weekend review

This'll be a little abbreviated because I'm nervously watching the Tigers play this make-or-break playoff-before-the-playoff against the evil Minnesota Twinkies and their spawn-of-Satan manager, Gardenhire. Die Minnesota die. Anyway. Just a couple bullets, plus the usual features: recruiting board update, senior seasons, and the blog review to see what everyone else thought about the weekend.

Bullets:

- Some honors for UVA footballers both past and present. Anthony Poindexter will have his jersey retired in that confusing ceremony where they "retire" something but don't actually retire anything. Can't we call this "honoring the number" or something like that? So that'll be before the Indiana game this weekend. Makes you wonder why it took so long.

- Also, how about this for cool: Robert Randolph and Matt Conrath get ACC PotW honors as co-specialist and co-defensive lineman. Good things happen when you win. Also, the ACC continues to be quite good at honoring folks whose biggest contributions don't necessarily show up on the stat sheet; this week, that'd be Conrath, whose three blocked passes only appear in the box score as more incompletions for T.J. Yates.

- The Maryland game is on at 4 on ESPNUVA. Works for me: Any game not relegated to ESPN360 is a good one.

Recruiting board update! Nothing good. Recruiting continues to be dead in the water, and in fact going backwards as no doubt you've heard we had our first decommitment.

- For decommitting and booking it to NC State, Tyler Brosius does not get removed. Decommitments don't get off so easy. No, the punishment for this is to be sent to the very bottom of the board and enshrined in a special set of particularly hellacious colors. Random thought: Now that we've beaten UNC it'll be interesting to see if NC State does too, as any Pack fan will tell you that UNC is their biggest rival and follow it up with a Go To Hell Carolina.

- Removed is Nick Dew who surprise surprise committed to Tech. I wonder why I didn't do that a while ago.

- Added DTs Brandon Sparrow and Ainsley Miller and OT Michael Justice. In some cases this is the sort of thing I warned you about; Justice, for example. Justice is almost certainly a fallback plan if both Kolb and Havenstein look elsewhere. We absolutely cannot stick ourselves with just one offensive lineman in the class.

Here's what went on this week in the high schools:

KEVIN PARKS: I probably ought to start getting used to calling him KP. Parks has run for 1,341 yards and 19 touchdowns, which would be pretty damn impressive in a full season. Over seven games it's unreal.

E.J. SCOTT: Just one catch for nine yards in Good Counsel's 21-7 win over McNamara. It's been a quiet season for Scott. The bigger news is this Friday's showdown between Scott's Good Counsel team and Kyrrel Latimer's DeMatha.

RYAN COBB: Caught a touchdown and had five tackles in Don Bosco's 49-8 win against Passaic.

TYLER BROSIUS: Oh wait I don't care.

Now for the rest of the ACC. We'll save the best for last, too.

- Gobbler Country did not enjoy the Hokies' trip to Bizzarro World as VT had a bit of an interesting time against Dook.

- Willy Mac at Block-C had the same criticism of his own team's offense as I had for UNC's, which obviously would not be good for Clemson. Also, losing to Maryland causes Block-C to cease caring about what week it is, which is really nothing more than the usual symptom of lost-to-Maryland-itis. Take two Vitamin Dukes and call me in the morning. Meanwhile, Testudo Times points out that the ACC Atlantic is now basically a complete flip-flop from the predictions. Dude, Maryland is the only undefeated team in that division, how did that happen?

- State Fans Nation is grumpy after NC State's loss to Wake.

- With Florida State's loss to BC, Tomahawk Nation is fed up with Bobby Bowden. Very fed up. Extremely fed up.

- Finally, let's enjoy a last little bit of UNC schadenfreude before we finish. We'll start with Dr. Saturday, who doesn't have any schadenfreude for us but his ACC roulette wheel is a fun read nontheless. I do take issue with one statement:

...the Tar Heels finished with a pathetic 173 yards total offense on 2.9 yards per snap, but probably suffered more from committing three turnovers to the Cavaliers' zero, one of which led to the game's only touchdown.

Actually, I think the 2.9 yards per snap hurt them way worse than the turnovers. One was the recovered punt, which led to another punt. One interception was just the game-ender, which by that point the game was almost certainly a foregone conclusion anyway. One interception did lead to a touchdown, but as it was already 9-3 and Carolina didn't score again, it was mainly icing on the cake. UNC only advanced past the 50 three times and never into the red zone, and turnovers had very little to do with that.

Anyway, UNC. Actually, the prevailing opinion tends to be "wow, we suck", the offensive line and coordinator being the main targets of blame as the Carolina fanbase starts to wonder about basketball season. No, the main thing is that Heather Dinich appears to be the only one who called this the right way. Which, uh. Yeah. I didn't see it coming and neither did the Carolina faithful:

Despite the dangerous nature of a desperate UVa team, UNC should win this game and it should not be close. Anything else is simply going leave the Heels open to more questions about their toughness coming off a loss not to mention doubts galore.

UNC 35 UVa 10

Actually, the money quote is in the comments section:

Just to cheer you guys up, the coaching was actually probably worse in last year’s UVa game. Feel better….?

Which, he's right: if you recall, Butch Davis had about exactly as much time as Verica used up to move the ball fewer yards downfield than Verica had to and try to kick the game-winning field goal, and instead opted for overtime. You can tell UNC - no offense, really, it's just the truth - is a basketball school because if this was Clemson who kept losing to us like this, the fans would not only have backed a moving van up to Davis's house but in the dead of the night they'd have broken in and packed it up, too.

I'll leave you with three lines from Carolina March: one which is so hilariously true, one which is just hilariously hilarious, and one which should be just enough to keep you enjoying these little UNC wins:

It's almost as if The Oldest Rivalry in the South exists solely to annoy the SEC by being battled over by two basketball schools.

So funny because it's true.

Let's make this perfectly clear. There is no way Virginia can win on Saturday.

So funny because it turned out not to be true at all.

There's no excitement, no hatred, just a distaste towards Mr. Jefferson's bourbon-breathed imbecilic followers.

See you in Charlottesville, same time, next year.