four sport superstar

It was a reasonably eventful weekend. For me it's not over yet, because I get President's Day off, so here's a post you can waste time with at work for once. And we cover four sports today, two of which we're actually good at.

Lacrosse

That season started on Saturday and continues today. The first four games, including Saturday's 13-7 win over Drexel, are cannon fodder warmup games for the big one against Syracuse next Friday. Here, I meant to link this last week, but forgot: it's the "composite top 20" as posted on the official site, and you'll notice that the top seven teams are bolded. One's us, and the other six are on our schedule. It's not like we can help playing Maryland, UNC, or Duke, but the brass balls displayed by the athletic department in scheduling basically everyone else that's a powerhouse are admirable.

As for the game itself, Chad Gaudet was brought in this year from Dartmouth to fix our biggest weakness from last year and win some damn faceoffs. This he did - 12 of 21. For reference, Drexel was a 58% team last year on faceoffs, and we won just 10 of 22 (45%) against them last year. A good start.

Next up is welcoming Bryant to the ranks of Division I. What a rude way to make your debut.

Swimming

I haven't once mentioned this sport on these pages, and for this I am shamed. It was, after all, my sport in high school. In fact, up until 2007 when the TFSU mens' team took home the ACC championship, the UVA mens' team ACC championship streak was an exact mirror of my high school team's division meet streak. (The high school streak continues intact and should add division championship #11 in two weeks at the shiny, gleaming, brand-spanking-new pool they just built for the team.)

I digress. The point here is that the women's championship meet begins this week, at Maryland. The men are next week. Both our teams went undefeated in conference dual meets. I encourage DC-area 'Hoos aching for a good Virginia team to root for to show up at 7 PM at Maryland's Eppley Natatorium on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, this week and next, and root for the swim teams to crush the ACC opposition. It's free!

Football

It's more or less official that DC Bob Diaco is leaving for Cincinnati. Diaco worked with Cincy's coach Brian Kelly at CMU before coming here, so, while it's basically a lateral move, it's pretty much an understandable one. I have no idea what effect this will have on the defense, because Diaco was DC for about two offseason months and zero practices. I also can't really think all this turnover is healthy for the coaching staff. Only two position groups - the TEs and OLs - have the same coach as they did last year. This is what's happened:

OC: Mike Groh --> Gregg Brandon
DC: Bob Pruett --> ??? (Al Groh?)
ST: Bob Diaco --> ??? (Ron Prince?)
QB: Mike Groh --> Gregg Brandon (I assume)
RB: Anthony Poindexter --> Wayne Lineburg
WR: Wayne Lineburg --> Latrell Scott
TE: Bob Price --> Price
OL: Dave Borbely --> Borbely
DL: Levern Belin --> Chad Wilt
LB: Bob Diaco --> ???
DB: Steve Bernstein --> Anthony Poindexter

That's an upgrade at RB, WR, and DB, in getting Poindexter coaching the proper position and getting recruiter extraordinaire Scott on the staff. Jury's out, though, at DL (firing Belin seemed pointless), QB (Mike Groh was considered a pretty good developer of quarterbacks right up until the part where he had to call plays for them) and LB. Diaco's special teams coaching was nothing terribly special - I never had any complaints about kick/punt coverage, but the returns left a lot to be desired.

I don't know how I'd feel about Prince coming back. I don't think he was a good OC at all. I never cared for his playcalling any more than I liked Mike Groh's. That said, though, his fingerprints won't be on this offense, and it's always nice to have a guy with head coaching experience to bounce things off of. But that said, he's definitely not the guy I want to see atop the candidates list if this is Al Groh's last year.

Thinking future-wise, the 2010 recruiting board is updated again. Changes:

- Added LB Marcus Rush (offer) and WR Brandon Coleman (offer) to the yellow section.

- Added LB Khairi Fortt, a junior day attendee along with Rush, to the red section. Too many offers to be higher right now.

- Moved RB Kevin Parks to the blue section. He's like thisclose to committing.

Basketball

This is all I know to say about the basketball team anymore:

afgherhfadknfpwjr-u23jojdfjsdijskmoweoj?????

I mean, holy bouncing Jesus. I've talked in the past about how I keep thinking about what kind of production certain players are capable of when playing their best and then projecting that into one game, but I didn't actually think it'd happen.

Indeed, most everyone played well, especially Zeglinski and his 6-for-6 shooting, but the story as always is Sylven Landesberg with the biggest and the mostest buckets. On the day when Sean Singletary's #44 was retired and a few recruits were in the house, Landesberg took it upon himself to make sure the honor didn't get wasted on a losing effort. This kid is BIG-TIME and I don't know any other way to say it. Here's hoping Landesberg was seeing himself in Singletary's place about five years down the road.