weekend mishmash

I was going to write up on Conner Davis, and don't get me wrong, I'm really looking forward to, but beer got in the way and now I don't want to spend the time and it's already almost 10 at night anyway. Damn beer.

So just a few quickish things, and really not exactly good news to be honest:

- First, dispensing with the bad news right away: you may have heard, but John Brandenburg will be transferring. Speculation seems to be in the direction of some personal or family stuff; that would be pretty much confirmed if Brandenburg ends up at a school much closer to his native Missouri. Lousy news, but we wish him all the best. It leaves five open scholarships for 2010, and if I had to predict now I'd say Bennett will probably leave one open and not burn them all up in this class. There's still time to scrounge up a juco transfer or something to sit at the end of the bench and give us a little depth; this would not really hurt us going forward except to take away a 2010 scholarship in case Bennett does want to use it on a recruit. But with one now open for '09 and '10, if it wouldn't carry forward to affect the 2011 recruiting class, it's a possibility. The other possibility is maybe to give it to Will Sherrill. It'd be a classy gesture even if Sherrill isn't going to sniff the court against any opponent tougher than UMES.

What really sucks is the depth at the 5 for this year. Brandenburg was basically penciled in for 10-15 minutes a game as the backup center. It's imperative now that one of the 2010 recruits be someone that can play there all the time, and no, that someone is not Will Regan. Assane Sene is going to have to pick up major minutes and be kept in a glass box at all times so as to avoid accidents. If Sene can be good for half a game (an extra three minutes above what he played last year), we can scrape through with a combination of Meyinsse and Scott for the other half, and call it "going small" and make everyone think it's a deliberate strategy. If Sene goes down? God help us.

- That leads us to what Bennett is actually doing on the recruiting trail, and for one day at least, he's hanging with the high school coaches. Hey, why not? Meet 'em all at once and be done with it. Getting Tony out there taking the Tony Is Awesome tour and impressing that upon the folks with influence is pretty crucial to the recruiting efforts. I fully expect we'll be kicking Tech's ugly-colored keister on the basketball recruiting trail in short order.

- TheLegacyx4's Bird did something pretty cool with the media predictions of the past four years. What's depressing is the downward trend of the media's perception of UVA. Sometimes they're wrong (2007), sometimes they're right as hell (2008), but they've steadily dropped us in the rankings. And that continues this year, I guarantee it; the media will have us 6th in the divison, you watch, and certainly anything higher than 5th would be a shocker. Not because I think we suck, but because I think the media thinks we suck.

- This is a little oldish, but it's worth a read if you didn't run across it already. The ACC Sports Journal sat down with former UVA AD/ACC commissioner/NCAA president Gene Corrigan for a three-part interview, the theme of which is pretty boilerplate: old guy reminisces on his day and riffs on how today is different. But that wouldn't be a boilerplate theme if it wasn't a good one. It's always good for behind-the-scenes stuff you don't get to hear about at the time - in this case, among other things, the ACC expansion to Tallahassee, which Corrigan oversaw. Here is Part I, Part II, and Part III.