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As a close follower of College Baseball (huge OSU Beaver fan!) I completely disagree with your assessment.  I think that the difference in first half and second half statistics has much less to do with reported velocity (especially since I trust "reported" velocities about as far as I can throw the scouts and campus crew who are recording them ;) ), and much more with opponent faced.  You have to remember that college players don't have spring training and that the first half of the season is very similar to the big colleges tuning up and against much lesser competition.  It is very similar to the MLB guys throwing spring training games to a bunch of AAA'ers.  Especially for the teams in big time conferences ( like Virginia and the ACC ).  His stats changed drastically because the hitters he faced changed drastically.
Take for instance one of my favorite players, Sam Gaviglio.  Who through his first 6 starts of the season was working on 41 straight scoreless innings.  Of course it was coming against Connecticut, and Hartford and UC-Santa Barbara.  Sam id a great pitcher and was on a great run, but of course once the incredibly tough Pac-10 season started his results took a slight tumble.  He still posted nice numbers but it wasn't the almost 14k per 9 he was running in the first half, or the 5 k/bb he threw against non Pac-10 opponent (as opposed to the 2.5 k/bb he had against the pac-10).
Both goo pitchers (Hultzen better of course), both had their stats diminish because of starting conference play.  I am sure that fatigue especially towards the end of the season also set in, but this is mostly an opponent effect. 
I would say that the ACC's sched in terms of difficult non conference to conference is AT LEAST as drastic as the difficulty going AAA to MLB.