- Moved CB Demetrious Nicholson and LB Sean Duggan from yellow to blue. In Nicholson's case it's because UNC, which looked so strong in this recruitment earlier, is starting to look like a really lousy place for a football player to spend the next four or five years of his life. In Duggan's case it's because Wisconsin dropped off the list. BC and Michigan are still gonna be tough to contend with, though.
- Moved LB Travis Hughes from red to yellow. I still don't think he'll end up here, but he seems serious. If he does, it'll be the greatest recruiting resurrection ever pulled at UVA.
- Moved QB Lafonte Thourogood from yellow to red. Starting to get the "it ain't happening" feeling.
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Newsy things:
- UNC's Kendric Burney is officially out for the UVA game, having lost his appeal. At the rate things are going, it doesn't look likely that most of the rest of their parked players will be on the field, either, though Deunta Williams is back this week. That's a very winnable game.
- The UNC game will be at 6 PM, online, no TV. Speaking as someone who's still working on ways to get recordings of online games: argh.
- Michael Phillips suggests that JKD is still listed as the DT starter mainly because he's a senior captain, and says that Matt Conrath is getting the first snaps. But, JKD was out there a lot on first downs against FSU. Unless Conrath was banged up - wouldn't have been evident either way from the ESPN3 broadcast - JKD is still getting the meaningful snaps.
- The lead guy at CavsCorner, Chris Wallace, mentioned that some numbnuts at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked this question of Mike London: "What changes have you made since taking over as head coach?" (I would have told him the only thing I did was paint the equipment shed, just to see what he prints.) This must be the guy:
Both Virginia and Groh have moved on. London, the first African-American coach in the history of Virginia athletics, has brought excitement to a program needing a boost.Mr. Huff? Dave Leitao for you on line 1. It's no wonder the newspaper industry is slowly disappearing and practically every major newspaper in the country is, like the AJC, a hyphenated combination of two papers that would have failed on their own. I realize he's only one coach off, but this is a basic, fundamental statement of a plain fact that is plain wrong, and this man is somehow paid actual legal tender to do less research for his job than I do for my hobby, which is this blog that mucks around with an audience that is occasionally measured as low as the mere dozens. As opposed to the (theoretically) millions that get their information from his paper.
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High school senior seasons march on:
STAB 13, St. Christopher's 7: Thompson Brown's been having a really good season, but kept off the stat sheet here.
L.C. Bird 21, Monacan 13: Anthony Harris throws the go-ahead touchdown.
Hermitage 19, Deep Run 0: Diamonte Bailey assists in another Hermitage shutout.
Thomas Dale 12, Petersburg 8: Maybe a little rust as Kevin Green and Petersburg have had three straight weekends off.
>I.C. Norcom 45, Norview 0: Kameron Mack still rolling, and earning the shutout.
St. S/St. A 40, Randolph-Macon 0: Gotta like the shutouts our future defenders keep getting. This one belongs to Darius Lee.
Menchville 31, Gloucester 3: Clifton Richardson QBs his team to their first win of the season. Very nice to see. And he's homecoming king, too!
Phoebus 50, Woodside 10: #1-in-the-state Phoebus and Caleb Taylor crush a solid Woodside bunch.
Tallwood 14, Green Run 6: David Dean's team upset as Tallwood gets their first win of the year.
Cox 21, Princess Anne 17: Ross Burbank helps pave the way for a solid 200-plus yard night for Cox's running game.
Hampton 33, Warwick 0: Another easy one for David Watford.
Gonzaga 32, DeMatha 25: Upset loss for Kelby Johnson and Jordan Lomax. And UVA was recruiting that Gonzaga quarterback (Kevin Hogan) pretty heavily, too.
Damascus 35, Springbrook 14: Big win for Brandon Phelps against an undefeated team.
Stone Bridge 63, Marshall 7: Man....these teams never passed. Rob Burns in on the defensive shutdown but never got to rush the quarterback.
Good Counsel 48, Bishop McNamara 0: Vincent Croce pitches in on the shutout; prospect Blake Countess does a lot of the scoring.
Independence 51, Ardrey Kell 30: Adrian Gamble catches four passes for 125 yards.
Boys' Latin 45, St. Frances 0: Yep, another shutout. Marco Jones this time. SF is awful though.
Mt. Lebanon 35, Canon-McMillan 12: It's really hard to find your offensive linemen in the high school box scores, but at least Tim Cwalina keeps winning.
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I've decided to put the ongoing AP poll study in this section. I might give this its own page, but for this week this is what we're doing. Remember: these lag a week, so this is from last Sunday's poll. So here are this week's results. For explanation, please read here.
Trends that continue:
- If there's a team likely to be way overvoted, it's probably a big-name team. Less so this week, but man look at Texas. This is largely the result of voters either keeping them in the middle-ish of the poll after a hideous loss against UCLA, or kicking them out entirely.
- And if there's a group of writers most likely to hold a bias, it's probably West Coasters. Except....look what they did to Oregon. SEC voters ranked Oregon second, and Pac-10 voters had them damn near 7th. Very weird. Probably a one-time-only thing.
Regionalism continues to appear most strongly below the top 25, with conference-regional voters being the main driving force behind the appearance of teams like Northwestern, Oregon State, UCLA, and Missouri in the "also getting votes" section. Additionally, strong bias is evident from 21-25, with four of those five teams getting a huge boost from conference voters. Remember, at the bottom, higher differences in average ratings are harder to achieve, so the delta numbers for teams like NC State, Nevada, and MSU are significant.
However, overall, if you were trying to claim bias permeated this week's poll, you'd have only weak evidence to go on. Other than the almost omnipresent tendency of West Coast voters to overrate West Coast teams, everything else seems to be close to a random distribution again. Tune in next week, then.
1 comment:
Keep posting. The facts here stand on their own, but it's the commentary that keeps me coming back. I'd hate to have to turn to a dry, sometimes dead-wrong newspaper. I continue to recommend your site to any Hoo with a sense of humor.
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