double-barreled recruiting update

That's right, there's recruiting and then there's recruiting.  Let's do the regular stuff first with an update of the recruiting board:

-- Removed OL Mike McGlinchey from green.  Committed to Notre Dame.  Rats.  I can definitely see McGlinchey ending up on the February list of misses that mean something.

-- Removed RB Ryan Green from red.  No longer seems worth my time to track his recruitment, as UVA doesn't look to be in the picture.

-- Moved ATH Michael Parker from blue to red.  Parker more or less committed to Maryland yesterday.  Kind of.  Maryland types are acting like they definitely got him.  Mike Farrell says otherwise.  Someone tweetered at Farrell that Parker had tweetered about being a Terp and Farrell's response was, "I am aware of that."  This is a messed-up recruitment and I probably shouldn't drop every detail about it because most of it goes on behind paywalls, but let's just say the details involve something that rhymes with "wackademicks."  And they must be really off-kilter because UVA typically has no problem taking a kid even if they know he'll fall short of NCAA requirements, because 90% of those can be fixed with a FUMA-shirt.  We're just gonna drop this one down to red and not get everyone's hopes up.

-- Added WR Paul Harris, ATH Myles Nash, and LB Larenz Bryant to yellow.

So, double-barreled.  There's more than one way to fill a roster, and Tony Bennett is looking to raid other peoples' to make it happen, since ours is so shorthanded.  Here's the list of possibilities.

OK, not everyone on that list is a possibility.  Bennett did, however, host former Duquesne point guard T.J. McConnell today, a player who would (in my exceedingly humble opinion) fit perfectly with our point guard needs.  We could use a big, too, but ideally we could get one that would play next year, like UConn's Alex Oriakhi who everyone wants and therefore isn't coming here.  A point guard, on the other hand - we're in a real sweet-spot position to take one, especially one who's a sophomore like McConnell.  We have Jontel Evans and Teven Jones for next year, and then Evans graduates.  It would be far, far better to have another experienced point guard than to turn it all over to Jones and some freshman in 2013.  Then, UVA is an appealing destination for a 2014 point guard (cough DevonHall cough cough) because our hypothetical transfer would hypothetically be a senior in 2014, meaning any freshman would spend a year learning and then jump right into the lineup in 2015, either behind or in front of Jones who'll be a senior that year.

It's also interesting to note what ACC teams got transfer-slammed besides us.  Too bad our transfers decided not to be arsed with the courtesy of sticking out the year (a little British lingo there), but oh well.  Now we are seeing a few other players leave too, especially from Wake Forest, which loses starting PG Tony Chennault (Wake fans will probably call this addition by subtraction), center Carson Desrosiers, and freshman guard Anthony Fields.  VT and GT are losing a couple guys who hardly ever played, excepting Glen Rice, Jr. who isn't transferring of his own accord; GT kicked him off the team.

And no, by the way, I'm not sure it's healthy for the transfer list to be that damn long.  Like it's a big surprise, when kids are recruited as freshmen and pressured to commit during their junior year or earlier.  That represents about 5% of the total players in the country, and that's actually too small a number because obviously seniors can't transfer.  It's really more like 7 or 8%.  One day I'll write a highly enlightening piece about how the rules for transferring need to be tightened, as soon as I form a coherent opinion about it.

To wrap this up, I leave you with a piece of advice: throwing errors from third base hurt your team, yes, but you should not punish your hand for the error by breaking it on a wall, as North Carolina third baseman Colin Moran did this weekend.  Moran is leading the Heels with a .389 batting average (more than 60 points ahead of the next guy) and 24 RBIs, so this isn't a small deal.  He'll be out 3-4 weeks, which makes it very likely he won't be available for the UVA series.  All together now: bummer.  I understand Heels fans are mad at the umpires for not calling a foul on the wall.