To add the finishing touch, senior forward Caroline Miller is the ACC's offensive POY. Why not reigning FOV co-Cav of the Year Morgan Brian, you might ask? Brian is too good for her own good in this regard; she spent half the season in Japan helping the women's U-20 national team win their World Cup. In fact, she scored a goal against Nigeria in the semifinals.
The Hoos play the first round of the NCAA tournament on Friday as a 2 seed, hosting La Salle.
-- Speaking of soccer, I decided to stop whining about not getting to see enough of it this past week, and also watched the men take on NC State on Thursday in the final regular season game. That was fun, since the Hoos won 2-1 on an OT golden goal. Not NC State's weekend for playing UVA. It might have been easier, but Will Bates - whose game is all about finishing - was off his mark a few times, and missed a couple chances to slam home some easy ones. He got a goal anyway when the Pack got called for an iffy handball in the box and UVA was awarded the penalty kick.
The ACC tournament starts tomorrow, and UVA visits their Official Postseason Bitch, Wake Forest, as the tourney's 6 seed. Now they'd better beat the Deacons after I said that.
-- The football depth chart for the week seems to end Henry Coley's suspension, but not his time in the doghouse. He's listed third, behind Daquan Romero and Demeitre Brim. Romero played well enough on Saturday to make it easy for the coaches to dole out Coley's discipline at their own pace.
From Old Virginia Ballot - Week 10
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama Crimson Tide |  1 |
| 2 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish |  -1 |
| 3 | Kansas St. Wildcats | -- |
| 4 | Florida Gators | -- |
| 5 | Oregon Ducks | -- |
| 6 | Florida St. Seminoles | -- |
| 7 | Texas A&M Aggies | -- |
| 8 | Oregon St. Beavers | 1 |
| 9 | Stanford Cardinal | 1 |
| 10 | Ohio St. Buckeyes | -2 |
| 11 | Nebraska Cornhuskers | 3 |
| 12 | South Carolina Gamecocks | 1 |
| 13 | LSU Tigers | 2 |
| 14 | Clemson Tigers | 6 |
| 15 | Georgia Bulldogs | 3 |
| 16 | UCLA Bruins | 3 |
| 17 | Oklahoma Sooners | 6 |
| 18 | Texas Longhorns | 6 |
| 19 | Penn St. Nittany Lions | 6 |
| 20 | Northwestern Wildcats | 2 |
| 21 | USC Trojans | -5 |
| 22 | North Carolina Tar Heels | -5 |
| 23 | Texas Tech Red Raiders | -11 |
| 24 | Michigan Wolverines | -- |
| 25 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys | -- |
| Dropouts: Arizona Wildcats, Iowa St. Cyclones | ||
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »
I'll tell you what though, I'm not the only one. The BCS computers also have Florida fourth and Oregon fifth. So ha.
I was also forced to flip-flop Ohio State and Nebraska. Something about a 25-point margin of victory and giving up 63 points doesn't let me in good conscience put the Huskers ahead.
You see that Arizona and Iowa State were the only teams to drop out this week, and that's because they fell out of consideration entirely at 5-4. They won't be back next week, either, because 6-4 isn't good enough. Arizona's very weird. #11 when in, but unable to stay in consistently. NC State (hehe), Duke, Arizona State, and Cincinnati also dropped out of consideration; the former three because they're all 5-4, and Cincy because their qualifying win over VT got ruined by VT's losing record. Kent State and Louisiana Tech debuted in the consideration pool (re-debuted in Lousiana Tech's case) and Kent State actually did OK, coming in 29th. That said, it'll be a sad day indeed for the other teams in the pool if I end up ranking a team that lost by 33 to 1-9 Kentucky.
My excuse this week for shuffling Senior Seasons off til Tuesday - again - is that there's quite a bit of extra work involved this week. Most of these teams are going to the playoffs, so I gotsta see how those schedules shake out. Some states are easier than others to find, and the ballot takes up most of my time on Mondays. Tomorrow, Senior Seasons will accompany the recruiting profile of one of the most interesting commitments on the board.
4 comments:
With Austin Nichols committing to Memphis, that looks, barring a late stunner, to be a wrap on basketball recruiting. In some ways, it's not the worst thing - if we had landed Nichols, someone would have had to go, and I'm not a fan of over-recruiting. Furthermore, with Gill active next year, there looks to be reasonable post depth (hard to see Atkins or Mitchell transferring away). This also gives us marginally better scholarship spacing next year - 2 in the sr. class, 3 jr's, 6 soph's, 2 fresh.
Don't get me wrong - would've loved to land a high caliber talent like Nichols. But it's not the biggest issue, IMO, to not land him, particularly when we were probably one of the longshots in his finalists.
The Class of 2014 currently has two open spots. The big positive is that, assuming there isn't mass transfers, there should be enough quality depth all-around that we can afford to simply go after the best caliber talent instead of filling holes.
Arizona jumping from very good to ineligible doesn't seem right. Maybe you should allow yourself a little discretion to include a team that doesn't make the official cut.
Theoretically, if there were a team who'd played all of the top 10 teams and finished 6-4, you'd want that team to be ranked. I agree with the eligibility principle but no reason you can't fudge it.
Yeah, that seems fair. I did after all include Toledo earlier than they would've been because they beat a team in the rankings, even if that team wasn't strictly part of the requirements. Arizona is playing Colorado this week, if by some stroke of fate they squeak past the Buffs, I'll put 'em back in the pool.
Re: hoops recruiting, there are two more targets that I know of: Joel Embiid and Schuyler Rimmer. Also there's only one spot left for 2014, which will be filled if we get Embiid or Rimmer. (Don't forget that we have BJ Stith already in the fold.) We'll be one over for 2013 in that case, but TB appears to be banking on a transfer.
Around a decade ago we saved all our sports under the Littlepage Plan with stated (unrealistic/unattainable) goals for ACC and national championships. It was nice having a target, it made it easier to put something like a women's soccer championship in a larger program-wide context.
My question is, how do we adjust those program goals if we have since added half a dozen more teams to the conference? I'm still happy women's soccer won a championship, but how much happier am I? And three years from now?
SSFR
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