Tuesday, January 28, 2014

weekend review

It's the recruiting homestretch, with Signing Day a little over a week away, so there's plenty of movement on and off the recruiting board.  So that's what kicks off the weekend review this week.

-- Added LB Chris Peace and DE Cory Jones (re-add in that case) to orange.  Jones had committed to Toledo a little while ago, but flipped on an official visit this weekend, and was joined by Peace, who committed almost on the spot to his UVA offer.  Both are instate players who up til now had gotten very little attention.

-- Moved OL Will Richardson from orange to maroon.  UVA is very dangerously thin at OL and this class is not helping.  I can't fault London for losing Richardson since Richardson more or less lied to him, but I can certainly find fault with not doing the OL work that should've been done in July.

-- Removed CB DaiQuan Lawrence from blue; recommitted to Wake Forest.

-- Removed DB Daniel Ezeagwu from green (Maryland.)

-- Removed TE Blake Whiteley (Texas) and CB Cornelius Floyd (Arkansas) from yellow.

-- Moved DT Derrick Nnadi from red to yellow.  Weird recruitment, ain't it?  I don't really expect Nnadi to pick UVA when all's said and done (I think, based on nothing, that FSU is going to be the answer) but at least there's a ripple.

-- Added LB Vincent Jackson and CB Ladarius Wiley to yellow.  Wiley is a friend of Jeffrey Farrar and currently technically a Purdue commit, but Farrar is working on him.

With only a week left, this'll be the penultimate update; the next time for the 2014 board will be the last.  I'm working on the 2015 board and slowly but surely filling it up; probably will have it out next week.

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-- UVA picked up a couple tops-in-the-country nods this past week, and in different sports.  Probably the kiss of death in both cases, but whatever.  Baseball America has the Hoos as their preseason #1 team, and rates the lineup as somewhere between "elite" and "team for the ages."  And UVA's performance in ESPN's BPI is the nation's best in January.  So far.  Still plenty of time to screw that up.  But even should UVA lose tonight, it'd be hard to argue any other team in the country had more of a season-turning month - in the right direction - than did UVA.  (And if you could make a case for someone else, it'd be Michigan. :D :D :D )

-- Lacrosse season is still a short ways off and it's already off to a tough start.  Reserve midfielder Carl Walrath got himself kicked off the team for an incident in November in which he thought it would be a bright idea to clock a police officer and take off running.  Now, not that Walrath shouldn't be summarily booted for a brainstorm like that, but it bothers me that it's Craig Littlepage making the statement.  There are several different ways to interpret that, none of which are good.

-- This week I'm gonna start in on spring sports.  Not sure exactly what order I'll do things, but I'll for sure start tomorrow with a lacrosse schedule analysis.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice interview with the Baseball America guy about UVA's #1 ranking in the DP yesterday. Loved this line: "This is a program that always seems to finish the year higher than where we had them ranked in the preseason. So it’s not going to be able to do that this year."

Basketball team is looking awesome. Notre Dame game is the most complete they've looked all year. And Perrantes is much of the reason. After a couple of those first-half assists, I can't have been the only one thinking: "This kid could end up getting his jersey retired." Obviously a premature thought by far, but man he did some beautiful things out there.

Anonymous said...

If the pitching is there this year ... this team should make it to Omaha. On paper, this is a loaded, loaded squad, with lots of top 3 round picks.

Very curious who gets the starting nods and who goes to the pen. Sure sounds like Waddell/Kirby are in.