Monday, April 13, 2009

that is not how those games are supposed to end

OK let's just get it out of the way right now: No, Tristan Spurlock hasn't made up his mind yet, or at least he hasn't told anyone, as of 5:50 PM EDT.

So, the baseball team did something baseball teams aren't supposed to ever do: tie. Which is stupid. ACC travel policy, you see, mandates that you can't start an inning on Sunday after a certain time because the visiting team has to travel its happy self back to school. This seems hypocritical for a league which is happy to hold weeknight basketball games that don't end until midnight in order to placate the TV folks. So if it's tied, eh bien, game over. Hell, even hockey got rid of ties, and this is a sport where 10 or 15 of those in a season was par for the course.

The result is a split of the series with Georgia Tech, which if you predicted that, you're probably the sort of numbnuts that calls "edge" when flipping a coin. Other than "ACC policy is dumb", I think we can take away two lessons from the series: one, that our bullpen is still stinky and that Matt Packer is really starting to worry me; and two, we can hang with teams considered better than us (and therefore have every bit as good a chance at winning the ACC as anyone else) because our bats have the ability to make other bullpens look as bad as ours.

But you really have to wonder about Packer. Like, seriously, if he's hurt or something. Because he's nothing at all like the pitcher he was. If he were in last year's form we'd probably be leading the league. If he can find a way to morph back into the pitcher he was last year we might well be favorites for the ACC title, because our schedule is pretty favorable the rest of the way. His stats in ACC games this year: WHIP - 1.69 (crummy) and ERA - 9.69 (ungodly). Makes you wonder if there's something about his arm he's not telling anyone.

The lacrosse team played this weekend too, unfortunately, and had big trouble remembering how many Duke players are supposed to be on the field at any given time. Dom Starsia's boys tried a new defensive tactic on Saturday which involved allowing a random Dookie to roam freely within three stick lengths of our goalie and challenging Ghitelman to come up with a stop. This is not known to be a successful ploy.

So, my fears of a three-way tie have come to pass, and our reward for our defensive ineptitude against Duke is another game against Duke. The only thing determined by the pathetic excuse for an ACC regular season is that UNC is everyone's bitch, and not that there's anything different between second and third seed except the color of jersey you wear, but we're third seed. Starsia now has two weeks to square away the defense and a game against Ivy League doormat Dartmouth to practice it. And I renew my plea to the ACC to either encourage a few of its teams to add lacrosse, or expand the lacrosse portion of the league.

As promised before the weekend, an update to the recruiting board:

- Added the following offered players: C Russell Bodine, DE Kareem Martin, LB Ryan Cobb (all to yellow), LB Ken Wilkins (to red.)

- Removed the following players LB Kevin Pierre-Louis (recommitted to BC), LB Nick Forbes (seems to be in the same category as Aramide Olaniyan where the coaches can't see the fit in the 3-4), and LB Justin Maclin (out of our league.)

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