weekend review

Short newsbits and then Senior Seasons and then that's it.

-- Fun little article about Kyle Crockett in the Daily Press.  His rapid rise to the majors was certainly impressive.  Actually saw him pitch in person this year and noticed two things: one, the pros got him out of the Karl Kuhn squat awfully quickly (most UVA pitchers lose that after going pro) and two, he's still rail-skinny and looked like he might get eaten by Miguel Cabrera.

-- The O-line is a little thinner this week with Jackson Matteo out after foot surgery.  It doesn't sound like a real short-term type of thing, despite the claim that he's not out for the year yet.

-- VT is also down some more in the depth department, losing one of their top RBs, freshman Shai McKenzie, to a torn ACL.  It's a really tough situation for the guy - it's the same ACL he tore last year.

-- I haven't bothered yet with posting anything about bowl projections, as they're kinda silly this early, and UVA's have been just a hodgepodge of bowls who get to pick the ACC's barrel-scrapings.  But here's the first one that has the Hoos in a respectable place against an opponent who'd probably beat the flying crap out of us.  The Music City is part of a group of bowls that shares the fourth through seventh pick (or fifth through eighth if the playoff takes an ACC team); any time you see UVA in the Military, Independence, or ex-Motor City Bowls, that's basement-type stuff.  Not that I'd scoff at going.

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

Senior Seasons!  And we have a new addition, too.  Always fun to add a new face to follow midseason.  Last year that never happened - all the commitments came either before or after the season.

West Orange 50, Jones 14: New UVA commit Brandon Wilson didn't do anything to put himself in the game article.  I just wanted to point out that he has a teammate named Eddie McDoom.  SIGN HIM.  I demand it.  West Orange is 5-0.

Poly Prep 34, Hun School 7: Chris Sharp slogged out 87 yards on 17 carries, and the game's opening touchdown, but Hun couldn't get anything else going on offense.  Hun is 1-1.

Good Counsel 17, Gonzaga 7: Nick Johns passed for Gonzaga's only touchdown in a loss that wouldn't have been an upset a couple years ago, but is a fairly big one today.  OLGC and Gonzaga are both 4-1.

Kettle Run 27, Skyline 0: David Eldrige had a quiet day with only one catch for 12 yards.  Kettle Run is 2-2.

Altavista 46, Appomattox 7: Juan Thornhill threw for one touchdown and ran for another on a fake punt.  Altavista is 4-0.

Manasquan 21, Holmdel 0 (Tanner Cowley) - Manasquan is 2-1.
Colerain 30, Lakota West 21 (C.J. Stalker) - Lakota West is 2-3.
Plymouth-Whitemarsh 47, Wissahickon 27 (Ryan Bischoff) - P-W is 3-2.
St. Joseph's-Montvale 47, St. Joseph's Prep 29 (Olamide Zacchaeus) - St. Joseph's Prep is 1-3.
Philadelphia Northeast 23, Roxborough 8 (Gladimir Paul) - Northeast is 1-4.
Cathedral Prep 16, Aquinas Institute 12 (James Trucilla) - Prep is 5-0.
Somerset 50, Greater Johnstown 13 (Kareem Gibson) - Johnstown is 3-2.
Spring Valley 56, South Aiken 35 (Rasool Clemons) - South Aiken is 2-3.
HD Woodson 42, Woodrow Wilson 23 (Kareem McDonald) - Wilson is 3-2.
Broad Run 38, Liberty 35 (R.J. Proctor) - Liberty is 3-1.
Mills Godwin 27, Patrick Henry 5 (Eli Hanback) - Patrick Henry is 1-3.
Ocean Lakes 56, Bayside 12 (Jahvoni Simmons) - Ocean Lakes is 4-0.
Grassfield 27, Hickory 17 (Richard Burney) - Hickory is 1-3.

Only David Curry with Buford had a scheduled bye this week, but Grant Polk and Charlotte got rained out.  No byes the next two weeks, though; everyone's in action.

weekend review

I don't brag much - maybe like four or five times a year, tops - but when I'm right, I'm right.  The Charlottesville regional, as far as UVA was concerned, went down exactly as planned.  Except for that UNC-Wilmington was a dud and couldn't get past Elon.  UVA, on the other hand, swung some cold bats against some quality pitching performances from Army's Chris Rowley and Elon's Spencer Medick.  Fortunately the Hoos turned in even better performances on the hill and set themselves up in the winners' bracket.  Then, against the same Elon team, only with a burned-up pitching staff, UVA opened up a can.

Sunday's starter was Whit Mayberry, but the outing of the day belonged to David Rosenberger, a medium-use reliever for most of the season who came through with five scoreless innings in relief.  A terrific outing especially for a guy who usually needed four or five appearances to rack up that many innings.  Mayberry wasn't actually bad, and a more normal strike zone might've seen him go five or six terrific innings himself.  Whit was victimized by a dinky little strike zone and actually only walked one hitter, but since the umpire wouldn't give him the corners, he had to throw juiceballs in order to get strikes, and the Elon hitters took advantage.  A six-run third, though, followed by some insurance in later innings, put the Elon threat away for good.

Can't talk about great pitching performances without mentioning the shutout on Saturday, though, which Scott Silverstein (6 innings), Josh Sborz (1 inning) and Kyle Crockett (2 innings) combined their efforts on.  Or, for that matter, Brandon Waddell's three-hit, 8-K effort against Army.  When you allow four runs in three games, you'll usually advance.

It's an extremely chalky tournament so far; 14 of 16 super-regional slots have been filled (at the moment I'm writing this) and the only one of those 14 that's not a 1 seed is Oklahoma.  (Which beat the Hokies.  You can probably hear me wailing and gnashing my teeth already.)  UVA hosts Mississippi State, which slipped up against 4 seed Central Arkansas on Sunday but recovered today to move on.

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

-- Solid article last week in ESPN, the summary of which is basically Brian O'Connor is awesome.

-- More shakeup in the lacrosse world, and I call it bad news.  The ACC lost out on the Johns Hopkins sweepstakes (who knows if they ever tried?) and Hopkins will join the Big Ten as an associate member for lacrosse.  Or really, Hopkins will join the CIC (the B1G's research collaboration branch) with lacrosse as their excuse - and the B1G's excuse for adding them.

That puts a powerful competitor for recruits on the landscape for 2015, when the move occurs.  (Hopkins probably has half a schedule put together for 2014 already, and there's no sense in them joining before Maryland and Rutgers get there anyway.)  Maryland badly needed Hopkins so they wouldn't have to go the fully-independent route and would have a rival they could use as a recruiting chip.  They've put together a conference of Hopkins, Maryland, Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, and Rutgers, which is a tough group, especially since it'll be televised on the BTN.  (Don't expect Michigan to stink forever.)  Meanwhile, the ACC now has to look within its own ranks if it wants to find a sixth member and create a tourney autobid.

Hopkins will have to create room on their schedule for four Big Ten games (they already play Maryland, obviously, and played Michigan this season) and it's natural to wonder if they'll keep UVA on their schedule.  They probably will.  Hopkins-UVA is one of the stronger rivalries in lacrosse and one Hopkins may need to keep their recruiting at an elite level, and besides that we're the closest ACC team they've got.  If they want to keep playing ACC teams, UVA is the way to do it.

The other big shakeup is Denver's move to the Big East as an associate lacrosse member.  This is called "the Big East saves its own ass" and preserves its autobid, as it will be losing Syracuse and Rutgers and would've dropped to five teams after 2014.  Naturally, the ECAC is in trouble, and the four teams left (Air Force, Bellarmine, Hobart, and Fairfield) need to either go raiding or find other conferences.  The latter seems more likely.  Fairfield is in the MAAC, after all, and might find this a propitious time to be a lax member too.  Bellarmine might find a fit in the A-Sun.  The NEC has a little autobid dilemma, being also left with five teams thanks to the MAAC's pillaging, and Hobart might be just the fix they need.  Air Force could, I dunno, figure something out.  If they tried to keep the ECAC on life support, Detroit would be a fit, but who else?

I would guess they'll go their separate ways - the ECAC has always been little more than a holding pen for teams waiting to find a more permanent home.  And if so, you might just see the constant lacrosse realignment - which has for some time been a fact of life rather than a cataclysm - settle down for a bit, with the only catalyst for more change being new schools adding the sport.

weekend review

Of the big four sports played in North America, as well as some of the next-tier ones like soccer and lacrosse, baseball is easily the most structured.  That's why it lends itself so well to advanced statistics.  That's also why it's the most prone to bizarrity; in a more free-flowing game like hockey or basketball, there's less of a structure to break free of, which means there's less opportunity for something nutty to happen.  And usually when it does, it's because of the officials.

So you get games like Saturday's against UNC.  It's impressive how fast a pitchers' duel turned into a slugfest.  Whit Mayberry did a great job in five innings of starting, needing only about 60 pitches and moving very efficiently.  Nathan Kirby was great for two innings; unfortunately, he pitched in three, with the wheels coming off in the eighth.  (He wasn't the only one, though; the boys in Carolina blue fell apart at exactly the same time.  And I was impressed in the confidence the coaches put in Kirby, having him pitch through some tough situations in a very tight game.)

Thankfully, UVA scoring runs and then UNC giving them back wasn't the ultimate story.  Carolina boneheadedness was.  UVA's 11th-inning rally started to bear fruit when UNC tried to get the lead runner at third on a sacrifice bunt, and Colin Moran biffed the throw, which of course moved everyone up a bag.  That's how the 11th started; it ended when Skye Bolt hit a deep drive that Mike Papi caught against the wall (saving at least a double), and for whatever reason, the pinch-runner on first never tagged up.  He was nowhere to be found when the ball arrived back at the base to double him off and polish off the game.

You can argue for a while whose fault that was (and we have, believe me) but since none of the replays show where he ended up, it's all speculation.  My guess: he came in thinking there were two outs (there was one) and that Papi's catch was the end of the inning.  And therefore went tearing around the basepaths at the crack of the bat with home plate on the mind.  If that's the case, I blame the first-base coach; I mean, I used to kind of internally roll my eyes in my baseball playing days, when I'd reach first and the coach there would remind me how many outs.  But there's a reason they do that.  I doubt it happened this time.

So with Thursday's game being a carryover of the scorching-bat attack from the Duke series and the VCU midweek game, and UVA scoring 10 runs on Carolina's ace Kent Emanuel (the more-than-heavy implication on the Sabre board is that Emanuel was tipping all his offspeed pitches) the only thing that kept UVA from a sweep was one really lousy inning on Friday.

It's really not that bad a deal, though.  If you buy that there are five real competitors for the ACC title, any of which could win the tourney, UVA is in the tourney pool that has only two of them; us and FSU.  UNC has to deal with both Clemson and NC State.  On the other hand, we do have the only two teams that beat us in a series this year (that would be the two Techs.)

Some other notes in brief:

-- Nate Irving moves like a sloth in molasses, which makes it all the more exciting when he does things like beat out a bunt and score from second on a single to left.

-- Kyle Crockett was absolutely devastating on Thursday.  In retrospect it's a shame we used him Thursday, because he got shelled Friday and might not have if he hadn't pitched the day before, but man: when his curve is working, left-handers look like total dipshits against it.  And let's face it: we all know UNC has a nasty good lineup, and a six-run lead isn't totally safe.  As we sort of learned on Saturday when the Heels overcame a three-run deficit and nearly blew past a four-run one.  So no bagging on BOC for using Crockett to "save" a huge lead in game one.

-- Colin Moran won the ACC POY award over Mike Papi.  I am not sure whether to be enraged or not.  Papi probably had one of the best seasons ever for a non-winner.  I mean, hello, national OBP leader.  (Then again: national RBI leader Moran.)  On the one hand, Papi was probably penalized for not playing the whole season.  He wasn't even a starter at the beginning and sat about 10-12 games entirely.  This is probably part of the reason Joe McCarthy won freshman of the year instead of Skye Bolt.  So in that respect it evens out.  And it wasn't the media voting, it was the coaches, so for once we can't blame Caulton Tudor and his ilk.

On the other hand, the coaches couldn't even agree on which third baseman should be on the all-ACC first team; Moran shared that honor with VT's Chad Pinder.  If he's not definitively the best at his position, is he really the best overall player in the conference?

Oh well; we don't really know if Papi was "definitively the best" outfielder either, and he might well not have been.  Anyway, UVA was well represented on the honors list: Papi, Reed Gragnani, Nick Howard, and Kyle Crockett all made the first team; McCarthy and Branden Cogswell the second team, and UVA took home FOY and COY honors while UNC took pitcher and player of the year.  Of 36 slots on the honorees list, 15 are filled with Hoos or Heels.  Nice especially to see Gragnani honored after a career spent mostly on the injured list.

-- A few other bragfacts from the ACC release on this honors stuff: this is BOC's third COY award in four years and fourth of his UVA tenure.  During that tenure, UVA has only failed to reach 40 wins twice; we got 39 those times.

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

-- Clifton Richardson's impending transfer is definitely one of the more disappointing ones of late.  I think pretty much all of us had high hopes for his future.  It doesn't hurt the depth too badly, but Richardson had more potential than either of the backs in front of him on the chart.  Even if Taquan Mizzell was likely going to ensure Richardson never hit the top of the food chain.  It leaves basically four backs on the roster for 2013, all of whom will almost certainly see the field at some point.  Kevin Parks and Mizzell likely hold the inside track on the top two slots, and Khalek Shepherd and Kye Morgan will at a bare minimum get garbage time - though probably a little more than that.

-- An article that casts some doubt on the future, as-yet-nonexistent ACC Network.  Consolation prize if the ACC Network falls through: more cash from ESPN, quite probably meant as a way to ensure the viability of the conference since it's really in ESPN's best interest for the ACC to exist.  The article says that works out to about $2 million more per school per year, which after a little math and some assumptions means about $336 million total.  So what I hear from that is that if ESPN can buy out the necessary rights from the other media entities that own them for less than $336 million, it's network city.

-- The men's tennis team plays in its third straight national championship matchup tomorrow against UCLA.  A win would give UVA its first ever title, and extend our national championship streak to five years (UVA has won a national title in something every year since 2009) as well as give us a chance at our first multiple-title year since 1993.

series preview: North Carolina

Date/Time: Thu./Sat., May 16-18; 6:00, 7:00, 2:00

TV: ESPN3

Record against the Heels: 98-175-4

Last meeting: UNC 3-0 over UVA (1-2, 2-6, 3-5); 4/13-4/15/12, Charlottesville

Last game: UVA 17, VCU 3 (5/14); UNC 2, App.St. 0 (5/14)

Last weekend: UVA 3-0 over Duke (6-5, 17-8, 14-6); GT 2-1 over UNC (4-5, 3-1, 8-9)

National rankings:

Baseball America: UVA #7; UNC #3
Collegiate Baseball: UVA #7; UNC #2
NCBWA: UVA #7; UNC #4
Perfect Game: UVA #6; UNC #2
Coaches: UVA #7; UNC #2
Composite: UVA #6; UNC #2

North Carolina lineup:

C: Brian Holberton (.310-9-29)
1B: Cody Stubbs (.365-7-65)
2B: Mike Zolk (.300-2-25)
SS: Michael Russell (.304-2-27)
3B: Colin Moran (.379-13-78)
LF: Parks Jordan (.281-1-24)
CF: Chaz Frank (.293-1-27)
RF: Skye Bolt (.391-6-41)
DH: Landon Lassiter (.331-1-23)

Lineup notes: In UNC's ideal hitting world, that's who they'd start.  Skye Bolt's injury, from which he returned against Appy State this week, forced Holberton to go to the outfield.  In his absence, Matt Roberts (.167-2-16) and Korey Dunbar (.163-0-3) split catching duties.  Obviously they're both atrocious hitters, and will probably be used mainly as defensive replacements.  This is a lefty-heavy lineup, and both are right-handers, so pinch-hitting against our lefty relievers isn't out of the question either, nor, I suppose, is starting them against our lefty starters.  Utility OF Alex Raburn (.200-0-5) is a right-handed pinch-hit option as well.

Pitching probables:

Thursday: LHP Brandon Waddell (4-1, 3.88, 69 K) vs. LHP Kent Emanuel (9-2, 2.03, 73 K)
Friday: LHP Scott Silverstein (8-1, 3.21, 53 K) vs. RHP Benton Moss (8-1, 2.96, 74 K)
Saturday: TBA vs. LHP Hobbs Johnson (4-0, 1.99, 54 K)

North Carolina has been more or less the undisputed best team in the ACC all season, with only one remaining challenger to the throne: Virginia.  The Hoos can usurp the Heels' spot atop the conference with a sweep this weekend.  Unlikely, of course, but possible.  Sweep, and UVA takes the #1 seed in the ACC tourney; otherwise, the #3 seed awaits.

-- UVA at bat

UNC will send a parade of outstanding pitchers to the hill this weekend, whom they've relied on all year.  Kent Emanuel has had three excellent years at UNC, and is going to go in the first round because he's a very rare breed of pitcher: a big, tall lefty who's filled out his frame and is still upping the velocity on his fastball.  That was a decent-at-best pitch as a freshman that's worked its way into the low 90s; additionally, he's a four-pitch guy with a terrific changeup and great control.  Emanuel pitches deep into games; he's racked up four complete games and averages over eight innings an appearance.  Basically, he pitches into the ninth more often than not.

Friday will be hard-throwing, beanpole right-hander Benton Moss, who was a freshman all-American last year.  His fastball is mid-90s stuff - and that was coming out of high school.  He, too, has a nice arsenal of pitches, and is more of a strikeout fiend than Emanuel is, averaging over one per inning.  But he also brings a little less polish and control.  Finally there's Hobbs Johnson, a lefty more in the typical mold of southpaws, with a more moderate velocity on his fastball and an array of pitches that he must command well in order to be successful.  Johnson has been good at keeping hitters from making solid contact, but walks more than he should and runs up high pitch counts; he's pulled, on average, in the fifth inning.

UNC's bullpen will put UVA's reliever-eating skills to the test.  Everyone who might be expected to show up on the hill has an opponents' BA below .200, except for closer Trent Thornton at .201.  Big exception there.  The one potential chink in the armor is that they're all righties; the likelihood of the Heels bringing a southpaw out of the pen is minimal.

-- UNC at bat

There's very little point in analyzing the ups and downs of the UNC lineup, because there aren't a whole lot of downs to go off of.  Colin Moran is legitimately one of the elite players in the whole country; his 78 RBIs are tops in the nation and the pace that he's on would put the major league record to shame if applied over 162 games.

Not far behind him, though, is Cody Stubbs, whose 21 doubles are best in the ACC and near the top in the nation as well.  I'd call those two the top threats, with third going to freshman outfielder Skye Bolt, hitting .391 and recently healed from a foot injury.  On the basepaths, it's Bolt, Chaz Frank, and Michael Russell presenting the biggest steal threats.

Now that we know we don't have Brandon Cogswell, it's safe to guess that the Saturday TBA on the mound is as much about BOC deciding whether he wants Nick Howard in the infield or on the mound as it is about sorting out the postseason rotation.

-- Outlook

This is a meeting of the ACC's two best-hitting teams; the difference is that UNC has a starting rotation that's more or less elite and backs it up with a bullpen.  UVA can match up in the bullpen department but not many teams in the country can match the rotation.  I think the Hoos, with their very patient approach, should be able to find some success against Hobbs Johnson and possibly Benton Moss as well.  That doesn't translate automatically to a win, of course, but we can at least point out that the Heels won't be invincible.  The other matchup in UVA's favor is the heavy emphasis on left-handed hitting that the Heels' lineup uses, against UVA's lefty starting pitchers and relievers like Kyle Crockett.

That said, this is obviously a tough series.  Could UVA pull out a 2-1 win?  Absolutely.  More likely is a 2-1 loss; I'll be fall-off-my-chair surprised if either team gets a sweep.

weekend review

So it's been kind of a crap spring so far, relatively speaking.  It's much colder than last year's, I've had all this damn work to do, and worst of all from the actual perspective of the blog, the lacrosse team has stunk up the joint.  We've been spoiled, man - I've gotten used to spring being the season when being a UVA fan is at its peak.  Weekend reviews speak of glorious triumphs on two fields at once.

So this weekend was pretty refreshing.  Even if the lacrosse game ultimately meant very little in the grand scheme, hey, at least it was a Senior Day win, and it was nice to watch the ball go in the net for once.  Nobody's scored 12 goals on Bellarmine all year, not even likely #1 seed Denver.  A few bullets on that game:

-- Mark Cockerton scored four goals, but the game's MVP is Tyler German, who won two out of every three of his faceoffs.  Mick Parks was absent for personal (not disciplinary) reasons, and might find his seat taken when he gets back.  German was only 5-for-14 coming in, but certainly deserves a few shots against Maryland next weekend.

-- Also, while we're on the subject of faceoffs, anyone who didn't enjoy watching Thompson Brown truck his opponent on the garbage-time faceoff he took must not actually like lacrosse.

-- I'll touch on this more when the season's over and I write a seasonal postmortem, but one thing I've gotten tired of is watching our shooters try the same shot over and over with the same result, which is usually a save.  I lost track of how many times our guys were on the doorstep and tried to lob the ball into the net as if there were no goalie, which was a failed strategy every time.

-- I was incredibly surprised to see UVA credited with 23-of-24 on clearing attempts.  We had to be worse than that.  Had to be.

-- Maybe the best thing of all was scoring a goal with three seconds left in the third quarter after watching every team all year do that to us.

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

Baseball brought the brooms to Davenport this weekend and knocked Florida State off their top-5 perch.  Before the series I wrote a Sabre post that said something to the effect of: if the team could simply go .500 in the rest of their ACC games and win all the nonconference ones, they'd be in the conversation for a top-8 national seed in the tournament and a near-certain regional host.  That'd have put them at 41-14 plus whatever happened in the ACC tourney.  Now they've swept a team that they could've easily dropped two games to.  It's not a stretch to say they could win their next ten in a row and be 45-6 going into the Carolina series.

That said, finals break is before the Duke series.  At the moment, Duke is in the 9th slot overall in the ACC, with VT in the 8th slot, a mere one game ahead.  Duke has Maryland this coming weekend, so the odds are decent that they'll pull ahead of the Hokies.  So just to be dicks I think we should sweep VT and then activate our secret powers of post-finals suckery to get swept by Duke.  Just for a laugh at the Hokies' expense.  And as a public service - to spare ACC tournament viewers the agony of the eyes.

Yet more bullets from the weekend:

-- It's pretty amazing how we're 36-5 and we don't even have any good players.  The ACC media has not yet seen fit to award even one single player of the week honor (or pitcher) to a Cavalier.

-- It's time to put some padding on the wall next to the right-field bullpen.  Past time, really.  Joe McCarthy jammed his finger (that's not, like, Kevin Ware-gruesome, but you click on that link, you'll see a finger going a direction it weren't ever meant to) catching a foul ball, and slammed his elbow on the cement top in the process.  And later, FSU's right fielder Jameis Winston nearly broke his kneecap sliding into it in another foul ball attempt.  Winston happens to be FSU's selection for starting quarterback in the fall - we'd have looked like a bunch of assholes if he missed the year because of our brick wall.  I seem to recall an Irvine player taking a hard run at that wall as well, and coming out rather the worse for the encounter.  Let's get some padding there before someone breaks their skull open.

-- Winston, by the way, is one of the least comfortable-looking players I've ever seen patrol an outfield.  When Derek Fisher hit his three-run triple, I swear Winston ran right past the spot where the ball eventually landed.

-- Pretty much every pitcher we ran out to the mound had themselves a really nice weekend.  Scott Silverstein pitched seven innings of shutout ball and FSU was held to one hit in a game for the first time since 1998.  Nick Howard was wild for two innings and then got himself together - and that's the kind of thing pitching coaches love.  They know you'll be off your game sometimes.  If you can get back on, mid-contest, that's the mental makeup they're looking for.  I'm awfully surprised at the impotence of FSU's bats, though.  Much credit goes to our pitchers, but you have to cast an eye at the FSU bats as well, who might've hit two or three balls hard all weekend.  So many of their hits were Texas Leaguers or choppers that slithered just past the infielders.

-- Kyle Crockett's instructions for his trip to the plate on Sunday (necessitated by the lineup shifts following McCarthy's injury removal) basically boiled down to this: Just keep the bat on your shoulder unless they're all fastballs, in which case I guess sure why not try a swing just for giggles.  He will probably never let his teammates forget the resulting base hit.

-- The following batter was Brandon Downes, and the strategy looked awfully odd.  Downes was still bunting with two strikes.  My guess: The coaches decided that even a foul-bunt strikeout or allowing the out at third was preferable to the possibility of Crockett having to try and slide to break up a double play.  As it turned out, the out at third is what happened, and at that point, Crockett was moved up a base and he wasn't going to be caught up in any double plays.  Good thing he didn't have to slide into home, though.

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

I'll do a recruiting board update later, but yes, J.J. Jackson committed to basically take Chris Nelson's spot - which, assuming we can land Andrew Brown, is a good positional tradeoff because Jackson plays a position of much greater need.  The coaches were dead serious about trying to land Jackson even though his offer list sucks, so they must like something.

Even more interesting, really, are these two Monday developments: the post-spring depth chart and the ACC's media rights thingy.  The depth chart doesn't change too many of my post-spring impressions, but does leave a few surprises.  The list of position switches that I can see:

-- Pablo Alvarez from the bottom of the secondary depth chart to the bottom of the WR depth chart.  This is a likely indication that Alvarez isn't to be counted on for contributions.  Injuries played a major role in that.

-- Luke Bowanko to LG and walk-on Jackson Matteo to center.  That's the top surprise right there, and somewhat related is Sean Cascarano sticking at RG while Conner Davis moves to the second string and Jay Whitmire has the RT job.  (And Cody Wallace now backs up Whitmire instead of a guard.)  This Matteo thing could either be really good or really bad.  A walk-on freshman beats out a senior for one of the most important positions on the line.  I could see that turning out very badly, as Matteo hasn't played a single down of college football.  It's just as possible that Matteo is a minor prodigy with a talent for the nuances of the center position that Bowanko never had; center is a tricky thing to master.  This brings us the potential to have four years of the same center, which is the kind of continuity that coaches salivate over.

-- Kelvin Rainey at safety is also interesting.  As is Wil Wahee at second string corner.  After Matteo, the next thing people are talking about - in this case putting up a whiny fuss about, more than anything else - is Maurice Canady backing up Drequan Hoskey.  Even if the crowd that thinks he's the second coming are correct, being the third cornerback is like being the third wide receiver.  He'll have plenty of time on the field.

Part two of the weekend review runs tomorrow, as the brave new ACC - which includes the first wave of Notre Dame games - deserves its own post.

weekend review

Apologies for there being nothing to read yesterday.  The next two weeks might be a little bit sporadic and spotty as it's more or less crunch time on the road to the old MBA.  In fact at the moment I'm procrastinating on about 20 pages' worth of papers to do this instead.  So it'll be a tad short as well.

Plus, if you're reasonably familiar with stuff I've mentioned in the past, you can probably put two and two together and come up with another reason I wrote nothing yesterday.

Reason #2 why this will be short: nothing happened in the lacrosse game that hasn't happened in the past.  I've got lots of material for an end-of-year post, which will be much sooner than we're accustomed to, that may shed some light on why the wheels came off so badly.  I don't know whether it's a psychological bias on my part or what, but it seems like most of the time, winning generates a lot more analyzable results than losing.  Despite the joke that a really bad team can always find new ways to lose, usually what happens is that the team can't do X, Y, or Z, and as long as they can't, they lose.

By contrast, the baseball team has been finding all sorts of interesting ways to win, including three more this weekend.  All involved the long ball and high-scoring games in some fashion, which itself is kind of a new thing for a program that has tended toward station-to-station offense and shutdown pitching to rack up its victories.  Only about halfway through the season, UVA is only six homers shy of the 25 that they've accrued in each of the past two seasons.  (The year before that, 2010, was the final year for the ping-bats, so the comparisons cease to be valid.)  And this latest series was on the road at Wake Forest, so for this weekend at least, the closer fences at Davenport aren't a factor.

It's usually worthy of a headline when a major leaguer homers twice in a game, and it's awfully rare for a UVA player to do it.  Maybe it happens once or twice a season, if that.  So I call it astonishing that Joe McCarthy did exactly that and it was only the third-most interesting home run story of the weekend.  Reed Gragnani's first UVA career home run is an even bigger deal, if you ask me, and it's still only second.  It's Mike Papi taking home the weekend crown with a two-out, two-strike, ninth-inning grand slam to turn a three-run deficit into a one-run lead.  Exactly like you draw it up in your head when you're ten years old.  Put that game on a bigger stage than just a regular-season series against a low-level conference team and it would rival the RALLY TO OMAHA for drama.

This is UVA and we can't have nice things and when we do we can't enjoy them, so we have to talk a bit about the pitching, which I think is in range of reason to worry.  Of the starting pitchers, only Nick Howard had a good outing.  Brandon Waddell gave up six runs and Brian O'Connor had to use up Whit Mayberry in the first game.  Scott Silverstein and Josh Sborz combined for four innings of horror before the bullpen settled it down long enough for Gragnani's eighth-inning tiebreaker.  With Artie Lewicki still a little ways away from returning and a long ways away from being ready to start (think 2014) and Mayberry probably still not yet ready for six innings either, and Trey Oest coming up shaky against VMI during the week, options are very limited if the rotation collapses.  Sborz is still learning his way around a lineup and Nathan Kirby is not happening right now.

So let's just hope there is no collapse.  It's basically sink or swim with what we got.  The solution, if it comes to needing a solution, is probably to keep the starters the way they are and lean on the pen for some long-run innings, and then have the bats do what they have to do.  BOC may be loath to bring Austin Young, Kyle Crockett, or Mayberry forward to take the ball as a starter, but all three are worth three or four good innings a series.  It's not crazy to prefer those be the 6th, 7th, and 8th, instead of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

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

Events of the day necessitate a recruiting board update.

-- Moved K Gary Wunderlich from blue to orange.  That would be the event of the day.  Is it a little crazy using a scholarship on a kicker in one of our most limited years yet?  Not when he might be the best rising senior kicker in the country and multiple family members hold UVA degrees.  That he earned three stars on Rivals says something, because kickers don't usually get stars.

-- Moved ATHs M.J. Stewart and Travon McMillian from yellow to green.  I think UVA has a deal of work to do if they want to reel in either of these guys, but they're at least seriously in the conversation.

-- Removed TE Chris Laye (Auburn) and CB D'Andre Payne (Tennessee) from yellow.

-- Added RB Joe Mixon to red.  Would I bet any money on UVA pulling Mixon away from the other coast?  No.  Especially with like 40 other schools trying to do the same.  But there is at least a flicker, and Mixon is talking about waiting all year, which means if the coaches work hard on it they can give themselves a little staying power.

Yes, it remains a much smaller board than it was at this time last year.  Probably had ten more names on it back then.  I don't exactly expect to see a flood of new offers, either.  Slow and steady is the key here, which is why these updates have only been once every two weeks.  The coaches are probably doing almost as much work on the 2015 class as the 2014 one.

recruiting board update

It's that time again.  Click on over to the board itself to see, uh, the board itself.  Here are the updates:

-- Added QB Corwin Cutler and DT Donta Wilkins to green.  I officially throw up my hands in confusion when it comes to quarterback recruiting.  Take one every year, I get that.  Take two every year regardless of whether there is a scholarship crunch, I don't get that.

-- Added LB Peter Kalambayi and DE Shakir Soto to yellow.

-- Moved CB Calvin Jones from blue to green.  I haven't heard his name, like, ever, in recruiting discussions, and UVA is his only offer and I'm not thoroughly convinced there is a full, standing, committable offer.  We will consider him down a notch until I see something more concrete.

-- Moved DE Jonathan Allen from yellow to red.  Probably not happening.

-- Removed OT Marcell Lazard from yellow.  Almost definitely not happening.  Dude almost committed to Ohio State the other day.

Interestingly, I think the board right now makes the right commentary on the state of recruiting right now.  Only four names are in blue, but there are a larger number in green than we've seen in past years at this time.  If the coaches can maintain staying power through a hectic springtime - it's visit season right now - we can turn a few of those greens to blues and maybe some yellows to greens.  Gotta get people in town for the spring game, which is in a few weeks, and gotta do enough while folks are in town to keep Virginia on their minds while they take visits everywhere else.

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

-- File under "Things that make you go DAMMIT": Whit Mayberry and Tommy John surgery.  That'll be all for Mayberry's season, and while the Cav Daily article suggests the starting rotation will take a blow, the truth is the bullpen will suffer more.  Artie Lewicki will be fine on Sundays - maybe not as good as Mayberry would've been, because Whit was putting together a very solid season - but he'll be fine.  What we're missing now, and Lewicki would have provided, is a reliever who can take the ball and go three, four innings.  Like, twice through the lineup.  Kyle Crockett has the durability to do so but hasn't yet shown the consistency.

-- File under "Things that make you go HA": Tyree Watkins has been kicked off of Duke's football team.  Why do we give a damn about some two-bit third-string no-account wide receiver at Duke?  Tyree Watkins, you might remember, was once committed to Virginia.  His commitment didn't last long after his official visit to Charlottesville, because he spent a huge portion of it badmouthing Tim Smith, bragging on his own skills, and telling anyone who would listen that he and not Smith should've gotten four stars from Rivals.  Watkins proceeded to run his mouth at every opportunity during every UVA-Duke game, culminating in making a spectacle of himself by standing outside the UVA tunnel after halftime this past year and taunting every Cavalier who came out.  Except for Cam Johnson.  Seriously.  (And Cutcliffe had the nerve to complain about Chase Minnifield flapping his gums after one play.)  So there's some history here.

So while it is not cool to rejoice in the idea of assaulting a woman**, which is Watkins's (alleged) crime, it is perfectly OK to take satisfaction in the idea that this piece of shit's football career is over and he'll hopefully be out of society for a while.  With the slight disappointment that nobody at UVA ever had the chance to lay him out as he ran for a pass - see, he felt safe trash-talking because he never actually got on the field.

**Does the description of the crime ("The woman claimed that Watkins pulled her out of a car, grabbed her by her neck and choked her, causing her to hit her head against a wall.") feel a little chillingly familiar, if you replace the car with an apartment?  Seriously: fuck this guy.

week-and-a-half review

If you go to Peru for more than a couple days, and you don't visit Machu Picchu, you're doing it wrong.  It's like going to Egypt and not seeing the Pyramids.  You could do that, but why?

I'm baaaaaaaack!

Time to find out just what I missed.  And as a thank-you for sticking around, I'm peppering this week's posts with some of the better pictures from the trip.  Let's get into what I missed.  You saw it all, of course, while I was out gallivanting around Peru, but you don't know my opinion on it, and my opinion is what this place is for, so let's get started. We'll review both UVA's week - and mine.

*************************************************
The city of Lima was built by the Spanish on the Rimac River; “rimaq” is the Quechua word for “talking,” and so the river is called the Talking River. “Lima” is simply a corruption of “Rimac,” making Lima a “talking city” if you’re willing to stretch the etymology a little. This is highly appropriate: in modern times, Lima is the City of the Honking Horns. Drivers in Lima, of which there are millions at any given time, beep their horns for any and every reason, with little respite, leading to the placement of signs in some areas that say “Silencio” with a “No Horns” graphic.
*************************************************

FOOTBALL

-- Attrition. You know it's gonna happen, and last week it happened. Or at least, it was announced. Of the three that will leave (QB Ross Metheny, DE Thompson Brown, and WR Kevin Royal) the one that'll be most missed is Brown, but if things go downhill it'll be Metheny. Lemme explain: Brown got a lot of praise last year as a freshman and looked like a guy who, if everything panned out just right, could eventually live up to the #91 he was wearing. And pass-rushing could be a problem this year; Brown could've helped in that regard.

That said, we've got a lot of DEs, some of whom might just be even able to record a sack once in a while. Suddenly, though, we're thin at quarterback. There's Rocco, Watford, and two true freshmen. Metheny was a great insurance policy. I was telling people any chance I got that I didn't think Metheny would ever transfer, because he always came off as one of the truest-blue Hoos you'd ever find; oops. He'll play at South Alabama the next two years after getting his degree this spring in three. Not too shabby. You gotta tip your hat to that.

*************************************************
People who go to Machu Picchu or see its pictures often believe it is one of the highest points in Peru. It’s easy to believe. The valley is thousands upon thousands of feet below, and a bus takes you on a long ride up every one of them. Tall, steep, godlike mountains surround the site, towering thousands of feet above you. It feels like the roof of the Inca world. In truth, it isn’t. Crane your neck up to the highest mountain you can see; the city of Cuzco is a couple thousand feet above it yet. The route the Incas used to get from Cuzco (where Machu Picchu actually got most of its food) was a descent.
*************************************************

Royal was buried on the depth chart and didn't seem likely to emerge; a shame, I thought he had good potential as the kind of possession receiver that could give you the yards you needed plus three. But his UVA career never got off the ground.

That brings us to 85 exactly for next year, a number that we'll probably drop a little further beneath as time goes by this spring and summer. I've added Drequan Hoskey to the scholarship counters, since I've become almost positive he's getting a track scholarship and therefore counts.

-- Position switches. Going hand-in-hand with the attrition are the position changes laid out by Jeff White, as follows:

- SS Lovante' Battle to FB.
- OT Sean Cascarano to OG.
- C Cody Wallace to OG.
- OG Matt Mihalik to C.
- OG Jay Whitmire to OT.
- DE Marco Jones to DT.
- FS Darius Lee to OLB.
- LB Ausar Walcott to DE.

Whitmire and Jones come as no surprise; it's long been thought that their body types make them more natural for those new positions. But speaking of body types, Ausar Walcott was recruited as a bloody safety. Now he's moved all the way to DE, partly because he's grown and partly because of the shift in philosophy from the big NFL bodies Groh wanted to the speedsters favored by London. No longer do I think that "Walcott to DE" is a motivational tactic.

*************************************************
Algarrobina is the Peruvian velvet hammer. It’s a sweet cocktail. It’s cake in a glass. The finest, sweetest White Russian pales in comparison to a drink of algarrobina. There is also pisco. If wine were booze, it would be pisco. It’s used to make pisco sours, a gray appetizer cocktail and sort of the national drink of Peru. Want to irritate a patriotic Peruvian? Insinuate that pisco sours – or any of the local cuisine, really – were invented in Chile.
*************************************************

Battle essentially turns out to be the required fullback move. Someone had to do it; Zach Swanson was the only one on the roster. As for the OL shuffling, I think the main answer there is that Cody Wallace was getting beat out at center. Moving Mihalik there suggests that Wallace wasn't ready and Ross Burbank was eventually going to pass him, if he hadn't already. Mihalik will be the starting center in 2012, it appears.

Cascarano is probably the new starter at left guard in place of Austin Pasztor, but he'll sit the spring and give a couple others a chance to impress.

At the beginning of spring practice, which is next week (GET PUMPED) I'll post a revised depth chart that has all this crap on it, nice and updated and ready to go.

-- UNC. The saga concludes. They'll join Ohio State in postseason jail this year. This doesn't much affect UVA, really. My only take for now is that bowl bans really should wait a year, just to complicate recruiting a little bit. Did you see Ohio State suffer in the recruiting department? They did not.

-- Recruiting board update coming later this week. It gets its own separate post. I'm gonna wait because it looks like the first officially official commitment is on its way. (A handy tip for reading the free portion of pay articles: if a question is asked, like "Is Marshall ready to commit?" it's a hint. The answer is always yes.)

*************************************************
Before going to Machu Picchu, it’s advisable to take a couple of the other Inca site tours that are offered. You end up on top of other high peaks – the Incas were of the opinion that civilization needed to be as close to the celestial gods as possible – and you stare into the deep valleys and at the high peaks and wonder if the majesty and beauty of these places will detract from the sight of Machu Picchu, at the end of the journey. Don’t worry; it doesn’t.
*************************************************

BASKETBALL

Eh, I pretty much spoke my piece yesterday. Selection Sunday makes me forget about the ACC tournament. All I can say is I wish we weren't going into this Old West gunfight with three rounds in our six-shooter. What a number the basketball gods did on this team.

I will say that a season sweep over Maryland is a sweet and beautiful thing. It's nice to know that when a Maryland coach inevitably says "we don't lose to Virginia" you can chuckle and know it's the other way round. That said, I want to make some noise in the tournament so bad, because I hate that the legacy of the 2012 Virginia Cavaliers might be "lost every game against good competition through no fault of their own."

Even the writers are being twits. Tyler Zeller won ACC POY for wearing a UNC uniform. OK, OK.... Zeller is a legitimate winner. He's about as good as Mike Scott and dominated the two games against UVA, so it's easy to see why the writers chose him, even if we don't like it. (That said, Roy Williams freely admitted the game plan was to get Mike Scott in foul trouble. You start nothing but five-stars, we start nothing but three-stars, and even then you're scared you can't stop Mike Scott without pretending to be fouled? I think we know who Roy Williams thinks the POY is, even if he won't admit it.)

*************************************************
You can’t drink the water in Peru. The 24-hour Consequences await those who do. You’re forced to carry bottled water around, but it’s not all bad; it offers an excuse to sample some of the many exotic fruit juices that Peru has to offer, like lucuma and tuna. Tuna juice sounds like a really bad idea until you remember that the Spanish word for tuna is “atun.” Tuna’s just another fruit. Tuna juice, when served con leche (with milk), is bright neon green and tastes a little like the banana milkshakes my dad used to make for us growing up.
*************************************************

Scott did make all-ACC first team in the lock of the century; the only drama was whether he'd be unanimous, which he wasn't because Caulton Tudor and one other writer, probably also from the state of North Carolina, are trolling dillweeds. Tudor came in for a lot of flak from UVA fans for not voting Scott to the first team, but give him this; he had the sack to admit it. Whoever else is just a coward. That said, Tudor is part of the Old Media that thinks New Media - blogs and such - are "not up to journalistic standards" and therefore not worth anyone's time. Next time you see a print writer bagging on us Internet hobbyists, remind yourself: "Caulton Tudor voted Mike Scott to the second team literally because he doesn't wear a North Carolina jersey."

The dance show was going really well and everything was colorful, loud, and very impressive. Then these two came out and redefined the meaning of "take it to another level."

BASEBALL

Last weekend was a really good time to be in Peru with the team going 1-3 against the kind of competition we should be sweeping. That led to a change in the rotation; you now have Whit Mayberry pitching on Fridays, Scott Silverstein on Saturday, and sophomore Artie Lewicki on Sundays. For now. I got a feeling more shuffling is coming down the road. Man, did we get spoiled with last year's rotation.

*************************************************
Machu Picchu looks small in pictures. It even looks small in person. It’s only when you actually walk the place – and climb it – do you become acutely aware of its size. But then, Machu Picchu isn’t even the actual name of the city. Nobody knows what the Incas called it. Machu Picchu means “old mountain” in Quechua, and since the place was entirely lost to history and posterity, when it was rediscovered, they decided to simply give it the same name as the mountain it was attached to.
*************************************************

I was going to say that that puts the two best pitchers - Branden Kline and Kyle Crockett - in the bullpen, but man, has Kline had an ugly year. He didn't take to the closer's role very well, totally blowing the Friday game against Virginia Tech. Something is wrong. Either physically that he's not telling the coaches, or he's getting one of those pitchers' mental blocks, because his stuff is too good for the 5.12 ERA and 12 walks he's currently sporting.

Besides, Silverstein looks really good. This is the Scott Silverstein we were hoping for when he was a freshman. And the hitting is doing its thing nicely, too. If and when the pitching settles in and catches up, this'll be a dangerous team once again. The future looks bright with these freshmen - guys like Nate Irving and Derek Fisher have not had much growing pains to go through - and it's possible we won't have to wait til next year for the future to get here. It's hopefully reminiscent of 2009 when the team finished 6th in the ACC, caught fire, and made Omaha.

*************************************************
Two bratty kids were on our tour bus. They were about seven. The boy was a little older than his sister. They spoke unaccented English to each other and unaccented Spanish to their frazzled and somewhat defeated parents. At a place with intricate carvings that still ran water, one of them exclaimed to the tour guide, “Es como un baño!” It’s a sacred Incan fountain inside what was once a temple. Un baño, indeed. The tour guide looked even more irritated than when the two gringoes on the bus were the only ones that raised their hand in response to the question about whether anyone needed the English translation of the spiel.
*************************************************

Better get our shit together soon, though, because national TV is coming next weekend; a fully-televised series against Florida State. The bats pulled off some beautiful comebacks against VT this weekend to maintain instate superiority - wonder if we'll get that chance against FSU? Still, if we're to be the Cardiac Cavs again this year, I can get onboard with that.

LACROSSE

Woot.

I did make it back in time to see the Cornell game. And I was impressed with the Cornell defense. They were fast and athletic and really gave our guys trouble in attacking the net. That may be the only team to hold us in the single digits all year. Because I'm really impressed with our offense. Other years, we've been loaded, but it hasn't felt right. This year, we're loaded and it looks and feels great. Sustainable. This team passes the ball very well and you can be doing everything right on defense and oh well we scored anyway. I'm not in favor of a shot clock at all, but if one were instituted this year we'd probably score 25 a game.

You have to also love the play of Rob Fortunato yesterday. "Only" a .529 save percentage, but some of those saves were impressive. Fortunato is .624 on the season and has long since answered any questions about his abilities. He's a guy we can win the title with. .624 isn't likely to last, because the stiff competition is ahead, but still; this is good stuff here, and for at least one more season there are no issues in net.

*************************************************
One of those things you don’t think about when you cross the equator, but seems obvious the moment you notice it: the moon is upside down.
*************************************************

I mean, we even seem to have fixed the faceoff issue. Ryan Benincasa killed it against Syracuse, winning 20 of 28, and then struggled against Cornell but whatever because Mick Parks came in and won 9-of-16 against a team that's winning 63% on the season. Parks is a freshman, which is awesome news; dare I even say that the future looks really bright on faceoffs? If so, look out world. Letting UVA be a make-it-take-it team is a thrilling and deadly idea.

While UVA was beating Cuse and the Rumbling Bears (a name for a band if there ever was one) the rest of the ACC was making the conference look really, really bad. UNC lost to Lehigh and a down-year Pennsylvania. Duke got smoked by Loyola. Maryland lost to UMBC. Seriously, you guys? Bracketology comes out next week and it'll be interesting to see if these guys make it. It's a lot of fun that we still have the team that the rest of the world sees at the top - again - and is probably getting sick of it.

*************************************************
The idea of an “Incan temple” sounds impressive, but in actuality they’re small and utilitarian, nothing like the soaring cathedrals of Christianity. For one thing, the masses weren’t allowed inside, and for another, they’re among the only buildings that actually employed the technique that the Incas are known for, of carving the stones so intricately they didn’t need mortar. That was a royal pain in the butt and couldn’t be done by the average Joe Inca, so they didn’t build massive edifices this way. More's the pity, really.
*************************************************

It's time now to settle into the every-Saturday-is-lacrosse-day routine, like a mini-football season. Pity those who don't get that kind of chance in the spring and are reduced to making RV trips to the spring game and sit in the upper deck to get their fix. Maybe we can convert a few of the masses to be Virginia lacrosse fans since their schools don't have it.

Two more games - Ohio State and Johns Hopkins - and then the ACC schedule begins. I wonder what the ACC will look like by then? Duke has tests against Harvard, Duke, Georgetown and Syracuse, and UNC must play Hopkins and Maryland and Duke, and Maryland has UNC and Villanova, all before their games with UVA. Tough matchups, and these teams have all had some flaws exposed. It could turn out that our game with Hopkins is the determinant of the #1 seed.

*************************************************
The next time I fly across country, coast to coast, I will give strong consideration to going via Panama City, even though it means going through international customs. Latin American airlines still serve inflight meals. Even the really cheap airlines. I’d never had an inflight meal. Almost all my airline experiences are post-9/11, when airlines tried like hell to contain exploding costs and did so by cutting all the perks. Not the ones way down south. Copa Airlines has something that puts excitement on the lips of every red-blooded, right-thinking male in the whole world and a lot of the ladies, too: Free Booze.
*************************************************

untracked is not a word

However, announcers would be using it right now to describe the state of affairs of UVA basketball, and the next time I see one (which will be the first) I'm gonna ask how they'd like to ride a train that got untracked.

Regardless, we know what they mean: things are going the way you want them to.  I do not subscribe to the theory that the Boston College game "was closer than the final score."  You may describe a game like that if it's close at the end and then we hit a whole bunch of free throws brought on by clock-stopping fouls.  When you go on a 22-5 run to seal it up and it's five instead of three only because BC hit a meaningless jumper over our five-foot-something walk-on, it's perfectly fair to accept the final score as a proper one.  Yes, the game was close three-quarters of the way.  But look at it like this: if we'd started the game with a 22-5 run and then the last 30 minutes were dead even, the story would be how UVA "coasted" to an easy win that was never in doubt.  Good teams blow up on bad ones, that's how things go.

That run was essentially the difference between Brick Sammy and Splash Sammy.  That's the Z Factor.  UVA could never have played the NC State game at the relatively frenetic early pace* and actually been in the lead at halftime without Sammy hitting threes.  Likewise, the whole floor opened up against Boston College once Sammy knocked one down.  Suddenly a whole galaxy of offensive options are open to us.  This team is Sweet-16 capable when Sammy Zeglinski hits his jump shots, because he's the guy opponents don't game-plan for.

We're now in the middle of a stretch, starting with the BC game, where we alternate a theoretically easy game with a theoretically difficult one.  So winning the difficult ones are a big deal.  NC State is a difficult one, and you have to be encouraged by a game on the road where:

-- our second-biggest strength - defensive rebounding - wasn't working at all,
-- putting two and two together (the crowd not sounding frighteningly loud on TV plus Tony Bennett's description of the atmosphere as "festive") we come up with the extreme likelihood that our guys were hearing a lot of, um, interesting language from the student section,
-- an intelligent guy like Akil Mitchell calls the State players "borderline dirty" and says it in such a way that he knows he might get in trouble for saying it and doesn't care**

and yet we come out ahead.  Don't care if it makes my heart bruise my ribs from the inside.  Have some beer and settle down in there.  It doesn't get any easier on the road, with the next two trips being to Tallahassee and Chapel Hill, so I'll take 'em where I can get 'em.  Before the conference schedule began, you remember, I split the season's games up into two halves, one of mostly foregone conclusions and the other where the year would be maked or breaked.  The "foregone" half has gone as assumed, and we're 2-1 in the important half.  That means: go 3-2 in the rest of the important half and we're right where we want to be.

We'll finish today's basketball discussion with a little exercise.  You're a basketball coach and your team is down by 1 with eight seconds to go and you have the ball.  Who would you least rather be facing?  Yeah, ditto.

*at one point in the first half the announcers made note of NC State playing a zone defense and suggested they were doing it "to slow Virginia down."  I'll take "wacky basketball" for $400, Alex.  "This school has the politest student section in the ACC."  "What is Maryland?"  Correct!

**and still NC State fans are whining about the refs.  They let you take five steps with the ball while trying to inbound it.  99.9% of referees call that traveling, because they know what the rule book says.  Then again, Roger Ayers is the same highly observant rocket scientist that let Louisiana-Lafayette put six guys on the court on the game-winning play.  So.

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

- In a rare moment of candidness about his lineups, Brian O'Connor told Jeff White about this season's starting rotation, among other lineup revelations.  It comes down to three righties (Branden Kline, Whit Mayberry, and juco addition Joel Effertz) and two lefties (Kyle Crockett and Scott Silverstein.)  Kline and Crockett are locks.  That's Friday-Saturday right there.  If I were guessing right now I'd give Mayberry the solid edge for Sunday.  BOC has talked in the past about being happy to see Mayberry taking no prisoners in attacking the plate, which is the BOC/Karl Kuhn way.  Nibbling gets you banished to batting practice pitcher.  Mayberry does a good job of attacking even without ideal stuff.

I would guess Effertz will land the weekday starter spot.  If Silverstein starts, it leaves us without any remotely proven lefty bullpen options.  (These coaches are not actually the type to obsess over lefty-righty matchups, though.)  Effertz, by the way, comes from the same juco that sent us Cody Winiarski, and spent a year at Arizona before that.

By the way, I can't wait to see if Keith Werman gets any time behind the plate this year.  Cue jokes about the equipment size and the idea that it's a strike if he can reach it.  Humor aside, the Werm is the consummate ballplayer; really, if I told you that a random surprising position player was pulled in for some catcher duty this fall and is now listed as one on the roster, he's one of the least surprising choices.  He could play first base or pitch an inning and I wouldn't bat an eye.

-- The TV schedule for the lacrosse season came out last week, and it's the same as last year with two additions: Stony Brook and Penn both on ESPN3.  (Last year, Stony Brook wasn't on TV at all and Penn was on the UVA video service, which I sure hope returns this spring.)  Otherwise all the usual suspects - three ACC games plus all the marquee matchups.  This is what is known as a step in the right direction.  I don't necessarily care for the TV-driven expansion of the ACC to 14 teams, but I can more than put up with it if it means eventually 100% of UVA lacrosse will be in front of my eyes.  Add that to the seven televised baseball games (plus the ACC tournament) and you have the makings of a quality spring.

Speaking of lacrosse, on Thursday I plan to unveil a KenPom-esque math system for evaluating the college lax teams.  Like KenPom's system for basketball, it is intended to be a tempo-free way of determining the quality of offense and defense each team plays.  Should be fun if you're a math nerd.

-- BC Interruption had an interesting discussion on the future of the ACC basketball schedule, which will almost certainly be 18 games.  The question on the table was: what to do about the permanent rotation buddies?  Currently UVA plays two games every year against VT and Maryland, which is how it ought to be; you can see the rest of the pairings at BCI.  The ACC will discuss going to one permanent buddy (which would certainly pair us with VT) but more likely will go to three.  In BCI's world, we get Syracuse added to the rotation.  I wouldn't exactly be fired up about adding that awesome of a team to the schedule as a guaranteed twice-a-year thing, but then I can understand wanting to make sure the schedule was nice and tough for maximum SOS purposes.  But if you buy the north-middle-south alignment they have (which makes a lot of sense), then the only options to add are BC or the two Big East newcomers.  So.

-- Did I miss something?  It wouldn't be the first time.  Regardless, here is Oday Aboushi on crutches.  I don't know how old the picture is or what - it was tweeted a couple hours ago by Connor McCartin - or if it's an injury that'll last through the spring or anything at all really, but there it is.  If running around in circles and waving your hands in the air is your thing (and let's face it we're UVA football fans so whose thing is that not?) then you are hereby licensed for twenty seconds of that.

-- In the "it's pronounced Jop" department, here is a free throw shot by the erstwhile UVA recruit.  Even Mason Plumlee thinks that's shitty.  The best part is he still got the customary high fives from teammates.

pre-weekend review

Time for a little housekeeping.....

- The baseball recruiting class is down by one player and then up by one.  Nolan Clark, the juco catcher with the bat (as opposed to the one with the glove, which would be Chace Mitchell) signed a contract with the Phillies, which terminates his college eligibility.  However, I did miss another juco player when I rolled through the baseball commits: Joel Effertz, a pitcher from the same Wisconsin juco that sent us Cody Winiarski.

Not having Clark means that Mitchell is probably the front-runner for catching duties but will (at least at first) split them with Ryan Levine and/or maybe incoming freshman Nate Irving.  Levine and Mitchell are the top two choices, though.  It also means that my musings on Clark taking over third base are moot.  So that will probably be Stephen Bruno.

Effertz posted a 3.03 ERA with 79 Ks and a 7-4 record at MATC this spring.  (For useless comparison's sake, Winiarski had an ERA of 2.39 the year before he came to UVA.)  He'll be an incoming sophomore.  Having another arm to throw at the weekend starter problem is a fantastic thing.  Candidates now include Branden Kline, Kyle Crockett (the two that probably have the biggest lead on the field) as well as Effertz, Scott Silverstein, and Whit Mayberry.  Somebody out of that group might well also be the closer, or, for that job, O'Connor may turn to Artie Lewicki.

- Georgia Tech got in some trouble the other day.  GT fans are pretty pissed about the whole thing, but if you ask me they got off easy.  At first glance, vacating the 2009 ACC championship over a couple of shirts seems harsh.  But the NCAA had a long list of nasty words to say about GT's apparent hindrance of the investigation.  So a couple hundred dollars' worth of apparel became a major violation that the NCAA takes very seriously.

The thing is, this gives them repeat-violator status: "If Tech commits another major infraction before Nov. 17, 2010, it will be subject to added penalties as a repeat violator."  And for supposedly being a huge hindrance to an investigation and being a repeat violator, GT football gets....four more years of probation.  It's pretty clear the NCAA thinks vacating games is a serious penalty just shy of chopping off a leg or two.

For anyone hoping to see any of the various programs currently under the NCAA microscope (Auburn, OSU, Oregon, UNC) hammered with the hammer of thunder and justice, this is a disappointing development.  Vacating games is nobody's idea of a deterrent.  Let me state that a little more clearly: Nobody gives a fuck.  Administrators and the NCAA act like the condemned on death row when they have to take down a banner, but they know it's a facade and we know they know.  Vacating games is, like, the absolute minimum that can possibly happen.  As a penalty for hindering and obstructing an investigation, GT got probation.  And since they did this while under the shadow of previous violations, becoming a repeat violator, I think we all know what probation is good for.  (I suggest wiping your ass with it.)

Bottom line: If you're hoping UNC is going to be slammed by the NCAA, your hopes just got a lot dimmer.  They were ever so angry at GT and gave them probation.  We're a few short steps away from being able to say that Mark Emmert's call for toughness is an empty shitpile.  We'll see how they deal with UNC.  If they can't be nuked to the Stone Age for allowing a coach to run an agency's branch office out of the football facilities - or if the NCAA thinks vacating games is the same thing - then we can officially call Emmert an empty, lying sack.

- The basketball penalties on GT are a little more along the lines of fitting the crime.  Those combined with Brian Oliver's transfer to Seton Hall (I read Rutgers at first but apparently, Seton Hall it is) are going to conspire to give GT a long climb back to basketball respectability.  GT will be an eminently beatable team this season without Oliver or Iman Shumpert (off to the draft) but even so, one less three-point shooter in the league is a good thing for UVA.

- Danny Hultzen continues to add things to his trophy pile: John Olerud Award for best two-way player in the country, and all-state baseball and academic teams as voted on by the SIDs of Virginia.  How he lost out on best baseball player in the state is beyond me being as he was a Golden Spikes finalist and the kid from JMU (Jake Lowery) is not.  One can be the best player in the nation but not the state; that is an interesting dynamic.

- Anthony Cooper will make his selection on Wednesday.  Or at least, make it public.  This is hopefully UVA's race to lose.

- Lastly, I spent yesterday smoothing out the video-production process, and I've got the Cornell game from the lax quarterfinals uploaded too.  So check that out on the videos page.  Things are a little streamlined now when it comes to making videos, and the quality is better too.  I hated all those little lines on the screen that were caused by converting to a different format.  Now I can use the format that comes from the special box.  I still want my Tivo back, and believe me by football season I'm getting it, but at least I can catch up a little now.

- Administratively, expect full posting and/or video production next week; after that, on Saturday, I go on my summer vacation.  That means hiatus the following week.  Two or three posting days will be missed, to return to regular programming on Wednesday or Thursday.  On the other side of vacation, we'll start to shift to full-time football coverage.  Don't you love how the offseason only lasts like a month or so?

baseball preview, part 1

In case you haven't noticed - understandable if for some reason this is your only lifeline to UVA sports - there's once again a pretty good baseball team playing at Davenport Field this year. Pitching is by far its strong suit, which will take you a long way, for sure. The team is 12-1 with the lone loss coming in a 2-1 series win against East Carolina. They're ranked as high as 6th and as low as 11th (college baseball has tons of polls) by virtue of three weeks' worth of strong showings, including a total dismantling of SEC semi-power Auburn.

All this without hitting a single home run.

It's a slightly new era in college baseball; metal bats continue to be used, but they're deader than they used to be. This probably bodes well for UVA, at least this year; Brian O'Connor has eschewed power hitting in his recruiting in favor of pitching pitching pitching and guys who can hit for really high averages. Making it harder to hit home runs gives UVA a little bit of an edge since that's not what the offense depends on.

Today we'll have a look at the pitching, and later this week, the position players.

Starters

Unlike last year when the Sunday starter was up for grabs a little bit at the beginning of the year, this year the weekend starters are engraved in marble. They are:

- Friday - Danny Hultzen. Hultzen is the guy Charlie Sheen wishes he was. Sheen was misquoted in his rantings; what he meant to say was, he has tiger blood and Hultzen DNA. Hultzen has a real chance to win every variation of national player of the year award there is, and will certainly be drafted with one of the top ten - maybe top five - picks in the MLB draft ths June. Even though he's leading the team in OPS and batting average and is second in RBI, his hitting duties will probably lighten up a little as the stretch run gets hot. Hultzen's pitching is what makes him valuable - he carries an 0.87 ERA so far and has struck out 36 in just over 20 innings. Yes. Almost two strikeouts per inning.

He did walk a batter once this season, though. So he has been known to throw the occasional pitch out of the strike zone. Still - it's not likely UVA will lose any of his starts this year, until maybe the postseason. To make matters worse for opposing lineups, Hultzen is a southpaw.

- Saturday - Tyler Wilson. Wilson has made a smooth transition from long relief. His 23-to-5 K/BB ratio would look pretty awesome if not for Hultzen's 36-to-1. Aw hell....it's still pretty awesome. Wilson's move out of the pen has created a few question marks in long relief, but so far the team has been able to handle it.

- Sunday - Cody Winiarski. A little bit of a soft-tosser, the start to this season has been tremendously encouraging as Winiarski has been striking out more hitters than last year. He and Wilson have started the year with ERAs under 2, and they share a .206 opponents' BA. A tough, four-run first inning against ECU was enough to tag Cody with the only loss of the season, but outside of that one inning he hasn't allowed a single run, and he's averaged 6+ innings in his three starts. Winiarski's hot start is the most encouraging sign of the whole season; if this kind of pitching holds up, UVA will have easily the best weekend rotation in the ACC.

- Weekdays - Will Roberts and Kyle Crockett. Crockett was probably the most-hyped recruit of the freshman class that actually made it to the season (Justin Nicolino signed with the Blue Jays and Tyler Skulina transferred before the season began.) Crockett won a few awards and such as a high school pitcher and had the added advantage of being from Virginia. UVA fans love a Virginian. But Crockett will spend most of his time in the bullpen and probably only get starts when the weekday schedule includes two games, such as in a couple weeks against Towson. Roberts is the main weekday starter. A junior, Roberts hasn't quite been able to pitch his way into the weekend rotation, but will probably be needed there next year. He's good enough for some emergency innings against ACC competition, if needed, and should be able to rack up the wins one by one pitching against the JMUs and Towsons of the world.

Bullpen

This looked like a question mark before the year began, with Wilson moving to the rotation, but events since then have solidified the outlook. The pen got hit by graduation - especially at closer where Kevin Arico was unbelievably dependable in 2010.

The new closer is sophomore Branden Kline, who had an excellent freshman season, especially late as the fourth starter in tournament play. Kline has yet to allow a run and has five saves already. There will be no problems here.

Whit Mayberry had a tough start to the season, but he's settled down nicely. Mayberry has starter's endurance and will probably be the primary long reliever this year. Kyle Crockett is the first lefty out of the pen and he's pitching well, too. Left-handed pitching out of the pen is much more readily available than it's been in the past - Crockett can provide a couple innings, if needed, and then there's Scott Silverstein. Silverstein's history of arm trouble is longer than O.J.'s rap sheet; multiple shoulder surgeries have kept him off the mound until this year. He made his first pitching appearance for UVA a little over a week ago. He's not gonna be rushed back, but he gives us a situational lefty.

Justin Thompson is another guy we'll see plenty of, though he's more likely to be primarily a weekday reliever. And the freshman class brought a lot of arms that we've already seen a little of and will get a few innings here and there - guys like Ryan Ashooh and Austin Young.

No doubt, pitching is where this team will draw its success from. As you'll see a little later, the batting lineup isn't quite the murderers' row it's been in the past, but given the choice between OK hitting and awesome pitching, or the opposite, I'll take the awesome pitching every time. The new bats should help this staff - not that they need much help - to keep their numbers down. Except for their strikeouts. Strikeouts will be up; Danny Hultzen is rapidly climbing the all-time list at UVA. I'm very confident in calling this the best rotation in the ACC, and if the bullpen continues to pitch the way they started the season, they'll be able to claim the same crown.