one more spot

You gotta hand it to Tony Bennett.  Four months removed from playing an NCAA tournament game with one hand tied behind his back, the team using six and a half scholarship players thanks to massive attrition and injuries, we sit in prime recruiting season with only one more scholarship to hand out.  Don't believe me?  Here's the list of players occupying a scholarship in the 2013-2014 year (which is what we're recruiting for right now.)

Devon Hall (Fr.)
Justin Anderson (So.)
Taylor Barnette (So.)
Anthony Gill (So.)
Teven Jones (So.)
Evan Nolte (So.)
Mike Tobey (So.)
Darion Atkins (Jr.)
Malcolm Brogdon (Jr.)
Paul Jesperson (Jr.)
Joe Harris (Sr.)
Akil Mitchell (Sr.)

Yup, that's 12.  Half of which are in that sophomore class of 2016, which could make for some interesting times two years from now when we're trying to recruit their replacements.  But that's a ways off.  Here's a look at the players Tony Bennett is recruiting this summer:

-- Jake O'Brien

OK, technically, O'Brien's not a 2013 recruit, unless by 2013 you mean the year he runs out of college rather than high school eligibility.  O'Brien has been playing his college hoops at Boston University, which is changing conferences after this upcoming season and thus is ineligible to play in the America East tournament this year.  So O'Brien, a fifth-year senior who's already got his degree, is looking for a place where he can play in the postseason and go to graduate school.  NCAA lets you do that, if you study something that's not available at your original school, so a school that wants him has to find him a major that BU doesn't offer, and yes that's not even remotely in the spirit of the rule but whatever.

O'Brien would fill the one remaining hole we have on the scholarship roster this season and put us at a full 13.  He's a 6'9" power forward with a decent shooting touch.  And he'd fill a glaring hole in the roster.  See, Anthony Gill can't play this year, leaving us with fours that don't play offense too well and threes that probably wouldn't defend the four very well.  In the former category you have Atkins and Mitchell; in the latter, Harris, Nolte, and maybe Anderson.  Jake O'Brien would be a guy who can theoretically do both (theoretically, because he'd be new to the pack-line), and thus if he chooses UVA, you'll probably see him playing real minutes.  O'Brien has a few other suitors, Temple chief among them.

-- Austin Nichols

Now we get into the folks that might join Devon Hall in the 2013 recruiting class.  Nichols, truth be told, is nearly a carbon copy of Evan Nolte.  He's 6'8" and a very generous 200 pounds, probably with weights in his shoes.  Doesn't matter: he's got the kind of talent you don't turn away if it wants to join your program.  He's a consensus four-star that had legit offers from places like Duke, Florida, UNC, and so on.

Thing is, Nichols likes UVA quite a bit, one, and two, a lot of those schools have taken commitments from elsewhere already.  Nichols was digging on Missouri, but then an assistant coach they had (who Nichols has some ties to) was hired at Auburn, so now he's digging on Auburn instead.  Other schools are involved, too, but UVA has as good a chance at landing Nichols as any other school.  He and Hall would make for a star-power class.

-- Schuyler Rimmer

Rimmer doesn't have the star power, but he's still got the offers.  Lately, schools have been blowing up his phone with 'em, such that he's taking a bit of a step back to digest it all.  He's a tall forward like Nichols, but he's got a solid 25-30 pounds on Nichols and uses them to good effect.  Less athletic and less polished than Nichols, but Rimmer fills a need that UVA could sorely use going forward: someone that will beat the hell out of you to get at the basketball.  ESPN's scouting report notes: "It's fitting that Rimmer plays the game without one of his front teeth."  Not only that, but you could use the hackneyed A-Rod notation to give him a nickname and it'd actually sound good for once: SkyRim.

-- London Perrantes

Yup - a point guard.  Even after convincing Devon Hall to reclassify, and getting commitments from Teven Jones and Taylor Barnette, and even though Perrantes's commitment would mean UVA has four legit bigs and nine backcourt players.  This has spawned a few theories:

- Bennett is really happy with the bigs he has and doesn't want more.
- Bennett isn't happy with the point guard lineup.
- Bennett's talent evaluation is wack.

The second theory is the most troubling, because it would imply that after picking up Jones and Barnette, Bennett isn't happy with either, nor is he comfortable with the idea of Brogdon playing 10-12 minutes a game at the point.  It also implies terrible roster management.  But finally, it's also the most debunkable theory: I highly doubt Bennett has already given up on two of his players without having seen either one play in an actual game.  I mean, the team hasn't even left for Europe yet.

No, I think the real reason for the offer to Perrantes (as well as Xavier Rathan-Mayes, for whom the Hoos got into the game too late) is that Bennett learned his lesson from recruitments like those of James Robinson and T.J. McConnell, and you can never count on anyone til they've signed on that dotted line.  I'd rather have a big myself, and so probably would Tony, but if there's talent you like, you bring that talent in.  Neither Nichols nor Rimmer is such a lock to come to UVA that you shouldn't hedge your bets, and no doubt a second lesson Bennett has learned is the value of a full roster.

The best part about this offer is that we can extend a hand of congratulations to the LA Times for being the first to use the two most overused headline phrases (as relates to UVA) in one succinct shot.

What seems almost assured is that Bennett isn't going to save the scholarship for 2014.  If he did he'd have two to spend, but there looks to be a concerted effort underway to fill the roster and keep it full.  If I were a betting man, and I am but Vegas doesn't offer lines on this, I'd say that last scholarship will be spoken for by the end of September.

weekend review

So I turned on the TV on Friday, all set for a great weekend to be kicked off with an exciting lacrosse game, and I was really pleased with what I saw - the orange uniforms are far superior to the blues, and they look really good with white helmets and shorts, and frankly I wish more games featured both teams wearing their colors instead of whites.  Looks really good that way.  So I liked what I saw.

Then the game started.

Shortly thereafter, I learned anew the meaning of "downhill fast."  I seriously don't know what to make of that, and fervently hope it was simply the one implosion for the year.  I would love to tell you that the reason we can't seem to beat Duke is simply a fluke of probability.  That most of the big games we play - UNC, Maryland, Hopkins, Syracuse minus this year, Cornell, etc. - are largely coin flips, Duke is no different, you can never win all your coin flips, and it just so happens the ones we lose are all the Duke ones.   It's not that there's a Doonkie Kong on our backs, the players are different every year, it's fatigue or whatever.

I have to call bullshit on myself, though, after that game.  Sports so often comes down to math and probabilities and sabermetrics and things, but there's a real danger in going full Moneyball on everything too.  UVA has one of the country's elite offenses, the defending Tewaaraton winner and possible front-runner for a repeat, and possibly the best combination of star power and balanced scoring in the land.  And nobody this season has scored as few as five goals on Duke.  MAAC members Marist and Jacksonville, 2-8 Dartmouth plus other Ivy patsies Brown and Penn, Big East weenie Rutgers - everybody has scored at least seven.  We scored five, most of which were meaningless.  There's psychology involved when that happens.  Period.

Maybe it's just that Duke didn't think Marist and Jacksonville were worth their time to defend, and got up for this game instead.  Or maybe there really is that mental block in the heads of our players.  Maybe we need to schedule Duke on a different weekend.  I dunno.  I expect we'll see them again in the ACC final, assuming we get past UNC, and it goes without saying it sure has to look better than that.  Not getting an early lead will probably fire up the ol' mental-block neurons and that'll be that.

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-- I wish I could say baseball was a silver lining, but nope: the offensive black hole over Klockner enveloped Davenport, too, and the Hoos managed just six runs all weekend, and got swept by Carolina.  Remember your mantra: reloading year, reloading year.  Especially when considering Saturday, in which the Hoos gave up six runs - five unearned.

I wanted 18 wins, but we'd have to go 9-3 to get there, which means sweeping at least one of the remaining series (Duke, Miami, GT, Maryland.)  The bad news is, Miami is the kind of team that could drop another sweep-bomb on us instead, and that series is down there.  The good news is, Duke and Maryland suck, and GT is also surprisingly bad, and all are eminently sweepable themselves.  So keep the faith on that 18-win goal, and keep in mind too that 17 is really not all bad, considering.

-- I'd be very happy to tell you all about what I thought about the spring game...uhhh, as soon as I watch it.  It was on at the same time as Michigan's only televised lacrosse game of the year, and I watched that instead, figuring I could just watch the spring game on Monday.  But not so much.  So that's on hold for a little bit.

-- The weekend wasn't a total loss - Mike London added to his commitment total by getting one from four-star cornerback Tim Harris.  Harris has been pretty much UVA-all-the-way, but it's nice to make it official, especially since he had offers from Tech, Michigan, and OSU.  The mythical fence around the state isn't always real big, but sometimes it's big enough, and it helps too that Varina has become a very UVA-friendly school.

-- Speaking of recruiting, ESPN's 150 came out today, which hopefully means more evaluations will start showing up on more players in their database, which in turn would mean I can get a little earlier of a start on recruit profiles and maybe not be eight recruits behind this year.

-- Anthony Gill: down to two.  Three?  Two. (?)  It's like this: Gill's already visited UVA - this past weekend - and we turn to Twitter (no, not the riffraff, actual people who know things) for the rest.  His AAU coach tweetered on Sunday that Gill will visit Ohio State next weekend, and that his decision will (in Coach's opinion) come down to UVA or OSU.  The next day: "My money is on UVA for AG."  Today, Whitey Reid reported that UNC finally got in touch, after a lot of rumors here and there assuming they were interested.

So - does Gill take the bait from Chapel Hill?  I will give you two snippets and let you form your own opinion.  Snippet one: AG's father told Whitey the reason UVA got the first visit was because UVA was first in contact.  In other words, we made him a priority, and they appreciated that.  Roy Williams, on the other hand, waited well over a week after Gill got his release.  Snippet two: yet another tweetypost, this one from CavsCorner, that reads, in part, "Anthony Gill is down to UVA and...."  Yes, that's where it stops because the rest is behind a paywall, but don't you know it would be bad English to say "UVA and UNC and OSU"?  The OSU visit is still on, by the way.

My own opinion on the situation is that Gill reminds me in several ways of KT Harrell.  Religious guy, big on relationships, working closely with his father on his destination (who by the way sounds a little like Harrell's dad did during that recruitment), and doesn't seem to respond to in-your-face coaching.  (Frank Martin is very much a player's coach off the court but a louder and more neck-bulgy version of Bobby Knight on it.)  I dunno.  Maybe my amateur psychology degree is wrong on Gill's demeanor, but he doesn't come off as the kind of guy to be dazzled by a football stadium with 90,000 people in it.  I boldly predict Anthony Gill declares himself a Hoo in less than two weeks' time.

-- And finally: another big guy Tony Bennett has inquired about is Coastal Carolina's Sam McLaurin, who intends to go to law school and therefore if he chooses UVA he'll be McLawyerin' for all time.  McLaurin is 6'8", shot .652 last year, is an all-academic guy in the classroom (he's going to law school, so, obviously) and best of all can play next year since he's going to be a grad student taking a course of study not offered by his current school.  We'd only get him for one year, but hey - next year's big man lineup consists of Akil Mitchell, Darion Atkins, and Mike Tobey, and squat else.  In other words: not a lot of scoring unless Tobey is a surprise double-double machine.

Of the five schools on the list of those to contact McLaurin, two don't have law schools, one is Drake, and one is actual competition until McLaurin gets a load of our law school.  Of course there'll be others that get in touch, but I'll start this one off on the optimistic side.

weekend review

Well, the big news of the weekend was the bad news of the weekend: James Robinson's decision to go to Pittsburgh instead of UVA.  Damn you Pittsburgh for stealing Cam Saddler and what was that other guy's name in football and now the one guy that would've fit like the last puzzle piece from our basketball team.  Right out of our backyard.  Tony Bennett is assembling a lot of talent for the coming years, and a point guard like Robinson would've fit like a glove.  Not least because Sammy Zeglinski leaves after this year and that means 2012 we have Jontel Evans and nobody else manning the point.  Malcolm Brogdon may get a look but that's not ideal.  What to do now?  The staff will go after L.J. Rose, probably with the fullest-court press imaginable, but that's not a likely proposition.  Chances are either they grit their teeth for 2012 and try to make the most of it with Evans and whoever else can handle a ball - or they take a fallback option and try to turn mid-major talent into an ACC player.  Either way, the 2013 PG crop (Nate Britt, Big Cat Barber, etc.) just became the most important recruiting challenge Tony Bennett's yet had in his UVA career.

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Fall camp chugs on, and so do position switches, and this means we need a depth chart update.  Last week we covered Ryan Cobb's departure and Zach Swanson's move to fullback (the latter may have happened before the former, and if so might well have precipitated it) and this week, the dominos keep falling into place:

- Demetrious Nicholson won himself the starting cornerback job opposite Chase Minnifield.  That puts Rijo Walker in a bit of a playing time bind, as the coaches think highly of Dom Joseph.  Joseph could play safety, if necessary, but that wouldn't be ideal because there's a crying need to develop playable depth at safety for 2012 and beyond.  Right now the backups are LoVante' Battle and Pablo Alvarez, neither of whom have anything resembling decent game experience at safety.

- Vincent Croce, to nobody's surprise, moves to DT from DE.  Redshirt year is a lock barring an epic DT disaster, because he needs to pack on the pounds.

- The same article is primarily about Ausar Walcott's move back to linebacker.  The stay at defensive end?  More a wake-up call to Walcott than anything else.  Get him out of his comfort zone, remind him that his position on the team is not to be taken for granted.  Though he's been running with the third-team defense, it wouldn't surprise to see him make a leapfrog move or two up the depth chart as the season goes on.

- A few other changes have been made, most notably listing Landon Bradley as injured, and shuffling the quarterbacks.  London hasn't come out and said it, but for all purposes now, Mike Rocco is your starter.  The backup hasn't been really decided yet, I don't think, but for now it's David Watford since that's where the reps are going.

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Another sign that football season approaches: for some, it's already started.  It's weird that seasons start earlier in the South and later as you go north, which I guess a Southerner would say that's because they give a shit down there.  Me, if I were being recruited for college football, not doing my conditioning drills in 500 percent humidity would be a real attraction, and I'd feel awful weird about being done with the regular season before Halloween.  But Georgia is Georgia (or Jawjuh depending on your perspective), and that's where we go for the first edition of Senior Seasons this year.

In case you're wondering, this is the part of the every-Monday weekend review where I check in on how our commitments did in their game that weekend.  Only one this week....

Buford 42, Blessed Trinity 0: This is C.J. Moore, who had a nice game with an interception and a 33-yard touchdown catch.  Buford has won four straight state championships at the AA level in Georgia, which goes from A to 5A.

Despite also living in Georgia, Greyson Lambert waits til next week to start his season, but in a scrimmage a week ago he threw for 192 yards and three touchdowns in one half, before the scrimmage was called for weather.

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I leave you til tomorrow with the most unintentionally ironic thing that has ever or will ever emerge from an ESPN the Magazine article, in this case primarily about Ohio State president Gordon Gee:

At Miami, president Donna Shalala personally hires each coach.  She studies the NCAA rulebook and weekly compliance reports.  During football games, she scours the sidelines for suspicious guests.  "I'm on alert all the time," she says.

You could not have timed this quote better with a stopwatch.  How's that 24/7 alert status working out?

series preview: North Carolina

Date/Time: Thu.-Sat., May 19-21; 7:00, 7:00, 2:00

TV: None unless you want to shell out for the UNC video production

History against the Heels: 92-167-4

Last matchup: UVA series win, 3-0 (3-2, 5-1, 5-3), Charlottesville; 5/15-5/16, 2010

Last game: UVA 5, Miami 4 (5/15); UNC 7, App. St. 2 (5/17)

Last weekend: UVA 2-1 series win over Miami (2-6, 3-2, 5-4); UNC 1-2 series loss to GT (3-2, 8-9, 0-3)

National rankings:

Baseball America: UVA #1; UNC #17
Collegiate Baseball: UVA #1; UNC #16
NCBWA: UVA #1; UNC #14
Perfect Game: UVA #1; UNC #15
Coaches: UVA #1; UNC #13
Composite: UVA #1; UNC #14

RPI: UVA #2; UNC #3

Opposing blogs: It's Carolina, so baseball is something that other teams play during the basketball offseason.  Seriously.

UVA's established itself (at a pretty good time to do so) as the king of the rankings; for the first time this season the Hoos are #1 in all five polls.  Such is the power of Virginia baseball that Miami actually moved up in some polls as a reward for not getting swept last weekend.

This week, another test for UVA: a road trip to Chapel Hill.  UNC is similar to Miami in the sense of having a good pitching staff and only fair hitting.  Better pitching, in fact, but slightly worse hitting, and very solid fielding.  The result is a team that's surprisingly (to me) third in the RPI.  Maybe it's that series sweep over 37-10 Stony Brook.

UNC's staff is one you'd feel very confident going into a weekend series with; the rotation is strong and the bullpen is stronger.  Their pitching staff is second in the nation in strikeouts (guess who's first?? yup, very interesting matchup this weekend) and the leader there is Patrick Johnson, who'll pitch tonight against Cody Winiarski.  Johnson does it with command and control; he's not overpowering, which could be a plus for UVA and their patient ways at the plate.  Bottom line for UVA batters, though, is that they're facing a pitching staff very much like their own: going for strikeouts and not working the corners hoping for a generous umpire.

Carolina's got a few dangerous hitters - they're no murderer's row but there are a couple guys worth watching out for - but the real star of the team has been a freshman: third baseman Colin Moran, who's hitting .349 with nine home runs.  Yes, that's a big number in the brave new world of bats that go clank instead of ping.  He and shortstop Levi Michael lead the team in RBIs, and Moran has 63 to Michael's 45 so it's not real close.

I think the Heels' #3 RPI overrates them quite a bit.  How has UNC fared in the ACC this season?  A little bit underwhelmingly.  They're 9-0 against the real dregs (Duke, VT, and Maryland) but inexplicably lost their series with Wake Forest and even more inexplicably got swept by NC State.

The pitching rotation is a little bit different this weekend.  UNC hasn't changed anything, but it's Brian O'Connor's custom to shake things up and realign his rotation for the postseason; accordingly, Tyler Wilson is off this weekend with Winiarski starting tonight, Danny tomorrow, and Will Roberts on Saturday.  All it takes is one win this weekend or one GT loss and the #1 seed in the ACC tourney is ours; BOC is anticipating needing pitchers Wednesday (probably Winiarski), Thursday (Wilson), Saturday (Danny himself), and then hopefully Sunday (Roberts or Johnny Wholestaff.)  That's my guess at the rotation next weekend.  That Thursday game, assuming we're the 1 seed, will be against the 5 seed: probably UNC.  See the logic of keeping Wilson back this weekend?

Honestly, this weekend UVA has nothing to prove.  A series win would be a reaffirmation of awesomeness - series wins at GT and UNC and a sweep at Clemson, that'd be a record to be reckoned with - but barring the Rapture or some kind of catastrophe in the next couple weeks, UVA will be hosting a regional and getting first dibs on a super-regional, too.  That won't change if we have the misfortune of going 1-2.

Rest of the ACC:

NC State at Boston College
Wake Forest at Maryland: BC and Maryland are toast; the two road teams here will be vying for placement in the 2-3-6-7 pool in the ACC tourney.  NC State won the series against Wake, and so has the tiebreaker - both are 12-15.
Clemson at Florida State: A single win will give FSU the Atlantic Division and the #2 seed.  Clemson can win it if they sweep.
Duke at Miami: Good chance for Miami to get some separation from UNC in the standings, but it matters little since it'll probably be for the 4th seed over the 5th.
Georgia Tech at Virginia Tech: GT must sweep and hope for a UNC sweep in order to win the division.  Otherwise they'll almost definitely be the 3rd seed, having already beaten Miami and UNC in their series.

Probable ACC finish:

1. Virginia
2. Florida State
3. Georgia Tech
4. Miami
5. North Carolina
6. Clemson
7. NC State
8. Wake Forest

Remember, the teams are sorted into 1-4-5-8 and 2-3-6-7 pools, so whatever happens this weekend, expect to have to do it again the next.  That's why BOC isn't letting UNC get a look at Tyler Wilson.

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Bonus: Good news is afoot on the basketball recruiting trail.

- First, as predicted, Mike Tobey is starting to see a serious upward kick in his rankings.  Rivals gave him a fourth star and lists him now as the #100 prospect in the country, giving UVA two of the top 100 for 2012 along with Evan Nolte.  24/7 also puts him in their own top 100.  Time to be legitimately excited for a true center with major talents.  If Tobey pans out that way he could be the first real scoring center since, I dunno, Ralph?

- And two of the top 100 might be just the beginning; last night, rumors went 'splodey all over the tubes about Justin Anderson - a five-star to Rivals, top-25 player to just about everyone, and holding "god given off the charts athletic ability" according to ESPN.  By any measure, precisely the kind of player you always have room for on your roster.  Anderson is a Boo Williams player from Virginia and technically a Maryland commit at the moment; the coaching change and apparent loss of his lead recruiter there are causing him to have second thoughts.  The rumor mill is in full swing in the way that the rumor mill does, with affirmations and denials of everything and I'm not gonna even get into all that because I don't really do that.  Here's the bottom-line point: keep your eyes open for the next couple days because the possibility exists that the 2012 hoops class, which is already starting to look mighty awesome, could look twice as awesome by the end of the weekend.

weekend review, spring edition

Once again, we'll take a spin around some of the non-revenue sports and football recruiting. This seems like a pretty good format for Mondays and I think I'll keep it up, at least until the spring seasons wind down.

Starting with....

Swimming

The girls are ACC champs, and it wasn't even, like, close. They scored 848 points - almost 250 more than second place. To recap some of the domination:

- There are five relay events - we won all of them, which earns you 200 points.

- There are thirteen individual events, not including the diving, which we're a little weak at. With eight swimmers in each championship heat (and a further eight in the consolation heat, which still earns points) there are 104 possible slots. In a conference of 11 teams (no Wake Forest here) evenly distributing those spots would give each team 9.5 qualifying swimmers total. We had 39 of 104.

- Finishing last in the championship heat earns you 11 points. If you give us our 200 relay points, and give all 39 of our spots last place (impossible, because we had more than one swimmer in all events) that would give us enough points to win the meet by about 30 points.

- Of the eight swimmers in the 200 IM championship heat, six were 'Hoos, earning us 89 of a possible 118 points in that heat. P.S. - Only one, Megan Evo, was a senior. Four were underclassmen - three sophomores and a freshman.

- Of the 18 event records that existed before the championships, we broke 10.

The NCAA championships are about a month away.

Lacrosse

No surprises here - the team is 3-0 after a pretty dominating performance against SUNY-Cupcake (er, Stony Brook) on Saturday. About the only complaint so far this season is letting the opponents into the game in the second half - our opponents have scored twice as much (14 goals against 7) in the second half as the first, and Dom Starsia pretty explicitly called out the second-half execution after the Bryant game. Otherwise, the results have been pretty much what you'd expect when the #2 team in the land takes on a trio of cannon fodder.

As for last season's glaring concern - faceoffs - the Stony Brook game looked pretty good, but there are zero conclusions to be drawn here, since the 19-of-32 faceoff performance was exactly the same as last year. I'll wait til Syracuse to see if we really are any better at that. In the two games against the 'Cuse last year we won only one-third of the faceoffs, which is awful, and yet we went 1-1 against them and broke even on goal differential. Just break even on faceoffs and the sky's the limit.

Baseball

Yup, it's that season too. Baseball was one of my favorite things to go see in my student days because the "security" never cared to ask why we were wearing jackets in the 70-degree weather. (Jackets have pockets, pockets hold beer. If you went to college and didn't blow off class on one of the first beautiful warm spring afternoons of the year, smuggle a six-pack into Davenport Field and enjoy a ballgame and beer while sitting on the grass, you didn't go to college.)

Anyway, the season started exactly the same as it did last year: a dominating four-game sweep of a ridiculously overmatched Patriot League opponent; in this case, Bucknell. Which, like, great, but honestly in my limited looks at the baseball season this year I don't see any evidence we can expect anything more than last year's results: a middling ACC finish and a first-round exit from the NCAA regionals. I suppose I shouldn't complain. Simply making the NCAA tournament is more than some of our higher profile sports can claim.

Basketball

Not much to say here right now except that if you haven't already, you should go read Jerry Ratcliffe's article on this season's forgotten man, Mamadi Diane. A healthy Mo this season would have saved us a lot of embarrassment; unfortunately for all involved, it wasn't to be.

A little bit of something on the recruiting front here, too. We're in good shape to land PG Eric Atkins out of Maryland for the class of 2010, and soon. Atkins and Mychal Parker would make a pretty good first half of the recruiting class, no?

Football

As promised, an update to the recruiting board.

- Moved RB Kevin Parks to orange. 43 touchdowns FTW.

- Added WR E.J. Scott, TE Blake Barker, OT Robbie Havenstein, and S Dontae Johnson to the yellow section. For the most part these are Junior Day attendees, either the one we just had two weeks ago or the one coming up this Saturday the 28th.

- Added DE Henry Anderson to the red section. (Offer.) Also added to red: RB Khalek Shepherd (Junior Day invitee) and LB Nick Forbes (Offer, though given the nationwide interest it's unlikely he'll ever leave the red section. We've got better chances with Khairi Fortt and Aramide Olaniyan.)

- Added a few schools to a few prospects' lists, most notably Auburn to Olaniyan's. This is interesting because Auburn's recruiting footprint doesn't really overlap ours much. If Auburn is wandering up to the Blue Ridge foothills to recruit Olaniyan, this sounds like a prospect I very much want to see committed to UVA.

so apparently we weren't done yet

By now, of course, the secret is long since out. We all thought Dave Leitao was done with the '09 recruiting class and had no more scholarships to offer; we all thought wrong. As I'm sure you know already, top-ten prospect PF Renardo Sidney will be in Charlottesville this weekend to watch the opening of the season against VMI. Sidney is expected either to serve his one required year in the college ranks, and then head to the League, or follow Brandon Jennings over to Europe to start getting paid right away.

UVA fans would be best served operating under the assumption that we will never have Sidney, and that any seasons he spends in orange and blue are a bonus. This is not to say abandon all hope, but 2009 was already looking fairly bright, with the 'Bergs growing up some and Spurlock arriving on Grounds. Last week Sidney was not an option; next week, Sidney may not be an option, and in 2010, he likely won't be an option.

However, if indeed he's looking to make a one-and-done run in college and squeeze as many millions out of his draft status as he can, UVA would be a very logical choice:

- It's the ACC, where the college basketball spotlight shines brightest.
- He'd be surrounded with talent, yet he'd probably be head-and-shoulders above all of it.
- We're already poised for some success in 2009; deserved or not, he'd see the lion's share of credit (or at least, exposure) from any success we have.
- New gym new facilities yada yada yada.

So cross your fingers.

This seems as good a time as any to offer my thoughts on this NBA rule forbidding high schoolers to jump straight into the draft. For some reason, echoes of controversy still linger, and no doubt they'll return in full force if David Stern decides to push for a second year of wait time. As with many such things, I'm strongly opinionated.

- First off, nobody has a right to play in the NBA, no matter how damn talented they are. The moment a writer mentions a "right" to play in the NBA, he loses all credibility. The NBA can bar anyone they damn please as long as their rules for doing so don't run afoul of actual laws. I really don't see why people will accept a minimum age for things like smoking and drinking, but not the NBA. Sudden big-ass piles of wealth are at least as dangerous as tobacco.

- Second, everyone benefits. Everyone. The NBA benefits by having better quality players filter through to the draft. The college sport benefits by getting the stars on campus. Fans get to see the quality of play improve in both leagues. And yes, the players benefit by learning whether or not they're ready for the show, getting time to hone their game against better competition than the pasty white kids from the preppy school across town, coming under the auspices of a father-figure coach for at least one season, and having extra resources available to mature and make better decisions. Can anyone tell me Sebastien Telfair would not have benefited from a year in college?

This article notes that the starting 2 guard in this weekend's exhibition was not Jeff Jones, nor Sylven Landesburg, but Mustapha Farrakhan. While that's interesting enough in and of itself, I think the real lesson to learn is that the combinations this year are in no way set in stone, and we should expect to see Leitao do a lot of experimenting. The team is full of freshmen and sophomores, and juniors that haven't played much (Tat, Meyinsse) and it's unlikely that the rotation against VMI will have much more than a passing resemblance to the one we use in March against Maryland, and not just because the non-conference season is walk-on season.

The ACC soccer tournament begins tomorrow (for us - the 8/9 game between NC State and VT is actually tonight), and I really don't have high hopes. We have Duke in the first round, but what we don't have is Agorsor or Freshman of the Year Tchani. And if we get past Duke, #1 seed Wake awaits. The future is bright for this team with three players on the ACC all-freshman team (Tchani, Shawn Barry, and Brian Ownby), just not the immediate future.