Andrew Devlin transfer

This actually broke on the World Wide WebberNet yesterday, but I didn't feel like making it a footnote to baseball. (Side note: This is very poor bloggery on my part. If I'd bothered waiting til today to write that baseball note I could have actually worked with accurate information.)

Anyway, yeah, TE-turned-DE Andrew Devlin is transferring to Pitt. On a surprise-transfer scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is "6-foot-7 250 pound Ryan Mallett doesn't want to run an offense designed for Pat White" and 10 is "Tim Tebow decides to follow his stripper girlfriend to Knoxville," this is about a 1.5. Here you have a guy who was recruited to be the heir apparent to a tight-end dynasty that is basically no more, asked to switch to a position where he'd likely be a depth player for three years. He gave it a whirl during spring practice, and you can't ask any more than that.

Impact on the team is - no disrespect at all here to Devlin - minimal. Nominally, the two-deep at DE is Collins and Conrath for starters, Zane Parr and either Kevin Crawford or Will Hill as backups. The downside is that's a very inexperienced bunch. Only Conrath has any starts at DE. The upside is experience is overrated at DE. Conrath proved that last year. DE is one position where being a holy terror athletically can make up for a lot. And Collins carries himself like a professional and will be just fine. There's room in the fall for one of the other incoming freshmen to make a name for himself, as well.

The other effect on the team is the scholarships. If you've been reading these pages, and you've been buying what I'm selling, you knew already there'd be some attrition. Maybe some transfers, maybe some academic washouts - in any case, by my count, there were 89 scholarships promised out for the fall. So four of those were not going to be on the team come September 6. Devlin's transfer brings it down to 88. Jeff White's linked article above suggests the next to drop may be Kevin Crawford, which would start to make DE depth a little more worrisome.

Anyway, the depth chart is updated to reflect, and it also includes a few new walk-ons.

There's also baseball - the "accurate information" above is the starting pitchers for the next two games, and it manages to make me look silly by naming Matt Packer the starter against Clemson on Thursday. Huh. The article also rather generously states Packer has "struggled at times"; by "struggled" they mean "sucked pretty bad" and by "at times" they mean "whenever we least could afford it." I have seriously wondered whether Packer has been nursing some kind of injury to his elbow or shoulder that he's been keeping secret from the coaches, that's how bad he's been. That he got a start against VT and will do so again this week puts that idea to rest. Let's hope the real explanation is that he's just got a starter's mentality and isn't bullpen material. Danny Hultzen will go against UNC, then it's anyone's guess about Duke on Saturday.

EasSpur weekend

Recruiting post. Minimal editorial today, because it's my birthday tomorrow and I can't say for sure how much of this weekend will be spent sober. Send me expensive presents.

A quick non-recruiting bit from Gottschalk: Andrew Devlin's spring is over with a knee something-or-other. Impact should be minimal, at least to the team, if he's OK for the fall, as there's only a week of practice left. It'll make summer conditioning tough though and make it that much harder for Devlin to see the two-deep. Competition in the fall will be heavy.

Now. The basketball, then. As I've mentioned, Tristan Spurlock is coming down for his visit. Two pieces of quality journalizing along those lines; first, from Jeff White, and second, video from NBC 29. Earlier Spurlock said he was 50/50, now he tells NBC he's 60/40 about staying.....that sounds like a guy whose mind is moving in the right direction.

Some folks have said this shouldn't be seen as a test for Bennett. Some folks are wrong. This is a huge test for Bennett, and I do expect he'll pass. Listen, you watch that Spurlock video, you hear him say this: he knows (and must like, or he wouldn't have chosen us) the players, the facilities, the Grounds, the whole deal. That's all in our favor. It's the coaches and their system he wants to know about. Here's a guy who already likes nearly everything about UVA. He's signed on the dotted line, so other coaches can't touch him. They can't be calling him up and badmouthing Bennett's system. It's just Bennett and Spurlock. If Bennett can't close the deal, how's he going to close the deal with someone who doesn't already know and like the school and can be the target of negative recruiting?

Recruiting board is updated, but only on my computer. Sometime later on I'll post. Company's coming and the drinking is going to start shortly. Happy Easter! May the Easter Bunny bring you a regular season lacrosse title and a basketball recruit.

Long brothers: collect 'em all

Dear Old U.Va reports, as do the premium boards at Rivals, that the wheels that were set in motion a few months ago are rolling toward their final destination, which is an overly wordy way of saying that Kyle Long will enroll at UVA this summer and be on the football roster in the fall as an offensive lineman. With Chris already graduated and Howie Jr. signed to play lacrosse, our Brothers Long collection is complete. Here's hoping Kyle is as good at protecting quarterbacks as Chris was at terrorizing them.

But that's not all. TheSabre also reports that Hunter Steward, who previously planned to enroll at Fork Union for a year, will do no such thing. Steward, too, now expects to join the team this fall. Here is the awesome part of the article:

"One of the problems for me at the beginning was picking up on small parts of being an offensive lineman. For example, when I was pass blocking I would push guys too far and end up drawing a penalty for illegal man downfield."

That's Steward talking. Steward, in case you didn't already know, weighs something north of 300 pounds, and in my very humble opinion someone who has a problem with pushing defensive linemen too far downfield does not have a problem.

So the depth chart is now updated with the assumption that both will enroll and be on the roster in the fall. There's no way of knowing, really, how many of those freshman tackles will be put elsewhere, not until spring (for the redshirt guys) and fall (for the incoming class) practices begin. I have Cascarano at guard but only because I took a SWAG that he'll end up there.

The real upshot for now is that basically all the world's potential now resides in that freshman class. Between Long, Stewart, Moses, Cascarano, and Aboushi, as well as the talent that resides in the sophomore class with guys like Bradley and Milstead and the junior class with incumbent starters Shields and Cabbell, there will be no excuse for not having a superb offensive line starting around 2010 and moving onwards.

There's one more change to the depth chart - had I been paying any attention when writing my weekend review yesterday, it would have been there, but no, I was in too big a hurry to finish the post and go play Super Smash Brothers. Sorry about that. Kinda. Anyway, what with the spread offense making its grand debut next year, and what with the tight end position being a big ol' afterthought in pretty much every variation of the spread (including ours), the coaches find themselves with an excess of tight ends, and whaddaya know, not enough veteran DEs. Andrew Devlin, therefore, is now a DE. Problem solved. The meaning of all this? Kevin Crawford likely backs up Matt Conrath, and Devlin and Zane Parr battle it out on the other side, the consolation prize being the #2 spot on the depth chart. However, that's one injury away from having to dip into the true freshman pool for the depth chart (Tory Allen is probably not a factor) and so I still anticipate at least one redshirt coming off this season.

The only question I have for now, and its a drum I've beat in the past, but, where are the scholarships coming from? Assuming Long and Steward each get one, I now count 91 scholarship commitments. That's not including Sean Gottschalk, who is no longer with the team and almost certainly will not ever be again, but does include Isaac Cain. That's six over the limit. Who is going to leave the team between now and fall practice?