super, thanks for asking

It took a while, but spring finally sprung, as they say.  You can tell because UVA sports have begun kicking ass again.

So much that was said about the Lake Elsinore regional came true.  Evenly-matched?  Yup - the regional flipped upside-down right out of the gate, with the top two teams both facing elimination after one day.  UCSB as a shaky host?  Yup again - the only one seed not to win a game.  And UVA needing to race through at top speed or else miss out on the supers?  I guess we don't know for sure, which is good.

But BOC sure felt that way.  In other years, Josh Sborz probably wouldn't have been kept on the mound after his team padded a 3-1 lead with three more runs brought to you by Geico.  And he wouldn't have been asked to "save" a five-run lead after pitching the previous two days, either.  Sborz's usage tells you all you need to know about how BOC felt about stretching out the series, which is to say, DON'T, at all costs short of shredding all his elbow ligaments.

It's obvious why: come the 11th inning, the Hoos were down to one unused pitcher, who was also the center fielder.  Had UVA lost that game I don't know what the hell, man.  You'd have had to hope a combination of Adam Haseley and Alec Bettinger could've gotten you through seven innings, eight if you're really lucky, and then I suppose more of Sborz (who wouldn't have gone on Sunday if he wasn't protecting a lead) and then some dudes who'd pitched like three innings all year.

Scary thought.  Less scary had San Diego State held on in the losers' bracket, because their pitching staff is in even worse shape, which makes me sort of wish they'd beaten USC and then us on Sunday to set up a hitters' duel for the ages.  If 14-10 represents the mutual near-collapse of two pitching staffs, I'd've bet everything on the over in a UVA-SDSU matchup on Monday.  I guess we'll just have to settle for winning the regional the semi-easy way.

A lot of credit goes to hitting that was clutcher than clutch.  Ernie Clement delivered the game-winning hit on Saturday and almost the whole lineup made Sunday happen, but for my money the guys who won this regional are Connor Jones and Brandon Waddell.  This simply doesn't happen if they don't both pitch into the eighth, combine for sixteen innings, and allow one lousy run each.  UVA will advance through the tournament as long as those two pitch lights-out, and be eliminated when they don't.

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I have yet to exult in UVA's 22nd national championship, so: woohoo tennis!  Five schools have won multiple national championships this season - UConn, Colorado, Ohio State, Stanford, and, of course, because I wouldn't mention it otherwise, UVA.  Three years ago, men's tennis was a program with a rep for being that program that couldn't get over the hump.  Now with two trophies, they've taken their place in the elite.  Hopefully for quite some time.

I was also going to write about consecutive trophies, but I forgot it was two years ago they won their first.  I realized I was thinking of Danielle Collins's individual singles championship last year.  Silly me, mixing up our powerhouse programs like that.  It didn't help my muddled situation that Ryan Shane won the singles title this year.  All these damn trophies are so confusing to keep track of.  How I long for the simplicity of life in Blacksburg and the clean, uncluttered trophy cases and freed-up postseason schedules.  Oh wait no I don't.

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-- Don't you love when you watch this really long drawn-out recruitment that takes years and then the subject of said recruitment sticks around for one season and then boogies?  Jamil Kamara's name first popped up when he was a high school freshman at Princess Anne.  His full UVA career: one catch, six yards.  Unlike the loss of Greyson Lambert I don't really chalk this up to the fact that this program is the result of a crash between a fireworks truck and an oil tank.  I guess you could argue that there's excessive WR depth and that the inmates are just a little too much in charge of the asylum when it comes to redshirting decisions.  I'd happily concede both points.  It's just that Kamara's overinflated opinion of his readiness is why he didn't redshirt last year in the first place, and why he'll be suiting up elsewhere next year.

-- I know the baseball team's camo unis have a near-perfect win-loss record.  I still hate them.  Especially when the home whites are so damn classy-looking and they finally got a set of decent road grays.  I'd just hate to think we might finally win a national title and all the lasting images of the team that does so would be in brown.

breakdown

I think it's interesting that, sometimes, a seemingly unremarkable play catches the eye of a lot of different people, all independent of each other.  On third-and-18 on UVA's opening drive (an ominous phrase in and of itself) Greyson Lambert threw a screen to Kevin Parks that picked up two yards.  Really explosive offense, this.

I decided, for reasons unknown to myself, to rewind and see what had happened; perhaps the play looked like it should have picked up a great deal more.  Perhaps I was just perturbed, which would be understandable given that our opening salvo exploded in the breech.  Upon a second look, it was easy to see what had happened: Conner Davis whiffed a block, badly.

At least one game thread picked up on that fact too, and quickly; the play became a matter of discussion to the extent that a game thread allows.  Even more interestingly, eminent Sabre philosopher JHoo picked up on it too, and provided one small note that I missed on my own reviewing:

So plenty of folks did their job well … … but guard Conner Davis, who had responsibility for the outside man on the play – here, cornerback D.J. White – broke one of those little rules on screen passes: he looked back to watch the pass and see the completion.

I'm normally very loath to copy and paste paywalled stuff, but there's a point to be made here.

A third look at the play confirms it completely.  Davis had eyes only for the backfield; when he turned around after the catch, he found a defender flying past him.

Think about the implications of this.  Consider:

-- Davis is not only a fifth-year senior, but also the most experienced player on his unit.
-- This is a big game.  The players know the deal when it comes to bowl eligibility, as well as their coach's job situation.  And they happen to really like their coach and want to keep him around.
-- It's the third play of the game.  Everyone's fresh.  Fatigue is not a thing right now.
-- It's early, so we're almost certainly on a script here.  This play has been practiced a hundred times and the players know it's coming.

A fifth-year senior doesn't have the mental discipline to carry out a simple assignment.  That's a sad commentary.

That is not to single out Conner Davis.  The point is: if this is the case with our fifth-year seniors, it's the case all up and down the board.  Attention to detail waved bye-bye to Mike London ages ago, assuming the twain ever met.  And if it's foreign to the head coach, it's not getting passed on to the team.  This explains London's puzzling approach to clock management.  (Why didn't he take a timeout when GT faced 3rd-and-23 at the end of the first half?  It probably didn't even occur to him.)  This explains (in a blast from the past) how it's possible that London can make a big deal out of accountability in a press conference, and then forget to remove a player from kickoff duties whose bonehead kickoff penalty cost his team three points.

You might say it's unfair to extrapolate a whole huge generalization like that out of one play, but it's not like there isn't a mountain of evidence of London's failure to instill any mental discipline in himself or his team.  And the end-of-half play provided another example of the same.  Let's break down this play.

First off, some perspective on how hideously badly this play was executed.  UVA sent three receivers downfield and left seven men back in protect.  GT rushed three.  Four seconds after the snap, GT defensive end KeShun Freeman is swiping the ball out of Lambert's hands.

Seven on three and we can't protect the QB for five seconds.  That is pitiful.  The play starts with Zach Swanson lined up as an H-back, and in motion from left to right, likely because GT has overloaded the right side with defenders and is showing blitz on that side while the linebacker on his side is backing off.  Swanson is supposed to handle Freeman until the cavalry arrives in the form of Ryan Doull, pulling around from left to right as if it were a run play.  Swanson whiffs, badly, jumping outside while Freeman jumps inside.  Fortunately, Doull arrives just in time to give Freeman a shove that uses his own momentum to carry him well past the QB.  Swanson sees this and turns upfield, apparently seeing if there are any delayed rushers.  Finding that eight men have dropped into coverage, he spends the rest of the play looking a bit lost.

Doull's shove has taken Freeman out of the play momentarily.  That's enough for Doull, who decides the play is over, and starts spectating.  Freeman, of course, does not oblige, and Doull is just in time to gather up the ball from the ground (and earn an attaboy from the announcers for a "heads-up play", which would've been nice if it were true.)

Doull's a third-year player, and older than most, having taken a post-grad year as well.  Quitting on a play - it's just an inexcusable lack of sharpness from someone with his experience.  But it's fruitless to direct your anger at Doull.  This is the attitude that has permeated the whole team.  How can we expect the players to be mentally accountable if the head coach doesn't demand it?  For every such event easily spotted on TV, you can bet there are ten or fifteen more that are impossible to see.

It's hard to imagine a coach less interested in attention to detail than London is, which means the next coach will likely demand more of it than now, which means the players are in for a rude awakening when he shows up.  It might not be fun for them at first, but the end result will be a lot more watchable.

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Quick brief things:

-- Some people are bellyaching about David Watford being in the game at receiver while Jamil Kamara languishes on the bench.  Oh please.  Nobody has any damn clue what Kamara is doing or not doing in order to not earn playing time, and the fact that London does actually seem to demand some kind of minimum standard of behavior or knowledge of the offense or something in order to earn your way onto the field - that does not register on the list of things to complain about.  You actually find people bringing up how bad he was as a quarterback, as if that somehow affects his ability to stick his hands out and hold on to a flying football.

-- If I'm London, I don't queue up one inch of game film on Florida State.  What good is preparation - take it from a 1% to a 2% chance to win that game?  Just punt that game - the path to a bowl game is much easier through Miami and VT, and hyper-preparation for the latter is not something I'd be against.

Prediction summary:

- Kevin Parks runs for 120 yards.  My God, not even close.  And no, being down 14-0, 21-7 in the first quarter is emphatically not a reason to abandon the run.  Maybe the fact that it wasn't working would've been a reason, but going pass-happy because of a two-TD deficit in the first half is pure panic.

- Keeon Johnson has a big day, which these days means four or more catches.  No, but he was certainly targeted more than often enough to succeed.

- UVA's season average for rushing yards allowed per attempt jumps at least a quarter-yard.  Remarkably, no.  I'm impressed.  It was very close, but didn't make it.  This is the point where I single out Max Valles for at least one ridiculously good play in which he got in position to discourage an option pitch and then ate up the quarterback.  Who the hell defends both options all by his own self?  Valles, that's who.  It was the football equivalent of Akil Mitchell's brilliant play on Jabari Parker from the ACC CG - you know the one.  Only, better.

- Lambert throws at least two more picks, one of which isn't his fault.  Tossing up a lame duck of a throw because he's being crushed by a pass rusher certainly qualifies.

Season prediction stats:

17-for-45 on specifics (38%)
5-3 straight up
4-2-1 ATS

the recruit: Jamil Kamara

Name: Jamil Kamara
Position: WR
Hometown: Virginia Beach
School: Bishop Sullivan
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 210

24/7: 95, four stars; #9 ATH, VA #6, US #106
ESPN: 82, four stars; #36 WR, VA #9, East #26, US #263
Rivals: 5.9, four stars; #17 WR, VA #6, US #123
Scout: four stars; #28 WR

Other offers: Florida, Clemson, South Carolina, Virginia Tech, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Michigan State, West Virginia, Vanderbilt, Pittsburgh, Miami, NC State, Illinois, Boston College, Connecticut, various other non-BCS

We interrupt your previously scheduled programming of Two-Star Theater to put another marquee name on the board.  Andrew Brown and Quin Blanding comprised two of the big three targets for 2014, and the first two made their preference known pretty quickly.  Jamil Kamara, on the other hand, waited until the calendar actually changed before making his commitment.

This is a name that's been on the radar for a very long time.  Rivals has articles going all the way back to March of 2011 when Kamara was a freshman.  His history is not only long, but well-spotlighted - that article list clocks in at 127 separate features that at least mention his name.  24/7 tops that with a whopping 242 (although they include various board posts by their gurus in that count.)  Verbal offers began right around that time and the only reason they ever stopped was because written offers started being allowed eventually.  Suffice it to say: Kamara is one of the most heavily-scouted prospects you'll ever find.  He also played the recruiting game to just about the fullest extent possible.  Kamara camped all over, he took most if not all his official visits, he transferred schools for the sake of visibility and coaching (originally, he played for Princess Anne, one of the bottom-feeders of the 757 public-school circuit), and he joined several other prospects in playing the hat game at the Army All-American game.

It's no surprise, then, that the scouting sites are pretty much in agreement not only about his ability levels but his general traits as well.  No matter where you look, the basic book will be the same: very physical, great hands, good routes, speed OK but not great.  Kamara certainly does have the size; at 6'2", 210, he fits right into the mold of your prototypical big receiver.  His hands are what set him apart, which, let's hope so because a Rivals article on Andre Levrone that just came out today pointed out the following stat: UVA's receivers in 2013 were credited with 118 catches and 82 drops.

Kamara was already going to get a long, hard look against the first defensive unit in fall camp with every opportunity to get to the top of the depth chart, and a redshirt is unlikely except in the case of injury.  If he's showing off sticky fingers in August and everyone else is continuing their rockhanded ways from last season, look out; you'll see a true freshman hit the first string faster than you can say Wali Lundy.

What the receiver mix will look like next year depends a lot on camp performance, simply because the unit played so badly last season.  Not many jobs are safe.  However, the chance certainly exists that the top pairing could be Kamara and Keeon Johnson, the one receiver from last year to actually draw compliments for his play.  If so, that would represent a drastic departure from the beginning of last season when the top two were Darius Jennings and Dominique Terrell - both listed at 5'11", 175.  A little less speed, a lot more size.

Kamara's ceiling, obviously, with this kind of excitement, is a three-year career and early exit to the NFL - but I don't think that's the likely outcome.  That lack of electric speed means he won't dazzle headline writers and be the Next Great Freshman Sensation (and it's probably why the offer list is solid but also unspectacular) and it nips any Sammy Watkins comparisons in the bud.  Instead I'm gonna go ahead and break out the Billy McMullen analogy.  Big guy, not all that fast, sometimes caught from behind, caught everything in sight and won all the jump balls, never dropped anything that I can remember, and was just plain productive.  That's what we have in Kamara if he lives up to his scouting reports.  I could live with that and I suspect we all would.

season preview: NC State

Media prediction: 10th of 15

Last season:

Record: 24-11 (11-7); ACC 5th seed
Postseason: NCAA 8 seed; lost in 1st round
KenPom: 34th of 347

Returning scoring: 21.2%
Returning rebounding: 17.7%
Returning assists: 15.1%

2012-2013 all-ACC:

1st team: F Richard Howell
2nd team: G Lorenzo Brown
3rd team: F C.J. Leslie
HM: none
Defensive: none
Rookie: F T.J. Warren

(Italics indicate departed player.)

Starting lineup:

PG: Anthony Barber (Fr.)
SG: Desmond Lee (Jr.)
SF: T.J. Warren (So.)
PF: Lennard Freeman (Fr.)
C: Jordan Vandenberg (5Sr.)

Bench:

G Ralston Turner (rJr.)
G Tyler Lewis (So.)
F Kyle Washington (Fr.)
F BeeJay Anya (Fr.)

Coach: Mark Gottfried (3rd season)

ACC schedule:

Twice: Miami, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
Once: Boston College, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Maryland, Notre Dame, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech

NC State took a fall in the preseason poll for the same reason as Miami: losing everyone.  Despite an early loss to NC Central, however, they've handled the transition better.  They've got a little extra help: forward T.J. Warren returns after being part of their heralded freshman class last year, and he's living up to every bit of his five-star reputation.

Out from under the shadow of NC State's veterans, Warren is exploding onto the scene, scoring almost 24 points a game right now.  When on the floor, Warren takes more than a third of NC State's shots, one of the highest usage rates in the country.  He's also a solid rebounder who crashes the offensive boards especially hard.  If he were shooting threes at a better clip he'd be nearly unstoppable, but he was a better than .500 shooter from that range last year so it's not out of his reach.

The rest of the Wolfpack are basically complementary to Warren's stardom.  Freshman point guard Anthony Barber is doing a good job of balancing scoring and distributing while limiting his turnovers.  Desmond Lee provides decent secondary scoring, and LSU transfer Ralston Turner (who sat last season per transfer rules) provides excellent three-point heat off the bench.  Turner is the only one shooting over .300, though, and since NC State generally shoots threes badly, doesn't take many in the first place, and hasn't gotten to the free-throw line much, the Pack currently get the highest percentage of their points from two-pointers in the country.

Most of the frontcourt is there to rebound and defend.  Freshman Lennard Freeman can score a bit, but he's lightly used.  His backup, Kyle Washington, is - basically a backup.  7'1" center Jordan Vandenberg had a slow start to his season with an ankle injury, but if his ankle can hold up, NC State would be well-advised to use him more.  Vandenberg represents the entire senior class at NC State (it's a team that's highly tilted toward underclassmen); he's seen limited action in his career but so far this year has been a highly efficient scorer and outstanding shot-blocker.  His backup, freshman BeeJay Anya, is a strange physical specimen; he's only 6'9" but clocks in at 325 pounds and has freakishly long arms.  He's a lightly-used defensive specialist for now.

NC State's ACC season has started with a disappointing loss to Pitt after holding an 8-point halftime lead; nevertheless, they should find a moderate amount of success in the conference this year.  They're not a likely favorite contender for the title, but they did do what UVA could not: beat Tennessee in Knoxville, giving them an OOC win to hang their hat on come selection time.  They can be somewhat one-dimensional, as they rely so heavily on Warren and mid-range scoring.  However, they're at least a bubble team and their conference season will be an exercise in convincing the selection committee to give them a double-digit seed.  Call it 50-50 from here as to whether they can get to the Dance or merely the NIT.

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So I really should've acted like there's a basketball game today, and previewed it, but then I also should've not put on my procrastination shoes during the whole holiday season and gotten like three weeks behind.  This coming week I'll work to finish these darn previews.  Meantime, look for notes on the bottom like this, if something has happened worth noting.  Kind of like:

-- The impending assistant coach exodus.  Or rather, ongoing exodus, with Anthony Poindexter and Vincent Brown officially off to Connecticut, where they'll work for former UVA assistant Bob Diaco.  Dex was on staff with Diaco at UVA, and no doubt recommended Brown, who arrived with London - though Brown did work as a graduate assistant on UVA's staff while Diaco was here.  Since Poindexter will be UConn's DC, it makes sense he'd want to work with at least one familiar face.

I'm on record as saying that when London goes, as seems inevitable, a clean sweep of the coaching staff should follow.  So starting that a bit early doesn't bother me a great deal.  Yeah, Poindexter's a UVA legend.  And he's getting a raise and a promotion by leaving.  Brown is not, but his motivation is equally understandable: get off the sinking ship, fast.  Brown gets another 3-4 years of job security out of this, and the chance to choose his own destiny rather than sitting around waiting for the axe next winter.  In fact, it's Brown whose loss will hurt UVA the most: I think he's easily the most capable of UVA's position coaches, and his recruiting responsibility was Georgia, a place where UVA was having a reasonable amount of success and should always have a presence.  That said, I've got no real heartburn over ever losing any member of the current coaching staff.  Not even Poindexter.  I don't think his coaching has been a positive for UVA, on balance.  Diaco should be warned to hold special teams meetings in another county from Dex.

Poindexter's departure does one other thing for UVA, too: it relieves a future new head coach of the pressure to keep him and/or removes any potential bad blood from firing him.  That's the risk of hiring popular alums as coaches: nearly all coaching hires end badly.  With Chip West a possibility for departure as well, UVA must replace two and perhaps three defensive coaches.

That'll be hard to do; nobody wants to work for a coach who's widely believed to have just one more year left.  The likely course of action is to promote a GA to a full-time job (Jonathan Lewis's eligibility in that regard is up, and he already works with the D-line, Brown's responsibility this year) or find a I-AA or even high school coach.  UVA will not otherwise be able to attract a name of any kind.

-- Let's also have a recruiting board update in honor of Jamil Kamara's commitment.  As follows:

-- Moved WR Jamil Kamara and DE Darrious Carter from blue to orange.  Kamara's announcement completes a year-long journey that's really even longer, since his name first began to appear during the spring of his freshman year, which would be 2011.

-- Removed LB Melvin Keihn from green (VT.)  Screwing up this recruitment is another piece on the pile of evidence that London's pitch has worn thin and no longer resonates.  Keihn is from Gilman, a school where UVA should do exceedingly well and has in the past - think Darius Jennings.

2014 big-picture

With Signing Day nearly a month into the rearview mirror, it's a good time to project the makeup of the next class up.  I've gotten pretty good at saying this next class will be pretty small and then finding it to be normal-to-biggish, but this time I mean it.  By the time we get to the fall, the senior class will only have like eight people in it.  Since you can usually expect to attrite between five and eight players a year (and eight is kind of pushing it) the 2014 class will (should) cap out around 15 or so players.

Fortunately, it'll be small but talent-rich.  Five-star safety Quin Blanding is widely expected to commit to UVA on Wednesday, and there should be other elite 757 talent not too far behind.  This is a class Mike London's been working on for a while now; Jamil Kamara took a visit to UVA way back in 2011, and had this to say:

"I was there with Eli Harold, Quin Blanding, (Taquan) Smoke Mizzell, Corwin Cutler from Ocean Lakes, and Keanu Reuben from Landstown. ... It's still Virginia Tech and Virginia. Those are my two favorites. They're about the same. I still haven't been to Tech and I really like Virginia."

Do any of those names ring any bells?  The only unfamiliar one is Reuben, who ended up at William & Mary.  Kamara would later take a trip to Virginia Tech and wear a Hokies sweatshirt on the trip.  That led Hokies everywhere to conclude he was obviously Tech-bound, and when it came up eventually that he favored UVA, that helped lead to the creation of the mysterious "Godfather" that was "steering" prospects to Virginia.  Hokies have such vivid imaginations.  (And they're actively destroying their own school's ability to recruit in the Tidewater area, so keep it going fellas.)

Anyway, let's check out the positional breakdown for 2014:

QUARTERBACK

For two years now I have looked like a royal dum-dum for saying I didn't expect to take more than one quarterback in the class, and then we took two.  Well, this year, Corwin Cutler looks like a likely prep prospect, which shifts him back to 2014.  So that's sort of one quarterback in the class, and really, from a purely numbers-management perspective, it works out very well.

So have I learned my lesson?  No, I have not.  Now, any old thing can happen.  Just watch, it probably will.  But: the numbers crunch in this class, the fact that we probably already have a 2014 QB in Cutler, and the other fact that that would put six scholarship QBs on the roster in 2014, gives me no choice but to predict we won't take any more this coming year.  Wait til 2015.

RUNNING BACK

I only have one (Cortavious Givens) on the recruiting board at the moment, but I expect things to pick up a little here.  There are currently five on the roster, three of which will be seniors in 2014, so it's not wise to leave the cupboard bare when they go.  (Not that Smoke Mizzell is chopped liver, but he and Kye Morgan alone aren't a depth chart.)  Look for one or two to appear in the 2014 class.

WIDE RECEIVER

The need here is small - probably for about two.  Kamara is likely to be one.  I wouldn't be surprised to see the second be a case of London dropping a January offer to a 757 guy the way he did with Mason Thomas and Divante Walker, but it's a long year and we'll see.  With only Tim Smith graduating after 2013, though (Bobby Smith's scholarship is probably being turned over to a class of 2013 recruit) and a pretty sizable stable of receivers in the fold, taking more than two would be wasteful.

TIGHT END

There's a weird dichotomy going on here in that the coaches seem to want to recruit a pure tight end prospect, but are being very picky about the ones they offer.  At this point, though, they seem likely to fill the position from within; Mario Nixon and Zach Swanson are strongly rumored to be making the move to TE (back to TE, in Swanson's case) and Max Valles will likely start out there too.  So the need isn't pressing, and it looks from here like the coaches are focusing elsewhere.  I wouldn't rule out taking a TE but I wouldn't bank on it.

OFFENSIVE LINE

As per always, three is the bare minimum, and more are usually to be expected.  The coaches really cranked up the offer cannon aimed at offensive linemen this year; a full eleven of the players on the recruiting board are O-linemen.  Some of that might have been before they dug up George Adeosun and flipped Eric Tetlow, the latter of which was a Signing Day surprise even to the coaches, and so they might be dialing back on some of those.  That said, at least two were in town for this past weekend's junior day, and there are quite a few more that both think very highly of Virginia and wouldn't be turned away if they committed.  I think four linemen is the likely target for a small class like this one, but five wouldn't surprise me.

DEFENSIVE LINE

UVA already has one commitment in the fold (DT Chris Nelson) but it's a coin flip at best that he stays.  He's from Florida and is working the instate-school visit circuit hard; there's a bit of a placeholder element to his status right now.  It might not matter if the Hoos land Andrew Brown and Derrick Nnadi.  The former seems very likely - hard to believe about a five-star talent like Brown, but this is our year, man.  Nnadi is setting up to be a major battleground between UVA and Tech.  Landing both would take care of all defensive tackle needs for 2014, with or without Nelson.

As for DE, having only signed one in 2013 makes this more of a pressing need.  I'd like to see two or even three in this 2014 class.  I realize that would make half the class nothing but O-linemen and DEs, but so be it.  Trenches baby.

LINEBACKER

None are seniors this coming fall, so any we take will add to the numbers without any corresponding subtraction.  That minimizes the need.  We'll probably take one and maybe two, but likely no more.

DEFENSIVE BACK

There's such an enormous glut of players at both CB and safety that it seems like it'd be hard to take very many in 2014.  But it also seems like this position is a prime candidate to be hit by attrition when some of these guys are so likely never to see the field.  Plus, 2014 is the senior year for four safeties, so it makes sense to add a couple more in that recruiting class.  Blanding is probably one; I think the coaches might try to find another as well.  Two outstanding cornerbacks just signed up in 2013 and there's a major freshman glut from 2012 there too, so taking just one is very possible in 2014.

KICKER/PUNTER

It seems having an experienced special teams coach on staff has already had an effect on recruiting, because Mike London just did something he's never done at UVA: offer a scholarship to a kicker.  It's probably the only such offer that'll go out, but UVA's chances of landing him are very good.

So, the numerical breakdown and projection, not counting prep candidates:

QB: 0
RB: 1
WR: 2
TE: 0
OL: 4
DT: 2
DE: 2
LB: 2
DB: 3
K: 1

As ever, all numbers are +/-1.  Especially on the minus side because that adds up to 17.  Maybe knock off a DB and an OL.

Now to finish things off, the year's first recruiting board update.  Here we go:

-- Added K Gary Wunderlich to blue.  And in case you're wondering, I'm fully on board with the idea of putting a kicker on scholarship if you find a really good one.  Good kickers aren't all that common in college and I hate watching a perfectly good drive go to waste because of a missed 35-yard field goal.

-- Added OTs Will Richardson and Bentley Spain to green.  I resisted adding Spain when I made the original board because he had such a damn offer list, but he put UVA in his top six so what the hey.  That top six also includes LSU, Michigan, and Stanford so Virginia is sort of a one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other inclusion, not to mention that if "numbers of articles by one particular Rivals affiliate" is a good indicator, he's a South Carolina lean.  But still.

-- Added DE Jeremiah Clarke to green.  Clarke picked up an offer at the junior day.

-- Removed LB Troy Reeder from green.  Reeder was even kind of borderline blue-green in my thinking, but he committed to Penn State today.  Bother.

-- Moved TE Chris Laye from green to yellow.

-- Moved ATH Travon McMillian and DE Jalyn Holmes from red to yellow.  Holmes is a guy the coaches are on like white on rice but hasn't - until recently - been all that receptive to UVA.  Owing to a need for DEs, though, if I could put one guy from the red or yellow lists into the verbally committed section, it'd be Holmes.