Welp. Didn't take long. It hardly seems worth writing about the latest chapter in the Mike London story because it's so uncannily similar to most of the other ones. Talk up the latest new schemes, surprise with some swaggy hype-azz uniformz, lose by the book, chapter and verse. OK, sure, it lacked a little something in the clock-management dumbassery department, but London did burn at least two timeouts that I can remember just because of play-call confusion. So let's check that box.
Other boxes to check: annoying playcalling, offensive line depth biting us in the ass again, undisciplined penalties committed by seniors, crappy special teams, red zone ineptitude. The list goes on. A whole offseason and literally nothing has changed. I sound surprised here, which I guess I am a little, because this time I'm really gonna get to kick that football.
I really hated those helmets, by the way, which you can chalk mostly up to my reflexive get-off-my-lawnism about uniforms. UVA seems to be working on building a pretty solid brand identity. You can instantly recognize those gorgeous home whites the baseball team wears, and the school uses a uniform wordmark across most other teams, if not all of them.
Football? There's no brand identity anywhere. The navy blue helmets would work at least to anchor the zillion other looks they think are wonderful attention getters. Naw, let's ditch 'em and go with the marshmallow look. And the look on Saturday was a horrible mishmash. The pants are pure throwback - literally, because they come from the 1960s throwbacks they wore a while ago. The jerseys are a clean, unadorned, modern take on a classic look. And the helmets were $WAGGY HYPPPEEE, Oregon $tylez. Pick a look. (Preferably not swaggy hype.) There's absolutely no attempt at a brand, an identity, a foundation, it's just "hey this would be a cool idea," and they slap it up there and there's no reason to do it or even any connection with the rest of the athletic program.
I wouldn't usually spend two paragraphs on the uniforms, but if by now you can't get the connection to the actual state of the program then we'll just have to leave you here.
Notre Dame comes to town next weekend. Of the three difficult OOC games this is the one I expected to be toughest. They just got done steamtrucking Texas, so I think I'm still thinking that. If UVA is to steal an OOC win in one of those three games, Boise State is the place to look.
Some player-focused observations:
-- I was surprised Kelvin Rainey was credited with only five tackles. He seemed to be all over, making tackles in front of the secondary and generally being much more visible than you'd expect from a first-year starter. I liked it. And it looks clear too that Micah Kiser is the real deal.
-- I was much less pleased with the defensive ends. Mike Moore didn't look like a senior. Kwontie Moore was hardly visible. Trent Corney showed off his athleticism by actually juking his blocker, but then looked surprised that Josh Rosen actually moved away from the pressure. Fortunately, he kind of moved toward the rest of the defensive line, but Corney's tackle attempt on that particular play looked like he still hasn't picked up a lot of fundamentals.
-- Matt Johns reminds me of a youngish NASCAR driver who clearly can drive in the lower series but moves up to the big time and is stuck on an underfunded team with an uncompetitive car, which he can't crash because they can't afford replacements. He might compete for the winner's circle if he was allowed to drive aggressively into the corners, but he's just being asked to circle the track. That's Steve Fairchild's playbook in a nutshell. Johns can play quarterback, it's clear, but too often, he's not really allowed to. Sure, he threw a pick when he cut loose, just like the driver might find a wall or two the hard way. But in reading up about UCLA, one quote I saw was along the lines of Josh Rosen being handed the keys to a Ferrari, he just had to not crash it. Well, Rosen took a shot downfield the very first chance he got, and it's obvious he's not just driving the Ferrari around the block. Johns needs to be cut loose more too. He's capable of making it work.
Until then we'll just keep throwing screen passes on every third-and-long of the game which they totally won't be expecting this time.
-- One game in and the offensive line is already a smoking wreck. Eric Tetlow and Jake Fieler, out for the year. Ryan Doull and Sadiq Olanrewaju, no telling when they'll be back. Jay Whitmire, not ready to go full speed yet or he'd be out there at one of those positions somewhere. The interior line was absolutely owned; UCLA's DTs were exactly the problem I thought they'd be, and the "power running game" went exactly as far as I thought it would. I was openly skeptical of the power running thing; if I'd known we'd be missing four linemen going into the first game, I'd have been downright derisive.
That's OK, I'm sure we'll just recruit us a few more cornerbacks to make up for it.
It's pretty much official, I've skipped the optimistic, maybe-things-gonna-be-OK phase of the season and gone straight to snark. With any luck that'll last the next eleven (or twelve, if Lucy doesn't pull that football away again) games and we can minimize the burning apathy, which is all that's left at the end.
Showing posts with label corney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corney. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Thursday, August 13, 2015
identity crisis
Football season is underway. Could you tell? Probably not from inside a UVA bubble. There's little excitement, little buzz, and little attention being paid to the Hoos by anyone outside the state. When attention is paid, it's almost always to the proverbial hot seat under Mike London's proverbial posterior. UVA fans weren't alone in being incredulous that London was kept around after last season. Grantland calls it "the utterly baffling phenomenon that is his continued employment by the Commonwealth of Virginia" as the grand finale to their hot-seat preview. The only other theme you ever really see is "tough schedule"; ESPN's ACC power rankings have UVA 12th out of 14, on the premise of "gee, this team is talented but that schedule is so hard." This more or less ignores their own player rankings which gave UVA exactly one player in the nation's top 100 and ACC's top 25. (Quin Blanding.)
The truth is the schedule isn't that hard. Sure, the nonconference schedule isn't piled high with weenies. It's basically Three Men and aBaby William & Mary. It's also two-thirds ACC. The Coastal Conference is the most milquetoast division in all of college football. If you think the conference schedule is overly challenging, there's a saying about suckers at the poker table, which applies here.
Sooner or later, and probably sooner but I've been burned by that assumption before, I'll write the obit for the London regime. It'll say the words quarterbacks about a hundred times. The list of things London has mismanaged is long and distinguished and - here's the scary part - mostly unfixable this year. He could address a few things, like the crappy special teams and his nonsensical clock management, but truly fixing them - no, that would take a couple years. In some cases because the issues are structural and in some cases because we need a couple years of evidence to call them fixed.
There is one place he can make tangible progress, though. Besides winning, there's one absolutely huge, glaring difference between the football team and the other major programs at this school: Identity. Basketball, baseball, lacrosse, you've seen what they've built and the reputations they have. A program's identity and its relationship to success is a little bit of a chicken-or-egg question, but a coach has gotta know what he stands for, and I don't mean getting his players to go to class. That's what drives your recruiting and your teaching and your coaching.
I know Mike London is a man of character and he wants his players to be great guys and hard-working and all that, but that's not really it. That doesn't translate into coaching and to the extent that it's translated into recruiting, it hasn't driven the on-field direction of the team. Tony Bennett recruits players of tremendous character, not just for the sake of it but because his incredibly successful system requires a ton of selflessness and trust in your teammates. Brian O'Connor recruits only college-enthusiastic players because it means he doesn't have to sweat out the draft and because they see Omaha as more than just a place where scouts gather.
What's Mike London's philosophy? Best I can tell, it's that athletes and speed make a football team and you can recruit a bunch of them and mold them into football players. Besides the obvious roster-management problems with this (essentially, these guys can only play three positions - WR, CB, S) it's sort of telling: even the one thing that London can be said to be consistent about is essentially a scattershot lottery. Take a decent-looking athlete and hope he develops. Trent Corney has for years now tantalized with his immense raw talent, and played almost never.
There are hopeful glimmers. They're not likely to be enough to save the regime, but they're out there, and all on defense, where the one truly credible name on the coaching staff resides. In just a couple short years Jon Tenuta has established his identity on his side of the ball, and you saw it emerge last year. Offense is a so-far hopeless cause; it's just kind of there and the coaches are still talking about changing its aims and goals. Now we want to be a power-running team, right after spending years neglecting O-line recruiting. That should work. Defense, though, is Tenuta's blitzy-blitz scheme and his disruption, and you can actually tell what he's trying to do.
This is the challenge that awaits the football team this year: On offense, start developing some kind of identity. Most successful football teams are known by what they do on offense. If they're going to put their chips on the power running game, that means they can't go out to Pasadena and start going all screen-happy again. The defense has to be able to keep up this year what they did last year, with almost entirely new front-seven personnel.
If London, Tenuta, and Steve Fairchild are successful in finally moving the football team toward a defined plan, an identity, a meaning, then they'll probably be at least somewhat successful in the one metric that matters, and they just might keep their jobs. If they can't, they won't get another chance.
The truth is the schedule isn't that hard. Sure, the nonconference schedule isn't piled high with weenies. It's basically Three Men and a
Sooner or later, and probably sooner but I've been burned by that assumption before, I'll write the obit for the London regime. It'll say the words quarterbacks about a hundred times. The list of things London has mismanaged is long and distinguished and - here's the scary part - mostly unfixable this year. He could address a few things, like the crappy special teams and his nonsensical clock management, but truly fixing them - no, that would take a couple years. In some cases because the issues are structural and in some cases because we need a couple years of evidence to call them fixed.
There is one place he can make tangible progress, though. Besides winning, there's one absolutely huge, glaring difference between the football team and the other major programs at this school: Identity. Basketball, baseball, lacrosse, you've seen what they've built and the reputations they have. A program's identity and its relationship to success is a little bit of a chicken-or-egg question, but a coach has gotta know what he stands for, and I don't mean getting his players to go to class. That's what drives your recruiting and your teaching and your coaching.
I know Mike London is a man of character and he wants his players to be great guys and hard-working and all that, but that's not really it. That doesn't translate into coaching and to the extent that it's translated into recruiting, it hasn't driven the on-field direction of the team. Tony Bennett recruits players of tremendous character, not just for the sake of it but because his incredibly successful system requires a ton of selflessness and trust in your teammates. Brian O'Connor recruits only college-enthusiastic players because it means he doesn't have to sweat out the draft and because they see Omaha as more than just a place where scouts gather.
What's Mike London's philosophy? Best I can tell, it's that athletes and speed make a football team and you can recruit a bunch of them and mold them into football players. Besides the obvious roster-management problems with this (essentially, these guys can only play three positions - WR, CB, S) it's sort of telling: even the one thing that London can be said to be consistent about is essentially a scattershot lottery. Take a decent-looking athlete and hope he develops. Trent Corney has for years now tantalized with his immense raw talent, and played almost never.
There are hopeful glimmers. They're not likely to be enough to save the regime, but they're out there, and all on defense, where the one truly credible name on the coaching staff resides. In just a couple short years Jon Tenuta has established his identity on his side of the ball, and you saw it emerge last year. Offense is a so-far hopeless cause; it's just kind of there and the coaches are still talking about changing its aims and goals. Now we want to be a power-running team, right after spending years neglecting O-line recruiting. That should work. Defense, though, is Tenuta's blitzy-blitz scheme and his disruption, and you can actually tell what he's trying to do.
This is the challenge that awaits the football team this year: On offense, start developing some kind of identity. Most successful football teams are known by what they do on offense. If they're going to put their chips on the power running game, that means they can't go out to Pasadena and start going all screen-happy again. The defense has to be able to keep up this year what they did last year, with almost entirely new front-seven personnel.
If London, Tenuta, and Steve Fairchild are successful in finally moving the football team toward a defined plan, an identity, a meaning, then they'll probably be at least somewhat successful in the one metric that matters, and they just might keep their jobs. If they can't, they won't get another chance.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
the recruit: Cory Jones
Name: Cory Jones
Position: DE
Hometown: Washington, DC
School: Archbishop Carroll
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 210
24/7: 87, three stars; #36 WDE, DC #6
ESPN: 71, three stars; #143 DE, DC #12, East #244
Rivals: 5.4, two stars
Scout: two stars
Other offers: Illinois, Wake Forest, Toledo, ODU
It's a familiar story by now: raw athlete hasn't played football since he could walk like the rest of his recruiting class, is therefore underrecruited and Mike London pounces. Cory Jones is even more extreme than the usual story; Jones grew up working on his hardcourt skills, hoping to get his chance as a basketball player. By the time his junior season was over, though, he was coming to the realization that the offers weren't coming.
So he finally gave in to his school's football coach's urging to try the gridiron, with a lot more success than he'd ever had in hoops. It didn't take long - only a few weeks into the season - for some of the more local schools such as Maryland to come sniffing around. This is still absurdly later than the usual recruiting cycle, and what usually takes at least a year and more often two was compressed into just a couple months. Somewhat overwhelmed, Jones made a hasty commitment to Toledo, but retracted it on his official visit to UVA and became the penultimate member of the class of 2014.
The most intruguing thing about Jones is the sacks he racked up this past fall. This number is variously given as 20, 25, or 26, many of them in his first few games. Whatever the actual total, it's impressive; Archbishop Carroll plays in the highly competitive WCAC against schools like Good Counsel and DeMatha, and there's a ton of I-A talent that comes out of that league.
Depending on who you ask, Jones's athleticism is anywhere from eye-popping to average; ESPN credits him with just "adequate playing strength and average initial quickness for size." Scout agrees regarding Jones's initial moves, while Rivals and 24/7 have higher opinions. The guy literally never put on a football helmet til last summer, so I have a tough time believing 20-odd sacks are the result of average athleticism. Jones is probably closer to the higher end of the scale, but if he really was a Ziggy Ansah physical freak, a few more offers would surely have come his way.
Two comparisons with current UVA players come to mind; the first is, plainly, Max Valles. Jones has a similar build and projection; because he's still such an unsculpted mound of clay, there's the thought that he could develop into either a true weakside defensive end, or a stand-up pass-rushing linebacker like Valles with potential to learn the nuances of occasionally dropping into coverage and diagnosing run plays and other linebacker things.
Much depends on both how he fills out his frame, and who is coaching him in the future. Though Jon Tenuta has at least a rough blueprint on how he wants to use Jones, if there's a different coaching staff in a few years they might very well have their own ideas. This brings us to the other currently-playing comparison: Trent Corney, who has needed quite some time to channel his considerable athleticism into a useful form and should never have been on the field as a true freshman. There's really no reason for Jones to see the field this year; if he thought the recruiting process was overwhelming, wait'll he gets a load of actual college coaching. Lots to learn. I don't expect anything at all out of Jones until his third year in the program at the soonest, and if he's rushed, that won't change things. By then we should be able to tell if his talents are going to translate into regular contributions, or if he's on his way to being recruited over.
Position: DE
Hometown: Washington, DC
School: Archbishop Carroll
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 210
24/7: 87, three stars; #36 WDE, DC #6
ESPN: 71, three stars; #143 DE, DC #12, East #244
Rivals: 5.4, two stars
Scout: two stars
Other offers: Illinois, Wake Forest, Toledo, ODU
It's a familiar story by now: raw athlete hasn't played football since he could walk like the rest of his recruiting class, is therefore underrecruited and Mike London pounces. Cory Jones is even more extreme than the usual story; Jones grew up working on his hardcourt skills, hoping to get his chance as a basketball player. By the time his junior season was over, though, he was coming to the realization that the offers weren't coming.
So he finally gave in to his school's football coach's urging to try the gridiron, with a lot more success than he'd ever had in hoops. It didn't take long - only a few weeks into the season - for some of the more local schools such as Maryland to come sniffing around. This is still absurdly later than the usual recruiting cycle, and what usually takes at least a year and more often two was compressed into just a couple months. Somewhat overwhelmed, Jones made a hasty commitment to Toledo, but retracted it on his official visit to UVA and became the penultimate member of the class of 2014.
The most intruguing thing about Jones is the sacks he racked up this past fall. This number is variously given as 20, 25, or 26, many of them in his first few games. Whatever the actual total, it's impressive; Archbishop Carroll plays in the highly competitive WCAC against schools like Good Counsel and DeMatha, and there's a ton of I-A talent that comes out of that league.
Depending on who you ask, Jones's athleticism is anywhere from eye-popping to average; ESPN credits him with just "adequate playing strength and average initial quickness for size." Scout agrees regarding Jones's initial moves, while Rivals and 24/7 have higher opinions. The guy literally never put on a football helmet til last summer, so I have a tough time believing 20-odd sacks are the result of average athleticism. Jones is probably closer to the higher end of the scale, but if he really was a Ziggy Ansah physical freak, a few more offers would surely have come his way.
Two comparisons with current UVA players come to mind; the first is, plainly, Max Valles. Jones has a similar build and projection; because he's still such an unsculpted mound of clay, there's the thought that he could develop into either a true weakside defensive end, or a stand-up pass-rushing linebacker like Valles with potential to learn the nuances of occasionally dropping into coverage and diagnosing run plays and other linebacker things.
Much depends on both how he fills out his frame, and who is coaching him in the future. Though Jon Tenuta has at least a rough blueprint on how he wants to use Jones, if there's a different coaching staff in a few years they might very well have their own ideas. This brings us to the other currently-playing comparison: Trent Corney, who has needed quite some time to channel his considerable athleticism into a useful form and should never have been on the field as a true freshman. There's really no reason for Jones to see the field this year; if he thought the recruiting process was overwhelming, wait'll he gets a load of actual college coaching. Lots to learn. I don't expect anything at all out of Jones until his third year in the program at the soonest, and if he's rushed, that won't change things. By then we should be able to tell if his talents are going to translate into regular contributions, or if he's on his way to being recruited over.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
hamm it up
Everybody loves a good Cinderella story. And I love watching dominant running backs. That makes Daniel Hamm the obvious topic du jour.
If you'd ever heard of Hamm, you are a teammate, a relation, or lying. His existence flew under every radar that's tuned on Charlottesville. He doesn't have an entry in most recruiting databases and he never received any scholarship offers to speak of, not in football. He showed up on the field and people probably tried to remember if Khalek Shepherd wore #22 or some other number, until his name was announced. Now his name is on all the headlines.
You have to admit, that's pretty cool. It might be for just this one week, and might've only been VMI, but the entry in the record book is just as permanent as any other. And it made something interesting out of an uninteresting game.
Also, it leaves some questions, or at least, one big one. Namely, does this mean we have a new running back? Well, the quality of competition looms large over everything positive we can say about Hamm's future. Except for the first couple drives, VMI had no chance against the blocking, and Hamm always had a hole to run through. When he broke a tackle, it always came with the question as to whether a player on a better team would've brought him down; when he ran past someone, you always wondered if another team's players would've been faster. There's no way UVA's running game will generate 357 yards again this year.
Even so, a couple things look to be really in Hamm's favor here. First and probably foremost, it's got to be really bad news for Kye Morgan, hasn't it? That Khalek Shepherd and Taquan Mizzell are both hurt, and the next guy out is a true freshman walk-on, instead of Morgan who redshirted last season - that's a surprise. Morgan's got more than three-and-a-half seasons left in his career, so it's not like you just write him off, but what didn't he show last year?
As for Hamm himself, some of those runs - particularly, I thought, his second TD run - were nice runs regardless of opponent. He looked strong in his running. Some of the holes he hit weren't very big, and the truth is, a lot of guys might have considered them too small and stepped around them, looking for a home run elsewhere. And against most teams, that's how you run for two yards. Hamm was content to take the five-to-seven and come back and do it again. There's only one Barry Sanders, so give me the north-south, workhorse stuff all day long. I loved watching a guy who would - oh, fuck it, Hammer the defense - carry after carry.
Whether Hamm has or will unseat Shepherd or Mizzell this season, nobody can say except those who aren't telling. Whether that performance will translate to success against actual opponents, nobody can say at all. But I'm looking forward to finding out.
Other stuff in short:
-- That was the good story of the offense. The bad story: the passing game. The numbers are good but the eye test was definitely not. So many of those yards were YAC, and not like with Mike Rocco where the YAC was often the result of a very well-timed ball. Watford threw a swing pass behind Kevin Parks and Parks was still able to pick up a ton of yardage; no ACC team will let that happen.
Watford's interceptions were the result of locking in on a receiver to absurd extremes. Especially the first. Some blame goes to Miles Gooch for running his route and then stopping, but he was so thoroughly covered that Watford had no business throwing that thing at all. Watford had some nice throws, too - the one to Tim Smith for a touchdown was gorgeous. Both his touchdown throws, actually, were excellent. Even then, he was watching nobody but Smith all the way. Until he learns to go through his second read he's not going to be a productive QB.
It would help if his receivers gave him a little assistance. Gooch has been mentioned; Dominique Terrell was also guilty at least once. Watford was scrambling and Terrell ran to a point on the field and simply stopped moving. I can't believe this only happened the two times I noticed it. Marques Hagans has got to impress on these guys that the route doesn't stop where the little arrow ends up. Of all former quarterbacks - a guy who kept a ton of plays alive with his feet - he ought to know this best.
-- I love the defense, though. When the announcers talked about how VMI had us "on the ropes" in the first quarter, well, OK, the offense didn't produce, but the VMI offense gained 15 yards the whole quarter. I mean, come on. The defense just crushed the fightin' Vimmies. No contest. If the offense had played as good a game as the defense it would've been 105-0. I'm not going back through the annals to find out the last time UVA allowed so few yards (79) but the notes tell us that they allowed 84 to Akron in 2004. So it goes back further than that. I would go so far as to say that even with as bad as VMI is, the defense outperformed expectations.
Time for a prediction review:
-- Mizzell and Shepherd combine for at least five more carries than Parks. The point here was that Parks was going to get a nice light day, maybe not show up in the second half. I could null it out since nobody knew about their injuries, but I'm giving it to myself, actually, because Hamm by himself had four more carries and then the fourth quarter was turned over to the backups.
-- Watford averages 10 yards per attempt, enough to double his seasonal passing yards if allowed to throw 28 times. He was at 8.2, which isn't enough for this.
-- At least five new redshirts are burned, two on the O-line. The grand total is seven: Hamm is one, along with LaChaston Smith, Eric Tetlow, Sadiq Olanrewaju, Eric Smith, Max Valles, and Donte Wilkins. Most are defensible; LaChaston Smith is the one I have to question. That hurdle was cool, but couldn't Morgan have just gotten those carries? Five deep is plenty. It's doubly screwy because of the very strong possibility that Smith might move to a whole new position eventually.
The rest are fine. I actually saw someone complaining that Hamm's redshirt had been burned. Lordy. You wouldn't have known he was even remotely good if you'd gotten your way. Besides, Hamm is a walk-on; it's exceedingly wrong to essentially tell a walk-on "for the good of the team we're going to ask you to pay your very expensive way for a fifth year." The offensive linemen almost had to play; the first-stringers can't take every snap of the season. And we'll almost certainly see more of Wilkins, too.
-- Defensive tackles account for at least two sacks. No, but they still dominated.
-- So does Eli Harold. No, but Trent Corney did, probably against VMI's second-string tackle, although I didn't look to see.
-- Urban bats down at least two passes. There was actually a lot of very good pressure on Eric Kordenbrock, but VMI did a nice job of keeping his release time short.
I only get two of six, which adds up to 6-for-16 on the year. Full game prediction, with a win against the spread and a gimme on the straight-up, makes me 2-1 and 2-1 ATS.
We'll cover the rest of the ACC as part of tomorrow's weekend review.
If you'd ever heard of Hamm, you are a teammate, a relation, or lying. His existence flew under every radar that's tuned on Charlottesville. He doesn't have an entry in most recruiting databases and he never received any scholarship offers to speak of, not in football. He showed up on the field and people probably tried to remember if Khalek Shepherd wore #22 or some other number, until his name was announced. Now his name is on all the headlines.
You have to admit, that's pretty cool. It might be for just this one week, and might've only been VMI, but the entry in the record book is just as permanent as any other. And it made something interesting out of an uninteresting game.
Also, it leaves some questions, or at least, one big one. Namely, does this mean we have a new running back? Well, the quality of competition looms large over everything positive we can say about Hamm's future. Except for the first couple drives, VMI had no chance against the blocking, and Hamm always had a hole to run through. When he broke a tackle, it always came with the question as to whether a player on a better team would've brought him down; when he ran past someone, you always wondered if another team's players would've been faster. There's no way UVA's running game will generate 357 yards again this year.
Even so, a couple things look to be really in Hamm's favor here. First and probably foremost, it's got to be really bad news for Kye Morgan, hasn't it? That Khalek Shepherd and Taquan Mizzell are both hurt, and the next guy out is a true freshman walk-on, instead of Morgan who redshirted last season - that's a surprise. Morgan's got more than three-and-a-half seasons left in his career, so it's not like you just write him off, but what didn't he show last year?
As for Hamm himself, some of those runs - particularly, I thought, his second TD run - were nice runs regardless of opponent. He looked strong in his running. Some of the holes he hit weren't very big, and the truth is, a lot of guys might have considered them too small and stepped around them, looking for a home run elsewhere. And against most teams, that's how you run for two yards. Hamm was content to take the five-to-seven and come back and do it again. There's only one Barry Sanders, so give me the north-south, workhorse stuff all day long. I loved watching a guy who would - oh, fuck it, Hammer the defense - carry after carry.
Whether Hamm has or will unseat Shepherd or Mizzell this season, nobody can say except those who aren't telling. Whether that performance will translate to success against actual opponents, nobody can say at all. But I'm looking forward to finding out.
Other stuff in short:
-- That was the good story of the offense. The bad story: the passing game. The numbers are good but the eye test was definitely not. So many of those yards were YAC, and not like with Mike Rocco where the YAC was often the result of a very well-timed ball. Watford threw a swing pass behind Kevin Parks and Parks was still able to pick up a ton of yardage; no ACC team will let that happen.
Watford's interceptions were the result of locking in on a receiver to absurd extremes. Especially the first. Some blame goes to Miles Gooch for running his route and then stopping, but he was so thoroughly covered that Watford had no business throwing that thing at all. Watford had some nice throws, too - the one to Tim Smith for a touchdown was gorgeous. Both his touchdown throws, actually, were excellent. Even then, he was watching nobody but Smith all the way. Until he learns to go through his second read he's not going to be a productive QB.
It would help if his receivers gave him a little assistance. Gooch has been mentioned; Dominique Terrell was also guilty at least once. Watford was scrambling and Terrell ran to a point on the field and simply stopped moving. I can't believe this only happened the two times I noticed it. Marques Hagans has got to impress on these guys that the route doesn't stop where the little arrow ends up. Of all former quarterbacks - a guy who kept a ton of plays alive with his feet - he ought to know this best.
-- I love the defense, though. When the announcers talked about how VMI had us "on the ropes" in the first quarter, well, OK, the offense didn't produce, but the VMI offense gained 15 yards the whole quarter. I mean, come on. The defense just crushed the fightin' Vimmies. No contest. If the offense had played as good a game as the defense it would've been 105-0. I'm not going back through the annals to find out the last time UVA allowed so few yards (79) but the notes tell us that they allowed 84 to Akron in 2004. So it goes back further than that. I would go so far as to say that even with as bad as VMI is, the defense outperformed expectations.
Time for a prediction review:
-- Mizzell and Shepherd combine for at least five more carries than Parks. The point here was that Parks was going to get a nice light day, maybe not show up in the second half. I could null it out since nobody knew about their injuries, but I'm giving it to myself, actually, because Hamm by himself had four more carries and then the fourth quarter was turned over to the backups.
-- Watford averages 10 yards per attempt, enough to double his seasonal passing yards if allowed to throw 28 times. He was at 8.2, which isn't enough for this.
-- At least five new redshirts are burned, two on the O-line. The grand total is seven: Hamm is one, along with LaChaston Smith, Eric Tetlow, Sadiq Olanrewaju, Eric Smith, Max Valles, and Donte Wilkins. Most are defensible; LaChaston Smith is the one I have to question. That hurdle was cool, but couldn't Morgan have just gotten those carries? Five deep is plenty. It's doubly screwy because of the very strong possibility that Smith might move to a whole new position eventually.
The rest are fine. I actually saw someone complaining that Hamm's redshirt had been burned. Lordy. You wouldn't have known he was even remotely good if you'd gotten your way. Besides, Hamm is a walk-on; it's exceedingly wrong to essentially tell a walk-on "for the good of the team we're going to ask you to pay your very expensive way for a fifth year." The offensive linemen almost had to play; the first-stringers can't take every snap of the season. And we'll almost certainly see more of Wilkins, too.
-- Defensive tackles account for at least two sacks. No, but they still dominated.
-- So does Eli Harold. No, but Trent Corney did, probably against VMI's second-string tackle, although I didn't look to see.
-- Urban bats down at least two passes. There was actually a lot of very good pressure on Eric Kordenbrock, but VMI did a nice job of keeping his release time short.
I only get two of six, which adds up to 6-for-16 on the year. Full game prediction, with a win against the spread and a gimme on the straight-up, makes me 2-1 and 2-1 ATS.
We'll cover the rest of the ACC as part of tomorrow's weekend review.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
the recruit: Corwin Cutler
Name: Corwin "Turtle" Cutler
Position: QB
Hometown: Virginia Beach
School: Ocean Lakes
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 180
24/7: 87; three stars; #25 pro-style QB; VA #19
ESPN: 82; four stars; #19 pro-style QB; VA #14; Atlantic #40
Rivals: 5.7; three stars; #25 pro-style QB; VA #22
Scout: three stars; #54 QB
Other offers: Connecticut, East Carolina, Marshall
I officially give up when it comes to guessing how many quarterbacks Mike London wants in any given class. Just when it looks absolutely ripe to take one and only one, and Brendan Marshall is in the fold, another one comes down the pipe. Fortunately, there's a plethora of quality nicknames coming out of the Tidewater area lately (Turtle, Big Cat, Smoke) and we seem to be in on that action pretty strongly.
Still - too many quarterbacks? Actually, London just might know what he's doing in this case. Corwin Cutler got offers from not a whole lot of places, and it didn't take him long to follow through with a commitment to the UVA one. Shortly after his commitment, though, ESPN gave a knowing nod in London's direction and said: well played, indeed. Their scouting report begins thusly: "This is a prospect that for whatever reason has flown under the radar throughout the process, but we believe Cutler is going to start seeing a lot more attention after the spring evaluation period. ... This guy should have a lot more offers."
ESPN is known for being more than occasionally divergent from the consensus opinion on a recruit, but that's an unusually blunt assessment. They were confident enough in Cutler's abilities to rate him our best commitment until this Tuesday, when Taquan Mizzell jumped on board - above bonafide players like Tim Harris, Kirk Garner, and Micah Kiser. And they might be onto something: Rivals' latest re-rank bumped Cutler upwards to high-three-star level, and 24/7's assessment of Cutler's performance at the New Level Athletics 7-on-7 tournament in New York, two months ago, was consistently higher than that of Mizzell. High praise, given Smoke's own ratings.
This makes the upcoming high school season an interesting one. Cutler definitely hit up the camp scene - his dad is involved in that in his own way, more on that in a bit. He plays in the high-visibility 757, and Ocean Lakes was among the top teams in the district last year. Even a middling three-star quarterback ought to have had offers, and now that the services have got a load of Turtle over the summer, they certainly like him better than "middling three star." (Except Scout, which is so damn lazy and useless that they're listing Tech commit Parker Osterloh under our section. Their lack of enthusiasm can be easily dismissed.) Possibly all the quarterback attention in Virginia was being given to the "big three" of Hackenberg, Hodges, and Burns. Regardless, now that Cutler's a UVA commit, folks will be watching this season, myself included. And I'm very interested to see if Cutler will live up to the rankings.
Cutler could prove to be one of UVA's most important recruits in a while, though, and not just for what happens on the field. All that rubbish from Hokies fans about a shadowy "Godfather" that steers players to UVA, and the supposed shadiness of the 757 Sports Academy (where Hampton Roads players train in the summer) really got the goat of a certain Carson Cutler - Corwin's father and a coach at the academy. How can I put this delicately.... Carson was really, really pissed about that shit. The PG version of his feelings was: "The rumors going around about being an AAU team and coaches being street agents are ridiculous and very unfortunate." The not-so-PG version, as posted on the Wahoos247 board:
It goes on in that vein. I did a little cleaning up for readability but that's basically the direct quote from the elder Cutler. UVA's recruitment of the younger Cutler is the kind of thing that's giving Mike London powerful allies in the best recruiting grounds in the state, and the way Hokie fans react to it doesn't help the cause in Blacksburg. Pissing off a group of people who see it as their mission to help football players find exposure for themselves, and ultimately, find homes in college somewhere, is How Not To Recruit 101, and the best part is, it's not like the VT coaches have much control over it.
Anyway. The part where we discuss the future. Turtle, obviously, finds a crowded depth chart. London has all but declared Greyson Lambert and Matt Johns will redshirt, which means that the QB pipeline is being established and Cutler and Marshall will certainly get the same treatment. Cutler won't play in 2014 either; Phillip Sims and David Watford will be seniors. That sets up a battle in 2015, when Cutler is a redshirt sophomore and Lambert and Johns are redshirt juniors. If the services are right about Cutler, he'll fend off Marshall, but it'll still be a major fight. There's sure to be some twists between now and then, but it's still very likely to be several years before Turtle is truly on the radar for the starting job. I don't pretend to know just what'll happen in a QB competition three months from now, let alone three years, but if Cutler is going to be the starting QB at UVA eventually, the window for that is 2015 to 2017 - the depth chart ahead of him may work out such that it's his fifth year before the job is truly his.
******************************************************
-- You know we finally got Smoke Mizzell, right? You heard about that already. I don't need to repeat incessantly that Mizzell committed to UVA this week. Mizzell's commitment to UVA, in which he committed to UVA, was the first five-star commitment for the Hoos since Eugene Monroe. Mizzell's commitment to UVA is bound to be a recruiting chip for the future as well, so I'm really glad Taquan Mizzell committed to UVA.
-- London and the coaches were surprisingly open about the depth chart this week - it was like bizzarro week in that respect, and certainly nice to hear something beyond the usual denials of ever even having heard of a "depth chart." London promised the official real preseason depth chart would be out Monday, which got a lot of people assuming we'll know who the starting quarterback is. Well, I'm pretty sure it'll be Rocco, but I still also think the Monday depth chart is gonna have a lot of "OR" in the QB section.
-- Besides that, some position changes were discussed: DE to TE for Rob Burns, WR to DB for Anthony Cooper, FB to DE for Trent Corney. When that happens, if a true freshman is involved, it's code for "this guy's redshirting" although Corney could be a special teams guy. Corney's getting something of an annoying legend built up around him, which Jeff White fed yesterday - annoying because this is the same kind of thing that happened with Keith Payne, who UVA fans were, in hindsight, wildly overrating and heaping just stupid expectations on. That, and you just know that some of the folks who want to see him "blowing people up" this year are gonna be some of the same moaning about redshirting in a few years. Truth is, he's just raw as all hell and probably needs that redshirt year.
Position: QB
Hometown: Virginia Beach
School: Ocean Lakes
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 180
24/7: 87; three stars; #25 pro-style QB; VA #19
ESPN: 82; four stars; #19 pro-style QB; VA #14; Atlantic #40
Rivals: 5.7; three stars; #25 pro-style QB; VA #22
Scout: three stars; #54 QB
Other offers: Connecticut, East Carolina, Marshall
I officially give up when it comes to guessing how many quarterbacks Mike London wants in any given class. Just when it looks absolutely ripe to take one and only one, and Brendan Marshall is in the fold, another one comes down the pipe. Fortunately, there's a plethora of quality nicknames coming out of the Tidewater area lately (Turtle, Big Cat, Smoke) and we seem to be in on that action pretty strongly.
Still - too many quarterbacks? Actually, London just might know what he's doing in this case. Corwin Cutler got offers from not a whole lot of places, and it didn't take him long to follow through with a commitment to the UVA one. Shortly after his commitment, though, ESPN gave a knowing nod in London's direction and said: well played, indeed. Their scouting report begins thusly: "This is a prospect that for whatever reason has flown under the radar throughout the process, but we believe Cutler is going to start seeing a lot more attention after the spring evaluation period. ... This guy should have a lot more offers."
ESPN is known for being more than occasionally divergent from the consensus opinion on a recruit, but that's an unusually blunt assessment. They were confident enough in Cutler's abilities to rate him our best commitment until this Tuesday, when Taquan Mizzell jumped on board - above bonafide players like Tim Harris, Kirk Garner, and Micah Kiser. And they might be onto something: Rivals' latest re-rank bumped Cutler upwards to high-three-star level, and 24/7's assessment of Cutler's performance at the New Level Athletics 7-on-7 tournament in New York, two months ago, was consistently higher than that of Mizzell. High praise, given Smoke's own ratings.
This makes the upcoming high school season an interesting one. Cutler definitely hit up the camp scene - his dad is involved in that in his own way, more on that in a bit. He plays in the high-visibility 757, and Ocean Lakes was among the top teams in the district last year. Even a middling three-star quarterback ought to have had offers, and now that the services have got a load of Turtle over the summer, they certainly like him better than "middling three star." (Except Scout, which is so damn lazy and useless that they're listing Tech commit Parker Osterloh under our section. Their lack of enthusiasm can be easily dismissed.) Possibly all the quarterback attention in Virginia was being given to the "big three" of Hackenberg, Hodges, and Burns. Regardless, now that Cutler's a UVA commit, folks will be watching this season, myself included. And I'm very interested to see if Cutler will live up to the rankings.
Cutler could prove to be one of UVA's most important recruits in a while, though, and not just for what happens on the field. All that rubbish from Hokies fans about a shadowy "Godfather" that steers players to UVA, and the supposed shadiness of the 757 Sports Academy (where Hampton Roads players train in the summer) really got the goat of a certain Carson Cutler - Corwin's father and a coach at the academy. How can I put this delicately.... Carson was really, really pissed about that shit. The PG version of his feelings was: "The rumors going around about being an AAU team and coaches being street agents are ridiculous and very unfortunate." The not-so-PG version, as posted on the Wahoos247 board:
I feel its absolutely disgusting how people are taking shots at men they don't even know. ... I followed VT football because of past relationship[s] I had with past and present players. I used to have a lot of respect for what they have done with talent have gotten over the years but now I have lost all of respect for them and their fans .... Now you can take my words and twist it all you want to, I can and will be a HUGE supporter of Coach Mike London and his staff because of the man that he is and the word that he keeps with the parents and players, the only thing he promised me is that my son will get his degree. So all [you] ignorant ASS S.O.B that have been calling him "BLACK SANTA" (giving gifts to us funding our trips etc) is fucking crazzzy but you showed your true colors!!!!! And its not BLACK OR WHITE thing, it's just your arrogance in thinking that every kid should go to VT....
It goes on in that vein. I did a little cleaning up for readability but that's basically the direct quote from the elder Cutler. UVA's recruitment of the younger Cutler is the kind of thing that's giving Mike London powerful allies in the best recruiting grounds in the state, and the way Hokie fans react to it doesn't help the cause in Blacksburg. Pissing off a group of people who see it as their mission to help football players find exposure for themselves, and ultimately, find homes in college somewhere, is How Not To Recruit 101, and the best part is, it's not like the VT coaches have much control over it.
Anyway. The part where we discuss the future. Turtle, obviously, finds a crowded depth chart. London has all but declared Greyson Lambert and Matt Johns will redshirt, which means that the QB pipeline is being established and Cutler and Marshall will certainly get the same treatment. Cutler won't play in 2014 either; Phillip Sims and David Watford will be seniors. That sets up a battle in 2015, when Cutler is a redshirt sophomore and Lambert and Johns are redshirt juniors. If the services are right about Cutler, he'll fend off Marshall, but it'll still be a major fight. There's sure to be some twists between now and then, but it's still very likely to be several years before Turtle is truly on the radar for the starting job. I don't pretend to know just what'll happen in a QB competition three months from now, let alone three years, but if Cutler is going to be the starting QB at UVA eventually, the window for that is 2015 to 2017 - the depth chart ahead of him may work out such that it's his fifth year before the job is truly his.
******************************************************
-- You know we finally got Smoke Mizzell, right? You heard about that already. I don't need to repeat incessantly that Mizzell committed to UVA this week. Mizzell's commitment to UVA, in which he committed to UVA, was the first five-star commitment for the Hoos since Eugene Monroe. Mizzell's commitment to UVA is bound to be a recruiting chip for the future as well, so I'm really glad Taquan Mizzell committed to UVA.
-- London and the coaches were surprisingly open about the depth chart this week - it was like bizzarro week in that respect, and certainly nice to hear something beyond the usual denials of ever even having heard of a "depth chart." London promised the official real preseason depth chart would be out Monday, which got a lot of people assuming we'll know who the starting quarterback is. Well, I'm pretty sure it'll be Rocco, but I still also think the Monday depth chart is gonna have a lot of "OR" in the QB section.
-- Besides that, some position changes were discussed: DE to TE for Rob Burns, WR to DB for Anthony Cooper, FB to DE for Trent Corney. When that happens, if a true freshman is involved, it's code for "this guy's redshirting" although Corney could be a special teams guy. Corney's getting something of an annoying legend built up around him, which Jeff White fed yesterday - annoying because this is the same kind of thing that happened with Keith Payne, who UVA fans were, in hindsight, wildly overrating and heaping just stupid expectations on. That, and you just know that some of the folks who want to see him "blowing people up" this year are gonna be some of the same moaning about redshirting in a few years. Truth is, he's just raw as all hell and probably needs that redshirt year.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
recruiting board update
Because it's Wednesday. The board page is here. Updates:
-- Moved DT Donta Wilkins and LB Peter Kalambayi from green to blue.
-- Moved OT Brad Henson from yellow to blue. Consider these guys, along with Wyatt Teller and Taquan Mizzell, the next wave of hopefulness, of sorts, now that Micah Kiser and Zack Jones have committed. Notice that all of them except Henson have four stars from at least one service, and Henson is pretty close.
-- Moved CB Calvin Jones from green to yellow.
-- Added LB LaChaston Smith to yellow.
-- Removed RB David Williams and DE Jonathan Allen from red. Top fives, eights, whatevers, without UVA, mean removal.
One other thing might change the recruiting board: the news that Trent Corney is now likely to enroll this summer and join the 2012 class for real. If and when the school announces that, I'll take him off the 2013 board and put him on the 2012 one, which might be gone from the links soon anyway but whatever; he's 2013 because he wasn't going to be on the team this fall, but if he's on the team this fall, he's 2012. Why the sudden change? My guess is it means someone else fell off the academic wagon. We know Tyrell Chavis is a candidate for a prep year, but even if you don't count him, Phillip Sims made 85 scholarships even. Adding Corney as well probably means further attrition is on the way.
Good news: baseball and lacrosse make their hopefully-triumphant returns to the field this weekend, so previews resume as normal tomorrow. In fact baseball actually started up again this evening; it's nice to get back to a routine.
-- Moved DT Donta Wilkins and LB Peter Kalambayi from green to blue.
-- Moved OT Brad Henson from yellow to blue. Consider these guys, along with Wyatt Teller and Taquan Mizzell, the next wave of hopefulness, of sorts, now that Micah Kiser and Zack Jones have committed. Notice that all of them except Henson have four stars from at least one service, and Henson is pretty close.
-- Moved CB Calvin Jones from green to yellow.
-- Added LB LaChaston Smith to yellow.
-- Removed RB David Williams and DE Jonathan Allen from red. Top fives, eights, whatevers, without UVA, mean removal.
One other thing might change the recruiting board: the news that Trent Corney is now likely to enroll this summer and join the 2012 class for real. If and when the school announces that, I'll take him off the 2013 board and put him on the 2012 one, which might be gone from the links soon anyway but whatever; he's 2013 because he wasn't going to be on the team this fall, but if he's on the team this fall, he's 2012. Why the sudden change? My guess is it means someone else fell off the academic wagon. We know Tyrell Chavis is a candidate for a prep year, but even if you don't count him, Phillip Sims made 85 scholarships even. Adding Corney as well probably means further attrition is on the way.
Good news: baseball and lacrosse make their hopefully-triumphant returns to the field this weekend, so previews resume as normal tomorrow. In fact baseball actually started up again this evening; it's nice to get back to a routine.
Friday, April 20, 2012
the recruit: Trent Corney
Name: Trent Corney
Position: ??
Hometown: Brockville, ON
School: Thousand Islands
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 240
24/7: NR
ESPN: NR
Rivals: NR
Scout: two stars, #109 OLB
Other offers: Buffalo, others?
This is a little bit of a different breed of recruitment. You might've noticed that most of the recruiting sites are insistent on classifying Trent Corney as a 2012 recruit - not totally unreasonable, as it's the year he'll graduate from high school. But they have their ways and I have mine: Corney will spend this fall (most likely) playing for Fork Union's prep team, and enroll at UVA in January 2013. That makes him, in my book, an early-enrolling 2013 recruit. The recruiting board reflects as much.
Right now, Corney is less of a football player and more of a track star that plays football. He's a freakish athlete and moves ridiculously well for a guy his size. If he wanted to play basketball he probably could. If he wanted to play lacrosse he probably could. Hockey, probably. One report attributes him a 4.3 40 time and while I don't believe that any more than I believe there's a purple boogeyman under my bed,** I'm willing to believe he's absurdly fast for a guy his size.
Of course he's strong as hell, too; various numbers have popped up for his bench press, squat, etc. which are highly impressive and so on and so forth. It's the javelin where Corney excels, though. He's a national-level javelin thrower; in fact, if his personal best javelin toss of 64.05 meters (800 grams, the same weight the NCAA uses) had been entered in last year's ACC championships, he'd have placed fourth. As a junior in high school.
Corney made his mind up a while ago, though, that he'd pursue a football scholarship and not a track one; he won't be on the track team at UVA. To that end he hit some camps, and wowed with his athleticism but probably not his football skills. The only school I could find that definitely gave him an offer was Buffalo. Rutgers showed a lot of interest, Stanford and Miami had a look, Pittsburgh, but no firm offers.
I don't usually find highlight tapes all that interesting, because they're "highlight tapes" for a reason, but Corney's was even less useful than most. Which in fact tells the story. A lot of the plays are of the man-among-boys type - like the time he tackled the holder before the kicker could get the extra point off. It speaks more to the level of competition than anything. Also, Corney's tackling form stinks. Often it was just, grab a guy by the jersey and chuck him to the ground with the javelin hand.
Also telling in this regard is that he doesn't really have a position. One report lists him as a "Running Back, Tight End, Wide Receiver, Linebacker, Safety, Defensive End." Uh, that's basically all of them. Except quarterback and kicker. This FUMA year will be necessary to find out what position he fits best, just for starters.
Essentially, what we've got here is a blank slate. I bet coaches love this, because it doesn't come across their plate too often: a freakish athlete where you get to just choose his position. I have no idea what that'll be and I bet the coaches don't know right now either and don't care. We can probably narrow down a few - he's not a defensive back, he's probably not an offensive lineman because he'd have to grow too much and learn too much technique, and he's probably not a tailback. On defense, he's either a defensive end or maybe - maybe - a linebacker. Big maybe, though - he's probably going to outgrow the kind of size Mike London prefers at linebacker, but that doesn't necessarily mean he won't be athletic enough anyway. If on offense, he's a tight end or an H-back style fullback.
You have to love the idea of trying a guy like Corney on your team, though. The chances of him really and truly reaching his full potential are slim, for two reasons: his incredible rawness, and the enormous height of his ceiling. It's probable, though admittedly boring, that he'll fall somewhere in between total superstar and washout. You ask me, I think I'd prefer to see him as a field-stretching tight end, because we haven't had that ability from that position for a while.
**Have you noticed I basically never mention anyone's 40 time? Until there's a real, honest standard for them that everyone uses, they're useless. Especially hand-timed ones. People place such importance on tenths of a second and people just don't have that kind of reaction time. Proof positive of the worthlessness of 40-time reports is that an actual newspaper-type thing reported with a straight face that a 240-pound guy ran a 4.3. He bloody well did not.
Position: ??
Hometown: Brockville, ON
School: Thousand Islands
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 240
24/7: NR
ESPN: NR
Rivals: NR
Scout: two stars, #109 OLB
Other offers: Buffalo, others?
This is a little bit of a different breed of recruitment. You might've noticed that most of the recruiting sites are insistent on classifying Trent Corney as a 2012 recruit - not totally unreasonable, as it's the year he'll graduate from high school. But they have their ways and I have mine: Corney will spend this fall (most likely) playing for Fork Union's prep team, and enroll at UVA in January 2013. That makes him, in my book, an early-enrolling 2013 recruit. The recruiting board reflects as much.
Right now, Corney is less of a football player and more of a track star that plays football. He's a freakish athlete and moves ridiculously well for a guy his size. If he wanted to play basketball he probably could. If he wanted to play lacrosse he probably could. Hockey, probably. One report attributes him a 4.3 40 time and while I don't believe that any more than I believe there's a purple boogeyman under my bed,** I'm willing to believe he's absurdly fast for a guy his size.
Of course he's strong as hell, too; various numbers have popped up for his bench press, squat, etc. which are highly impressive and so on and so forth. It's the javelin where Corney excels, though. He's a national-level javelin thrower; in fact, if his personal best javelin toss of 64.05 meters (800 grams, the same weight the NCAA uses) had been entered in last year's ACC championships, he'd have placed fourth. As a junior in high school.
Corney made his mind up a while ago, though, that he'd pursue a football scholarship and not a track one; he won't be on the track team at UVA. To that end he hit some camps, and wowed with his athleticism but probably not his football skills. The only school I could find that definitely gave him an offer was Buffalo. Rutgers showed a lot of interest, Stanford and Miami had a look, Pittsburgh, but no firm offers.
I don't usually find highlight tapes all that interesting, because they're "highlight tapes" for a reason, but Corney's was even less useful than most. Which in fact tells the story. A lot of the plays are of the man-among-boys type - like the time he tackled the holder before the kicker could get the extra point off. It speaks more to the level of competition than anything. Also, Corney's tackling form stinks. Often it was just, grab a guy by the jersey and chuck him to the ground with the javelin hand.
Also telling in this regard is that he doesn't really have a position. One report lists him as a "Running Back, Tight End, Wide Receiver, Linebacker, Safety, Defensive End." Uh, that's basically all of them. Except quarterback and kicker. This FUMA year will be necessary to find out what position he fits best, just for starters.
Essentially, what we've got here is a blank slate. I bet coaches love this, because it doesn't come across their plate too often: a freakish athlete where you get to just choose his position. I have no idea what that'll be and I bet the coaches don't know right now either and don't care. We can probably narrow down a few - he's not a defensive back, he's probably not an offensive lineman because he'd have to grow too much and learn too much technique, and he's probably not a tailback. On defense, he's either a defensive end or maybe - maybe - a linebacker. Big maybe, though - he's probably going to outgrow the kind of size Mike London prefers at linebacker, but that doesn't necessarily mean he won't be athletic enough anyway. If on offense, he's a tight end or an H-back style fullback.
You have to love the idea of trying a guy like Corney on your team, though. The chances of him really and truly reaching his full potential are slim, for two reasons: his incredible rawness, and the enormous height of his ceiling. It's probable, though admittedly boring, that he'll fall somewhere in between total superstar and washout. You ask me, I think I'd prefer to see him as a field-stretching tight end, because we haven't had that ability from that position for a while.
**Have you noticed I basically never mention anyone's 40 time? Until there's a real, honest standard for them that everyone uses, they're useless. Especially hand-timed ones. People place such importance on tenths of a second and people just don't have that kind of reaction time. Proof positive of the worthlessness of 40-time reports is that an actual newspaper-type thing reported with a straight face that a 240-pound guy ran a 4.3. He bloody well did not.
Friday, February 3, 2012
game preview: Florida State; PLUS we got Pitt
Date/Time: Saturday, February 4; 1:00
TV: ACC Net., ESPN3
Record against the Noles: 17-19
Last matchup: FSU 63, UVA 56; 2/12/11; Tallahassee
Last game: UVA 65, Clemson 61 (1/31); FSU 68, GT 54 (2/1)
Opposing blogs: Tomahawk Nation
KenPom breakdown:
Tempo:
UVA: 59.9 (#341)
FSU: 68.1 (#99)
Offense:
UVA: 106.1 (#82)
FSU: 106.0 (#83)
Defense:
UVA: 86.5 (#8)
FSU: 85.5 (#5)
Pythag:
UVA: .8897 (#22)
FSU: .9009 (#18)
Common opponents:
Clemson: UVA won 65-61; FSU lost 79-59
Virginia Tech: UVA lost 47-45; FSU won 63-59
Duke: UVA lost 61-58; FSU won 76-73
Georgia Tech: UVA won 70-38; FSU won 68-54
Projected starting lineups:
Virginia:
PG: Jontel Evans (6.0 ppg, 2.0 rpg, 3.6 apg)
SG: Sammy Zeglinski (8.9 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 2.7 apg)
SF: Joe Harris (12.6 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 1.6 apg)
PF: Mike Scott (17.0 ppg, 8.3 rpg, 1.5 apg)
F: Akil Mitchell (4.0 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 0.8 apg)
Florida State:
PG: Luke Loucks (7.2 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 4.1 apg)
SG: Michael Snaer (14.1 ppg, 3.6 rpg, 1.8 apg)
G: Deividas Dulkys (7.7 ppg, 2.2 rpg, 1.2 apg)
PF: Bernard James (10.5 ppg, 8.8 rpg, 0.5 apg)
C: Xavier Gibson (7.7 ppg, 5.0 rpg, 0.4 apg)
The ACC made it's long-awaited announcement about future divisional alignments and scheduling and so forth, and that's big enough news I thought about skipping the game preview and rambling about that instead. But this is as big a bastaball game as there is in the remainder of this season, so it'd be wrong to skip it. So you get both. Stupid blogger thoughts on the 14-team ACC are appended to the end of this preview.
As for the game itself, it's kinda big. FSU and UVA are extremely similar in some respects (nearly identical KenPom numbers, heavy emphasis on defense) and polar opposites in others (tempo, defensive style) and are the two odds-on contenders for the right to be named Best Team In The ACC Other Than You-Know-Who. Except that FSU has already beaten both You-Know-Whos.
Shameless plug before the fun stuff begins: since I'll be watching this game on ESPN3 and not on the tube, I'll be tweetering like a wild man all game; follow @MaizeNBlueWahoo for stupid blogger mini-thoughts.
-- UVA on offense
You know how UVA's defense works: don't let anybody inside, especially don't let anyone drive inside, and sag off on the perimeter. FSU is more or less the opposite: they will hound and harass you on the perimeter and dare you to take advantage of their aggressiveness by driving. Then they position a couple of athletic trees near the basket and get swatty.
Said trees are named Bernard James and Xavier Gibson. It's not uncommon for teams to not have a real center, so they station a four there and hope it works out. Florida State is the opposite; both these guys could legitimately be fives. They have block percentages of 9.0 and 8.8 respectively, which means that when they're both on the court at the same time, the chances are better than 1-in-6 that your shot will meet an immovable object on the way to the net. FSU is also excellent at defending the three-point shot, allowing just 28.3% shooting from there. Just to up the degree of difficulty a little more, FSU is one of the biggest teams in the country, 9th in "effective height." The guy who spells James and Gibson is seven-footer Jon Kreft, and their starting guards all stand 6'5". And sixth man Okaro White comes off the bench at 6'8".
How do you score on a team like this? I expect that, for starters, Mike Scott will have to deploy his 14-17 foot jump shot more often than usual. James and Gibson will probably double him when he gets the ball in the post, and they're athletic guys but whether or not they're effective in chasing Scott to the perimeter (and no big guy this year has been, so far) it'll at least spread the floor a little.
I also think UVA will go into maximum slow-down mode. I mean, even more so than usual. FSU is a team that thrives on generating turnovers, and their size makes them really good at it. The first twenty seconds of the shot clock will feature a little bit of jogging around, setting screens and playing catch on the perimeter, in full Tony Bennett war crime style. Jontel and Sammy aren't big guys, and FSU has the athleticism advantage. If Sammy or Joe Harris finds themselves with a nice open shot, fine, but I think we'll be content with taking our one shot late in the shot clock using one of our main scorers, instead of trying to force-create openings.
Deividas Dulkys is a better defender than Michael Snaer, so I think he'll draw Joe Harris; Dulkys has sneaky-good hands and is one of the Noles' top ball thieves. But he's skinny and nowhere near as quick as Snaer. If Harris is allowed to go one-on-one with his back to the basket, Dulkys may need help. Harris typically is a perimeter player, of course, but if he gets the ball closer to the bucket, the Hoos might be able to work some inside-out magic, or else find Mike Scott a little bit more open than he should be. At the point, Luke Loucks has a big size advantage on Evans - how many 6'5" point guards are there? - but he's got no quicks and Evans ought to win the matchup more often than not.
There may be a few second-chance points to be found as well; despite having such a big team, FSU is surprisingly average at defensive rebounding. James is a bright spot for them here, but Gibson, for his size, isn't that great.
Any way you slice it, though, points will be hard to find. This is a team that held UNC to 57 points, and in the Noles' second-fastest-paced game of the season, too. (Somehow, Clemson scored 79 on them. That is a mystery of the highest order and the Hoos' ray of hope.) UVA will have to work for every point, and must stay disciplined; against a pressure defense like FSU's, it's easy to fall into the trap of rushing one's shot.
-- UVA on defense
How might this game be won? Turnovers on this end. A TO% of 24.1 makes FSU the #323 team in the country - turning it over one out of every four possessions. Backup point guard Jeff Peterson is shockingly terrible with a whopping 37%. Yes, if Peterson is on the court for eight possessions, he'll turn the ball over on three of them. Five Seminoles average more than two turnovers per game.
And even playing at a much, much faster pace, FSU as a team averages fewer assists per game (12) than UVA (13.) Why so few? It has a lot to do with the number of transition baskets they get, off of all those turnovers they create on the other end. It's also a function of having so many bigs - James, Gibson, White - involved in the offense. But it's also a function of having black holes for offensive players. Just about every Virginia player is better in the assist department than his Florida State counterpart, except for the point guards who are about even. Once the ball hits the hands of a Seminole, it's likely to go toward the basket. Or end up in enemy hands.
Despite the fact that James is the second-leading scorer, the truth is that the halfcourt offense runs through the guards mostly. Or at least it should, as Gibson is actually the highest-usage player on the team, but one of the least efficient. James is mostly a putback and transition guy. Point guard Loucks doesn't look for his shot much, instead looking to feed Snaer and Dulkys, both of whom have very good shots.
When FSU's starters are in, that's when they'll have the advantage. When they're not turning the ball over, they're pretty tough to stop. UVA will have the upper hand when any of them are off the floor - Ian Miller has been a terrible shooter this year, and Peterson's turnover habit is already well-documented. Jon Kreft is a nonfactor. UVA's pack-line defense should be a good matchup against such a turnover-prone team, as it's something of a novelty and designed to let you make your own mistakes. But FSU's size will be tough to defend and there'll be times there's nothing we can do.
-- Outlook
No doubt, FSU is a tournament team, and they have a terrific chance to earn the #1 seed in the ACC tourney. Both of these teams are built in such a way as to give each other fits. But unfortunately, FSU more so. In order to win, UVA must force the Seminoles into a thousand turnovers and limit their own, because this defense will be maybe the toughest we see all year. Including Carolina. On the road, this is easier said than done. It should be close, but the win will be just out of reach.
-- Final score: FSU 54, UVA 50
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So, now the big-picture stuff. ACC expansion and scheduling, as announced today. Everybody say hi to Pittsburgh (HI PITTSBURGH!) as the Panthers will be the newest members of the Coastal Division when they eventually leave the Big East for better pastures.
There'll also be nine conference games on the football schedule, and the permanent crossover remains, so no changes there. Pitt and Cuse are simply each other's buddies. But the rest of the statement reads like this:
The format will consist of each team playing all six in its division each year, plus its primary crossover partner each year and two rotating opponents from the opposite division. This six-year cycle allows each team to play each divisional opponent and its primary crossover partner six times (three home and three away) while also playing each rotating crossover opponent two times (one home and one away).I parse and parse and parse this statement and I can't for the life of me tell whether they're doing this right or not. What do I mean?
- Wrong: The way they're doing it now.
- Right: The format proposed at the bottom of this post.
Just replace the Pitt helmet with a Syracuse one. Both ways would fulfill "playing each rotating crossover opponent two times in six years" but my way means three calendar years between games against a particular opponent. The current way - a home game directly followed by an away game directly followed by a huge gap - would mean five calendar years. Let me make this perfectly clear: if a normal student attends UVA, and during his time there, there are teams in the conference that we never play, then we have ceased to be a conference and are instead a little mini-NFL.
I don't have much faith that they got this right.
The choice of divisions for the newcomers, however, seems obvious in retrospect. BC can play Syracuse, and we have a little mini-region here in the mid-Atlantic now with us, Tech, Maryland, and Pitt. It will help our recruiting a little bit, as Pittsburgh is an area we like to have a presence in. (The reverse will also be true, of course.) And for once, I can see myself at a UVA football game in the future - Pittsburgh is only five hours from me. Bloomington was six and I made it a point to get my ass down there, so Pittsburgh has its appeal. Only problem: they don't have their own stadium and borrow that of the Steelers. Lame.
As for basketball, I don't have a complaint about 18 games at all but I do have a beef with not playing Maryland twice every year. Come on, man. Screw that. I suppose the upside is a more even spread of games against the conference in general, and the symmetry of the three-year cycle has a certain appeal. The other upside: a slight advantage in the year-to-year schedule, assuming Tech's downward spiral is a long-term thing, as they're obviously our one scheduling buddy.
One final disappointment, but not a permanent one: no announcement about how they're gonna work the baseball schedule with an odd number of teams. Here's a hint for the decision makers: get rid of divisions. Pittsburgh is the school with a baseball team, so it would be kind of bullshit to merely drop them into an already ridiculously stacked Coastal.
Finally, I don't get into politics here for a reason, but I'd like you to know that the Canadian pipeline is alive and well, regardless of what the President says. This one sends big football players to Charlottesville instead of oil to Texas, though. The Sabre's Good Ol' Blog is reporting (via the Ottawa Citizen) that Trent Corney is UVA's first 2013 commitment. Technically, Corney is a grayshirt, meaning he'll graduate high school this year, spend a semester at FUMA, and show up in the spring of 2013. For recruiting board purposes that makes him an early-enrolling 2013 guy. My thoughts on grayshirting are not happy thoughts, but the difference between this and the way Nick Saban and Les Miles do it - which is to spring it on a kid at literally the last possible minute so he doesn't have a chance to look elsewhere - is the difference between tapping another bumper parallel parking, and plowing your car into a kindergarten classroom.
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