Let's get jump-started this week with Senior Seasons. I need to keep things interesting, two-thirds of the way through a poop football season.
Upland 45, Alta Loma 20: Jeffery Farrar picked off two passes and took one to the house in a game where Upland leapt out to a big lead and never looked back. Upland is 5-3.
Norcross 24, Peachtree Ridge 20: Norcross is one of the county's top teams, and they held Jordan Ellis to 61 yards on the ground. Peachtree Ridge is 6-2.
Oscar Smith 62, King's Fork 12: Andrew Brown picked off a shovel pass in another Oscar Smith blowout win. Oscar Smith is 8-0.
Central Catholic 44, Admiral Farragut 3 (Caanan Brown) - CCC is 7-1.
Parkview 21, Central Gwinnett 13 (Darious Latimore) - Central Gwinnett is 2-6.
Cummings 44, Bartlett Yancey 13 (Will Richardson) - Cummings is 3-6.
Episcopal 28, Springside Chestnut Hill 20 (Evan Butts) - Episcopal is 8-1.
Bayside 28, Kempsville 6 (Quin Blanding) - Bayside is 4-4.
Spotsylvania 14, Chancellor 12 (Steven Moss) - Chancellor is 1-7.
Woodgrove 38, Dominion 0 (J.J. Jackson) - Woodgrove is 5-3.
How about this for a fun fact: Last week at this time there were five undefeated teams in all of D-I soccer, men and women both. They were:
Notre Dame, Cal, and Washington men
UVA and FSU women
Cal and Washington lost this weekend, Cal to San Diego and UW to UCLA. The other two non-UVA teams just happened to both be playing UVA - and both just happened to lose to UVA. That leaves just the UVA ladies, sitting at 18-0 - unbeaten and untied. Notre Dame had been ranked #2 in the country before their loss to UVA, and the women, with their win, clinched the #1 seed in the ACC tourney.
The only thing that stands in the way of a nifty narrative of UVA knocking out the last two other unbeatens in the country is the West Coast time difference; Washington's game ended on Sunday after the UVA-FSU match.
***************************************************
That will be about it for this week, except to point out that, with VT's loss to Duke this weekend, I feel oddly confident in saying that the VT game is probably our best shot at a win the rest of the season, even though we play a much worse team in UNC before then. Scoring 10 points on Duke is pretty bad. Pretty, pretty bad. If we don't get Brent Urban and Demetrious Nicholson back, it ain't happening, but with those two, hey. Our own offense is trying to rise, zombie-like, from the dead, and it doesn't take much defense to stop VT. The major hurdle will be VT's pass rush, which will be the toughest one David Watford has seen all year, plus trying to gain more than 10 yards all game on the ground.
The cut-short content today will be made up for this week with much basketball preview action. The season opener is less than two weeks away.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
Thought experiment: How would we feel about London today if Philip Sims had never come to UVA?
Last year would have gone better, obviously. And this year, with Rocco still at the helm? Well, even with Watford back there, we were still in a position to win every one of these last 5 games. So with Rocco, do we go 3-2?
I'm not saying any of that makes London a good coach. It's just a fanboy thought exercise. I just think it's interesting how thin the line is between success and failure, and the extent to which the perception of a coach's "success" is influenced by the smallest of random elements.
A defensive tackle intercepted a shovel pass? I don't think I've ever heard of that before. Wow. I hope he shows up in August.
What is with all this Rocco love lately? Does no one remember how many terrible picks at the worst possible times he had last year? Not to mention the complete tailspins he would get into? There is no evidence to suggest that given our Oline and WRs Rocco would have made a big difference.
Brendan,
Love your blog - best coverage of UVA around. I had a tip I wanted to pass on - is the email address on your blogger profile the best way? THanks
Yes, that email address is the best way.
I think that while we may look back on Rocco a little too fondly, it's not completely unjustified. I think there is a case to be made that Rocco was very good, but responded horribly to uncertainty surrounding who was the starting QB. Two years ago he put up a really solid season once he was the clear starter and felt comfortable in his spot on the team. Then they bring in Sims and London reopens the competition and it completely got in his head. He just wasn't able to deal with the pressure that comes along with not even knowing if you'll be back on the field the next offensive series.
I think the fact that a guy with no real pro-potential opted to ditch a flagship university like UVa to play a single year somewhere crappier speaks volumes to just how uncomfortable and and sick of the whole situation he was. That's why I do think it's somewhat justified to be a bit upset with London over how it all played out because it seems like he took a guy with some obvious confidence issues but who could really suceed in the right circumstances and just proceeded to destroy him mentally and elicit the absolute worst performances out of him possible.
Did you see that London is now claiming he tried to call timeout with 11 secs left in the half but the refs wouldn't stop the clock? What a load of CYA revisionist history BS trying to save his job after that retarded blunder. Never was impressed with him to begin with but now my opinion has sunk to a new low. Funny how he forgot to mention that during the sideline interview just after the half ended, the lying SOB.
That's pretty much what happened. My clock-management issue there was playcalling, not the delayed time-out, but people watching the sidelines said it happened like London said it did. London brought it up in the postgame.
I agree that losing Rocco is London's fault. Horribly managed. The experiment I had in mind was what if Sims never wanted to come here in the first place. Then we'd have a few more wins, and he'd look like a lot better coach -- despite not being any better. Huge swings in perceived success result from the smallest things.
I am a defender of Rocco, however. Kid had (and has) great potential. Would love to have a QB like that right now.
Of course, I'd rather have a dominant OL, while we're wishing. If we could just reliably gain 1 yard when we needed it… I mean, come on...
Okay, maybe I was a little harsh. But if that happened to me I would've been PO'ed and certainly would've said something about it in the sideline interview. And I understand he brought it up in the coaches media event on Monday (?), not postgame. I didn't realize he had such a long track record of game and time mismanagement. He still doesn't impress me at all.. esp with his constant mindless blabber that doesn't say anything at all. Would fit in great in the corporate world.
Best of luck vs. Clemson.
Post a Comment