Against Notre Dame, for the first time since February 8, and for only the 11th time this season (in 28 tries) UVA's point total got into the 70s. So I was bowled over to look at KenPom and find that that was the second-slowest game - 52 possessions - that we've seen all season. Only the Pitt game, at 51 possessions, was a lesser pace than this one.
So when Mike Brey said "that was a nuclear explosion," well, at first I figured he was just saying that because this particular explosion happened to him and not someone else. But no, that's a legit descriptor, and really I should've realized that Brey knew what he was talking about because it's not the first UVA explosion he's witnessed. 70 points in 52 possessions is about 1.35 per, an astounding number that blows away UVA's previous best effort, which was against Liberty.
Shooting 7-for-15 from three is a nice result and contributed to the effort, but it pales in comparison to shooting 21-for-29 - a whopping .724 percentage - from two. Anthony Gill and Akil Mitchell combined for 12-of-13. It didn't even have anything to do with zone defense. Brey didn't deploy it all that much. Sometimes basketball is about intricate play breakdowns and sometimes it's just about a light bulb going off, that says, "this guy can't guard me," and then doing something about that.
In Notre Dame's case there were a lot of this-guys - ND might as well have had four equal-sized dudes with the same number on their jersey and "GUMPY STIFF" where the name goes. It almost makes me wish Garrick Sherman had stayed at Michigan State so he could be a terrible post defender in East Lansing instead, but as the results of the weekend proved, Sparty didn't need the help.
Mike Tobey, meanwhile - the one guy we have who's comparable in size to the gumpy stiff gang - collected four blocked shots.
When the run came, in typical UVA fashion it didn't announce itself like it does for other teams. Brey - perhaps this is why he's a pretty good coach - knew it anyway. He called time-out when the lead stretched to five - Joe Harris had just hit that running three-pointer and then kiboshed a minute-long(!) Irish possession with a blocked shot, leading to an Anthony Gill you-can't-stop-this bucket. Not a minute had passed when Brey called another one. The building was getting around to figuring out what Brey already knew, because Justin Anderson had just dropped Little Boy on Zach Auguste and Gill had deployed Fat Man on the other end. When Malcolm Brogdon lefty-tossed the ball high off the glass and in, despite being clubbed with a hidden shillelagh Eric Atkins was saving for just such an occasion, Brey looked on resignedly. He didn't bother calling another timeout, and took two of them to the locker room. How do you fight a nuclear bomb with timeouts?
*****************************************************
The baseball team is two weeks into the season. Some stats of note:
-- Matt Thaiss is 6-for-17 to start the season (.353) with four doubles. It's exceedingly early to say this, but it appears we have two catchers that could start on just about any team in the ACC. Because it's not like Nate Irving - 5-for-15, 4 walks - is just handing over the job. Quite the opposite.
-- UVA pitching has allowed 16 runs, not one of them unearned. UVA has scored 31 earned runs and 21 more unearned. When Brian O'Connor sets out to fix what he thinks is a fielding problem, he fixes the hell out of it. The Hoos have committed two errors all season, one by a pitcher (which is to say, I don't care as much.)
-- Brandon Downes already has three home runs.
And finally a lacrosse game, which left me shaking my head in all ranges of emotion from annoyed disbelief to happy disbelief, also leaves me with one overarching impression of this team so far: I keep expecting disaster and don't get it. UVA is ranked 4th, which seems likely to result in the house-of-cards thing, but 4-0 is 4-0. I get the feeling this season will either be another train wreck or pretty darn awesome.
Showing posts with label downes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label downes. Show all posts
Monday, February 24, 2014
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
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.
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.
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