At the request of several players, members of the University of Virginia football team on Monday linked arms and posed for photos in front of The Rotunda, the building at the heart of campus designed by Thomas Jefferson, sending a message to the world.

“Our school, our city, our home,” the team proclaimed in a now viral tweet. “United forever.”

Now Cavaliers coaches will try to convince recruits that Charlottesville, the university's hometown, is not a beacon of hate.

Klansmen, Nazis and white nationalists descended on Charlottesville over the weekend to fight the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The demonstration turned violent, then deadly. An avowed Nazi sympathizer drove a car at high speed into a group of counterprotesters, killing one woman and injuring 19 more, police say.

Elected officials in Charlottesville have vowed that the domestic terrorist attack would not define their city. Now coaches at the school will reach out to prospects with that same message, knowing that the horrible scenes of this past weekend will be used by their competitors to try to lure away players.

Cavaliers Coach Bronco Mendenhall said Tuesday he’d begun contacting recruits, but that not one player or parent told him they were backing away from Virginia.

“I was expecting, and rightly so, more concern,” he said. “But most of them are realizing that this is happening predominantly from people coming into our city and leaving, and won't necessarily be their neighbors and won't necessarily be their fans.”