weekend review

Sort of a little different one today, in that I don't have any high school results and stuff for you this week. Part of the hard drive recovery process is going to involve re-stocking the favorites bar where all that local news stuff was, and I chose to spend this weekend reconstituting my music collection instead. Here's a summary: K.P. Parks went apeshit again, as he always does, and ran for shitloads of yards and scored beaucoup touchdowns before sitting down sometime after halftime with his team up by zillions. You know what job I want? The West Rowan H.S. offensive coordinator. It's easy. Just script the first forty plays of the game as follows: Hand off to Parks. Then eat a donut and take a nap til the half. I would worry that Parks might get hurt in his remaining games this fall, but that would require he be tackled.

I do have the recruiting board back in action, and you can find it here as always. And there's changes and stuff this week too, ain't that special? Those would be:

- Dropped OTs Khamrone Kolb and Robby Havenstein. Damn it. Kolb jumped for Penn State, and just as I predicted, Havenstein dropped not very long after that. Unfortunately he dropped for Wisconsin. It might appear that there's enough depth on the offensive line since we'll ideally be adding three to this next class what with Conner Davis joining the two prep schoolers (Moses if we're lucky, and Cody Wallace.) However, given the utterly abysmal state of the offensive line right now, I'd like one more just to have options.

- Dropped LB Dominique Guinn-Bailey to red. Someone on the CavsCorner message board said he'd committed to some I-AA school or another, but that's the only place I've seen it, so I guess I'll just leave him on there until another couple months go by and nothing happens. Yay passive-aggressive board updates.

- It's the triumphant return of the blue section! Depending on what you read and who he's talking to, we're either in a top two or top three for Louis Young. Or maybe a top twelve given his rather interesting interpretation of the term "verbal commitment." My nagging feeling we're really not going to get Young clashed with the general rule that a top four or so is good enough for the blue section. Then I realized I'm really just despairing of ever seeing a verbal commitment ever again, and bucked up, chinned up, nutted up, and re-established the blue section. So there it is, and right now Young is the only inhabitant. Hooray for recruiting no longer being totally dead in the water.

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Hoops! I have been completely blown away by Tony Bennett's efforts this summer. I give him an A++++++. If his teaching and his in-game coaching are half as good as his recruiting has been (considering that he wrapped up this #8-ranked class in six months), we'll win every game by 50. And the X's and O's were said to be his strong point. ACC, you might as well just roll over and die right now.

Apparently the media isn't as smitten as I am. Sylven Landesberg isn't happy about being left off the preseason all-ACC squad. And motivation is all well and good and I'm glad he's planning on proving folks wrong and all that, but maybe I'd prefer him to focus on something a little more team-oriented. It's not like the ACC media weekend in Greensboro was short of opportunities to be annoyed at what the media thinks about Virginia basketball. They have us 11th. In other words, they don't think a new coach and the loss of practically nobody of importance to graduation means any improvement in the standings.

This is nonsense. First off, the carnage wreaked upon ACC rosters due to graduation and departures for the draft is massive and widespread. More so than usual, I suggest to you. Nearly every team is replacing multiple huge pieces of the puzzle. Second, Tony Bennett Tony Bennett Tony Bennett. We will finish the season seeded higher than 11th in the ACC tournament. That's a rock-solid, etched-in-diamond guarantee. If that doesn't sound much like going out on a limb, then you get my point. Take out a second mortgage on the farm, withdraw every penny from your kids' college account, and hell, throw that firstborn up there for collateral. Better than 11th. I don't really know how much better. Sometimes I realize, man, we didn't score many points last year, did we? and I accept the idea that the CBI or maybe a charity NIT bid is progress and shouldn't be scoffed at. Other times I get all googly-eyed about what Bennett can do for this team - frickin' hell, he took a bunch of one-star recruits at a college way out in the hills to a 4 seed in the Dance. And that's when I start wondering if the committee will screw us with the draw like they did for baseball and make us travel out to Sacramento or something. The fun part will be finding out how it all plays out. But. Jebus damn it, better than 11th.

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Al Groh's press conference transcript, as always, is a fun read. The best Grohisms:

- "That, against a team like this that always becomes an ongoing situation-by-situation decision. That is do we want to match personnel or do we want to leave the regular in there, because there is an overlap in what we can do from a coverage standpoint between the two. Not entirely the same, but because there is an overlap, we have that option. And in the past in circumstances like this we've worked that option both ways."

- "Well, yeah, clearly when you see the numbers of their frequency, what that also clearly indicates is that there is a strong commitment and they are a dedicated passing team."

- "Nate has certainly been exceptionally stellar to the half way mark of the season. He's certainly playing himself into that position. He's probably making a similar move on that, say that Alvin Pearman utilized his senior season to do."

- "Well, they lead in receptions because they're playing in the Duke offense. If they were playing (at) Georgia Tech, they'd probably not be leading the conference in receptions."

- "Now if you win, you usually get a big return on it. But you can also result in the quarterback having to hold the ball and not be in the rhythm that he wants. Coaches are certainly this way. I'm certain some people say hold it, don't hold it, throw it, throw it. Sometimes if you have effective man-for-man coverage, there is nobody to throw it to. That would be the dilemma for the quarterback. What do you want me to do with it? There is nobody open, and you don't want me to stand there, I understand that. I don't have anybody to throw it to, either. What should I do with it? So we're going to get a good combination of both."

>- "QUESTION:What did you see of the 'phantom' personal foul called on Saturday?

COACH GROH: What we had suggested is that for anybody who has ‑‑ most people Tivo the game in order to go back and take a look at it and write your stories based on what you see there. So, I just suggested that everybody look at their Tivoed version and come up with your own opinion. And if you have any questions since clearly I'm not the expert on this. If you have any questions, I'd suggest that you direct them to the ACC office and see what they might want?

QUESTION:Did you direct any questions?

COACH GROH: I have the same question you might have. I guess Halloween was one week early. You know, Ghostbusters or whatever."

In Groh-speak, that means he thinks the personal foul was straight-up blatant bullshit. And he's almost certainly right. Unfortunately nobody can take his suggestion, because replay it on Tivo is precisely what I did, and none of it was onscreen.

Oh, and the "circumstance" count for the conference: 10. Impressive.

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Around the rest of the ACC, here's what we got:

- UNC pulled off a pretty impressive and really annoying choke job against TFSU, losing 30-27. I'm convinced this is the football gods' punishment for wearing those all-navy uniforms. They've deployed the navy pants and the navy jersey at separate times in the past, which was probably testing the football gods' patience, but the all-navy look was too much. Much like the signal they sent to Oregon when Oregon broke out the throwbacks and demolished California, UNC has now been warned that navy is not one of their primary colors. If they know what's good for them they'll never do that again.

- I told you this would happen. I told you. Maryland dropped one to Duke, 17-13, which has got Testudo Times ready for the bye week and criticizing Ralphie for his propensity to whine about not getting the breaks. And you might be interested to know we're not the only ones who've seen more QB draws out of their team than they care to stomach.

- We're not the only ones who had to deal with the triple option this weekend, and frankly I wouldn't swap our circumstance for Wake Forest's. They didn't win either: Navy beat them 13-10. Blogger So Dear is just pretending it didn't happen, which is probably wise. But dude: Check out the box score. Seriously. Navy never passed. Literally. 64 run plays, zero passes. They did that once last year, too, also in the rain. Lot of teams wear throwback uniforms, but nobody does throwback like Navy. You want throwback? We're going right back to 1903. We don't need wacky shenanigans and gimmicks like this "forward pass."

- Clemson's win against Miami put two teams squarely in the driver's seat for their respective divisions. Block-C doesn't hesitate to name C.J. Spiller the best player in all of college football. Which, y'know, maybe, but if they've got the best player in all of college football, what does it say about the rest of the team that provided Maryland its only ACC win?

- Finally, the Battle of the Catholics ended disappointingly. Final score: Congregation of the Holy Cross 20, Jesuits 16.

Normal-ish schedule this week. Tomorrow I will finally get around to profiling Akil Mitchell. Wednesday I'll have another coaching candidate lined up. Somewhere in between, I'll squeeze in another ACC roundtable. Gotta keep a sense of normalcy even though the season is solidly on the line on Halloween.