unfavorable comparison

I have to admit I've been unsure how to start this post.  I have all sorts of great ideas for how to finish it, each more spiteful than the last.  Maybe I'll go with the anecdote of the Cleveland Browns fan who died this past summer and wrote in his obituary that he wanted some of the Browns to act as pallbearers for his funeral - so they could let him down one last time.

I only hope I can maintain that kind of phlegmatic humor for the next 15 months, because they're going to be awful ones as far as football is concerned.  Probably the next 12 after that too since it looks likely that a new coach will take a minute or two in getting up to speed as well.  Hopefully that guy can coach his way out of a brown paper bag, because he's going to get here and find a lot of fans wearing them.

This season is a lesson, really.  I'm starting to feel awfully vindicated, in a grotesque way. The UVA-fan conventional wisdom has always been about "building for the future" by pulling experienced players the moment the season starts to go south and putting in wide-eyed freshmen to "get their reps" because it will "pay dividends down the road."  When Marc Verica was starting, fans wanted Ross Metheny or Mike Rocco instead.  When Rocco was starting, fans wanted David Watford instead, and then they wanted Phillip Sims.  Now we're doing exactly what this breed of fans has always wanted, because we have no choice - and it's pissing the future down the drain.  Every loss brings us mercifully closer to the end of the Mike London era, and sends recruits scurrying elsewhere.  Melvin Keihn has liked UVA for a long time and he comes from a very pro-UVA school, and he will probably not go to UVA.  London has been working on Jamil Kamara for three years, and his current leader is Wisconsin. (This said, Kamara seems to be the type of recruit whose leader is the last school he visited.)   Tim Settle is a crucial 2015 recruit, whose recruitment is getting more and more wide open by the day.  2015 needs to be a huge class, because there will be jillions of seniors next year, and London is going to walk into that recruiting cycle with one foot in the lame-duck grave.

Watford may yet bloom in 2015, of course.  Can't rule that out.  The play-for-the-future crowd certainly doesn't have that part wrong yet.  I couldn't decide whether he would progress or regress during this Duke game, I just didn't anticipate him doing both.

At any rate, we are now in dangerous territory.  It could've been avoided simply by not shitting the bed with the lights on in the second half.  The danger is not so much that the London era might be over soon.  I'm taking it for granted that it will be.  You're to take for granted now that I don't have any more faith in his coaching abilities.  I say this reluctantly and with a twinge of regret, even, because he seems like good people, and a guy who genuinely gives a shit about his players.  But I've given him the same slack one gives a player - and in a player's fourth year, we expect him to stop making stupid freshman mistakes because he ought to have grown up enough by now.  Well, here is London's senior year, so to speak, and he hasn't figured out shit.  I'm not going to spend every week ranting about it because I accept that he's not going anywhere after this season.  Just read into everything I say an assumption that London doesn't know how to fix the problems.

No, the real danger is that London's tenure, five years long if we continue down this path, is going to go down in history as even worse than that of the most vilified figure in UVA football history.  Al Groh at least started off pretty well.  Sure, he might have been micromanaging, overly self-assured, and totally inflexible; sure, he irritated a few high school coaches; sure, he pissed off a few people on the way out, and again by letting Georgia Tech structure his contract so we were paying him to coach there; sure, he helped dry up the instate recruiting pipelines; sure, he went to one bowl game in his last four years.  But you have to give this to the man in the glass: He had a winning record against fucking Duke.

********************************************

Prediction summary:

-- Kevin Parks gains 100+ yards.  Parks sputtered out with lame blocking and generally bad decisions from Watford on the read-option, and gained only 50.

-- The UVA run offense generates about 200 yards.  I really thought we were well on our way here, but again, thppbbbtt, and again, exactly half what I expected.

-- David Watford averages over six yards a throw. (Whee.)

-- Watford tops 200 yards passing. (Whee, again.)  Watford did succeed in both endeavors; the Duke pass defense was pretty awful and Watford looked very good early in calmly finding the guy that some Duke safety or linebacker would leave wide open in a futile all-out rush at the QB.  Unfortunately, Watford got happy-armed as time went on and started overthrowing everyone in sight.

-- Duke's passing game tops 300 yards.  It "only" got 292.  Can I have that one?  I'm having that one.  Largely the reason it didn't is because Boone looked like crap early.  He settled in nicely, though, eh?  And he'd have blown past 300 easily based only on how our defense played.

-- Neither team comes up with a turnover all game long.  Both quarterbacks threw a pick, so, no.

Going three of six - a very dubious three of six, but whatever, the Tigers lost and the Lions lost and the Red Wings lost and UVA lost and I had the restraint not to drive into a bridge embankment so the third prediction is my prize - makes me 16-for-36 on the season.  Also, I came damn close to nailing that final score, so I'm 4-3 both straight up and against the spread now.  This might be unfair, though, at this point; all I have to do is pick us to lose every week and at least then I'm guaranteed a winning record.

season preview: Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

Schedule:

8/31: Elon
9/7: BYE
9/14: @ Duke
9/21: North Carolina
9/26: Virginia Tech (Thu.)
10/5: @ Miami
10/12: @ Brigham Young
10/19: Syracuse
10/26: @ Virginia
11/2: Pittsburgh
11/9: BYE
11/14: @ Clemson (Thu.)
11/23: Alabama A&M
11/30: Georgia

Skip: Boston College, Florida State, Maryland, NC State, Wake Forest

2012 results:

Virginia Tech: L, 20-17
Presbyterian: W, 59-3
Virginia: W, 56-20
Miami: L, 42-36
Middle Tennessee: L, 49-28
Clemson: L, 47-31
Boston College: W, 37-17
Brigham Young: L, 47-17
Maryland: W, 33-13
North Carolina: W, 68-50
Duke: W, 42-24
Georgia: L, 42-10
Florida State: L, 21-15 (ACC championship)
USC: W, 21-7 (Sun Bowl)

Record: 7-7 (5-3); 3rd of 6, Coastal Division

Projected starters:

QB: Vad Lee (rSo.)
BB: David Sims (5Sr.)
AB: Robert Godhigh (5Sr.)
AB: B.J. Bostic (rJr.)
WR: Corey Dennis (Jr.)
WR: Darren Waller (Jr.)
LT: Ray Beno (5Sr.)
LG: Will Jackson (5Sr.)
C: Jay Finch (5Sr.)
RG: Shaquille Mason (Jr.)
RT: Morgan Bailey (rJr.)

DE: Jeremiah Attaochu (Sr.)
DT: Euclid Cummings (5Sr.)
NT: Adam Gotsis (So.)
DE: Emmanuel Dieke (5Sr.)
LB: Quayshawn Nealy (rJr.)
LB: Jabari Hunt-Days (rSo.)
LB: Brandon Watts (5Sr.)
CB: Jemea Thomas (5Sr.)
CB: Louis Young (Sr.)
S: Isaiah Johnson (Sr.)
S: Chris Milton (rSo.)

K: David Scully (5Sr.)
P: Sean Poole (5Sr.)

(Italics indicate new starter.)

Coach: Paul Johnson, 6th season

Media prediction: 4th of 7, Coastal Division

All-ACC:

2012 1st team: G Omoregie Uzzi
2012 2nd team: none
2012 HM: DE Jeremiah Attaochu, C Jay Finch, OT Will Jackson, RB Orwin Smith
2013 preseason: DE Jeremiah Attaochu

(Italics indicate departed player.)

Georgia Tech, in 2012, was the beneficiary of serendipity when they finished third in the division - but behind the two teams on postseason bans.  It earned them a trip to the ACCCG, which they damn near won; they then received an exemption from the rule banning losing teams from bowl games (perfectly fair, IMO, since they wouldn't have gone to the CG if not for UNC and Miami's punishments, and GT didn't deserve to be punished for other teams' cheating ways) and used it to good measure, defeating a severely underachieving USC team in the Sun Bowl.  This year, they've got a new defensive coordinator after canning Al Groh midseason, complete with a return to a more traditional 4-3, but the offense is the same now-familiar Paul Johnson option craziness.

-- Offense

The story here is that the same offensive line that blocked for GT's offense last year will return in full this year, but the people they block for will be very different.  Only B-back (fullback, essentially) David Sims returns among the skill position players.  Sims is a steady bruiser but he's the hammer, not the one called upon to make big plays.  At A-back, Robert Godhigh and B.J. Bostic have the upper hand among a stable of players looking to step into Orwin Smith's large shows.  If last year's stats are any indication, Godhigh is GT's best chance for finding a big-timer; not only did he average 7.9 yards per carry, but he caught 15 passes for 227 yards, both third on the team, and led the Jackets as well with four TD catches.  Bostic may have some work to do in order to gain separation from Tony Zenon and former QB prospect Synjyn Days.

Days is in the mix at A-back because redshirt sophomore Vad Lee seized the QB job last season with some impressive performances.  In particular, Lee engineered GT's 68-point outburst in their win over UNC in what turned out to be the highest-scoring ACC game in history.  Lee's passing needs some work, but it's not bad for where he is in his development; he was, however, a more dangerous and electric runner than starter Tevin Washington.  Big things are expected of Lee this year.

The primary receiver this year looks to be 6'5" Darren Waller, who fits the Paul Johnson mold of big, tall flankers who can block and occasionally win a 50-yard jump ball against a cornerback who momentarily forgot to cover him.  GT is otherwise dangerously thin at receiver.  (Not that they need a ton of depth, but, you know.)  Waller's opposite-side starter, Corey Dennis, is a junior but in his first season on the offensive side of the ball, and the rest of the depth chart consists of redshirt freshmen.

Some injury-related shuffling in 2012 resulted in six guys on the O-line starting enough games for me to be able to label them "returning starters"; five of them actually return.  Center Jay Finch earned all-ACC honorable mention last year, and joining him in the HM category was LG Will Jackson.  Jackson technically earned the honor as a tackle, having been pressed into RT duty last year; he's versatile but a more natural guard, and returns to the inside this season.  Ray Beno is a fixture at left tackle, and Shaquille Mason is a promising talent who played left guard last season and moves to the right side this year.  Mason jumped into the rotation almost immediately as a true freshman in 2011 and started 12 games as a sophomore last year.

The Jackets' offense ought to be tough to stop this year.  You can't beat the experience on the O-line, especially in a system like this, and Vad Lee has already turned potential into production and should keep doing so this year.  Despite the array of relative inexperience at A-back, there are more than enough talented candidates to find a few playmakers, Godhigh being at the top of the list.  The only major pitfall is at receiver, which isn't a crippling problem for Paul Johnson's offense, but could take a cylinder or two offline if Waller gets hurt or doesn't live up to expectations.

-- Defense

GT's move back to the 4-3 from Al Groh's 3-4 brings with it the personnel issues you'd expect: a few too many linebackers and a few too few linemen.  Even after moving Jeremiah Attaochu to DE almost immediately after Groh's sacking, GT has two very good candidates for their middle linebacker position.  The likely starter is 2012's third-leading tackler, Jabari Hunt-Days, but despite injury troubles and only starting one game last season, fifth-year senior Daniel Drummond is a productive player when on the field, and gives GT some excellent depth at MLB.

Their best and most versatile LB, however, is outside backer Quayshawn Nealy, a player with good skills against both the run and the pass.  Nealy intercepted two passes last year and piled up 79 tackles as well.  On the other side, Brandon Watts is another highly experienced player who is very good against the run.

Up front, Emmanuel Dieke is a decent player at end but it's Attaochu who will put the fear of God into opposing quarterbacks.  He had 10 sacks last year in Groh's hand-down linebacker role and later as a more traditional defensive end.  Attaochu is on four different award watch lists and ought to be able to achieve double-digit sacks again this year.  On the interior, Euclid Cummings moves into a starter's role on the inside after being a rotational end in the 3-4 and getting three sacks; however, Adam Gotsis is the one capturing most of the attention.  Gotsis is a 21-year old Aussie who's just a sophomore eligibility-wise, and who jumped right into the rotation as a true freshman last year with only a couple years of football experience under his belt.  Tech really likes the potential he brings to the table.

There's also a lot of experience in the secondary, where three seniors are holding down starting spots.  CB Jemea Thomas picked off four passes last year and was one tackle away from being the Jackets' leading tackler; that honor went to safety Isaiah Johnson, another of GT's senior returning starters.  GT could use some more production out of CB Louis Young, and Chris Milton, as the lone new starter in the defensive backfield, brings a little uncertainty to the unit.  However, Milton jumped into the rotation as a redshirt freshman last year and has potential as well.

Overall, the defense has got to find a way to keep defensive backs from being the top two tacklers on the team.  There are seven seniors among the eleven starters, so there's no lack of experience, and those seven don't include the best linebacker, Nealy.  There's also some intriguing possibilities among the younger players, such as Hunt-Days and Gotsis.  The change to the 4-3 seemed to shock the team into performing in the later stages of the season, and that experience could be a launching board for this year.  GT needs no more debacles like giving up 49 points to MTSU.

-- Special teams

Placekicking was a sore spot for the Jackets last year, but of the three kickers who tried a field goal last year, only David Scully returns.  If Scully doesn't improve on his 4-for-8 performance, GT will open the competition right back up; Scully also missed two extra points and was 1-for-3 on FG attempts under 30 yards.  Poor.  The punting from Sean Poole is decent but not extraordinary.

-- Outlook

It's really not a stretch to think GT could make the ACC CG again; a couple of the media writers thought so as well.  They have the ability on defense to improve in that area and fix what was wrong in 2012, and the tools exist on offense to excel there as well.  There's an experienced offensive line and enough potential at the skill positions to not miss a step, or even improve over last year.  This should at least be a bowl team with a better record than in 2012, and an outside contender for the division title.

game preview: Georgia Tech

Date/Time: October 9, 3:30 PM

TV: ESPNUVA

History against the Yellow Jackets: 16-15-1

Last matchup: GT 34, UVA 9; 10/24/09 in Charlottesville

Last week: FSU 34, UVA 14; GT 24, WF 20

Line: Georgia Tech by 10

Opposing blogs: From The Rumble Seat

Uniform combination: blue jersey, orange pants

Injury report:

OUT

WR Bobby Smith
WR Tim Smith
TE Joe Torchia

DOUBTFUL - none

QUESTIONABLE

FB Terence Fells-Danzer
C Mike Price

PROBABLE

OT Landon Bradley
WR Kris Burd
LB Darnell Carter
RB Raynard Horne
WR Brian Oden
TE Colter Phillips

Other useful stuff:
GT season preview
FTRS Q&A
Other half
Updated depth chart

Is this the biggest game of the season? No, but ask around and you'll find a faction of the fanbase that wants this one more than any other this year. Any other. In some circles, the game discussion starts and ends with two words: Al Groh. Tech's Paul Johnson hired Groh to install his 3-4 defense, and the results have been mixed so far, giving UVA fans plenty of reason to believe in the chance of beating the ex-head coach.

HOW WE CAN WIN

- Groh is Groh. You think Al Groh will throw what the FTRS boys call the Grohfense out the window for the UVA game? Detractors and defenders alike can agree on this: Groh doesn't mix things up for the sake of it. He brought what he knows to Georgia Tech, which means they'll be running exactly the same defense UVA ran for nine years. The same defense Mike London ran as defensive coordinator. You know where I'm going with this.

- Big-time safety help on run defense. GT's passing game has been ineffective all season. Joshua Nesbitt is completing passes at under a 40% clip, and the wide receivers have caught just 15 of Nesbitt's 25 completions for an average of 10.9 yards a catch. That's a far cry from 2009 when Demaryius Thomas was the passing game, and averaged over 25 YPC. Bottom line: there's nothing scary about Tech's receivers Stephen Hill and Tyler Melton, and I'm totally happy to let Ras-I Dowling and Chase Minnifield deal with them and cheat the safeties up to help in run support. The corners should be instructed to stick with their receivers - Dowling and Minnifield make one of the best CB tandems in the league and should have little trouble - and the safeties should crash the line of scrimmage and focus on stopping the run.

HOW WE CAN LOSE

- Predictability. So London knows the GT defense. Yup, and Al Groh knows the UVA offense. He even feels confident enough to point out to the media that UVA still (despite the many coordinator changes and the head coaching change) runs a lot of the same stuff Groh ran for Billy McMullen. This is the same style of offense Groh likely preferred. Groh is a wizard on defense, and if Bill Lazor allows UVA to fall into too many patterns, it'll get shut right down. GT's defense may have trouble executing but there's something about knowing what's coming that makes that problem go away.

- Changing to the 4-3 defense. Yes, I worry about this. The 3-4 is uniquely able to deal with Johnson's triple option. Because it already demands the use of a big nose tackle that can clog the middle, it can take away the middle option just by being itself, and with fewer players. That leaves more players to roam the edges, spy the QB and RB, and shut down the running game. It can turn those consistent four- and five-yard gains into one- and two-yarders. The 4-3, being what the majority of college teams play, is what this offense was designed to attack. London and Jim Reid need to find a way to neutralize this inherent advantage. Especially if they're going to insist on using a 245-pound defensive tackle.

- Poor passing game. Nothing invigorates the GT offense more than the ability to dominate in time-of-possession, and nothing facilitates that kind of domination like three-and-outs on offense brought about by incomplete passes. An efficient, well-run passing game won't guarantee victory here, but an inaccurate outing by Verica will likely guarantee a loss.

HOW THE GAME WILL GO

I like UVA's chances a lot better without Rodney McLeod - or any of the defensive backs for that matter - on the injury report. I tell ya though: for all that we didn't know about this team following the first three games, we don't know much more after the fourth. It doesn't help that GT is still kind of a work in progress themselves. The Jackets' offense isn't a high-powered Ferrari - it's more like a smooth four-cylinder engine with insanely good gas mileage. Only, one of the cylinders is misfiring, thanks to the lack of a wide receiver to make the passing game go. Mileage may vary. And the switch to the 3-4 is a big shift, as far as these things go. Not quite on the scale of Rich Rodriguez bringing the ninja spread to one of the Big Tenniest of Big Ten schools, but the growing pains are similar at Tech.

Remember, Wake Forest is one of the conference's worst teams, and Tech barely beat their 4th-string quarterback. So this is not the GT of the past two years. Still: we have our own growing pains, and it's still a safe bet that the offense will still have more bad times than good on Saturday.

So....what? Very few outcomes would surprise me on Saturday. GT is a team ripe for a blowout and you know how UVA teams of late have pulled surprise blowouts out of their asses when least expected. So even with that, I'd just shrug and chalk it up to a developing pattern. I'm feeling too wishy-washy about this game to make an actual prediction, so let's put it this way: the outcome that would not-surprise me the most would be a close loss. We're on the road, after all.

REST OF THE ACC

Virginia Tech vs. Central Michigan, 12:00
Boston College @ NC State, 12:00
Clemson @ North Carolina, 3:30
Wake Forest vs. Navy, 6:30
Florida State @ Miami, 8:00
Duke, Maryland: bye week

q&a with From The Rumble Seat

In what has become a thrice-yearly tradition (for football, basketball, and baseball, and it's a shame there's no lacrosse team there), it's just not Georgia Tech week without trading a Q&A with the engineer types at From The Rumble Seat, as ever the finest GT blog around. Here are their answers to the questions I had for them; soon enough you'll be able to read what I gave 'em for answers. Always a good way to find out what the opposition thinks is important about UVA football.

1. Seriously, what's going on? NC State gashed your defense and if Wake Forest wasn't the ACC's second-worst team and using their 4th-string QB, I doubt GT would have pulled that one out either. Is the offense out of sync? Any buyer's remorse with Groh? What's the one biggest problem that needs to get fixed lest GT end up in the Emerald Bowl?

FTRS: Defensively, Al Groh said it best when he said, "There’s no supermarket we can go down to and buy new players. This is our team as constituted." We lost our two most talented players to the NFL draft last season and returned everyone else from a relatively middle of the road 2009 defense. Factor in the transition to the Grohfense and we've got a fair amount of confusion, lack of 3-4 style players, and bad luck. There is no buyer's remorse, however, as most Tech fans are happy with the fundamental football we're seeing from our defense. Guys aren't flying past the ball carrier, missing tackles or completely leaving guys wide open in the passing game. It's just a work in progress on defense.

Offensively, we've had poor execution, untimely injuries, and lost talent to the NFL. Not having a dominant wide receiver has been pretty frustrating. Tech fans have watched at least one first round receiver play football at Tech since 2004. Now, it's only natural to compare our current stable to their predecessors (Calvin and Demaryius) and the comparisons haven't really materialized. Oh and we're fumbling about 40% more often than in 2009. That really hurts an option team.

2. Leaving personnel out of it, do you prefer the old 4-3 or Groh's 3-4 as a way to deal with ACC offenses?

FTRS: Our 4-3 was awful under Dave Wommack particularly in 2009. It couldn't stop a JV offense. In 2010, the 3-4 is still a work in progress. I think Tech fans will definitely give Groh a couple years to build up some decent talent before we judge him harshly. Wommack came in as a 4-2-5 guy and had all of Tenuta's well-coached-up guys to shield his inadequacies as a coordinator in 2008. When a majority of them left, the lack of adjustments and poor fundamental football made GT's 2009 defense fairly inept.

3. Let's assume Groh has impeccable knowledge of UVA's tendencies and personnel and is devising a brilliant scheme that will shut down the UVA offense if perfectly executed. What should UVA do to avoid that? What players on GT's defense should UVA focus on avoiding and what weaknesses should they try to attack?

FTRS: I recommend starting everyone on your scout team against Tech. That way Groh has no idea what GT will do to counterattack it. If the guy doesn't have a scholarship, he better be starting on Saturday. (Editor's note: here's where I'm tempted to make a crack about how you can't tell the difference, but I think the offense will look better this week than last.)

Since the season started, most teams have avoided running towards Brad Jefferson. He is playing one of the inside linebacker spots and has essentially herded opposing offenses to the opposite side of the field. Jerrard Tarrant is a play maker at corner and safety but is also highly susceptible to being burned. Our weak points are all over the field. We have an inexperienced, yet talented safety in freshman Isaiah Johnson. Our defensive line applies minimal pressure and our linebackers are often out of position. Your offense should find some success.

4. A lot of UVA fans really, really want to beat Al Groh. Is there any win-one-for-the-Grohster feeling, going up against his old team, among GT fans?

FTRS: GT fans really dislike UVA because UVA is the fly in the soup of GT. 2008 is the perfect example. UVA wasn't the best team ever coming into GT's 2008 homecoming. When UVA left, they had ended a 12 game homecoming win streak and essentially ruined GT's shot at an ACC Coastal Title. (Editor's note: Oopsy-daisy.) Oh and UVA is 12-7 against GT since the epic 1990 game (including an 8-1 home record). Al Groh just throws fuel on the fire for most GT fans. We want to beat UVA already and Al Groh adds a little spice to the hate-filled burrito that is the GT fan base.

5. Seriously, I hate being other teams' homecoming opponent (except when we win). Couldn't you have waited a week and had it against MTSU instead?

FTRS: I don't really know what goes into the selection of homecoming dates. Looking back over the year, the homecoming game has averaged about 1,000 more people per contest than average football games at Bobby Dodd. And we try to schedule the last home game in October. I guess Dan Radakovich felt that UVA was more enticing for GT alums to attend than MTSU. (Editor's note: Smart man.) It was probably a mutual decision between the Alumni Association, Athletic Association, and City of Atlanta (for traffic). Generally speaking, we don't schedule patsies on homecoming as the last six were UVA, VT, UVA, Army, Miami, and Clemson.

have we learned anything?

Here we are, a month into the season. UVA's got wins in the games that were supposed to be wins, and a loss in the game that was supposed to be a loss. In this respect they're no different from 90% of teams in the country. The problem with that is it makes it awfully hard to tell what things will look like going forward, and it makes the weeks interminably long. You want to find out how the team really looks against the competition that matters.

Which is a vast improvement over 2009, which was over as soon as it began. Losing to William & Mary tends to clarify the picture in all the wrong ways. Better to wonder how you'll look against Florida State than know you're going to lose to Duke.

Right now, though, wondering is about all there is. I'd fret about the running game's relative inefficiency against VMI, but it looked good against USC. I'd celebrate Marc Verica's mistake-free day and the quality outings from freshmen Ross Metheny and Mike Rocco, but VMI makes superstars-for-a-day out of a lot of people. I did like to see the defense allowing just 49 yards on VMI drives that started after the first quarter - helluva number - but I said beforehand that the Keydet rushing attack stank to high heaven, so I can't claim to be pleasantly surprised.

(Well, mostly mistake-free from Verica, anyway. Verica's capable of some beautiful throws and they were on display on Saturday, but he's also usually good for one really bad idea per game, and his Dipshit Decision of the Day came on UVA's second drive as he turned a 6-yard sack into a 17-yard sack by hauling ass toward his own goal line. Much better than an interception, though.)

So the real test of the season comes in the next three weeks, and those weeks just ooze with intrigue. Florida State, whom we haven't seen for four years. Georgia Tech in Atlanta, where UVA typically struggles but handed GT their last home loss on the most recent trip. Al Groh coaches there, you know, but I bet nobody will mention that at all during the run-up to the game. And then there's UNC, at home, with a big streak to protect. Seems like every season I manage to identify a crucial series of games - this is it here. Even a single win would protect our bowl hopes, even with the requirement to win seven. And that's the best news of all, because all three games are totally winnable.

Thoughts that didn't fit....

- Does Keith Payne ever actually get tackled, as in wrestled to the ground? His runs seem to end mostly in a large standing gaggle of shoving players that eventually grinds to a halt, thus ending forward progress, rather than an actual tackle. Sometimes this gaggle crawls slowly forward, gathering players like a weird helmeted version of Katamari Damacy, and in this way ten yards are gained and the strange career of Keith Payne grows in legend.

- I don't like monochrome uniforms and never have, but this version of blue-on-blue is an improvement over the last. But I don't think the white-on-white will be.

- Was that a kickoff return for a touchdown? Like, all the way to the end zone? Do you know how long it's been since we did that? So long that I thought it'd been since my student days. The last one I could think of was the Marquis Weeks runback against UNC in 2002 to spark that big second-half comeback. Right opponent, right player, off by two years. So it's actually been six years. Again: usual caveats about VMI vs. opponents that can be expected to put up some resistance. It was still fun.

- Speaking of not learning anything, garbage-time action didn't do any better than training camp did when it comes to picking a backup quarterback. Both Metheny and Rocco looked good. Rocco was up and down - more up than down. I fault him on the interception, for this reason: it's nigh-impossible for the observing fan to determine whether the receiver or quarterback is at fault for a bungled throw like that. So I have to give the benefit of the doubt to the veteran receiver instead of the rookie. And the ball shouldn't have been thrown even if the receiver had been there: that safety would've ensured the ball was never caught. Can't lock in on the route so hard you forget about the personnel.

Then again, Rocco's arm motion doesn't look like the ball is coming out of his elbow. Metheny's weird like that. But both look accurate. And Metheny's arm strength must be halfway decent: his one incompletion came with an especially duck-like motion and off his back foot, falling over, and he still managed to overthrow the receiver.

- Lastly: Rocco. A fanbase still pissed off (sometimes rightly, sometimes not) about Al Groh's extensive use of true freshmen in 2009 had alarm bells go off when the true freshman quarterback stepped onto the field to get some garbage time in once the game was out of hand.

This amused me. There is, of course, a very, very vocal contingent of the fanbase that despises the ground Groh walks on, and largely sees Mike London as the anti-Groh and is inclined to defend him on those grounds alone if they have to. London is a very different coach, but not so different as to have none of Groh in him. If I were to tell you of a UVA coach that burned a freshman defensive back's redshirt on special teams and autocratically told his coordinator to run a different system from the one he specialized in, Groh would come to mind first; London didn't fall far from the tree in those two respects.

As for Rocco, I'm not the least bit upset to have seen him play yesterday, and it has nothing to do with London or Groh. Anyone who dislikes the call is reasoning that it'd be better to have Rocco as a fifth-year senior - theoretically his best year - than for a few plays as a true freshman. But this is making an assumption about the year 2014, which in college football is two eternities and an eon away. Nobody can even say with 100% certainty that there'll even be an ACC as we know it by then, let alone that Mike Rocco will be/would have been UVA's starting (or even) quarterback. But we do know this with certainty: next year, Marc Verica will not be the starter, and we'll need a new one. And we know that we have no idea who that new guy will be, and further it'll be the single, absolute most important decision Mike London and Bill Lazor will have to make. Why not give yourself as many evaluation points as possible to make the choice? Playing Metheny exclusively gives him a leg up on the competition and halfway anoints him the 2011 starter; what if he can't take advantage? Then you've hurt yourself by not developing Rocco (or whoever) to the fullest in preparation for the job. Here's hoping for another blowout this year, maybe against EMU or Duke, and for another chance to see them both in action.

season preview: Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets


Schedule:

9/4: South Carolina State
9/11: @ Kansas
9/18: @ North Carolina
9/25: NC State
10/2: @ Wake Forest
10/9: Virginia
10/16: Middle Tennessee
10/23: @ Clemson
10/30: BYE
11/4: @ Virginia Tech (Thu.)
11/13: Miami
11/20: Duke
11/27: @ Georgia

Skip: Boston College, Florida State, Maryland

Projected starters:

QB: Joshua Nesbitt (Sr.)
BB: Anthony Allen (5Sr.)
AB: Roddy Jones (rJr.)
AB: Embry Peeples (Jr.)
WR: Tyler Melton (Jr.)
WR: Stephen Hill (So.)
LT: Nick Claytor (rJr.)
LG: Nick McRae (rSo.)
C: Sean Bedford (5Sr.)
RG: Omoregie Uzzi (rSo.)
RT: Austin Barrick (5Sr.)

DE: Izaan Cross (So.)
NT: Ben Anderson (5Sr.)
DE: Jason Peters (rJr.)
OLB: Anthony Barnes (5Sr.)
ILB: Brad Jefferson (Sr.)
ILB: Brandon Watts (rFr.)
OLB: Anthony Egbuniwe (5Sr.)
CB: Mario Butler (Sr.)
CB: Dominique Reese (5Sr.)
S: Mario Edwards (5Sr.)
S: Jerrard Tarrant (rJr.)

K: Scott Blair (Sr.)
P: Chandler Anderson (rJr.)

(Italics indicate new starter.)

Coach: Paul Johnson (3rd season)

Media prediction: 3rd, Coastal Division

All-ACC:

2009 1st team: QB Josh Nesbitt, RB Jonathan Dwyer, WR Demaryius Thomas, G Cord Howard, C Sean Bedford, DE Derrick Morgan
2009 2nd team: S Morgan Burnett
2009 HM: LB Brad Jefferson
2010 preseason: C Sean Bedford

(Italics indicate returning player.)


In both of his seasons as Georgia Tech's coach, Paul Johnson has been the ACC Coach of the Year. Just on principle, it's not likely the media will want to give it to him again, but if Georgia Tech repeats as Coastal champions, this might be the one year of his three that he's most deserving. GT has lost a lot of talent from last year, but since when has Johnson been the kind of coach that depends on superior talent for his success? Adding to the subplot is the switch to the 3-4 defense brought about by the hiring of Al Groh as defensive coordinator - a move that has a (rather overly bitter, I think) portion of the UVA fanbase elevating the GT game to the level of the one against the other Tech in terms of importance.


OFFENSE


Almost half of the ACC 1st team offense in 2009 was comprised of Yellow Jackets, so dominant was the GT offense. Only Nevada outgained GT on the ground nationally, and despite (or because of) the heavily run-oriented offense, GT led the country in yards per passing attempt at 10.6 - the only offense to reach double digits. But most of that talent has moved on - except, notably, for senior quarterback Joshua Nesbitt. It'll be tough for Nesbitt to improve on last season - named the top quarterback in the ACC while leading his team to a conference championship - but improving his completion percentage of 46.3% would be a step in that direction.

The two other big yardage-gainers are going to have to be replaced, though. Anthony Allen gets a promotion to B-back to replace the graduated Jonathan Dwyer. Roddy Jones returns at A-back, and though Embry Peeples is new to the starting gig, he didn't see much of a difference in 2009 playing time between himself and the two starters there. If the offensive line is up to snuff, the running game will be its usual dominant self. Expect very little drop in production on the ground, if any.

Demaryius Thomas is going to be tougher to replace. Tall and immensely productive, as well as a tenacious blocker, Thomas dominated the GT receiving game. He averaged 25 yards a catch and was responsible for two-thirds of the passing game's output. Taking his place in the lineup is the even taller - but much lankier - Stephen Hill. There are high hopes for Hill, but neither he nor Tyler Melton is the blocker that Thomas was. Hill will step into Thomas's role as the featured deep receiver and go-to guy for end zone fade routes, but at least early on, expect the passes to be a little more evenly distributed than in the past.

The offensive line has to replace three starters, but the most important - center Sean Bedford - returns for a fifth season. Bedford has risen from walk-on defensive lineman to Outland Trophy watch-lister and is the #1 factor in GT's ability to grind you down, five yards at a time. Austin Barrick is an athletic enough tackle that Paul Johnson even briefly considered him at A-back early in his tenure. Most of the rest of the line, though, has seen relatively little game action, and this unit will need to use its fairly easy early schedule to gel and get ready for the bigger games later in the season.

DEFENSE

Al Groh coaches this unit. There, that's out of the way. As you know, Groh is a 3-4 guy, and that's what he's brought to Georgia Tech. One of the first things that means is that two starting defensive tackles get squeezed into one slot. It's the unfortunate way things work out that DT is where most of the starting experience lies when it comes to returning players. Tech has to figure out how to get playing time for returning DT starters Ben Anderson and Logan Walls, while at the same time breaking in two new defensive ends.

All-conference end Derrick Morgan is off to the NFL, but what of the other 2009 starter at DE? In usual Al Groh fashion, Anthony Egbuniwe moves to OLB, where he'll play the pass-rushing linebacker role so familiar to UVA fans, and therefore get to keep a hand on the ground. Groh also has the heady ILB he likes in Brad Jefferson, who's entering his third season as a starter in the middle. Jefferson was the leading tackler in 2009 with 95, and Groh's system should help him easily reach triple digits.

The secondary loses all-star safety Morgan Burnett, who was Tech's all-over-the-field type in 2009. But the blow is softened by the return of CB Mario Butler and Jerrard Tarrant, each of whom picked off a pair of passes in 2009. Tarrant moves to safety this year, switching places with Dominique Reese, who started six games at safety last year. GT was one of the weaker pass defenses in the conference last year and gave up a ton of touchdowns through the air, and while there's a lot of experience here, there's a lot of room for improvement, too.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Chandler Anderson is a strong-legged punter, averaging over 42 yards, but Scott Blair's leg is neither exceptionally accurate nor exceptionally strong. His terrific performance against Clemson in the ACCCG was absolutely crucial, but he also missed some closer ones in some of Tech's closer losses. Sophomore Orwin Smith set a GT record for kick return yardage and should return in that role, as should Jerrard Tarrant for punt returns. GT had one of the conference's best punt coverage units in 2009 but clearly the worst kick coverage squad, the only conference team to allow two KR touchdowns.

OUTLOOK

Because of all the talent Tech has to replace on offense, the media figures GT will be leapfrogged this year by VT and Miami. I'm not so sure. Paul Johnson made his name by winning with less talent, and he hired the one ACC coach whose defense was best able to stop his old-school offensive system. If there's any difficulty to be overcome this year, it's probably that which results from a relatively earthshaking transition on defense. But GT's defense was nothing special in 2009, and Groh is now left free to focus entirely on what he does best. I think the defense will improve, if even only slightly, and if the offense takes any steps backwards, it won't be much. There's a strong likelihood GT will be 7-0 going into their rematch with Clemson. That's followed by a murderous November, but the easy early season means GT is likely to control their own destiny as they go. I'm not betting against them.

i'm just super-excited about this

Hey, remember when UVA had a good football team? Well, if your memory needs a little jogging, I've got just the thing. Thanks to the miracle of ESPN Classic, the old 2003 Tire Bowl is now part of the videos library. I'm all kinds of pleased with it (except for the fact that they cut out the first-quarter goal-line stand, that's a little annoying.) Although I do owe you this warning: I was at that game and only just now realized how lucky I was to have had the foresight to get tickets, because Pam Ward is the announcer. Pam Ward is excruciating. If you can stomach Pam Ward, you should thoroughly enjoy the Alvin Pearman fireworks display, as well as the awesome game plan that Al Groh and, yes, Mike London, came up with to shut down one of the top receivers of the decade. Ballsy game plan that involved awesomeness like dialing up blindside corner blitzes on fourth down. Go forth and enjoy.

what to do with college basketball

Alright, so if you're not already used to the idea of a 96-team tournament that will no longer allow you to fit your office bracket onto one page, you might as well get there. I don't care what the NCAA says about no decision being made, they're either lying or they mean they haven't figured out whether to roll to the press conference in white Hummer stretch limos or red Ferrari ones. With rims.

Yes, we're assuming here that the decision has been made. Because you know you hate it, they know you hate it, you know you'll lap up every second of it anyway, and they know you'll lap up every second of it anyway. And because it's not entirely evil. Oh, don't get me wrong. Yes, it's all about money and nothing else; yes, it'll even further de-emphasize the regular season; yes, it'll screw up the symmetry that makes the tournament such a great event; yes, yes, yes, it'll make a sloppy disaster of college basketball. But which is the more distasteful decision: chopping a whole bunch of non-revenue programs in order to feed the monster that football coaching salaries is becoming? (And the ax would fall disproportiontely on men's programs thanks to Title IX.) Or finding ways to keep paying for them? No doubt there are wrestlers, runners, and swimmers out there that probably won't even know it, but will owe their continued ability to participate in their current sport at their current school to the 96-team behemoth of an NCAA tournament.

So the NCAA needs more money and is going to get it, and sticking with the current 64 (I don't acknowledge 65) team plan is no longer viable - that's the going assumption. That said, let's look at some of the options that have been tossed around the interwebs, as alternatives to a 96-team tournament:

- Expand to 68.

The basic idea here would be to have play-ins for all four 16 seeds instead of just one of them. This is very appealing from a symmetry standpoint, as well as a let's-not-totally-destroy-the-tournament standpoint, but not going to bring in any money. Actually, I think the idea of eight crap-conference teams fighting for the chance to play in the Big Dance is kind of appealing, especially if given the understanding that the losers get autobids as NIT 8-seeds. It'd be a fun way to do Play-In Tuesday. Problem is, the ratings would suck, because y'know, Tuesday. And no matter how much you promote it, nobody's going to take time from filling out their brackets to find out whether East Tennessee State or Arkansas-Pine Bluff gets the right to be fed to Kentucky. I'd be in favor of this idea for symmetry purposes, but fully admit it doesn't get any more money out of the ATM. Besides, the righteous indignation from columnists complaining that Cinderella is getting further and further shut out of the ball would be insufferable.

- Expand to 68, but play the play-ins between bubble teams for the 12th seed.

Or whatever seed the NCAA decrees, but 12 is generally the target here. You could actually see how this would generate a lot more interest. Nobody ever picks a 16 seed to win a game ever, and this is why nobody cares about the play-in. If it was for a slot in the tournament you actually had to worry about in your bracket? You bet your ass you'd be watching. To find out if Utah State is really all that that shiny 27-7 record cracks them up to be. To see if VT really does look scared to play any good teams outside the conference. You can't fill out the bracket not knowing who the 12 seeds are.

So the ratings would be enough to make it work, although there's still the issue of it probably still being Tuesday when we're all at work and it's too early in the week to skate off early. But the problem is this: For at least the last two years, the last four teams in - that is, the lowest four at-large bids - have been two 12 seeds, an 11, and a 10. Sometimes the at-larges drop to the 13 seed. This causes a big problem. Do you play these games on Selection Sunday and force the conferences to finish up their tournaments on Saturday? You'll get a lot of pushback from the conferences and you're really just robbing Peter to pay Paul because the ratings for these tournaments will suffer if they have to compete with each other for time slots (even more so than they do now) and if they replace a weekend game with a weekday one. But that's still the most appealing option, because the other choices are to 1) play Tuesday and call all the winners 12 seeds or 2) not announce the bracket until the games are over. The former will create seeding controversy every year and probably end up screwing over a bunch of teams all over the bracket. The latter is a logistical catastrophe and not ever going to be considered. Ergo, a nice idea in theory, but unworkable.

- Break up D-I into I-A and I-AA, like in football.

Speaking of "nice idea in theory but unworkable." This is something that's been bandied about in a very speculative way mostly by people who didn't really think about it much. The thinking goes: "if we have to make the tournament this damn big and let in all these unworthy teams, it's probably time to split things up." And it's appealing enough. The difference in resources between the little guys and big boys is stunning. You have D-I basketball teams playing in what basically amounts to a high school gym. Be serious.

But obviously enough, the discussion over who would stay and who would go would be, uh, touchy. It would be hideously unfair to simply split it up the exact same way football is. If you took Sagarin's top 11 conferences, the Sun Belt (an abomination of a football conference) and the MAC would be out, and the A-10 and MVC would be in. And that's not enough teams to make a quality 64-team tournament anyway, so you'd have this murderous but enormously entertaining catfight over which conferences get to comprise I-A basketball. And then what about superteams in crummy conferences? Do you tell the Horizon League they're no longer wanted and oh by the way Butler's coming with us ha ha you suck? Or do you consign Butler to their doom in basketball purgatory as a reward for being such a great story?

The resulting basketball tournament would be a lot more spirited and competitive without Morgan State taking up space, and whatever money the NCAA left on the table by not expanding could be made up during the suddenly-much-more-interesting regular season. And you might just be able to squeeze another couple dozen million out of a I-AA tournament. But this is a discussion the NCAA is never going to have.

- 72, 76, 80, 84, 88, or 92 teams.

I mean, what's the point? By this time you might as well just go all the way. If they didn't now, they would later anyway.

So. 96 it is - again, assuming that the NCAA has decided it's money time. I've come to see it as more or less inevitable, despite the many good reasons not to. It makes for some interesting questions that'll take time to answer. Like: UVA made two NCAA tournaments and four NITs in the past decade; since the NIT will be swallowed up and likely disappear, does that mean we'll make three times as many NCAA tournaments as we used to? When a team earns a 19-seed, will fans put a mental asterisk next to their name for making a tournament they wouldn't have made before? Coaches want the expanded tournament because making the tourney is their benchmark for success that keeps them employed. Will this backfire on them when they fail to make a tournament that should have been easier to get to?

I dunno either, but we'll find out.

**********************************************

Quick bullet stuff:

- Lacrosse stayed ranked #1, setting up our second #1 vs. #2 matchup of the year - this time an ACC rival in the opening event at the shiny new Giants stadium in New Jersey .... which I will miss because I will be at my cousin's wedding.

- Baseball did not stay ranked #1 anywhere, which is what happens when you lose a series to a 3-6 team that you probably should have swept. Ai. No panic - both losses were by a single run - but we need to not lose these series to crappy teams, because we play fewer of them than the other contenders as Wake isn't on the schedule. Georgia Tech is next week, and besides the terrific #2 vs. #4 matchup (BA's rankings), the Friday game should feature a pitching matchup for the ages: Danny Hultzen (4-1, 1.57) vs. Deck McGuire (5-1, 1.53.) Stat-wise, it's every bit as good as Drew Pomeranz vs. Anthony Ranaudo that'll happen later this year when Ole Miss faces LSU. If Hultzen wasn't a sophomore, it'd be just as hyped. Look for a Q&A later this week with longtime Q&A counterpart From The Rumble Seat, who threatened to make fun of us for being richer, smarter, and sexier than your average engineer if I didn't comply.

- Speaking of which, FTRS also had some questions about their new defensive coordinator, which I answered because as you might remember that would be Al Groh. So check that out too.

not what i wanted to see

We got two things in that category today. One, I didn't want to see our basketball team down by four with three minutes to play against UNC-Wilmington. Could definitely have done without that. Fortunately, it ended up in the win column after all, and that's really what this team needs. Never mind what it does or doesn't do to our tournament chances, when you're recovering from a 10-18 season you need wins dammit.

What else didn't I want to see? Al Groh at Georgia Tech, that's what. I'm happy enough to see Al land on his feet, but I was sorta hoping it'd be in the pros or something, not in our very own division where we get to go up against him every year.

GT will see an improvement on defense, no question. They had the playmakers to have a good pass defense and a decent defense overall, and it didn't happen; under Dave Wommack this year, they gave up 6.1 yards per play. The run defense was particularly heinous. The plus-up in linebacker play that Groh will bring to Atlanta, that alone will be worth half a yard of improvement, even if his 3-4 is a better pass defense than run defense.

But this is a Virginia blog, so the question isn't what will happen to Georgia Tech's defense. We'll let someone else figure that out, and anyway, the answer is "improve" in no uncertain terms. Groh might have had his ups and downs as a head coach but damn if he didn't know how to coach a defense. The question really is, who's going to have the advantage when we meet up in 2010? Us or them?

Actually, the way the coaching carousel shook out gives UVA the upper hand here. Groh's going to run that 3-4 no matter what. But when he left, the 3-4 left with him. Groh might be able to give Paul Johnson all kinds of great tips on how to attack the 3-4** but we're not using it any more. The downside is that Paul Johnson really prefers to run his offense against a 4-3 because a 3-4 is much better suited to stop that triple-option thing they do, so we've gone from uniquely suited to match up well against it to just being like every other team. But there's no inside intelligence that Groh can bring to GT about UVA because the defense will be different, and so will the offense, as soon as we can find a coordinator for it. Whatever offense we run, Groh will have to attack it the same way he attacks everyone else's, without any special foreknowledge of our tendencies.

On the flip side, you might recall who used to be Groh's defensive coordinator and who had to run that 3-4 defense for a few years. Mike London knows a little something about its strengths and weaknesses, one might safely presume. You and I both know Groh is stubborn enough that he's not going to make any drastic changes to it. He'll coach what he knows.

Whatever intel Groh brings Paul Johnson about UVA is probably limited to the tendencies of our players. Things like, "It's stupid to throw the ball at Ras-I Dowling," or, "Marc Verica occasionally likes to mix things up and throw the ball at someone in the other color jersey," only less obvious and more coachy. London and Groh have coached with and against each other, so if there's anything to be learned from each other's coaching tendencies, it's a two-way street and cancels each other out.

I don't like the idea of going up against Groh's defenses for the next five years, but the reality of the situation is it probably doesn't matter a whole lot. GT really only had a crappy defense for one year, and it's not like our crap offense actually took advantage of it. The advantages GT will gain on us are slim and way overshadowed by the talent gap between our teams anyway. Until our offense stops making every defense look like the Steel Curtain, we won't notice the difference.

By the way, Al isn't the only Groh with a new gig: Mike's been hired to coach quarterbacks at Louisville. Another good hire - anyone who can take a short, unpolished athlete without much of a position and turn him into a better-than-competent quarterback is a worthy coach. Mike Groh rose to his level of incompetence as an OC but I'd have him back coaching QBs in a heartbeat.

**You have to figure this is a huge reason why Johnson would be interested in Groh as a DC. The 3-4 gave him fits. Yes, we got blown out this year but that's because the offense managed to possess the ball for all of 17 minutes out of 60. The defense kept us in it for three quarters. And it won the game for us last year when it held GT's offense to a measly 259 yards, one lousy field goal after the first quarter, and actually managed to handily win the time of possession battle against a team that's designed to never lose that statistic. The 3-4 matches up nicely against that offense because more linebackers = more playmakers to defend the option. Having Groh on staff lets Johnson pick his brain for ways to attack the one scheme that really slows him down.

begin the London era

So I didn't really expect to have writer's block on the day a new head coach was announced, but now that I think about it, it makes sense. We spent the whole time after Leitao was fired assuming Tubby Smith or maybe Jeff Capel would be our next basketball coach. That was three weeks. We've probably spent three years assuming Mike London would be our next football coach, and voila. It seems very odd that nine days ago, Al Groh was preparing to coach a football game the same way he always has - that is to say, as if he's coached a million of these things before and will coach a million more before it's over. Then boom, he's fired, and barely a week later his replacement is hired, and in between we're basically deprived of most of the fun times and lunacy that typically accompanies a head coach search in the 21st century.

Now, the fact is that if you'd told me before the season in a vacuum that this is how it would have gone down, I'd have been mightily disappointed. I was never entirely against the idea of hiring London, but I wasn't sold on it either - you'll never convince me that the best way to conduct a coaching search is to limit it to within a 70-mile radius outside your school. And London is probably not the best coach on the list of ostensible candidates - or if he is, he hasn't yet proven it. So to fire Groh and then forgo a nationwide search to make the easy call just down the road to a guy you already know, dangle the big bucks, and call it a day - that was my nightmare scenario. And if this goes badly, that's probably how we'll all end up remembering how it played out.

But calling it that is to ignore that the search probably began two months ago. When Littlepage said, "we'll evaluate Groh's status at the end of the season," that is AD-speak for "bye-bye." So basically, one of two things happened here:

- Either Littlepage made the decision to fire Groh except in case of a miracle, and then spent the next couple months evaluating potential replacements, having his people send out feelers to agent-types, weighing ideas against one another, finding out the availability of various coaches on his list (and their appeal to the higher-up administration and the boosters), and having settled on the man who best fit his criteria, was likely to be available, and appealed to the money folks, made his move as soon as he professionally could, or -

- he threw up his hands, said, screw it, I just dealt with this shit like eight months ago, I'm too old for this, and decided not to bother with anything that would be too difficult like prying Jim Grobe out of Winston-Salem and took the path of least resistance to the guy that he knew would keep fans and boosters off his back for a while.

The athletic department having demonstrated a relatively high degree of competence in most of their other recent coaching hires, I choose to believe option 1.

So we might not have ended up with the actual best coach on the list, but we do have the best fit. Often, "a good fit" is something you say when you don't really feel like going into detail on your choice, or something recruits say when they mean "this school has the hottest cheerleaders." In coaching, though, it means something - you wouldn't hire, say, good ol' boy Steve Spurrier to coach at a buttoned-down place like BYU. And at UVA, you can't hire a Bobby Bowden clone - that is, I Neither Know Nor Care What My Players Are Up To In The Classroom. There is no magical know-how-to-win-at-UVA handbook that Mike London happens to have, but he does have the qualities you need - understanding of the academic expectations, connections in the state, and it helps also that he's already coached and even recruited a bunch of the current roster anyway. Hell, he coached here so recently that all the pictures handily show him already in UVA garb, coaching UVA.

What I already know about London is this stuff: He's an apple right off the Groh coaching tree - but not a Groh apostle - and both are good news. We won't have to go down the list of top in-state recruits and mark off two-thirds of them as Hokies right off the bat. We'll see a switch to the 4-3 defense - about the only concrete actual on-field detail London mentioned in his press conference. He'll have the stadium full and the checks to the VAF flowing again. The alumni all love him.

All good stuff. All you can ask for from a head coach the day he's hired. The downside: we don't really know if he can be a head coach. Two years at Richmond doesn't tell us enough. I don't even think you have to be a cynic to point out that his national championship came on the extant foundation laid by Dave Clawson. Just a realist. He didn't screw it up, though, which is definitely a start. But I think we're like the crappy NFL team that drafts a quarterback in the first round. We've found out everything we can find out and we know the guy has all the tools he needs. Now we need to see if it plays out on the field like it should. Got the talent, but does he have the ability? There's absolutely no reason not to be optimistic here. But there's a lot of wait-and-see, too.

requiem for an era: Let It Go In Peace

Now it's official. We can debate until we win a national title over what sealed it, but the Al Groh era came to its official end just under nine years after its beginning, less than 24 hours after the final game of the 2000 decade. Just as the '80s and '90s belonged to George Welsh and the '00s belonged to Groh, the '10s will belong to a new head coach. Or let's hope. Because if the decade has to be split any time too soon, we're in trouble.

There is no event in sports quite like the firing of a head football coach at a major Division I-A school. A coach in the pros is just a coach. A college coach is a coach, general manager, surrogate father, and public representative of an entire university. It's a rare event (and the rarer the better) and has the potential to permanently change the fortunes of the program for better or for worse, and every realm of possibility in between.

Besides that, for me, it's a little bit personal. My first year as a Virginia fan was 2000 - the last year of the Welsh era, and by that time, it was already more or less understood that Welsh was in his last year. Groh is, for all intents and purposes, the only UVA coach I've ever known. He's been around long enough that some of our most junior fans weren't even alive when Groh was hired. With all that said, this is the first in a week-ish long series looking back at the decade. Today I just get on my soapbox. In the coming days, we'll look at the games and players that made the 2000s what they were.

The voices in my head had a lively, sometimes angry debate around the FOV boardroom table about what kind of tone this post would take. That lasted weeks. Sometimes, I wanted to launch a full-bore, R-rated, profanity-laced assault on those who say things like this:

Too bad we'll never see them again as long as the Charlottesville Charlatan wears the whistle. Dump this a-hole already and get someone in there who can stop the bleeding or at least knows how to coach someone else to tie a f-ing tourniquet!

Because I hate that shit.

Another option on the table was just to ignore that there was any controversy at all, and write what would no doubt have been a very moving tribute to a man who wears his oversized UVA heart on his sleeve. Let the haters hate, I'll just be over here waving my flag.

Whatever the ideas that sprang to mind, they still had one common theme: In Defense of Al Groh. Because, you see, I consider myself an Al Groh fan. Maybe even an apologist, even though I crossed the line this year and put myself in the camp that was ready for the ax to fall. How can I not? How can I not want to shake his hand and thank him wholeheartedly for his efforts? Here's a guy who left behind a job that 100% of football coaches in the country would do anything for. Including Al. Head Coach in the National Football League. Only 32 men can say that. (31, when Al was coaching the Jets.) The Fortune 500 has 500 CEOs. There are 100 U.S. Senators. Hell, 400,000 people show up every year at the Indy 500 and only 33 drivers get to race in it. But only 32 people at any one time can claim to be an NFL head coach. Al gave it up to coach at the University of Virginia: his dream job. And then he spent every single day of the next nine years proving he damn sure meant it when he said at his hiring, "The University of Virginia is my school."

Well dammit, the University of Virginia is my school too. And anyone who's as good a man as Al Groh appears to be on all counts (I've never met him, but I've never heard anything bad about him from those that have) and has that kind of loyalty to my school, that's a guy I'll stick up for when I can. So let's run down some of the personality knocks on Groh. Arrogant. Curmudgeonly. Not personable, engaging, or particularly friendly with those on the "outside." Jerk to the media. This is the stuff that gets repeated. Occasionally, someone might even say something true when they're harping on this theme. It still gets old real fast. Look: the man hasn't changed. In 2003 when he was winning, he was still the same guy as he is now - the supposedly arrogant, curmudgeonly, prickly jerk that he is now, if you listen to the critics. Makes you wonder why nobody said anything then. No, wait, I know: it's because he was winning games back then. Now that he's losing, he's all that stuff and more.

Here's a better idea. Man up and say you want him gone because we're losing too much. Is that so hard? Sometimes, yes. It requires you to admit that the reason you want him gone is all about you. If we're losing games, you have to go back to work and listen to that stupid Hokie bastard in the office run his fat mouth off. Your autumns - especially your Saturdays - aren't as much fun. This would be selfish, so you decide that you want Groh gone because he's arrogant, because he's selfish himself, because he's narcissistic, nepotistic, and prickly. Not a good representative of the school, and after all, we're all about the school here, right?

The simple fact is, Groh is a fan just like the rest of us, and a man just like the rest of us (figuratively speaking, ladies) and the difference between him and us is he committed the cardinal sin of losing too many games. And for that he is, apparently, a charlatan and an asshole. I just don't get it.

So the Groh era is over with, and no, this isn't a plea for UVA fans to come together in some kind of bipartisan show of unity now that we don't have Al Groh to disagree over any more. Frankly, I'd be more interested in bagging up every fan who ever used the phrase "good riddance" or called Groh an asshole for the crime of losing football games, and chucking them over the same cliff they've been trying to punt Groh over for the past three years. "Good riddance"? The guy wears his UVA heart on his sleeve, leaves a Holy Grail job for Charlottesville, works and coaches his ass off every day of the year, involves himself in numerous charities, makes a thousand small gestures that mean everything to somebody, and inspires his players to pour their heart and soul out on the field for him, and "GOOD RIDDANCE" is what he gets for his troubles? And on top of that, the insult to injury of calling for him to return his salary and buyout? I would keep Groh and go 0-12 next year if it somehow made some of the greedier, selfish, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately fans open their eyes to the side of Al Groh that doesn't involve his wins-and-losses record.

Failing that, what I'd realistically like to see is an end to all that. It wasn't right before, but there was at least the thin veneer of wanting-what's-best-for-the-program to hide behind - even if the losses were simply an excuse to make stuff up. Now there's no point. Yes, it's still happening, the criticism and the name-calling and the good-riddance-ing, and yes, it's pissing the rest of us off and that's all it's accomplishing. So help me, if I see another good-riddance style post on any UVA message board the rest of the year, I'm gonna go off on someone. You got what you wanted - Groh is fired. You also got a 3-9 season to go with it, which has been just all sorts of fun, but hey, you got what you wanted.

I know as well as anyone it's time for the Groh era to end, because I'm just as guilty as the average fan of the sin of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. A winning record, five bowl games, and two ACC COY awards just aren't enough, you know? It's that time. I'm not happy about it. But I will remind everyone to be careful what they wish for. Al Groh was King of Charlottesville in 2003, but 99.5% of coaching hires end badly. All you can really hope for is for that bad end to come much later rather than sooner. At the time he was fired, Groh was tied for the third-longest tenure among ACC coaches - if the next hire lasts that long, it will be a success. Like this one has been.

the replacements: Jim Grobe

Wednesday again, and that means another look at a potential next head coach. But first, a few articles about the current one. The ACC Sports Journal weighs in, as does Jay Jenkins of the CDP and Doughty in Roanoke. Two games left means it's time for the media to start writing the postmortems.

Jerry Ratcliffe outdoes them all, though. His analysis of "what went wrong for Groh" is Pulitzer stuff. Seriously. Columnists are on deadlines, and a lot of the time they just mail it in. This is not one of those pieces. It's the sort of above-and-beyond stuff that UVA fans would be well advised to arm themselves with the next time they find themselves in yet another shouting match about the head coach.

I don't agree with 100% of it. So our tough academic standards are being held against us in recruiting? I don't doubt recruits are being told, "You don't want to go to Virginia. Players there run the risk of getting kicked out even though the NCAA says they're eligible. You'll set your career back." But there's a simple response: "Son, I don't care what Coach Beamer or Coach Friedgen say. We don't think you're too stupid for UVA. Maybe they do."

Most of it, I'm entirely on board with. For example, Littlepage was wrong - dead wrong - to unilaterally dismiss Peter Lalich last year. That's the coach's call, not the AD's. As I've harped on in the past, it sends the message that the coach isn't in control, and further, as Ratcliffe points out, it put a giant monkey wrench in the staff's plans.

Anyway, go read it if you haven't already. Finally, also check out the list of Harris poll voters - there's a nice UVA presence with Dick Bestwick and Jim Dombrowski. It's also a fun list to scroll through and see a name you remember and go, "hey, that guy!" Besides the UVA names, for me those were Touchdown Tommy Vardell, the former Lions fullback, and Danny Kanell. Besides being the guy who handed off to Warrick Dunn only to watch him get stuffed at Scott Stadium's 2-yard line, Kanell resurfaced all of a damn sudden as the broadcaster for the Duke game a few weeks ago. Weird. Now, the rest of this space belongs to:

Jim Grobe

Main qualification: Unfucked Wake Forest's program. Also, is UVA alum.

Resume:

1975: Virginia (GA)
1978: Emory & Henry (LB)
1979-83: Marshall (LB)
1984-94: Air Force (LB)
1995-2000: Ohio (HC)
2001-present: Wake Forest (HC)

Let's start with the good. Wake Forest, before Grobe came along, was a graveyard of a program. They wallowed in the bottom of the ACC, told all their opponents except Duke and UNC to "just wait til basketball season", and were thought of as basically automatic. Grobe didn't actually turn that perception around right away, but in the middle of this decade he delivered a surprise ACC championship to Winston-Salem. For the latter part of this decade, people have actually been taking Wake Forest seriously, which is going to be Grobe's legacy there as long as this not-so-good year is an anomaly and not a new pattern.

Grobe is solid people and a solid head coach and not the kind of guy it's easy to bash. Plus he's got that Virginia sheepskin. So it's with a bit of trepidation that I write the rest of this. Grobe is simply the wrong choice for the next head coach.

First off, the similarities between he and Groh run deep. Virginia alums, head coach at Wake Forest, 9th year on the job, basically the same name even - it's kind of eerie. In fact, if Groh had been fired two years ago and Grobe been poached at that time, the general feeling would be that we had replaced Al Groh with Al Groh's good side. But we had that inconvenient 9-win season, which makes it tough to fire a head coach. Now, in my book it's not a bad thing to be compared to Al Groh. Both he and Grobe are quality individuals. But, part of the reason Groh is on the hot seat is that the donor money is drying up and fan interest is dwindling. Littlepage specifically mentioned fan interest in his "we're firing the head coach after the season but I'm not saying that right now" press statement of a couple weeks ago. To be sure, there are still many fans who believe we'd be getting the 2006 version of Jim Grobe and not the 2004 or 2009 one, but overall this isn't a hire that would energize the fanbase much. Or the checkbooks, which is what the administration listens to.

Because here's the thing: Winning record is another area where the two coaches share similiarities. Groh is 59-51. Grobe is 56-50. The difference in total games is, of course, bowl games, which Groh has been to more of. The general argument from Grobe supporters is "look what kind of program Grobe had to work with at Wake Forest." True, they were kind of the dregs and don't have much history. But history matters only a little. What happened in 1975 or 1985 doesn't affect what happens in 2005. (Thank God.) What does matter is what happened in the year or two prior. That's where rebuilding projects are born. Let me show you a set of four season records:

7-5
2-9
5-7
3-9

The first two are Wake, 1999-00. The second two are UVA, 2008-09, assuming the last two games go as expected. Would Grobe really be walking into less of a rebuilding project than he did at Wake? The assumption of course is yes - I'm not so sure. And here's what the first five years of that rebuilding project looked like:

6-5
7-6
5-7
4-7
4-7

If Grobe is hired at UVA and his first five years look like that, there will actually be no fifth year. There may not even be a fourth year. Dave Leitao was punted two years after earning a #4 seed to the NCAAs. Groh was in hot water for going 5-7 once. The 2006 season 5-7 year was so horrendous, Beta Bridge was painted after game 1 of the following season, and the campaign that followed was perceived as a miraculous job-saver. The above is not what we're looking for.

Grobe is essentially the safe hire. Fraidy-cat, even. It's playing Marco Polo in the shallow end when you could be having fun on the diving board. At least, it's as safe as you can be when you run the risk of pissing off a fellow conference denizen by poaching their coach. The reward isn't worth the risk. Grobe will be 58 when next year rolls around, so we'd get, what, maybe seven years out of him if you really stretch it? If we want to go for an older, established coach, Tommy Tuberville is looking for a job. If we want an alum, at least have a look at Derek Dooley, whose remaining coaching usefulness is measured in decades, not years. Grobe could probably get us back to a bowl game in pretty short order, but hiring him would be an acknowledgement that the next coaching hire isn't far off, and in the meantime, a self-consignment to bowl games in Washington, DC and Mobile. I want to shoot higher than that.

weekend review. also, i hate football.

One of my favorite things about Al Groh is his answers to media questions that he doesn't want to answer. Some people call this a negative. Perhaps, they say, the program's image would be better (at least, it would have been better pre-W&M - these days all bets are off) if he wasn't so cantankerous with the media. Myself, I don't agree. There's no more useless aspect of the media's coverage of football than the halftime sideline interview, and those people ask some of the dipshittiest questions known to man. My day is always brightened when Groh plays the crabby old man and hilariously refuses to answer. It's an endearing quality.

But I digress. Doug Doughty at the Roanoke Times asked one of those questions on Sunday that Groh didn't want to answer, and the result was vintage Groh, with a twist.

"What would you say to the people who are calling for a coaching change?"

After about a four-second pause, Groh responded, "I don't have anything to say."

He paused for another 4-5 seconds and then added, "I know a lot more about the situation than probably anybody. Maybe some day I'll say what that is."

Doughty writes that there was a "cryptic tone" to Groh's answer. Tone schmone. That answer is dripping cryptic-ness. The Windtalkers would be proud. Of course, what with the pauses and such, it could be that Groh is just simply tired of hearing about all this. No doubt that's the case anyway. It has to take a toll on a man.

Then again, it doesn't take a great deal of curiosity or biting insight to be able to read a lot more into that. "Maybe someday I'll say what that is." Given everything we've heard out of Groh in the past, it's easy to conclude that's just him being cranky as usual. And what situation? The one that got us where we are today and that Groh rather justifiably believes he knows more about than most of his loudmouth critics? Again, that would be vintage Groh. Or maybe "the situation" is Groh's actual job situation and there's actual information to be had on this and he doesn't feel like sharing, or has been instructed not to. If you're not so much a Groh supporter, it's easy to read that and hope he means he's already been privately axed and is being allowed to play out the string.

While we're on the subject of local writers, Jerry Ratcliffe thinks the lack of a run game was our downfall. Good lord, the man couldn't be more wrong if he told you Virginia Poly's uniforms were stylish. Take away Jameel Sewell's stats against Duke (in other words, throw out the sacks which really were pass attempts and stick with just the running backs plus Vic Hall's reverse) and we averaged 5.1 yards a carry. That's actually pretty good! Outstanding, Private Pyle, I think we finally found something that you do well! And it makes sense. There are four units on any offense: quarterbacks, receivers, running backs, and line. Three of those four are lousy, and they're the three required for a passing game. The problem is not that our running game is bad, the problem, obviously, is that we don't use it. The passing game is so pathetic and yet used so frequently that we actually averaged more yards per run play than per pass play. That's absurd. Stop passing the ball so damn much. It'll help the defense out, too.

I'd have had this link up sooner, but I didn't. Last week's ACC roundtable roundup is posted at the now officially defunct 850 The Buzz blog, which is now 620 The Buzz and doesn't really have a blog any more.

You might have noticed I'm just skipping all the usual weekend review stuff. This is because there's nothing worth bothering with on the recruiting front. But I think we will go ahead and take our usual spin around the ACC, only we'll just take a look at the losing teams, I think. Winning is for snobs.

- Wake got stomach-punched just like we did. And their loss might even have been worse because they were much better-positioned for a bowl bid than we were, and poised for a major upset that would have made that bowl thing happen. And then bam. And it turns out Blogger So Dear is also a Cleveland Browns fan, which is about the only NFL fanbase that is allowed to lord it over Lions fans in the misery department. At least the Lions only lose games. Cleveland once lost its whole team and needed two years to find it.

- YANCSTSB is chock-full of misery this week, and who can blame him? NC State is "where defense goes to die:"

When you watch your team rally to score a go-ahead touchdown with 3:50 and yet are convinced that the game is lost, that's the essence of N.C. State fandom these days.

Funny, we have the exact opposite problem. It's eerie. Duke scored to go up 18-17 with basically exactly that much time left on the clock. And I felt exactly the same way. When you have 3:50 to drive approximately 60 yards in order to score just one measly field goal and yet are convinced the game is lost, that's the essence of UVA fandom these days. I have an idea. We don't play NC State this year. Let's team up. Our defense, their offense. We'll be the North Virginia State CavPack (or Wolvaliers, that sounds kinda cool) and get ourselves bowl eligible. We can send our offense and their defense to go compete in the D-III playoffs.

- I couldn't do this without talking about Va. Poly. You know you enjoyed watching that game. You know you loved it. You know it was the best part of your weekend and that really sucks because it wasn't even our own game and it didn't even happen on the weekend. Losing to UNC took it out of College Game Balls pretty hard: he goes into what he calls a semi-angered rant in which the strongest word up to that point is "miffs." This from the guy who wrote this. That is a rant.

As for Gobbler Country, his game recap consists of a picture of a turtle. Your guess is as good as mine. I guess that's what they call art. Either the turtle represents the long, slow march to death that we all must take in our lives and therefore speaks to the futility of our efforts, or he thinks that's the particular ACC team the Hokies looked like on Thursday. Your call.

- It's hard to stand out in the misery-filled ACC this week, but I seem to have managed it. Thank God I waited to post until after I was done with my SEC-fan-on-Youtube stage or who knows what words of mine might have been broadcast for the wide, wide audiences of Greater Internetia. Actually, I do know what words I'd have used. All of them have four letters and I wasn't allowed to say them growing up.

So. Basketball season in eleven days. I'm excited for that, and with any amount of luck, February 1 will get here and I won't already be similarly counting down the days til baseball and lacrosse.

textbook

Most lessons from yesterday's game are pretty obvious and you don't need me to tell you them and I'm not going to insult your intelligence by doing so. "We Suck" is the general gist of all of them, and you can get that from the media and everyone else. One thing ESPN won't mention, though, is the page from the textbook on How To Get Yourself Fired As Head Coach that we got to see written afresh yesterday. It's a huge book, by the way. Massive. Coaches are writing new entries every year. Dennis Franchione has a whole chapter. Al Groh's new entry was on display on 3rd and 9 near midfield.

Now, mind you, normally I refrain from nitpicking Groh's decisions. Lord knows you can go to almost any ol' website devoted to UVA football and find more than enough of that. I happen to like Al Groh and so I keep my fat mouth shut - often on purpose, just to try and balance out the tsunami of vitriol that cascades from on high everywhere else. There's plenty else to yak about. But - rrrrggghh. I'm not lying when I say that when I saw Cam Johnson streaking toward the line of scrimmage at the snap of the aforementioned play, I did not like what I saw one bit, and naturally would continue hating everything I saw for the rest of the game.

Want to know how to get yourself fired as head coach, then? Keep certain facts in mind. We had six sacks and all of them were spread among the three defensive linemen: Dolce, Parr, and Collins. No blitzing linebackers had gotten to the quarterback all day. Thaddeus Lewis had, at least twice already in my recollection, burned us by throwing directly at the blitz and picking up huge yardage. There were four minutes left in the game, or just under; a fourth down would not have guaranteed an attempt to go for it. Not with nine yards to pick up. Many coaches would have punted. Indeed, given our own offensive brilliance, if I were Cutcliffe, punt is exactly what I'd have done on 4th and 9 from the 42. So the way to get yourself fired as head coach of UVA is to dial up a big ol' blitz on 3rd and 9 that leaves practically no help at all for the cornerbacks in man coverage. ARGH.

This whole thing has been weird for me to write, by the way, because if there's one concept I hate in all of football it's the prevent defense. In this case, though? A nice standard, non-prevent, non-blitz, four-man rush would have sufficed. When our linemen are eating theirs for lunch all day, I like our chances. That blitz was the last thing I wanted to see, except for what happened next.

So there go the bowl hopes, and there goes Al Groh. Hell, I've already got the official farewell post half written. We're probably not going to win another game all year. We won't see a worse defense than Duke all year, so don't expect to see us score any more than the 17 points we just managed, because we cannot pass and can barely run. Not unless the defense and special teams help out, and the latter won't, because we have no clue how to return a kick.

If you ask me, it's time now to forget all about Miami, BC, and Clemson. Punt the season. Practice, for the next four weeks, exclusively against VPI. If you can't beat William & Mary at home, and you can't beat Duke at home, you can't go to a bowl game, and at the end of the day there's no difference between 5-7 and 0-12. So, might as well put all our chips on the only game that matters any more. Practice a few new looks and don't use any of 'em in the next three games. Riko Smalls is Tyrod Taylor from now til November 28. Pull out all the stops and try to end this season with a bang.

Meantime, I'm going to see if I can get my money back for this weekend. UVA loses to Duke, Michigan loses to Illinois, the Lions lose to the Rams, and both my fantasy teams get crushed. I hate football.

weekend review

Sort of a little different one today, in that I don't have any high school results and stuff for you this week. Part of the hard drive recovery process is going to involve re-stocking the favorites bar where all that local news stuff was, and I chose to spend this weekend reconstituting my music collection instead. Here's a summary: K.P. Parks went apeshit again, as he always does, and ran for shitloads of yards and scored beaucoup touchdowns before sitting down sometime after halftime with his team up by zillions. You know what job I want? The West Rowan H.S. offensive coordinator. It's easy. Just script the first forty plays of the game as follows: Hand off to Parks. Then eat a donut and take a nap til the half. I would worry that Parks might get hurt in his remaining games this fall, but that would require he be tackled.

I do have the recruiting board back in action, and you can find it here as always. And there's changes and stuff this week too, ain't that special? Those would be:

- Dropped OTs Khamrone Kolb and Robby Havenstein. Damn it. Kolb jumped for Penn State, and just as I predicted, Havenstein dropped not very long after that. Unfortunately he dropped for Wisconsin. It might appear that there's enough depth on the offensive line since we'll ideally be adding three to this next class what with Conner Davis joining the two prep schoolers (Moses if we're lucky, and Cody Wallace.) However, given the utterly abysmal state of the offensive line right now, I'd like one more just to have options.

- Dropped LB Dominique Guinn-Bailey to red. Someone on the CavsCorner message board said he'd committed to some I-AA school or another, but that's the only place I've seen it, so I guess I'll just leave him on there until another couple months go by and nothing happens. Yay passive-aggressive board updates.

- It's the triumphant return of the blue section! Depending on what you read and who he's talking to, we're either in a top two or top three for Louis Young. Or maybe a top twelve given his rather interesting interpretation of the term "verbal commitment." My nagging feeling we're really not going to get Young clashed with the general rule that a top four or so is good enough for the blue section. Then I realized I'm really just despairing of ever seeing a verbal commitment ever again, and bucked up, chinned up, nutted up, and re-established the blue section. So there it is, and right now Young is the only inhabitant. Hooray for recruiting no longer being totally dead in the water.

**********************************

Hoops! I have been completely blown away by Tony Bennett's efforts this summer. I give him an A++++++. If his teaching and his in-game coaching are half as good as his recruiting has been (considering that he wrapped up this #8-ranked class in six months), we'll win every game by 50. And the X's and O's were said to be his strong point. ACC, you might as well just roll over and die right now.

Apparently the media isn't as smitten as I am. Sylven Landesberg isn't happy about being left off the preseason all-ACC squad. And motivation is all well and good and I'm glad he's planning on proving folks wrong and all that, but maybe I'd prefer him to focus on something a little more team-oriented. It's not like the ACC media weekend in Greensboro was short of opportunities to be annoyed at what the media thinks about Virginia basketball. They have us 11th. In other words, they don't think a new coach and the loss of practically nobody of importance to graduation means any improvement in the standings.

This is nonsense. First off, the carnage wreaked upon ACC rosters due to graduation and departures for the draft is massive and widespread. More so than usual, I suggest to you. Nearly every team is replacing multiple huge pieces of the puzzle. Second, Tony Bennett Tony Bennett Tony Bennett. We will finish the season seeded higher than 11th in the ACC tournament. That's a rock-solid, etched-in-diamond guarantee. If that doesn't sound much like going out on a limb, then you get my point. Take out a second mortgage on the farm, withdraw every penny from your kids' college account, and hell, throw that firstborn up there for collateral. Better than 11th. I don't really know how much better. Sometimes I realize, man, we didn't score many points last year, did we? and I accept the idea that the CBI or maybe a charity NIT bid is progress and shouldn't be scoffed at. Other times I get all googly-eyed about what Bennett can do for this team - frickin' hell, he took a bunch of one-star recruits at a college way out in the hills to a 4 seed in the Dance. And that's when I start wondering if the committee will screw us with the draw like they did for baseball and make us travel out to Sacramento or something. The fun part will be finding out how it all plays out. But. Jebus damn it, better than 11th.

**********************************

Al Groh's press conference transcript, as always, is a fun read. The best Grohisms:

- "That, against a team like this that always becomes an ongoing situation-by-situation decision. That is do we want to match personnel or do we want to leave the regular in there, because there is an overlap in what we can do from a coverage standpoint between the two. Not entirely the same, but because there is an overlap, we have that option. And in the past in circumstances like this we've worked that option both ways."

- "Well, yeah, clearly when you see the numbers of their frequency, what that also clearly indicates is that there is a strong commitment and they are a dedicated passing team."

- "Nate has certainly been exceptionally stellar to the half way mark of the season. He's certainly playing himself into that position. He's probably making a similar move on that, say that Alvin Pearman utilized his senior season to do."

- "Well, they lead in receptions because they're playing in the Duke offense. If they were playing (at) Georgia Tech, they'd probably not be leading the conference in receptions."

- "Now if you win, you usually get a big return on it. But you can also result in the quarterback having to hold the ball and not be in the rhythm that he wants. Coaches are certainly this way. I'm certain some people say hold it, don't hold it, throw it, throw it. Sometimes if you have effective man-for-man coverage, there is nobody to throw it to. That would be the dilemma for the quarterback. What do you want me to do with it? There is nobody open, and you don't want me to stand there, I understand that. I don't have anybody to throw it to, either. What should I do with it? So we're going to get a good combination of both."

>- "QUESTION:What did you see of the 'phantom' personal foul called on Saturday?

COACH GROH: What we had suggested is that for anybody who has ‑‑ most people Tivo the game in order to go back and take a look at it and write your stories based on what you see there. So, I just suggested that everybody look at their Tivoed version and come up with your own opinion. And if you have any questions since clearly I'm not the expert on this. If you have any questions, I'd suggest that you direct them to the ACC office and see what they might want?

QUESTION:Did you direct any questions?

COACH GROH: I have the same question you might have. I guess Halloween was one week early. You know, Ghostbusters or whatever."

In Groh-speak, that means he thinks the personal foul was straight-up blatant bullshit. And he's almost certainly right. Unfortunately nobody can take his suggestion, because replay it on Tivo is precisely what I did, and none of it was onscreen.

Oh, and the "circumstance" count for the conference: 10. Impressive.

**********************************

Around the rest of the ACC, here's what we got:

- UNC pulled off a pretty impressive and really annoying choke job against TFSU, losing 30-27. I'm convinced this is the football gods' punishment for wearing those all-navy uniforms. They've deployed the navy pants and the navy jersey at separate times in the past, which was probably testing the football gods' patience, but the all-navy look was too much. Much like the signal they sent to Oregon when Oregon broke out the throwbacks and demolished California, UNC has now been warned that navy is not one of their primary colors. If they know what's good for them they'll never do that again.

- I told you this would happen. I told you. Maryland dropped one to Duke, 17-13, which has got Testudo Times ready for the bye week and criticizing Ralphie for his propensity to whine about not getting the breaks. And you might be interested to know we're not the only ones who've seen more QB draws out of their team than they care to stomach.

- We're not the only ones who had to deal with the triple option this weekend, and frankly I wouldn't swap our circumstance for Wake Forest's. They didn't win either: Navy beat them 13-10. Blogger So Dear is just pretending it didn't happen, which is probably wise. But dude: Check out the box score. Seriously. Navy never passed. Literally. 64 run plays, zero passes. They did that once last year, too, also in the rain. Lot of teams wear throwback uniforms, but nobody does throwback like Navy. You want throwback? We're going right back to 1903. We don't need wacky shenanigans and gimmicks like this "forward pass."

- Clemson's win against Miami put two teams squarely in the driver's seat for their respective divisions. Block-C doesn't hesitate to name C.J. Spiller the best player in all of college football. Which, y'know, maybe, but if they've got the best player in all of college football, what does it say about the rest of the team that provided Maryland its only ACC win?

- Finally, the Battle of the Catholics ended disappointingly. Final score: Congregation of the Holy Cross 20, Jesuits 16.

Normal-ish schedule this week. Tomorrow I will finally get around to profiling Akil Mitchell. Wednesday I'll have another coaching candidate lined up. Somewhere in between, I'll squeeze in another ACC roundtable. Gotta keep a sense of normalcy even though the season is solidly on the line on Halloween.