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.

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-- 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: Georgia Tech

Date/Time: Fri-Sun, 5/11-5/13; 6:00, 1:00, 1:00

TV: Friday and Sunday on UVA's live stream only; Saturday on ACC regional networks and ESPN3

Record against the Jackets: 42-64-2

Last matchup: UVA 2-1 over GT; 4/8-4/10/11; Atlanta

Last game: UVA 12, High Point 3 (5/9); GT 8, UGA 6 (5/9)

Last weekend: UVA bye; GT 3-0 over Charlotte (9-0, 6-3, 6-5)

National rankings:

Baseball America: UVA #21; GT unranked
Collegiate Baseball: UVA #23; GT unranked
NCBWA: UVA #21; GT unranked
Perfect Game: UVA #22; GT #38
Coaches: UVA #22; GT unranked
Composite: UVA #22; GT unranked

Georgia Tech lineup:

C: Zane Evans (.292-1-35)
1B: Jake Davies (.335-8-54)
2B: Thomas Smith (.338-0-9)
3B: Sam Dove (.349-2-23)
SS: Mott Hyde (.272-5-25)
LF: Brandon Thomas (.366-3-36)
CF: Kyle Wren (.276-2-20)
RF: Daniel Palka (.315-11-42)
DH: Paul Kronenfeld (.293-3-20)

Lineup notes: I don't know if Thomas is available.  I looked for injury news and couldn't find any, but he missed the last two games of GT's last series as well as the UGA game.  If he doesn't play, GT will platoon Daniel Spingola (.389-0-2) and Evan Martin (.233-0-2) in left.  Davies is also the new Saturday starter, and he bats for himself; Palka takes over first and Kronenfeld plays right with Davies on the hill.

Pitching probables:

Friday: RHP Branden Kline (6-3, 3.52, 76 Ks) vs. RHP Buck Farmer (7-3, 3.20, 90 Ks)
Saturday: LHP Scott Silverstein (2-4, 3.81, 40 Ks) vs. LHP Jake Davies (0-1, 3.45, 11 Ks)
Sunday: RHP Artie Lewicki (3-2, 4.30, 35 Ks) vs. RHP Cole Pitts (4-4, 4.60, 51 Ks)

In hindsight, I really should've expected the Hoos to sweep Miami two weeks ago; the final exam break always comes when they're playing their best ball.  But if yesterday's game is any indication, maybe this is the year they stay sharp during the break.

UVA currently sits two games behind UNC in the division standings, which is really three games because they won the series.  And don't be expecting a miracle catch-up; UNC finishes the season with Duke and VT.  No, the Hoos are likely to have to settle for second.  Still, at 14-10 all they have to do is simply win two series against two losing teams (in conference play) and they'll reach the 18-game level after all.  An outside shot at hosting a regional remains in play here.

In years past this was one of the top series on the whole ACC docket.  This isn't the GT we remember though.  There's no Deck McGuire to face off against Danny Hultzen, with both teams featuring monster lineups.  The clankbats sapped GT of the awesome home run prowess they displayed in 2010.  They still have a dangerous lineup, but the pitching is suspect and the Jackets have lost games this year that in the past they'd have won by ten.

-- UVA at the plate

The Hoos continue to lead the ACC in batting average, still a hair over .300, which I didn't expect to be able to say after facing Miami's pitching roster.  Stephen Bruno's been on a tear in the last month and a half, and Nate Irving has boosted his average almost 50 points in that same time.  The ability to string together opportunistic hits against Miami was highly encouraging; the Hoos had been showing a propensity to crush lousy pitching and wilt against good stuff.

GT has a little of both - but leans more toward the lousy side.  They had an excellent staff last year, and the only holdover in the rotation is Friday starter Buck Farmer.  Farmer's a big righty who could be a top-five-rounds pick in the draft this summer and has decent command of four pitches.  It's no Hultzen vs. McGuire, but he and Branden Kline should have a good duel tomorrow night.

GT's best arm comes out of the bullpen, though, to close out games: Luke Bard and his 0.99 ERA made Keith Law's top-100 list of MLB draft prospects.  However, this is where it starts to get thin.  After GT's series against UNC, righty Dusty Isaacs was removed from the rotation; understandable as UNC shellacked him and boosted his ERA to 7.66.  Isaacs had also walked 35 hitters and struck out only 36.  GT had to resort to Jake Davies to replace him; Davies is mostly a position player, but can be a decent pitcher.  It's not likely Davies will go long enough to earn a decision, however, as he's only pitched 15 innings this year.  Isaacs, by the way, was only in because the guy they wanted to pitch on Saturdays, Matt Grimes, is out for the season.

On Sunday, GT will deploy the very hittable Cole Pitts; Pitts is allowing a .301 opponents' BA this year.  Not at all good.  That combines, by the way, with Davies's .310 number in that regard, though with much less of a sample size.

Bard has a great arm, but the rest of the GT bullpen is rather thin.  There's one outstanding middle reliever: righty Alex Cruz.  Cruz is a long reliever with a 1.74 ERA and a .156 opponents' BA; last weekend he finished the game started by Davies and pitched 4.1 innings.  He may do the same again; GT's ideal pitching plan probably goes something like: Farmer with a long outing on Friday and Bard with the save, Davies surviving until Cruz can take over on Saturday, and a monsoon on Sunday.  After Cruz and Bard, the next-best guy in the pen was Davies, and now it's another guy who only moonlights as a pitcher: catcher Zane Evans.  Josh Heddinger is relied on for a lot of innings, and relied on by opponents for a lot of runs.  Unless it's Cruz or Bard, you're going to like the ERAs posted on the screen when a Tech pitcher comes in from the pen, and there's real potential here for some batting averages to get a lift.

-- UVA in the field

The reason GT wins any games with a shaky and beaten-up pitching staff is because they hit.  They don't crank home runs at the ludicrous pace they used to - and nobody ever will again - but they still hit.  There won't be any weak spots in the lineup.

Brandon Thomas is fourth in the ACC in hitting at .366, although as noted above, I'm not sure if he's available.  This wouldn't be like Miami missing Peter O'Brien, though.  The lineup's "weakest" hitter is shortstop Mott Hyde, who bats .272, but with five homers.  CF Kyle Wren bats .276 and has very little power, but does have the speed to turn doubles into triples; he has six of the latter.  Other than those two, no regular hits below .292.

The lineup's power hitters are Daniel Palka with 11 home runs, and Jake Davies with eight.  Davies doesn't come out of the lineup when he pitches.  Also to watch out for: 3B Sam Dove, batting .349 with 13 doubles.  GT has four players with 12 or more doubles; UVA has just one (Stephen Bruno.)

If the lineup is still missing Thomas, they'll miss him greatly; he's got good enough power to be second on the team in slugging average as well as leading in batting average, and his replacements are unproven.  Daniel Spingola is batting .389, sure, but that's in just 18 at-bats.  Evan Martin is hitting just .233.  The two will probably form a lefty-righty platoon in Thomas's absence, meaning the lefty-batting Spingola would start Friday and Sunday and Martin on Saturday.

Still, even without Thomas the GT lineup would be worrisome.  Scott Silverstein really needs to get his control issues under, uh, control.  He had a solid warm-up outing yesterday against High Point, tossing two innings and allowing two hits and more importantly, no walks.  A good start, and it was only meant to be a short one since he's needed on Saturday.  It's got to be repeated or the drumbeat will only grow louder for he and Shane Halley to switch roles.

-- Outlook

Only Duke and Boston College have worse team ERAs than Georgia Tech's 4.40.  In a related development, those are also the two conference teams with losing season records.  So it's easy to pinpoint why GT is 10-14 and at some risk of not making the ACC tournament - they're tied for 8th with the other Tech and only one game ahead of Wake Forest.

The Jackets can be dangerous because of their bats, and our pitching is not what you'd call consistent.  However, you have to think our own bats are salivating at the chance to hit this patchwork pitching corps.  And with the series at Davenport, it ought to be home sweet home.  I fully expect the Hoos to win this series and give themselves the chance to head into the ACC tournament in two weeks with a ton of momentum.

weekend review

I was thinking of just posting a big picture of a fart, and that would've summed up my feelings about the weekend very nicely thank you, but maybe that would've been a cop out.  If we're going to puff out our chests like we usually get to do on spring weekends, we gotta face the music when things go badly.

I don't need to break down the basketball, though.  It's obvious to anyone what happened there: the basketball gods decided it wasn't going to happen, and that was that, and that decision was probably made back in February.  There's no other way to explain the freak series of injuries that hit this team; I don't know who suffered more broken bones, UVA or the rest of the country, but either way it's close.  The fates were not aligned for UVA this month, in everything from the actual on-floor competition to the race for accolades.  It is not our month when Bernard James kicks Joe Harris ON HIS BROKEN HAND and James is the one who garners media sympathy.

(This is the section you should only read if you like throwing up in your mouth and having your screw-you-o-meter pegged, but Carolina fans are amusingly broken up over Kendall Marshall's injury.  As if North Carolina is the team getting all the rotten luck this year.  I hope it's a year's worth of rotten luck that's just beginning.  Kendall Marshall doesn't specifically deserve to get hurt, but Carolina fans deserve to watch it happen, and if Creighton was going after John Henson, so much the better; Henson is a douchecanoe.  I hope some Ohio Bobcat comes out next weekend with a sledgehammer painted with the words "John Henson's Wrist."  Then maybe he'll learn the difference between a foul and a "foul."  If Creighton was hammering the Tar Heel players all game, it's probably because they assumed they'd be called for a foul whether they did or not, like certain other Carolina opponents, so they might as well get their money's worth.  What, me still bitter over that game at the JPJ?  Noooooo.)

I'd like to offer some kind of appraisal as to what the team will look like next year and how it will fare, but I just have no idea.  Here's what we lose:

- Mike Scott
- Sammy Zeglinski
- Mike Scott
- the ghost of Assane Sene
- Mike Scott

And here's the arriving cavalry:

- Teven Jones
- Evan Nolte
- Justin Anderson
- Mike Tobey
- Malcolm Brogdon's foot
- Joe Harris's left hand

A nominal starting lineup would be Evans, Brogdon, Harris, Mitchell, and Tobey.  Maybe.  It'll be a weirdly put-together team.  A lot of tweener types, and quite a few who fit the mold of a 3 and not enough that fit the mold of a 2 or a 4.  No bigs whatsoever besides Tobey, so it's sink or swim with him - hope his defense is up to Tony Bennett's standards or we'll never put anyone out there taller than 6'8".  Defending opposing bigs will be a question of hoping Akil Mitchell and Darion Atkins are up to the task, or else relying on a freshman who needs to become best friends with the weight room.

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Baseball isn't having a great weekend either, and it ain't over yet.  Two losses to Florida State mean that tonight is the last chance to salvage anything from the series.  It was the world's first chance to get a glimpse of UVA baseball without buying a ticket to Davenport Field, and what they saw didn't impress.

Saturday's and Sunday's games were full of the kind of mistakes that set coaches' blood on fire.  Mainly Saturday.  The games were lost because of 1) the mistakes and 2) FSU pouncing ruthlessly on the opportunities because they're a top-ten team and that's what top-ten teams do.  Sunday's story was a fantastic outing by Branden Kline - who returned to the starting rotation after a weekend off it - wasted by one bad inning of walks and HBPs.  And pitching coach Karl Kuhn was probably already blowing a stack after the four HBPs (and seven walks) issued on Saturday.  The next poor pitcher that plunks a Seminole batter probably rides the plane back to Charlottesville tied to a wing.

Pile that on top of the bad fielding effort and poor approach at the plate (FSU reliever Hunter Scantling threw about forty sliders and yet our batters continually looked surprised to see the slider....though it is a little strange to see a huge, hulking pitcher big enough to play defensive end for the Raiders pitching like Jamie Moyer.)  Nate Irving probably also came in for a little slice of the coaches' wrath for two lazy efforts resulting in passed balls.  Freshman catcher : baseball :: freshman point guard : basketball.  He'll learn.

Perhaps most troubling: a commenter's suggestion that Chris Taylor might need to be moved off of shortstop.  Taylor is a veteran player and the Hero of Irvine, but.... man, eight errors is kind of hard to argue with.  He's also 2-for-19 in ACC play.  (.253 on the season, but he's been padding his stats against JMU and Marist.)  Might it be a better lineup to have Stephen Bruno at short and Reed Gragnani at third, with Colin Harrington and Mitchell Shifflett in the outfield?  Maybe, but if that's even on Brian O'Connor's mind, it won't happen for a couple more weeks.  A possible shorter-term solution: move Taylor to second and Keith Werman to short.

Still, O'Connor is not a knee-jerk type.  Patience is a hallmark of his, if you've earned it.  (Which Taylor has.)  He's not stubborn either, but he'll probably always be much slower to make a move than fans will be to suggest it.  Will Roberts tossed a perfect game last year and it still took two more weekends before he was moved to Sundays.

Tonight, Whit Mayberry takes the mound, and we'll see if the Hoos can put together nine innings and salvage a game in Tallahassee.  Heck, I'd settle for innings that don't take five minutes to get through our half and twenty to get through theirs.

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Thank God for lacrosse, and we almost weren't even able to say that, as the team fell behind 6-1 to Ohio State after the first quarter.  Fortunately, the next three quarters were 10-3, Good Guys.  Ohio State is in the rearview mirror, hopefully permanently; the Buckeyes play the kind of stalloriffic brand of lacrosse that makes people think a shot clock is a good idea.  It's fairly hideous.  According to people who were there (the only way to see the game otherwise was to fork money over to Ohio State, which I wasn't going to do) OSU went into stall mode in the second quarter, hoping to milk their five-lead for three-fourths of the game.  They did this to Denver, too, causing notorious stallmaster Bill Tierney to whine about stalling.

There's no need to play teams like that, honestly.  Buckeye fans are getting a little tired of a coach that hasn't been able to get OSU over the hump, so maybe that particular brand of lacrosse isn't long for Columbus, Ohio, but if UVA is going to make trips out to the Midwest, how about making Ann Arbor the next destination?  Or, replace the OSU home-and-home we just finished up with one with, say, Georgetown - a much more local destination and, to my mind, a more interesting game.

Next week is a game that I think will determine the #1 seed in the tournament: Johns Hopkins.  My favorite rivalry game in any sport not involving an ACC team.  (I still think that once Syracuse becomes the ACC's fifth team, the conference should make an exception to its all-or-nothing policy and see if perhaps Hopkins is interested in making it six, for lax only.  They probably wouldn't be, but it'd be worth a try.)

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.

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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.
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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.

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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.
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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.

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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.
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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.)

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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.
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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.)

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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.
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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.

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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.
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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.

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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.
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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.

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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.
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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.

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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.
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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.

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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.
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weekend review

Before we begin our basketball discussion, the prosecution will stipulate to the following items:

-- Stipulated: That had we hit just one of the large number of missed three-pointers, we probably wouldn't even be having this discussion.  Had we hit two, we definitely wouldn't be.

-- Stipulated: That North Carolina is a much larger team, and therefore much less likely to foul; in addition, the numbers prove this, as they are the best team in the country at keeping the opponent off the free-throw line.

-- Stipulated: That John Henson is a floppy douchebag, about which we will certainly have words later on, and as such, is likely to fool a referee into calling fouls which are then unretractable.

-- Stipulated: That complaining about the refereeing is whiny as hell, most of the time.

That said:

Regardless of the above, you cannot tell me that, for example, Akil Mitchell's "moving screen" was caused by UNC's size advantage, or that said size advantage means UNC committed zero such infractions themselves.  You can't tell me that there's such a thing as a foul for boxing out.  There isn't.  There also is no such thing as a technical foul for a blatant flop, but there should be.

Ironically, that flop by Henson - yes, it was a flop even though he didn't actually fall to the ground - might have enlightened the referees.  My working theory is that, in going to the monitor to check if a flagrant foul was called, saw instead why the crowd was hurling boos at them, and backed off for the rest of the game.  The fouls being called were so astoundingly weak that I don't know how you stop doing them.  Don't box out?  Don't set screens?  So I rule out the idea that UVA was playing any less aggressively, especially since UNC didn't suddenly go on a scoring run.

No, I think it's the exact opposite of a coincidence that, after that trip to the monitor, only two fouls were called on UVA for the next 12 minutes.  One of those was with three seconds left in a last-ditch attempt to get the ball back.  Think of that: 15 fouls called in 28 minutes, and 2 (really 1) in the next 12.  The refereeing was so bad that even the refs knew it.  Too late, of course; foul trouble is irreversible.

It's a shame and a half, because the defensive effort was maybe the best of the season.  I mean, what the Hoos did in sticking it to a team that's much bigger and ostensibly a zillion times more talented is beyond impressive.  It was the kind of effort that deserved the recognition that a win would've brought.  The team battled.  Hard.  They were on the verge of being blown out of their own gym and it didn't faze them; they just buckled down and got 'er done.  With the exception of four-star Malcolm Brogdon, every player fielded by UVA was a measly three-star.  With the exception of four-star Kendall Marshall and Tyler Zeller (who's friggin 7'2"), every player fielded by UNC (that played more than three minutes) was a super-recruit five-star.  That team should blow ours out of the building, every time, and they shouldn't have to flop like Dookies to get it done.

Which brings us to John Henson.  This is the same douchecannon who felt it necessary to throw down a dunk with, like, twelve seconds left in the last game with a 16-point lead.**  He was on the receiving end of at least two of Scott's fouls, both of which he embellished like an Italian soccer player, and when the refs had the temerity to call a foul on him, he earned himself a technical foul.  They didn't call one, but he earned it.  With Greivis Vasquez playing in the League, Henson is officially the heir apparent to the ACC DOY (Douche of the Year) title.

Obviously, though, the refereeing needs to be fixed.  At some point, this independent-contractor model has got to go, in favor of permanent referees.  I don't even care if they hire the same guys. (Except Karl Hess, the Napoleon of refs.)  At least then you'd have better accountability.  The conference bears some blame, too, for promoting, among their refs, an atmosphere of "every little thing is a foul."  The other thing that would be nice: the ability to award a technical foul for exact situations like the one that earned Scott his fourth foul.  I looked in the rulebook; there's no provision for a T for flopping.  There ought to be, and it should say something to the effect that if the referees check the monitor for a flagrant and it turns out that it wasn't even a foul, they have the discretion to award a tech.  Shouldn't that be considered as unsportsmanlike as foul language?

**Typically the response to this is "well you should've played better and then you wouldn't be in that situation," which misses the point. The point is that dick behavior will surface regardless of situation.

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The spring sports did their thing, fortunately.  They were so brutally efficient in their work that I only have bullet points:

-- The first bullet isn't a spring sport at all; it's to let you know that the men's swim team joined the women in winning the ACC title.  It was much closer for them - VT made a meet of it - but the good guys prevailed in the end, and by fewer than 100 points.

-- The lacrosse game against Stony Brook was a 12-5 win, which was (I think) largely a function of the fact that Stony Brook lost everyone who was any good.  They've still got that tendency to be nigh-impossible to shake just when you think you're breaking it open, but with less than half the offensive firepower and no Adam Rand on faceoffs.  So it's kind of relative; used to be you couldn't seem to open it up past three goals, and now it's more like the six-goal barrier you have a hard time with.

-- Congrats are in order for Steele Stanwick, who became only the 7th player in ACC history to break 100 goals and 100 assists in a career.  And he topped both in the same game.

-- And even then, a contribution from him in the goals column wasn't necessary for the Hoos to stake themselves to a fairly sizable lead.  I'm glad I'm not a fan of someone else, coming to the realization that UVA can smoke you even without Stanwick on the scoresheet.  Owen Van Arsdale made some nice early contributions to that effect.  He made some freshman mistakes too, that you could see fairly easily, but I bet you that guy is a Tewaaraton finalist at some point in his career.

-- Baseball outscored Monmouth 38-6 over the three-game series.

-- Seriously.  38-6.

-- Freshman catcher Nate Irving has been providing a nice bat, as has Reed Gragnani.  Most of the rest of the freshmen have been playing only sporadically, but when they do, they're hitting such that the future looks very bright indeed.  Even Mitchell Shifflett is 3-for-4 on the season.  But the guy who's been raking in a way that oughta be outlawed?  Jared King.  He's 14-for-27 (.519) with five extra-base hits (including a home run) and 11 RBIs.

-- This weekend will be a four-game series instead of the traditional three, as we host a "tournament" of our own with two games each against Wright State and Seton Hall.  That means a need for a fifth starter.  Either Joel Effertz will go tomorrow to keep him on the weekdays and the fifth starter will take a turn on Sunday, or - more likely - Effertz will be held for the weekend and this fifth guy will go both tomorrow and next Tuesday.

-- Football schedule!  Finally.  Remember when it would come out the first week of February and we'd all be like, "waaaaahh this is late!"  We can blame a couple of the ACC's member schools for the holdup, in doing some last-minute scheduling calisthenics.  Florida State was one of them; it wasn't entirely their fault, as you can place the blame on a certain ex-Big East school that sued Rich Rodriguez because they think contracts are sacred holy grails that must always be followed to the letter, and then sued the Big East because the Big East insisted on holding them to a contract.  In moving to the Big 12, they had to add a conference game and therefore had to buy out their FSU game, sending FSU scrambling.  In case you're wondering, no, Syracuse and Pitt are not on this schedule.  It would be funny if they were, just to watch the Big East try and put a football schedule together with only five teams.  They'll be in the ACC in 2013, though.  Bet on it.

At any rate, you have to like what you see.  No super-long homestands or road stretches, and the bye week in a good, opportune place.  (I hate early-season bye weeks.  Waste of good rest time.)  And a Thursday night home game on the second-to-last week of the year against UNC, which means a little extra rest before the VT game.  A relatively tough OOC schedule is balanced by a favorable ACC one.  I think we're set up for success here.

weekend review

What'd you do this weekend?  Decent time?  I hear you had a little snow down there.  Like four inches or so in Richmond?  (It's cute how you think that's a "snowstorm" down there, although it's been such a weird winter here in Michigan that four inches is at least half the entire winter's total.)  If you're a Virginia fan and only a Virginia fan, it was a halfway decent weekend all things considered, but this kind of weekend is why I highly recommend ardent double-fanhood.  Actually, now that I go to grad school, it's really more like two and a half.  I had a great frickin' weekend, part of which involved going down and watching my grad school beat up on JMU in hoops.

But I'm not here to brag on Michigan's eight(!!!) four-star recruits that committed this weekend, or the weekend sweep in hockey**, or the big win over Ohio State in basketball.  Actually, yes, I kind of want to brag about the Ohio State thing.  That one is germane to UVA hoops, because the win over Michigan is probably the difference between being parked on the tournament bubble, and not.  Michigan is in great position to get at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title, and, depending on tiebreakers, the top seed in the B1G tournament.  So having very compellingly beaten them earlier this year gives UVA a Big Thing on which to hang our hat.  (Now you see why I say that if Michigan and UVA ever play each other in something, I root for the team that needs the win more.)

Of course, if you're trying to get to the tournament, it helps to beat the teams you're supposed to.  Maryland is a team we're supposed to beat, and 71-44 is the kind of beating you always want to hang on Maryland.  It's proof that our defense is our Linus blanket.  It's always there, comforting and secure.  The offense can be a ticking time bomb, but lo and behold if Malcolm Brogdon AND Sammy Zeglinski hit a few shots, then this is what happens.  Tony Bennett is starting to find ways to make opponents regret allocating their biggest guy to guard Mike Scott, because those guys aren't used to running through screens at the elbow.

Terrapin football has Randy Edsall, who's fantastically easy to lampoon because (among other reasons) he's being a huge twat about the Danny O'Brien transfer.  (In fairness, Edsall's percentage is pretty good, as he didn't decide to publicly be an ass about the other 23 guys who left in one year.)  VT's Seth Greenberg is a funny guy too.  Unfortunately for the humor section, though, it appears at first glance that Maryland has replaced one classy hoops coach with another.  Mark Turgeon couldn't stop talking about how well Virginia played and refused to use the 36-hour turnaround from Thursday as an excuse.  That said, he did produce an amusing bit of honesty in his post-game interview: "If we put Terrell (Stoglin) on the point, we might go 17 possessions where nobody else touches the ball."

Would that be worse, though?  Maryland had all of three assists on Saturday.  They might still only have three assists with ballhog Stoglin running the point, but they might cut down the turnovers; Maryland had fifteen.  A 1-to-5 A/T ratio will lose you every game.  As expected, Jontel Evans totally abused Nick Faust on the defensive end; Faust had five turnovers and no assists.  Evans is seven inches shorter than Faust, but weighs 13 pounds more, and poor Faust looked like a lanky ninth-grader trying to beat a tornado one-on-one.

Maryland fans fully expect a win in the rematch, naturally, but the truth is that the ACC continues to shake out into the four-tier system I identified two weeks ago.  At 10-2 and now a full three games ahead of the pack are Tobacco Road and FSU.  At 7-5 is the bubble trio of UVA, NC State, and Miami; the main thing keeping us actually off the bubble is that Michigan game as well as a few road wins OOC.  The kids with loaded guns are either 5-7 or 4-8, and the only one of those without a win against a higher-caste team is Maryland.  Then there's the win farms at the bottom, all with 10 losses, where the rest of the league goes to puff up the left side of their W-L column.  Sadly, there aren't any games left against the win farms; only two road tilts against the loaded-gun children and two home games against the high seeds.

**Seriously, wouldn't it be neat to have a varsity hockey team?  We'd be terrible, I don't doubt, but I take a perverse delight in rooting for shitty teams because there aren't any expectations and you can just blow off some steam and enjoy the game without worrying about the consequences of losing.  This is the part of my fanhood that's been carefully honed and developed by the Millen Era of the Detroit Lions.

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In the non-revenue world, things went according to plan and then some this weekend.  The ladies wrapped up a fifth straight ACC title in the pool, finishing 233 points ahead of their closest competition.  Four of the 11 teams at the meet didn't score that many points.  Of the 18 swimming events, UVA won 10, and took a 1-2-3 in the 200 backstroke.

And how about a sport that gets hardly any love around here, because I don't really know anything about it?  I refer of course to wrestling, which polished off its regular season at 11-1 in dual meets, the best record in the history of UVA rasslin'.  For the next-best record, you have to go back to 1974.  Wrestling coach Steve Garland is a member of the Craig Littlepage Hired Me coaching fraternity that includes guys like Brian O'Connor, and he directs the latest up-and-coming program in the school's repertoire.  It would be a terrific thing to get really good at wrestling, because wrestling is one of only two sports where Virginia Tech has the better program.**  (Guess who is responsible for the lone blemish?)  Getting to the point where we have forced VT to second-place status in the state (or worse) in every sport is the ultimate goal, and to take the rasslin' title from them would be a great next step. The team won a surprise ACC title two years ago and might just do it again this year, too.

**Football is obviously the other - for now.  There might be more but this is the kind of claim I can make without much fear that I'll be corrected by a Hokie, since in Blacksburg, sports are divided into two categories: football and money leeches.

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The baseball team could've started off a little better.  The weekend in South Carolina finished up 1-1-1 thanks to a rainout, and I hate ties because it's this little -1 that'll hang off the end of the record all year like a little vestigial appendix.  The loss was to Boston College, which took a surprise 3-0 record home.  Even Coastal Carolina had trouble, and that school is sort of the Butler of mid-major baseball, minus any final four appearances.

It really drives home the issues facing the team this year, though.  The winning runs scored by Boston College came from two passed balls by catcher Nate Irving, followed by a Branden Kline mistake that ended up on the wrong side of the fence.  In years past, the bats might have overcome that issue, but the hitting this year is still three-quarters potential.  The bats waited til the CCU game to break out, instead.  I'm going to write off the tie against JMU as a product of playing in rain that would've washed out 90% of baseball games much sooner than it eventually did.  The fielding is what let the team down and gave up a 4-2 lead, but you can't draw any conclusions from that when the ball is sopping wet.

And speaking of things that we expected to look better: 9-8 over Drexel might've caused a few raised eyebrows, too.  I mean, shouldn't we beat them by more than one goal?  Is there something wrong with the offense that caused the output to be limited to nine goals?

Well, no.  This is exactly why I started doing lacrosse efficiency stats.  See, last year, UVA averaged more than 35 offensive possessions per game, the second-most in the country.  And we scored on 35% of those possessions.  Against Drexel we had only 26 OPs.  And that wasn't the fault of lousy faceoff work (won 12 of 21) or bad clearing (13 of 15.)  Nope, it was just a slow-paced game.  60 offensive possessions and 68-70 total is your average lacrosse game; this one had only 49 OPs and 52 total.  It was just a very slow-paced game.

In that light, the offensive production was just fine.  UVA's O-rating for the game was 16.81; last year's total was 16.64.  Drexel's excellent goalie, Mark Manos, saved only five of 14 shots on net.  We got nine goals from seven players, and better yet, seven assists from six players.  And not a single point from Steele Stanwick, either.  Owen Van Arsdale was the offensive star, and two goals came from Rob Emery, too.  Young'uns.  UVA was badly outshot, 41-24, but it hardly mattered; we did a much better job of getting our shots on net, and Rob Fortunato saved 11 of 19 SOG.

Could I fret a little about the defense?  Yeah, I could.  Eight goals is a little too many.  Drexel's O-rating (and our D-rating) was 15.81, rather above the D-I average of about 14.10.  But there are too many positives to come out of this game to get all worried.  Ryan Benincasa was excellent on faceoffs (and freshman Mick Parks held his own), and there was only one penalty called on the Hoos the whole game.  Plus a huge ground-ball advantage for UVA as well.  The world will probably look at the 9-8 final score and a few of them will conclude Virginia is overrated.  Not to worry: a deep dive into the refreshing tempo-free pool should give you all the peace of mind you need.

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Small bullets:

-- The multi-year scholarship rule barely survived an override vote.  This is proof only that the rule for D-I membership needs to be tightened; it's out of hand when a school like Chicago State, which has the bare minimum of required sports and sucks at all of them, has an equivalent vote to the Texases and Ohio States and such of the world, which have nine-figure budgets.  The requirements for D-I membership were established ages ago; it's only a natural consequence of expanding economies and populations that more and more schools would be able to meet them.  And of course, the more FGCUs and Nebraska-Omahas and Presbyterians that make the leap, the more they'll be able to outvote the schools that help keep their budgets afloat.  There are two reasons they don't tighten up the requirements and split up D-I: one, some of the conferences would be torn asunder as half their schools failed to make the grade.  I think we'd all survive, though.  Number two: none of the HBCU's would make the cut, and such a move would have Al Sharpton up in the NCAA's grill faster than you can say "race card."

Oh, and #3: any move toward such a split would instantly be massively downvoted, because we're this close to having the FGCUs and Chicago States in charge of this thing.

Anyway, the multi-year scholarship thing is a great thing.  Schools that complain that multi-year schollies would be used as a recruiting tool are stupid.  That's the point.  They benefit the athlete, which is the point of the whole "college sport" thing.  That's like arguing City Council should award the contract to the highest bidder instead of the lowest, because if they don't, the city will have more money to spend elsewhere, and that would be bad.  It's such logic-defying argument it renders one speechless, which might've been the point.

-- Want to write a guest post?  This is my attempt to make the site not a barren wasteland during my spring break in Peru, and your chance to get your opinion out there.  Read here for details.  A week and a half or so is the deadline.