the quest that stood on the edge of a knife

I guess I've waited procrastinated long enough; it's best to wait a little while after an awful loss to compose oneself before one puts words out in public that one might regret, or at least that's what I tell myself as an excuse not to write anything all weekend.  (That, and it's now officially the offseason, which means weekends pretty much entirely off, anyway.)

But if the players themselves can go meet the fans less than 24 hours after maybe the most crushing loss in program history, I can probably nut up and write a column.  I guess it's our turn to be on the wrong end of very well-intentioned words that are ultimately of small comfort.  In a year or so, when baseball is back in the spotlight (largely with a very new lineup) we'll still have, on the permanent record for 2011, the most wins in program history**, the highest CWS finish in program history, and another CWS banner on the outfield wall, not to mention the ACC championship.  That'll erase the sting of how we exited.  (Mostly.  Except when something like this happens again, because this managed to remind one of Arkansas and the 2009 CWS with stunning clarity.)

From a much larger perspective, which is a much better way to view Friday night's game, I remind you again of the record-setting season, as well as this: that record-setting season came on the heels of having to replace the majority of the batting lineup and a big chunk of the useful pitching staff.  It's the nature of baseball and draft-eligible juniors; turnover is ever-turning.  Next year we'll see even more of it.  A lot of it.  It would have me extremely apprehensive about the future, but for the successes of this year.

**More years of Brian O'Connor's tenure at UVA have been spent breaking the seasonal wins record than have been spent not breaking it.  At 56 wins it's wicked doubtful that trend can continue but there's still a little bit of room.

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Bullet points:

- Filed under "things that sucked about Friday's game," and possibly right on top, was the lost chance to see Danny Hultzen at his magnificent best.  The damnable cruel fates and their whimsical illnesses that strike when you least need them. Here's a guy who's a top-five athlete in Virginia history, proving it: he struck out eight of the ten batters he faced.  A 24-strikeout pace!  The potential was there for the greatest pitching performance in CWS history.  South Carolina fans will say and have said many things about the Friday game, but on the top of the list ought to be "please heathen gods accept this sacrifice of ten virgins in exchange for your benevolence in striking down the most feared warrior of the enemy."  There's no way South Carolina wins that game if Danny Hultzen's innards aren't infested with viruses sent by Beelzebub himself.

- Another awful thing about being on the wrong end of a game that swung on the edge of a razor: the natural instinct to second-guess.  I shouldn't, but I can't help myself.  Personal top two: given the lack of success at the plate, I'd have given some real thought to a suicide squeeze, and is Reed Gragnani's glove in center really so bad that you'd rather have Shane Halley's bat?  I was taken aback to see Gragnani replaced after pinch-hitting.  It came back to bite us in the worst way when Halley bounced weakly into a bases-loaded double play.

- Besides Hultzen, the second-most deprived player of the day was John Barr, whose heroics are now lost to the annals of time.  Barr went 3-for-6 and hit the ball on the screws in his final at-bat.  His only failure was a violation of Willie Keeler's maxim ("hit 'em where they ain't"); had his line drive been directed a couple of feet in any other direction he'd have been the hero of the hour with a 4-for-6, 2-RBI performance in a likely win.  And no, I don't fault Colin Harrington for getting doubled off, Barr's liner was hit too hard and he had little to no chance to get back to the bag.

- More silver lining from Friday: Tyler Wilson earning the Senior CLASS Award.  I tend to balk at awards where the first name in it is the name of a moneymaking company, but this is one where you make an exception.  In this case it means you have the privilege of rooting for some very outstanding people, so congratulations are in order from all corners.

- A three-part series is coming up in the near future wherein I will offer up a look at next year's lineup possibilities and quickly profile the incoming freshmen.  That starts Wednesday, so stay tuned.

seriously the best weekend review ever

That was awesome and nobody can tell me different.  The best way to respond to an ACC championship by the baseball team is to one-up that sucker the next day and win a national title.  I doubted it could happen even up to the day before the Denver game.  You doubted it could happen.  Don't lie, you did.  19 goals to Duke will do that to you.

There's so much to be said about the fifth national title in UVA lacrosse history that it's hard to know which should come first.  How about we start with Dom Starsia, since his is the evaluation I seem to have screwed up the most?  Contrary to the idea that his career is tailing off, Coach Starsia pulled off what might well be his best season of coaching ever.  He changed up his whole philosophy.  This year he couldn't out-athlete the competition like he likes to do, so he shuffled players around, implemented a zone defense, and he and his crew of assistants got together and figured out how to change the offense from a one-man-at-a-time show to a working machine.  This season I've harped on the unsustainability of having more than half your goals be unassisted; Inside Lacrosse points out that in the four tournament games, 74% of UVA's goals had an assist attached to them.  This is more fun to watch by far, more successful, and ultimately the result of a focus by the coaching staff to make a concerted change in the way the offense attacks the net.  You could brush that off and claim it was forced upon them by the removal of the Brattons from the equation, but you and I both know that not every coach is savvy enough to know he needs to radically switch gears and talented enough to make it work.

And on top of it, Starsia, as evidenced by his interviews and the things the mike caught him saying to his team ("now go shake their hands, they deserve it") is as classy an individual as any that we have coaching here.

So there's one kind of leadership for you.  Then you have the players, especially captain Bray Malphrus, that got their teammates together and demanded accountability.  Malphrus is one of the team's captains, along with John Haldy, Adam Ghitelman, and Steele Stanwick.  Would this team be here without the leadership they brought?  I'd venture to say no.  The season would've ended early, probably in the first round, the team would have an unheard of six losses, and the only narrative would be about how the whole thing fell apart after last year's drama.  The laid-back Haldy is the perfect foil for the fiery and hyper-competitive Malphrus, and the combination was precisely the medicine this team needed after last year's troubles and another heartbreaking loss to nemesis Duke.  Malphrus plans to kick terrorist ass in the military after graduation and I'd say he'll do very, very well in the military environs.  Next year's team will have little trouble filling in the gaps on the field left when these seniors depart (and that's meant as a compliment to the rest of the team, not a knock on the seniors) but they'll need to make a very concerted effort to fill the leadership gaps.

If there's one on-field hole to fill next year, it'll be in net.  It seems like Ghitelman's been in there forever, and he took some real lumps early on from disapproving fans.  But he leaves UVA as the NCAA's third-winningest goalie of all time with 50 victories.  In a way I'm especially happy to see Ghitelman get this trophy because it'd be a shame to be that good for four years and come away empty-handed in the trophy department.

Other things I think:

- Steele Stanwick was held almost completely off the scoresheet, but with 20 points in the previous three games, he's made the Tewaaraton voting awfully interesting.  There's a school of thought that says no Final Four = no Tewaaraton for you, and Stanwick was the only candidate on the field in Baltimore.  That he got there by wildly outplaying the previous prohibitive favorite, Cornell's Rob Pannell, makes it even tougher to vote against him.  The trophy will be awarded Thursday.  If Stanwick doesn't win it won't be a travesty of justice, but if he does it won't be a shock any more.

- Crystal ball time: In February you learn that UVA will make it to the championship game in Baltimore.  (That would've saved a lot of gnashing of teeth in April.)  In that game:

• You'll see zero goals from Rhamel Bratton, Shamel Bratton, Steele Stanwick, or Chris Bocklet, and the only goal scorers at all will be Colin Briggs, Matt White, and Nick O'Reilly,
• UVA will lose the faceoff battle 12-7,
• UVA will also lose the groundballs battle and be outshot,
• Top defender Matt Lovejoy will be out from shoulder surgery,
• UVA will be shut out in the first quarter

And your prediction?  Yes, I think losing 16-4 sounds about right.  Actually winning instead is a real testament to the defense and the efficiency of the offense.

- I didn't hear any major horror stories from people in the overwhelmingly pro-Terp crowd in Baltimore.  John Tillman seems like a stand-up guy and the Maryland team doesn't seem to act too bad.  Admittedly the Terps probably had at least as good a reason for neutral fans to root for them as we did, maybe better.  And it was cool to have an all-ACC final.  Still, it never hurts to have the occasional reminder that Maryland fans can be the shittiest dickbags this earth has ever seen.

- I'll have a whole separate post on 2012 lax in the not-far-off future.  National championships have a way of brightening the future.

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It wasn't too bad a redemption story for the baseball team, either, erasing all memory of that final-week sweep by Carolina by winning the ACC title.  And not the cheap way, either: a 4-0 weekend.  Because of tiebreakers, the Hoos had locked up a spot in the title game against FSU before the Saturday rematch against Carolina, so, as predicted, Danny Hultzen was held back til Sunday and Cody Winiarski pitched against UNC.  And won anyway.

Then UVA picked up a 7-2 victory against FSU in a very decidedly non-UVA fashion: by smacking home runs.  All seven runs came that way.  This caused the FSU Rivals site to go all George Washington on us, mixed in with a little just-a-couple-plays-away Pete Hughes action: their description of the game was, "Three bad pitches."  Seminole starter Hunter Scantling echoed the "two bad pitches" line, except what he actually said was "one bad pitch" instead, which I guess means that when John Barr was hit by a pitch to put him on base ahead of Proscia's jack, that was a good pitch.

Proscia was the tournament MVP, by the way, on account of hitting that home run that would turn out to be a game-winner, and going 7-for-16 on the weekend.  Kenny Swab and Chris Taylor also made the all-tournament team, and Tyler Wilson was left off for reasons I can only assume involve it not being fair that UVA would have so many players on the team.  UNC's Patrick Johnson made it instead, for doing the exact same thing Wilson did (mow down Wake Forest) except without the part where Wilson also burned through Florida State in relief.  In the championship game.  So that makes sense.

So the Hoos get the autobid to the NCAA tournament, I guess, but the #1 seed label means they probably didn't need it.  (Y'know....probably.)  They'll see some familiar faces in the Charlottesville regional: East Carolina, an OOC opponent the last two years; St. John's, which comes to Davenport for regional play for the second year in a row; and Navy, which actually isn't all that familiar but wutever.  You might think that our old buddy Tim Weiser finally did us a solid by giving us the #1 seed, but you'd be wrong: assuming UVA makes it out of its own regional, Weiser handed the Hoos Pac-10 champ UCLA and their rotation of doom (with potential #1 pick Gerrit Cole) as a likely opponent.  THANKS DOOD

The baseball win gives UVA five ACC champeenships for the year, which ties us with Maryland for the season's most with five.  Our five: men's tennis, rowing, baseball, and men's and women's swimming and diving.  This is as good a time as any to brag about Virginia's ACC dominance.  In the years since ACC expansion (so, starting with the 2004-2005 season), here's the rundown of schools and their ACC championships:

1. Virginia - 37
2. FSU - 26
3. Duke - 25
4. UNC - 21
5. Maryland - 16
6. Ga. Tech - 14
7. Va. Tech - 11
8. Clemson - 8
9. NC State - 6
10. Miami - 5
11. Wake Forest - 5
12. Boston College - 1

UVA's 37 championships (in 7 years) break down like so:

• 6 each: Men's swimming & diving; men's tennis; rowing
• 4: Women's swimming & diving
• 3 each: Men's cross country; women's lacrosse
• 2 each: Baseball; men's lacrosse; men's soccer
• 1 each: Men's outdoor track & field; women's soccer; wrestling

Other accomplishments in this distinguished field:

- In each of the last seven years, only one of them saw another ACC school pick up more championships than Virginia.
- That year was 2006-2007, when UVA had three.  That's the lowest total in any of the seven seasons, but every other school has had at least one year of just two or fewer.
- UVA has otherwise picked up at least five in each season.
- UVA's six ACC championships in 2008-2009 and 2007-2008 would be the highest single-season total for any school in the expansion age - nobody else has ever had more than five - but....
- UVA broke that record in 2009-2010 with seven ACC titles.

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Busy week coming up, what with overdue recruiting board updates, and I also can't wait for the customary introduction to our latest basketball recruit, Justin Anderson.  Justin Anderson is the five-star we stole from Maryland, and I'll probably never get tired of using that phrase and may eventually just abbreviate it TFSWSFM because that is just so damn catchy.

But it's even more important that you know this: June 8 is the official Blog Birthday, marking three years of service to the Wahoo community.  That's a week from tomorrow.  Around these parts we celebrate birthdays by giving out presents, not receiving them, and that means the 3rd annual Cavalier of the Year Award.  In the near future, I'll unveil the 12 nominees that I think are most deserving of recognition as the top Virginia athlete of the year.  Over the course of a couple weeks, I'll profile each and tell you why they're on the list, and then you the fans will have the privilege of voting on the winner.  There's no awards ceremony, trophy presentation, or scholarship donation in the name of the winner (yet - the 20th annual award will be a black-tie affair, you just wait and see.)  For now, just a goofy Photoshop.  But the voting is fun.

acc tournament semi-preview

UVA baseball didn't exactly roll into the ACC tournament on a wave of momentum.  They do happen to be the #1 seed, and if you like that, thank (ick) the Hokies for taking one of three from Georgia Tech.  UVA did itself no favors in a horrendously weak hitting exposition against the Heels last weekend, getting themselves....swept.  Never thought I'd say that as long as Danny Hultzen was still on the team.

Not the end of the world, though.  The pitching is still as good as it ever was.  Carolina didn't get much hitting in, either, a five-run inning against Cody Winiarski and Kyle Crockett last Thursday being the scariest thing that happened all weekend.  As long as you have pitching, you're in every game.  So the ACC tournament pods shook out like so:

1. Virginia
4. North Carolina
5. Miami
8. Wake Forest

2. Florida State
3. Georgia Tech
6. Clemson
7. NC State

Now for the good news: the Hoos got the tourney off on the right foot.  Simply winning would've been cool and all, but the ACC tourney has a mercy rule (there's other games going on, chop chop, get a move on) and the Hoos took advantage.  Wake Forest, whom UVA hasn't seen on the diamond for a couple years, got smacked to the tune of 13-1 in just seven innings.  And really, six for the bats, because UVA was the home team.  So the bats are back.  Tyler Wilson got the start and pitched a gem, naturally.  Struck out 12 in 6.1 innings.  Nasty as ever.

The other result of the day - you'll like this, too, promise - was Clemson blanking Georgia Tech, 9-0.  Losing the first game of the tourney means you need to win your next two games and hope the team that just beat you wins neither of theirs.  So GT has a major uphill climb to win their side of the pool.

Friday, UVA plays Miami, and throws Will Roberts against right-hander Eric Whaley.  Last time against the Canes, Roberts gave up three hits to Miami in seven innings, allowed two runs, one earned, and struck out five.  Whaley was just as strong, with four hits, two runs, none earned, and five strikeouts in six innings on Saturday.  That was right after the exam break so hopefully that's why the bats were like that.  They always are.  This is the game that makes me most nervous; Roberts is a solid pitcher but obviously he's more hittable than the guy that might just be the #1 overall pick in the draft.

The final game of pool play in the tournament is the UNC game on Saturday at 7 PM; RoboDanny pitches against UNC's Kent Emanuel.  This was the same matchup as last Friday.  Emanuel is a lefty, same as Danny, and he held UVA to one lousy run in six innings.  Again, hopefully lingering exam break cobwebs.

The championship game, which hopefully UVA will be in, will be Sunday.  If we get that far, expect Cody Winiarski to start.  Unless a situation arises in which a CG appearance is clinched before Saturday's game, which can happen if UVA beats Miami and UNC loses both their first games, then you'll probably see Cody go on Saturday and Danny held back for the championship.

I'd be remiss, too, if I failed to mention all the Hoos on the all-ACC squads: John Hicks, Steven Proscia, David Coleman, Danny Hultzen, and Branden Kline on the first team and John Barr and Tyler Wilson on the second.  CyberDanny is the pitcher of the year, obviously, and Brian O'Connor is the COY, both for the second year in a row.

Programming note: Tomorrow I preview for you the lacrosse game against Denver, and then I'm off until either Monday or Tuesday.  Happy start of summer, and try not to get schwacked by a tornado.  They seem to be all over.  No tornadoes here, but the manhole on my street outside got blown out of its socket somehow by all the water raging through the sewer system and took a huge chunk of the street with it.  Never seen that before.

regional of near-doom review

I tell you what - it's probably actually more nerve-racking to watch baseball games unfold on Gametracker than it is watching them on TV. Cause you never know when the next pitch is gonna happen. Might be now, or it might be three minutes from now and then it's gonna give you four quick ones in a row. And sometimes the damn thing ain't even right. This baseball version seems to be OK enough, but I still have very annoying memories of the time the Yahoo gametracker thing told me we'd hit a game-winning three-pointer against VT only to find out a few minutes later it was a game-tying bucket, and yes, we lost big in OT.

Anyway, Gametracker it was for me this weekend, for two games that were pretty much blowouts and two games that were way closer than they should have been. So here's what happened over the weekend:

Friday: UVA 15, VCU 4

Cody Winiarski gets the start for the Hoos and is quickly staked to a 7-1 lead at the expense of VCU's not-so-scary-after-all ace, Seth Cutler-Voltz. Winiarski doesn't last as long as we'd ideally like, frittering away half that lead in the fourth inning and forcing Brian O'Connor to bring in shutdown long reliever Tyler Wilson. Wilson puts an end to any more VCU thoughts of ever again arriving safely at second base, let alone scoring; he breezes through three full innings, by which time the lead is large enough that backup infielder and sometimes-pitcher Corey Hunt - he of the ten IP all year - is brought in to finish the last two, which he does as the UVA bats continue to give the scoreboard operator something to do. All nine UVA starters get at least one hit, and the 5/6/7 hitters (Parker, Hicks, and Cannon) combine for nine hits, nine runs, and eight RBI.

Saturday: UVA 13, Ole Miss 7

The Hoos jump on Ole Miss starter Aaron Barrett for 7 runs, leading Rebs fans to lament that if their second starter can't last three innings, they're really screwed going forward. (They were right: in the next game, Ole Miss starter David Goforth failed to get out of the first inning enroute to giving up eight of St. John's 20 runs.) Danny Hultzen fails to be Hultzen-esque, giving up six runs in six innings. He gets the win anyway, and Branden Kline slams the door after making an oops pitch on a full count to the first batter. For the second game in a row, every UVA starting hitter collects a hit. Most collect two. John Barr collects four in four at bats and somehow manages to never score.

Sunday: St. John's 6, UVA 5

Well damn. UVA had just racked up 28 runs in 2 games and was facing a pitcher with an ERA north of 6; this was supposed to be the crowning slaughter. Instead we get a game that wasn't really as close as it looked. Other than a five-run fourth, UVA's bats were held mostly silent, and Robert Morey immediately gave back two of them in the bottom half of the inning. Despite this, UVA clung to a 5-4 lead through three and a half more innings, until St. John's slugger extraordinaire (who is a FRESHMAN and has TWENTY-FOUR HOME RUNS) delivered his second souvenir of the day into the outfield bleachers. Or maybe beyond. That was the margin of victory, and of course it came with two outs.

Monday: UVA 5, St. John's 3

Since we couldn't seem to figure out how to hit the ball past the outfielders, O'Connor resorted to some small ball. Sacrifices, double steals, and the ever-popular UVA classic, grounding into inning-ending double plays with the bases loaded, resulted in getting runs one at a time. Better than barely getting them at all, though. Branden Kline pitched 5 1/3 excellent innings and Kevin Arico had his longest outing of the year. Why longest? Because Brian O'Connor is a smart baseball man, not a dummy. UVA was sitting on a 4-1 lead in the top of the 6th; unfortunately, the bases were loaded and St. John's had Baltzey at the bat. You do not keep your closer around for the 9th inning if the game is about ready to be lost in the 6th. O'Connor brought in Arico to face Baltz, and Baltz grounded weakly to second; too weakly, as the Hoos didn't manage to get the double play and a run scored anyway. UVA escaped the inning with a 4-3 lead, which would prove to be enough as Arico has balls the size of coconuts.

Outlook:

- Should you be worried about the bats? No, not really. Most of the time, the hits were there when we needed them. Oklahoma's starting pitching is a little bit meh for a one-seed, so we'll get our offense.

- Should you be worried about Danny Hultzen? Absolutely. An ERA that's ballooned about a full point in the last month or so is cause for concern, and his last few outings haven't been great. You live and die with your ace, so he'll be out there for Game 1 on Saturday; let's hope he's good for six or seven strong ones.

- St. John's is going to be a very, very good team next year.

- Again: Props to O'Connor for bringing in the fireman when it mattered. The game was won right there in the sixth-inning with the go-ahead run at the plate and 24 home runs under his belt. It may seem like the no-brainer, but with the bats steadily going cold, it's too risky to bring in anyone but your best; nevertheless, some managers -big-league ones, too - will insist on the notion that if you have a closer, he's a 9th-inning guy only. No, you bring him in when you need the big guns, and if that's as early as the 6th, so be it.

- More on Oklahoma on Friday. For now, give a shout to your regional champs.