Wednesday, May 26, 2010

some stuff

Stuff goin' on - let's do a little catching up on it.

- Hat tip to Gobbler Country on this one; you can see a screenshot of the new football uniforms in action here. Screenshot because it's from NCAA '11. Picture #14 is what you want. There's only one problem: they messed them up. The players in the screenshot are wearing the NFL-style socks that disappeared along with most of the rest of Groh's additions to the look. (You have to admit, it probably looks better that way because there's hardly anything on the uniforms to break up all that white.) There's also no ACC patch, even though the rest of the depicted ACC teams have them. (Nutjob conspiracy theorists, you now have your flimsy ammunition: Big Ten teams wear no conference patch.) And I can't tell if there's an orange outline on the numbers, but if there's supposed to be, it's nowhere as distinguishable as it is on the real thing.

I still say this new look will be a lot better if we keep the white-on-white and blue-on-blue to a bare minimum.

- All-ACC baseball teams are out and the Hoos are very well represented. As you'd expect from the regular-season champion, no school has more players named than UVA does; seven in all with three on the first team (Arico, Gosselin, and ACCy Young winner Danny Hultzen) and four on the second team (Morey, Parker, Werman, and Cannon.)

- This has nothing at all to do with UVA athletics, but please oh please oh please let this guy's middle name be Maury.

- Speaking of baseball, the ACC tournament got off on the right foot for UVA with a 6-4 win over Boston College this afternoon. A game that was a little closer than we'd have liked to see means that top long reliever Tyler Wilson is now used up til Saturday and won't be available tomorrow. That puts a little more pressure on Morey to go a long way. However. Florida State lost to Miami today as well, so in all but the most unlikely of scenarios (that being BC winning both the rest of their games) UVA will have to beat Miami to play on Sunday. The flip side is that beating FSU tomorrow might not be absolutely necessary.

In fact, the strong possibility exists that it'll be totally meaningless. The early game tomorrow is Miami/BC. If Miami wins, the FSU game won't mean anything and the Miami game will determine the championship. Why? Say we lose to FSU but then beat Miami. Then we're 2-1, Miami is 2-1, and Florida State is either 2-1 (with a win over BC on Friday) or 1-2 (with a loss.) Either way, the tiebreakers break in our favor. If I were Brian O'Connor, I'd have both Morey and Kline (or Neal Davis) get ready and wait for the result of the early game before choosing a starter. Being able to save Morey for a possible Sunday game would be big. Reason not to: If he pitches on Sunday he won't be available for early NCAA regional games. Still, it's a strong consideration.

- Recruiting board update! It was getting a little old. It's also getting a little long. The evaluation period just finished up, and the coaches aimed the offer cannon out of state at players they were getting their first good looks at. Not a lot of players come off the board during this time, because they're getting flooded with offers and aren't narrowing things down yet. And they're taking SATs and ACTs and final exams, so campus visits are at a minimum. When the summer camp circuit and visit circuit fires up, that's when players will start knocking schools off their lists or make their commitments. So here are the updates - many more additions than removals:

- LB Daquan Romero (committed to UNC) and QB Gary Nova (Pitt) are the only removals.

- DT Vincent Croce is added to blue. Originally I figured his offer list was just entirely too big to even bother adding him, but what do you know, he has UVA in a top 3.

- TE Darius Redman, LB Nick Menocal, DEs Zach Wood and Stephon Sanders, and CB Blake Countess are added to yellow. All were beneficiaries of the offer gun. Menocal attends school in Florida with 2010 signee Pablo Alvarez.

- WR Tacoi Sumler is added to red. Sumler's offer list is divided into Volumes I, II, and III, it's that big, so we're not getting him, but he's a former teammate of early enrollee Michael Strauss, so hey, why not.

- Moved WR Dominique Terrell from yellow to red.

- Moved WR Daniel Adams from yellow to blue.

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