Everybody loves a good Cinderella story. And I love watching dominant running backs. That makes Daniel Hamm the obvious topic du jour.
If you'd ever heard of Hamm, you are a teammate, a relation, or lying. His existence flew under every radar that's tuned on Charlottesville. He doesn't have an entry in most recruiting databases and he never received any scholarship offers to speak of, not in football. He showed up on the field and people probably tried to remember if Khalek Shepherd wore #22 or some other number, until his name was announced. Now his name is on all the headlines.
You have to admit, that's pretty cool. It might be for just this one week, and might've only been VMI, but the entry in the record book is just as permanent as any other. And it made something interesting out of an uninteresting game.
Also, it leaves some questions, or at least, one big one. Namely, does this mean we have a new running back? Well, the quality of competition looms large over everything positive we can say about Hamm's future. Except for the first couple drives, VMI had no chance against the blocking, and Hamm always had a hole to run through. When he broke a tackle, it always came with the question as to whether a player on a better team would've brought him down; when he ran past someone, you always wondered if another team's players would've been faster. There's no way UVA's running game will generate 357 yards again this year.
Even so, a couple things look to be really in Hamm's favor here. First and probably foremost, it's got to be really bad news for Kye Morgan, hasn't it? That Khalek Shepherd and Taquan Mizzell are both hurt, and the next guy out is a true freshman walk-on, instead of Morgan who redshirted last season - that's a surprise. Morgan's got more than three-and-a-half seasons left in his career, so it's not like you just write him off, but what didn't he show last year?
As for Hamm himself, some of those runs - particularly, I thought, his second TD run - were nice runs regardless of opponent. He looked strong in his running. Some of the holes he hit weren't very big, and the truth is, a lot of guys might have considered them too small and stepped around them, looking for a home run elsewhere. And against most teams, that's how you run for two yards. Hamm was content to take the five-to-seven and come back and do it again. There's only one Barry Sanders, so give me the north-south, workhorse stuff all day long. I loved watching a guy who would - oh, fuck it, Hammer the defense - carry after carry.
Whether Hamm has or will unseat Shepherd or Mizzell this season, nobody can say except those who aren't telling. Whether that performance will translate to success against actual opponents, nobody can say at all. But I'm looking forward to finding out.
Other stuff in short:
-- That was the good story of the offense. The bad story: the passing game. The numbers are good but the eye test was definitely not. So many of those yards were YAC, and not like with Mike Rocco where the YAC was often the result of a very well-timed ball. Watford threw a swing pass behind Kevin Parks and Parks was still able to pick up a ton of yardage; no ACC team will let that happen.
Watford's interceptions were the result of locking in on a receiver to absurd extremes. Especially the first. Some blame goes to Miles Gooch for running his route and then stopping, but he was so thoroughly covered that Watford had no business throwing that thing at all. Watford had some nice throws, too - the one to Tim Smith for a touchdown was gorgeous. Both his touchdown throws, actually, were excellent. Even then, he was watching nobody but Smith all the way. Until he learns to go through his second read he's not going to be a productive QB.
It would help if his receivers gave him a little assistance. Gooch has been mentioned; Dominique Terrell was also guilty at least once. Watford was scrambling and Terrell ran to a point on the field and simply stopped moving. I can't believe this only happened the two times I noticed it. Marques Hagans has got to impress on these guys that the route doesn't stop where the little arrow ends up. Of all former quarterbacks - a guy who kept a ton of plays alive with his feet - he ought to know this best.
-- I love the defense, though. When the announcers talked about how VMI had us "on the ropes" in the first quarter, well, OK, the offense didn't produce, but the VMI offense gained 15 yards the whole quarter. I mean, come on. The defense just crushed the fightin' Vimmies. No contest. If the offense had played as good a game as the defense it would've been 105-0. I'm not going back through the annals to find out the last time UVA allowed so few yards (79) but the notes tell us that they allowed 84 to Akron in 2004. So it goes back further than that. I would go so far as to say that even with as bad as VMI is, the defense outperformed expectations.
Time for a prediction review:
-- Mizzell and Shepherd combine for at least five more carries than Parks. The point here was that Parks was going to get a nice light day, maybe not show up in the second half. I could null it out since nobody knew about their injuries, but I'm giving it to myself, actually, because Hamm by himself had four more carries and then the fourth quarter was turned over to the backups.
-- Watford averages 10 yards per attempt, enough to double his seasonal passing yards if allowed to throw 28 times. He was at 8.2, which isn't enough for this.
-- At least five new redshirts are burned, two on the O-line. The grand total is seven: Hamm is one, along with LaChaston Smith, Eric Tetlow, Sadiq Olanrewaju, Eric Smith, Max Valles, and Donte Wilkins. Most are defensible; LaChaston Smith is the one I have to question. That hurdle was cool, but couldn't Morgan have just gotten those carries? Five deep is plenty. It's doubly screwy because of the very strong possibility that Smith might move to a whole new position eventually.
The rest are fine. I actually saw someone complaining that Hamm's redshirt had been burned. Lordy. You wouldn't have known he was even remotely good if you'd gotten your way. Besides, Hamm is a walk-on; it's exceedingly wrong to essentially tell a walk-on "for the good of the team we're going to ask you to pay your very expensive way for a fifth year." The offensive linemen almost had to play; the first-stringers can't take every snap of the season. And we'll almost certainly see more of Wilkins, too.
-- Defensive tackles account for at least two sacks. No, but they still dominated.
-- So does Eli Harold. No, but Trent Corney did, probably against VMI's second-string tackle, although I didn't look to see.
-- Urban bats down at least two passes. There was actually a lot of very good pressure on Eric Kordenbrock, but VMI did a nice job of keeping his release time short.
I only get two of six, which adds up to 6-for-16 on the year. Full game prediction, with a win against the spread and a gimme on the straight-up, makes me 2-1 and 2-1 ATS.
We'll cover the rest of the ACC as part of tomorrow's weekend review.
Showing posts with label morgan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label morgan. Show all posts
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
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.
So you get games like Saturday's against UNC. It's impressive how fast a pitchers' duel turned into a slugfest. Whit Mayberry did a great job in five innings of starting, needing only about 60 pitches and moving very efficiently. Nathan Kirby was great for two innings; unfortunately, he pitched in three, with the wheels coming off in the eighth. (He wasn't the only one, though; the boys in Carolina blue fell apart at exactly the same time. And I was impressed in the confidence the coaches put in Kirby, having him pitch through some tough situations in a very tight game.)
Thankfully, UVA scoring runs and then UNC giving them back wasn't the ultimate story. Carolina boneheadedness was. UVA's 11th-inning rally started to bear fruit when UNC tried to get the lead runner at third on a sacrifice bunt, and Colin Moran biffed the throw, which of course moved everyone up a bag. That's how the 11th started; it ended when Skye Bolt hit a deep drive that Mike Papi caught against the wall (saving at least a double), and for whatever reason, the pinch-runner on first never tagged up. He was nowhere to be found when the ball arrived back at the base to double him off and polish off the game.
You can argue for a while whose fault that was (and we have, believe me) but since none of the replays show where he ended up, it's all speculation. My guess: he came in thinking there were two outs (there was one) and that Papi's catch was the end of the inning. And therefore went tearing around the basepaths at the crack of the bat with home plate on the mind. If that's the case, I blame the first-base coach; I mean, I used to kind of internally roll my eyes in my baseball playing days, when I'd reach first and the coach there would remind me how many outs. But there's a reason they do that. I doubt it happened this time.
So with Thursday's game being a carryover of the scorching-bat attack from the Duke series and the VCU midweek game, and UVA scoring 10 runs on Carolina's ace Kent Emanuel (the more-than-heavy implication on the Sabre board is that Emanuel was tipping all his offspeed pitches) the only thing that kept UVA from a sweep was one really lousy inning on Friday.
It's really not that bad a deal, though. If you buy that there are five real competitors for the ACC title, any of which could win the tourney, UVA is in the tourney pool that has only two of them; us and FSU. UNC has to deal with both Clemson and NC State. On the other hand, we do have the only two teams that beat us in a series this year (that would be the two Techs.)
Some other notes in brief:
-- Nate Irving moves like a sloth in molasses, which makes it all the more exciting when he does things like beat out a bunt and score from second on a single to left.
-- Kyle Crockett was absolutely devastating on Thursday. In retrospect it's a shame we used him Thursday, because he got shelled Friday and might not have if he hadn't pitched the day before, but man: when his curve is working, left-handers look like total dipshits against it. And let's face it: we all know UNC has a nasty good lineup, and a six-run lead isn't totally safe. As we sort of learned on Saturday when the Heels overcame a three-run deficit and nearly blew past a four-run one. So no bagging on BOC for using Crockett to "save" a huge lead in game one.
-- Colin Moran won the ACC POY award over Mike Papi. I am not sure whether to be enraged or not. Papi probably had one of the best seasons ever for a non-winner. I mean, hello, national OBP leader. (Then again: national RBI leader Moran.) On the one hand, Papi was probably penalized for not playing the whole season. He wasn't even a starter at the beginning and sat about 10-12 games entirely. This is probably part of the reason Joe McCarthy won freshman of the year instead of Skye Bolt. So in that respect it evens out. And it wasn't the media voting, it was the coaches, so for once we can't blame Caulton Tudor and his ilk.
On the other hand, the coaches couldn't even agree on which third baseman should be on the all-ACC first team; Moran shared that honor with VT's Chad Pinder. If he's not definitively the best at his position, is he really the best overall player in the conference?
Oh well; we don't really know if Papi was "definitively the best" outfielder either, and he might well not have been. Anyway, UVA was well represented on the honors list: Papi, Reed Gragnani, Nick Howard, and Kyle Crockett all made the first team; McCarthy and Branden Cogswell the second team, and UVA took home FOY and COY honors while UNC took pitcher and player of the year. Of 36 slots on the honorees list, 15 are filled with Hoos or Heels. Nice especially to see Gragnani honored after a career spent mostly on the injured list.
-- A few other bragfacts from the ACC release on this honors stuff: this is BOC's third COY award in four years and fourth of his UVA tenure. During that tenure, UVA has only failed to reach 40 wins twice; we got 39 those times.
*****************************************************
-- Clifton Richardson's impending transfer is definitely one of the more disappointing ones of late. I think pretty much all of us had high hopes for his future. It doesn't hurt the depth too badly, but Richardson had more potential than either of the backs in front of him on the chart. Even if Taquan Mizzell was likely going to ensure Richardson never hit the top of the food chain. It leaves basically four backs on the roster for 2013, all of whom will almost certainly see the field at some point. Kevin Parks and Mizzell likely hold the inside track on the top two slots, and Khalek Shepherd and Kye Morgan will at a bare minimum get garbage time - though probably a little more than that.
-- An article that casts some doubt on the future, as-yet-nonexistent ACC Network. Consolation prize if the ACC Network falls through: more cash from ESPN, quite probably meant as a way to ensure the viability of the conference since it's really in ESPN's best interest for the ACC to exist. The article says that works out to about $2 million more per school per year, which after a little math and some assumptions means about $336 million total. So what I hear from that is that if ESPN can buy out the necessary rights from the other media entities that own them for less than $336 million, it's network city.
-- The men's tennis team plays in its third straight national championship matchup tomorrow against UCLA. A win would give UVA its first ever title, and extend our national championship streak to five years (UVA has won a national title in something every year since 2009) as well as give us a chance at our first multiple-title year since 1993.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
the recruit: Kye Morgan
Name: Kye Morgan
Position: RB
Hometown: Somerset, NJ
School: Franklin
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 175
24/7: 81; three stars; #66 RB; NJ #35
ESPN: 74; two stars; #158 RB; NJ #37; Atlantic #200
Rivals: 5.6; three stars; #46 RB; NJ #22
Scout: three stars; #41 RB
Other offers: Rutgers, Illinois, Boston College, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Temple
It took a little while (relative to the rest of the recruiting class) but UVA got its running back just as fall camp kicked off, a man forever destined to be called Kyle on every message board by the uninitiatied and/or uninformed.
Morgan had Rutgers on the top of his wish list for most of the year, which is no surprise because his high school and hometown are literally across the river from Rutgers. You could hardly find a better definition of a school's backyard. We can't exactly say we stole Morgan from under their noses; Rutgers cut Morgan off after taking a commitment from another very similar player (except, one that had no other offers besides the Rutgers one.) Worried that his #2 choice might also fill up, Morgan jumped on board. (At the time, we were also still recruiting Chris Mangus hard, and had our eye on a couple other backs as well.)
Depending on the future of 2012 recruiting, it's possible that Morgan could move to safety, but the coaches seem to be regarding any further commitments as pure icing on the cake, so they're only playing longshots now. So Morgan is probably a running back all the way. As such, he fills a need; even though we have three of them rotating through very nicely, not having one in this class would've hurt, because three of four scholarship backs on the roster are set up to run out of eligibility in 2014.
Morgan isn't a specialty back, so he fills our need very well. There's a lot of things he does well - nothing spectacularly, but well, and productively. Doesn't have blazing fast speed, but he's fast enough, and quick to hit his top gear. Morgan also appears to have decent balance; despite his smallish size, defenders seem to consistently have trouble wrapping him up high on his highlight tapes, with the obvious and usual caveat that college players are a lot stronger. He'll also be a threat in the passing game, similar to Perry Jones.
Morgan's ratings are good enough and consistent enough that you can ignore the outlier; in this case, ESPN. I don't think a two-star guy has offers from that many decent schools. He had a very productive high school career, finishing it as the career and single-game yardage and touchdown record holder. Actually it's not quite finished; Franklin bowed out of the playoffs in the first round, but they have their rivalry game this coming weekend.
I think you can expect him to redshirt, because next season, Superman Jones is a senior and Parks and Richardson are sophomores. Nobody from this current crop of very productive backs is leaving. And in case someone gets hurt, Khalek Shepherd is ready to step in as well. There shouldn't be any need to play Morgan, and in fact it's ideal for his career if he can put a year of separation between himself and three other backs. Richardson and Parks will cast quite a shadow for a while. I don't expect Morgan to ever be a one-man show in the backfield, but if he redshirts (and assuming we don't pick up any more running backs this year) he'll have two seasons as the graybeard running back on the roster, and regardless of how his time is split, I expect he'll be very productive by then.
Position: RB
Hometown: Somerset, NJ
School: Franklin
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 175
24/7: 81; three stars; #66 RB; NJ #35
ESPN: 74; two stars; #158 RB; NJ #37; Atlantic #200
Rivals: 5.6; three stars; #46 RB; NJ #22
Scout: three stars; #41 RB
Other offers: Rutgers, Illinois, Boston College, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Temple
It took a little while (relative to the rest of the recruiting class) but UVA got its running back just as fall camp kicked off, a man forever destined to be called Kyle on every message board by the uninitiatied and/or uninformed.
Morgan had Rutgers on the top of his wish list for most of the year, which is no surprise because his high school and hometown are literally across the river from Rutgers. You could hardly find a better definition of a school's backyard. We can't exactly say we stole Morgan from under their noses; Rutgers cut Morgan off after taking a commitment from another very similar player (except, one that had no other offers besides the Rutgers one.) Worried that his #2 choice might also fill up, Morgan jumped on board. (At the time, we were also still recruiting Chris Mangus hard, and had our eye on a couple other backs as well.)
Depending on the future of 2012 recruiting, it's possible that Morgan could move to safety, but the coaches seem to be regarding any further commitments as pure icing on the cake, so they're only playing longshots now. So Morgan is probably a running back all the way. As such, he fills a need; even though we have three of them rotating through very nicely, not having one in this class would've hurt, because three of four scholarship backs on the roster are set up to run out of eligibility in 2014.
Morgan isn't a specialty back, so he fills our need very well. There's a lot of things he does well - nothing spectacularly, but well, and productively. Doesn't have blazing fast speed, but he's fast enough, and quick to hit his top gear. Morgan also appears to have decent balance; despite his smallish size, defenders seem to consistently have trouble wrapping him up high on his highlight tapes, with the obvious and usual caveat that college players are a lot stronger. He'll also be a threat in the passing game, similar to Perry Jones.
Morgan's ratings are good enough and consistent enough that you can ignore the outlier; in this case, ESPN. I don't think a two-star guy has offers from that many decent schools. He had a very productive high school career, finishing it as the career and single-game yardage and touchdown record holder. Actually it's not quite finished; Franklin bowed out of the playoffs in the first round, but they have their rivalry game this coming weekend.
I think you can expect him to redshirt, because next season, Superman Jones is a senior and Parks and Richardson are sophomores. Nobody from this current crop of very productive backs is leaving. And in case someone gets hurt, Khalek Shepherd is ready to step in as well. There shouldn't be any need to play Morgan, and in fact it's ideal for his career if he can put a year of separation between himself and three other backs. Richardson and Parks will cast quite a shadow for a while. I don't expect Morgan to ever be a one-man show in the backfield, but if he redshirts (and assuming we don't pick up any more running backs this year) he'll have two seasons as the graybeard running back on the roster, and regardless of how his time is split, I expect he'll be very productive by then.
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