For weeks now I've been making all sorts of promises about writing a lacrosse season review, so here's the time to make good on that. We'll see if we can't unearth the secrets behind a losing, NCAA-tournament-less lacrosse season, the first in nearly ten years.
OFFENSE
-- Stick skills. This was about the second or third thing that jumped out at me, but in retrospect, probably the actual most important. When I can, I watch Michigan games too - the Michigan team that's gone 2-26 in its first two years of existence - and the thing that always strikes me hardest in the contrast between Michigan and UVA (and the teams of a caliber that UVA's accustomed to playing) is their stick skills. Michigan's just aren't that good; they're often throwing balls off-target or failing to catch the good ones. It's amazing how much harder it is to play lacrosse when passes are that much less automatic.
This year the contrast was a lot less, and Michigan's didn't get better (much). Simply put, the offense turned the ball over far too much, without any help from the defense. Consider the stats: UVA had 62 fewer turnovers than its opposition, but 55 more caused turnovers - which if you juggle the numbers the right way, means UVA had almost as many unforced turnovers as their opponents. That would be fine if every opponent were a Cornell or a UNC, but there are cupcakes on the schedule too. If UVA played its top opponents even in the unforced turnover department, the cupcakes should create the margin. There was no margin - which means far too many unforced turnovers against teams equipped to take advantage.
Two games stick out: both OSU and UNC (the first game) committed just 1 unforced turnover apiece. Even in games where the opponent had more than we did, we never looked quite that good. And even against VMI we had 8. This was part of the reason the offense sputtered.
-- Lack of midfield athleticism. This was reason number two. It was a rare sight this year to see anyone beat his defender off the dribble, as it were. Shamel Bratton used to do this all the time. In retrospect, guys like Colin Briggs and Brian Carroll could do it too. Ryan Tucker and Rob Emery disappointed in this regard. It limited goal-scoring chances mostly to playmaking from the X or fast breaks; generally, a midfielder was only ever able to create when he could catch his defender running at him.
Owen Van Arsdale tends to be sort of a duly appointed scapegoat for the athleticism thing, and it's true he's not the world's most athletic guy, but he's only one of several. And OVA had the second-most assists on the team after Nick O'Reilly, so it might be said that Dom knows what he's doing by having OVA out there. Offense came from the attack feeding the mids, but rarely the other way round, and the lack of balance hurt.
-- Poor shooting decisions. I got awfully frustrated at times when an opposing goalie would prove he could consistently stop a particular type of shot and we just kept on lobbing the same ones in there. Games that stand out in my memory in this regard: Drexel, Vermont, Ohio State, Bellarmine. Others, too, I'm sure, but that's what comes to mind. Typically it was stick-side high - goalies like it when they don't have to move their stick much, and high-to-high stick side is going to get saved eight times out of ten - but in the case of Bellarmine, our attackers often found themselves on the doorstep and tried to toss it lazily into the net as if there wasn't anything in between, and the Bellarmine goalie kept saving them. Duh. It bugged me because our radio guys were gushing about the guy's skills (in fairness, he had a damn .662 save percentage this year, which is nasty good) but I wanted to go YES I KNOW IT'S EASY TO LOOK LIKE AN ALL-STAR WHEN THE SHOTS ARE THREE MILES AN HOUR.
I don't know whether the following is a symptom or a cause of the poor season, but UVA's opponents had both a better shooting percentage and SOG percentage than we did. If you guessed that 2004 was the last time that happened, give yourself a Fig Newton. Those numbers ended up at .264 and .565, respectively, both of which are the lowest since, yes, 2004, except for the .565, which is the lowest in God only knows how long.
Part of this admittedly may be attributed to the new stall rules, which have encouraged teams to avoid stalling, but I noticed our opponents got more accurate, not less, between last year and this.
DEFENSE
-- Goaltending. I mean, it's hard to leave this out when the stats look so bad. Dan Marino gave way to Rhody Heller midyear; Marino had a .455 save percentage on the season, Heller .482. Both are awful numbers. Marino's injury troubles in the fall might've carried over in his play to the spring. Austin Geisler, who transferred to High Point and played there this spring, had a .512 save percentage for the Panthers; given the somewhat (not hugely, but somewhat) easier schedule they play, it's hard to tell whether he would've made a difference, but it would've been cool to find out. You can bet the competition will be reopened in the fall, with incoming freshman Matt Barrett being given as good a shot as any.
The silver lining: Adam Ghitelman had a .497 percentage his freshman year, so Heller - though a redshirt freshman rather than a true one - isn't that far behind that number.
-- End of quarters. Oh gawd. Talk about frustrating. UVA played 15 games - therefore 60 quarters - and in 15 of those quarters, the opponent scored with fewer than 20 seconds left. So on average of once a game, UVA allowed an end-of-quarter goal.
Then, if we make the safe assumption that it's a coin flip as to whether the good guys or the bad guys have the ball at the end of the quarter, that means were 30 quarters when we were defending, which in turn means the defense allowed a goal half the time. More than half, if we take into account that nine games were basically out of reach one way or the other by the 30-second mark of the fourth (thus, nine of 60 quarters don't count since killing clock was the concern rather than feverishly trying to score.)
Not to mention that six of these end-of-quarter goals came after UVA had already scored a goal with less than a minute to go.
The Ohio State game was especially egregious. In the first three quarters, OSU scored with one second left, twelve seconds left, and three seconds left. This, one week after Cornell had scored the game-winner with 13 seconds to go in the fourth - 26 seconds after UVA had tied it up. Lesson: not learned. And Drexel forced overtime (in which UVA fortunately won) with a ten-seconds-left goal in regulation after an eight-seconds-left one before halftime.
Goaltending is partly to blame. In theory, you ought to be playing it pretty safe at the end of a quarter, so any shots are long ones and should be stoppable. That happened sometimes. In reality, the defense did an awful job of playing patient and tended to break down as the attackers got frenetic in trying to score.
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You'll notice two things that aren't on this list: faceoffs and injuries. I'm not sure that .527 is a real accurate assessment of how actually good our faceoff men were, but them's the stats, and I don't think that's where the season's problems really were. Also, not having Chris LaPierre wasn't the issue. Shocker might've helped in the midfield-athleticism department, but he's awfully unpolished on offense and probably wouldn't be a major playmaker except to maybe set up some of his own stuff.
Anyway, LaPierre's main strength is as an X-factor when two teams are equal. He can tilt the balance in your direction, but he's probably not going to solve your problems if you're facing a talent deficit. Neither can we say that not having top freshman Will McNamara would've helped, because we just don't know. Ask again next year.
Obviously, not everything was a disaster. I think Nick O'Reilly could have 50-some assists if he could rely more on his midfielders to be open for shots. Mark Cockerton isn't notably big, but he plays strong. Very strong. Wasn't uncommon to see him bull his way around a defender to score the goal. And Tanner Scales won the ACC Freshman of the Year award; Scales looked really good on defense and combined with Scott McWilliams to be a turnover-causing terror on the back end. It's a fitting award, since he inherited Steele Stanwick's #6 - who was the last UVA player to win the award. The last UVA non-offensive player to win was goalie Tillman Johnson. Having no way of remembering what number Johnson wore, I looked it up, hoping against hope it was 6. It was, but upside-down. Close enough.
So I think there's every reason to believe UVA gets back to the tournament next year; most of these problems aren't chronic. I'd like to think, for example, that the end-of-quarter issues are the sort of thing that will regress to the mean next year. This is just one of those things, and at least we have company from Baltimore in the "blue bloods missing the tournament" category.
Showing posts with label o'reilly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label o'reilly. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, March 18, 2013
weekend review
So you may already have heard, but it's the NIT for us. The Not Important Tournament. Not Invited Tournament. Nobody's Interested Tournament. Blah blah. I have to admit I'm not especially interested in hearing or talking about how we got snubbed wah wah mid majors with no resumes wah wah. Don't wanna hear it and I'm not interested in joining the righteous-anger fest. You knew this was gonna happen and if you couldn't see it coming a mile away then the orange glasses are blinding your eyes. UVA played like ass down the stretch. Losing by twenty when the whole world is looking at you to see if you're worthy of the bid is a surefire way to advertise you don't deserve one.
The lesson is not "avoid bad losses" - if it were, VT would've had a few trips to the Dance under Greenberg. The lesson is to play well down the stretch and don't have so many bad losses that you collapse under their weight. Everything UVA wanted was there for the taking, and they rolled over and didn't bother. If you must direct righteous anger somewhere, direct it inward.
Anyway, things aren't so bad. The Hoos have a whole new (if consolationary) set of opportunities in front of them. It's like, OK, you screwed that up, but here's another chance at things. Ironically enough it's even a second crack at getting to the same place they couldn't get to in the preseason. It's the last one, of course, but at least everything until the big show (if we get that far) will be played at home. UVA's #1 seed in the NIT ensures that. And since the JPJA is the one place where they don't seem to screw things up usually, I feel a lot better about the impending clash with Norfolk State. Seriously, if that game were in Richmond, though, or some other neutral venue, I'd be worried.
What really gnaws is not so much missing out on the big tournament - it's missing out on a tremendous opportunity in the ACC. That's a 4 seed, a 7 seed, and an 8 seed joining the conference next year, and this year's #1 overall seed the year after that. And it's not like UNC, Duke, or NC State are going to get worse in the near future. Miami is about the only currently successful team poised for a drop. It doesn't get any easier to win the ACC going forward. UVA should have a better team next year than they do this year, but will the conference leave them behind anyway? It's gonna be a tough sled in 2014.
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And all that unpleasantness aside, it pains me even more to talk about losing to Ohio State in anything, yet that's exactly what the lacrosse team went and did. The problem they're having is lit up in a bright neon sign by now. Vermont exposed it and Ohio State took advantage: Play a zone defense and UVA won't score on you.
The first quarter was nice and easy. (Except for the last second of it. I've mentioned already this season the seeming inability to defend in the last 30 seconds of a quarter and it bit us in the butt again.) The offense clicked because OSU couldn't defend Nick O'Reilly behind the net. Then they switched to a packed-down zone and stationed a defender on either side of the net, daring him to make a move to the front. Maddeningly, UVA's apparent response was to put another player behind the net, which was a useless move.
From then on UVA only ever scored when OSU abandoned the zone or didn't have time to set it up. Maddening stuff. You saw yesterday's bracketology, I'm sure, and UVA's position is better than I thought it would be, but only five games remain in the season, six (or seven) counting the ACC tourney. (Lacrosse season is awfully damn short, isn't it? Can you imagine if football season were just September and October and then the postseason began?) UVA has to win somewhere if they want the season to extend past the ACC tourney, and I don't mean against Bellarmine. (Which really worries me right now. Bellarmine's defense is starting to look fairly legit.)
Oh, while I'm at it: can we settle on a goalie? Or, can maybe one of the goalies do something about winning the starting job? The announcers pointed out that Rhody Heller's start against Vermont was a disciplinary thing in re: Marino, but that his OSU start was more of a performance thing. I didn't think Marino was playing all that bad, but his .450 save percentage says otherwise. Heller's isn't much better. A couple extra saves here and there just might make a difference. Would it be rude of me to point out that Austin Geisler has a .554 save percentage for High Point at the moment?
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At least there's baseball. Between one thing and another I didn't watch a single baseball game all weekend. For this I feel shame. But I'm duly impressed by the clutch batsman-work from Mike Papi on Friday. Since I didn't see the games I don't have any in-depth stuff here. But I'll say this. UVA has settled nicely into a spot where we can go into each season, and the minimum expectation in February is a 50/50 chance at hosting a regional. Any worse and the previous season must've been pretty poor, but it hasn't been that way for a while. That 50/50 shot is what we had this year. After two weeks into the ACC season, UVA's done a workmanlike job in winning a series against a much-improved Maryland team (I miss dropping 20 runs on them, but oh well, Maryland baseball is headed for obscurity and oblivion soon enough) and a road series against Clemson. None too shabby. I'd like to see how we do against our nemesis NC State next week, which always seems to beat us in the series no matter how much of a roll we're on, but at least, I think we can nudge the odds of a Charlottesville regional just a little more in our favor. Maybe only to 55/45, but this team is doing a marvelous job of spinning potential into gold.
Last thing for tonight: TheSabre has a marvelous photo gallery of the indoor practice facility, which looks fantastic. The speed with which that thing went up, from conception to reality, is remarkable. It wasn't that long ago the thing caught fire and we were like "well, at least it's hardly even started so there's not much to set back."
The lesson is not "avoid bad losses" - if it were, VT would've had a few trips to the Dance under Greenberg. The lesson is to play well down the stretch and don't have so many bad losses that you collapse under their weight. Everything UVA wanted was there for the taking, and they rolled over and didn't bother. If you must direct righteous anger somewhere, direct it inward.
Anyway, things aren't so bad. The Hoos have a whole new (if consolationary) set of opportunities in front of them. It's like, OK, you screwed that up, but here's another chance at things. Ironically enough it's even a second crack at getting to the same place they couldn't get to in the preseason. It's the last one, of course, but at least everything until the big show (if we get that far) will be played at home. UVA's #1 seed in the NIT ensures that. And since the JPJA is the one place where they don't seem to screw things up usually, I feel a lot better about the impending clash with Norfolk State. Seriously, if that game were in Richmond, though, or some other neutral venue, I'd be worried.
What really gnaws is not so much missing out on the big tournament - it's missing out on a tremendous opportunity in the ACC. That's a 4 seed, a 7 seed, and an 8 seed joining the conference next year, and this year's #1 overall seed the year after that. And it's not like UNC, Duke, or NC State are going to get worse in the near future. Miami is about the only currently successful team poised for a drop. It doesn't get any easier to win the ACC going forward. UVA should have a better team next year than they do this year, but will the conference leave them behind anyway? It's gonna be a tough sled in 2014.
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And all that unpleasantness aside, it pains me even more to talk about losing to Ohio State in anything, yet that's exactly what the lacrosse team went and did. The problem they're having is lit up in a bright neon sign by now. Vermont exposed it and Ohio State took advantage: Play a zone defense and UVA won't score on you.
The first quarter was nice and easy. (Except for the last second of it. I've mentioned already this season the seeming inability to defend in the last 30 seconds of a quarter and it bit us in the butt again.) The offense clicked because OSU couldn't defend Nick O'Reilly behind the net. Then they switched to a packed-down zone and stationed a defender on either side of the net, daring him to make a move to the front. Maddeningly, UVA's apparent response was to put another player behind the net, which was a useless move.
From then on UVA only ever scored when OSU abandoned the zone or didn't have time to set it up. Maddening stuff. You saw yesterday's bracketology, I'm sure, and UVA's position is better than I thought it would be, but only five games remain in the season, six (or seven) counting the ACC tourney. (Lacrosse season is awfully damn short, isn't it? Can you imagine if football season were just September and October and then the postseason began?) UVA has to win somewhere if they want the season to extend past the ACC tourney, and I don't mean against Bellarmine. (Which really worries me right now. Bellarmine's defense is starting to look fairly legit.)
Oh, while I'm at it: can we settle on a goalie? Or, can maybe one of the goalies do something about winning the starting job? The announcers pointed out that Rhody Heller's start against Vermont was a disciplinary thing in re: Marino, but that his OSU start was more of a performance thing. I didn't think Marino was playing all that bad, but his .450 save percentage says otherwise. Heller's isn't much better. A couple extra saves here and there just might make a difference. Would it be rude of me to point out that Austin Geisler has a .554 save percentage for High Point at the moment?
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At least there's baseball. Between one thing and another I didn't watch a single baseball game all weekend. For this I feel shame. But I'm duly impressed by the clutch batsman-work from Mike Papi on Friday. Since I didn't see the games I don't have any in-depth stuff here. But I'll say this. UVA has settled nicely into a spot where we can go into each season, and the minimum expectation in February is a 50/50 chance at hosting a regional. Any worse and the previous season must've been pretty poor, but it hasn't been that way for a while. That 50/50 shot is what we had this year. After two weeks into the ACC season, UVA's done a workmanlike job in winning a series against a much-improved Maryland team (I miss dropping 20 runs on them, but oh well, Maryland baseball is headed for obscurity and oblivion soon enough) and a road series against Clemson. None too shabby. I'd like to see how we do against our nemesis NC State next week, which always seems to beat us in the series no matter how much of a roll we're on, but at least, I think we can nudge the odds of a Charlottesville regional just a little more in our favor. Maybe only to 55/45, but this team is doing a marvelous job of spinning potential into gold.
Last thing for tonight: TheSabre has a marvelous photo gallery of the indoor practice facility, which looks fantastic. The speed with which that thing went up, from conception to reality, is remarkable. It wasn't that long ago the thing caught fire and we were like "well, at least it's hardly even started so there's not much to set back."
Friday, March 15, 2013
game preview: Ohio State
Date/Time: Saturday, March 16; 3:00
TV: Cavaliers Live
Record against the Buckeyes: 6-0
Last meeting: UVA 11, OSU 9; 3/17/12, Columbus
Last game: Cornell 12, UVA 11 (3/9); DU 10, OSU 9 (3/9)
Rankings: UVA #11/#9, OSU #12/#12
Efficiency stats:
Faceoffs:
UVA: 54.7% (#11)
OSU: 58.3% (#17)
Clearing (offense):
UVA: 93.2% (#3)
OSU: 91.8% (#7)
Clearing (defense):
UVA: 79.5% (#8)
OSU: 90.5% (#57)
Scoring % (offense):
UVA: 34.8% (#23)
OSU: 35.5% (#19)
Scoring % (defense):
UVA: 30.1% (#21)
OSU: 28.5% (#12)
O-rating:
UVA: 16.20 (#20)
OSU: 15.97 (#21)
D-rating:
UVA: 12.84 (#14)
OSU: 13.01 (#15)
(Ratings are my KenPom-esque measures of efficiency for lacrosse. Numbers are schedule-adjusted. National average is about 15.1.)
With one bubble team now having fallen very ingloriously off the bubble for good (I think a close loss to NC State would've at least kept us on the horse, but losing by twenty is the likely coup de grace), it's time to turn our attention to another bubble team: the lacrosse one.
This blog's yearly lacrosse bracketology will make its 2013 debut this Sunday, and already I fully expect the Hoos to be starting from a lower position than we're used to. With very narrow losses to Syracuse and Cornell, each week now brings more or less a must-win game in order to stake a tourney claim. Remember, the autobids expanded by one, which leaves even less margin for error for UVA in the weeks ahead. The Hoos must find a feather for their cap somewhere. Ohio State isn't it, but without one, we really can't afford a loss, either.
-- UVA on offense
If truth be told, I would point to the offense as the reason the Hoos couldn't quite get past Syracuse or Cornell, and had trouble with Vermont besides. UVA is scoring at a slightly lower rate than they did in 2011 and 2012, and that's with the schedule still mostly composed of cupcakes and lacking Hopkins and the ACC. And, come to think of it, Ohio State's not-shabby defense.
Actually, the Buckeyes are a little less of a wall than they've been in the past. They're playing faster, too; in the past, they've had the reputation of being the UVA of the lacrosse world, but they're more or less mid-pack in terms of possessions per game now. Both should help UVA. Goalie Greg Dutton hasn't been on top of his game, with a save percentage south of .500 after posting a .575 last season.
OSU also brings a revamped defense, with only Dominic Imbordino returning from last year. Partly as a result (I would imagine) OSU is way near the bottom of the NCAA charts in caused turnovers. Their results this year have been a mixed bag. Allowing only 10 goals to Denver, even in a loss, is pretty good - that's a season-low for the Pioneers. Allowing 8 goals to Detroit, one of the worst offensive teams in the country, is bad. That would be Detroit's second-highest total of the year, and Dutton was frankly outplayed by Detroit's goalie in that game.
On the good-guy side, Dom is slowly settling down the lineups, but not completely. Nick O'Reilly has become a fixture, and oftentimes the offense lives or dies with his quarterbacking, which he's doing a nice job of with 15 assists already this year. I still want to see Matt White play closer to the net and end this midfield experiment, but I've resigned myself to not getting my way. Otherwise, there isn't so much a first and second line of midfielders as there is a first and second group that gets shuffled up at times. We're getting there, though.
Faceoffs continue to scare me, even with Mick Parks winning at a .567 clip. The reason is that our wing play, if I may be so blunt, stinks. Chris LaPierre has been missing a ton of time and it shows. Our wings are always last to the play, it seems. I'd like to maybe solve that by putting the speedy Pat Harbeson on the wing, but Harbeson's no defender at all and only marginally skilled on offense. Besides, there's no guarantee he'd take any better an angle to the ball or be any better anticipating its motion than anyone else. Can't be much worse, though.
Still, as long as we can get some possession I'd like to think we can score on Ohio State. Maybe not, like, VMI-style, but UVA was doing well against a very stingy Cornell defense for a while. Continuing to gel should help, and the game is at home.
-- UVA on defense
It was probably fair to say that OSU was a one-man show last year. Attackman Logan Schuss had twice as many points as the next guy. It's much more diversified this year. Freshman Carter Brown has joined Schuss at the attack and played well. Along with top midfielder Jesse King, OSU finds itself with a much more efficient offense than they had last year. King and Brown are both scoring on 40% or more of their shots.
The battle between Schuss and Scott McWilliams should be a good one. McWilliams already has 20 caused turnovers, and while he's a little bit of a risk-taker and prone to getting beat, Schuss is one notch below the country's elite. Which McWilliams has now had his crack it in guarding Rob Pannell.
If there's an X-factor it might be midget midfielder Turner Evans, who missed the Buckeyes' first couple games. Evans is judicious with his shots, but he's been a sniper when he gets open for one, scoring six times on nine shots. As he's not very big, he has a tough time getting open on his own, but he'll probably have a short stick on him more often than not and that defender can't be caught out of place.
-- Outlook
A tough matchup awaits. Ohio State has tourney aspirations and this is one of their best chances to play their way in. And this is a year in which UVA is going to struggle to play at the level we're accustomed to seeing. Last year OSU jumped out to like a 6-1 lead before UVA got back into the game and eventually won. So don't be exactly blown away if we lose. That said, I'll be damned if I predict a loss to these bastards.
Final score: UVA 10, OSU 8
Monday, February 18, 2013
weekend review
With spring season upon us, I get to have a lot more fun on Mondays with three sports to look back on instead of just one. Let's start with the one everyone's most pissed off about. On the face of it, I can't find much reason to be too surprised or disappointed or upset or whatever about losing on the road at North Carolina. I mean, that's not exactly a bad team.
This being the ACC, though, you don't come away from a loss at Carolina without having something to say about the refereeing. Which was the usual debacle. I have three instances on the top of my head of obvious bullshit that went UNC's way:
-- Brice Johnson pulling up his dribble at the free-throw line, landing with both feet, long-jumping past a defender, landing again, and ending with an easy dunk.
-- Joe Harris deflecting a pass, running after it, being clipped at the waist by the guy he deflected it from (I think Strickland) and being called for a foul.
-- McAdoo shoving Akil Mitchell halfway out of bounds while jostling for position and somehow getting Mitchell to be called for the foul.
It wasn't caught on TV, but those at the game - and the radio guys - described Tony Bennett's heated confrontation with a ref during a TV timeout. Like, actually heated, with voice raised and everything. I know it's standard to complain about the reffing when playing a team from the state of North Carolina, but Tony thus far has usually limited his expression of distaste for the reffing to subtle body language cues and the occasional glare. This is a guy who's earned the right to be taken seriously when he's pissed about the officiating. Although frankly, Coach K is well-known for being just this side of the line between "proactive" and obnoxious in dealing with the referees; it probably wouldn't hurt if Tony moved his zebra interactions a little closer in that direction.
As usual, UNC fans will say that the gap in fouls and free throws - in this case, 11 to 21 and 30 to 11, respectively - is due to superior athleticism and other teams having to hack to keep up. And as usual, bullshit: Akil Mitchell can match anyone in Heel blue for athleticism. Also as usual, the pinnacle of irony is when a dissatisfied wail goes up in either Cameron or the Dean Dome when the home fans feel hard done by the refs.
As for the non-ref portions of the game, it was an odd one. UVA hit 58.5% percent of its shots and 57.1% of three-pointers. That's pretty awesome. Scoring 1.17 points per possession wins you most games. Unless your point guard turns the ball over 6 times and you give up 1.35 PPP on defense. Both numbers are almost totally foreign to a Bennett-coached UVA team. If UVA hadn't shot so well I'd hate to see what the score would look like, because UNC wasn't exactly cold from the floor and got a 15-point advantage from the stripe besides. (Dammit there I go again with the reffing.)
What we're really starting to see is the effect of a thin lineup. Many times during this game UVA was simply unequipped to play defense against a Carolina team that could not shoot wrong. No Mike Tobey means no center, and eight minutes out of Darion Atkins isn't what we envisioned either. (Atkins is clearly a shell of the player he was at the start of the season, so his eight minutes barely count.) It leaves Evan Nolte to defend players he simply can't defend, especially when our lone actual post player is in foul trouble because the zebras are stupid. (Dammit there I go again with the reffing.)
Not to fear, however. Yes, it would've been nice to have that one to help cement a tourney bid. However, the mainest goal this regular season is to finish no worse than third in the ACC standings and then win a game in the ACC tourney. Our one-game lead on NC State is really a two-game lead because we beat them for the tiebreaker. If we have to tiebreak against UNC - over whom we still have a one-game lead - it'll fall to the how-did-you-do-against-#1 rule. UNC is 0-2 against Miami and has lost to Duke and NC State this year; we'll finish 1-0 against NC State. That means one of the following must happen for UNC to win the tiebreaker over UVA:
-- Beat Duke and hope we lose to both Duke and Miami.
or
-- Hope NC State falls behind FSU and/or Maryland, then polish off a season sweep against whichever one does (they have two left against FSU and one against Maryland, whom they've already beaten) and hope we don't do the same.
In a nutshell, UNC has to work so that the tiebreaker doesn't drop to how we did against NC State because they've already lost that one. So things look good. UVA still has to not screw this up, but the Hoos still sit in the drivers' seat, and ohbytheway can still get in position for 2nd with a win over Duke.
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The baseball team, on the other hand, also went one state south and had a much better time of it. They're now 3-0 after two wins over East Carolina and one over St. Peter's - the latter game being a surprise bonus after Sunday's game got washed out and St. Peter's had their entire Longwood series cancelled as well. Only Saturday's ECU game was especially close, and that partly because Nathan Kirby, brought on in relief to put a nice easy end to the contest, got bombed instead. So he's going to be climbing out of an ERA hole for a little while.
The bats looked nice. Nice enough that I don't think it's out of line to say we probably won't have too many worries about them this year. Maybe here and there, but you know, when you start off the year getting two grand salamis in the same game from one player (Kenny Towns, who had no other hits all weekend) you're in good shape.
Saturday was more or less a breeze, thanks to nearly five very good innings from Brandon Waddell. If Waddell can keep that up all season it'll be huge. Towns gave the Hoos a 4-0 lead in the top of the first and then helped cement the win as part of an eight-run seventh. Josh Sborz and David Rosenberger made it an all-freshman day on the mound and combined for 4 1/3 innings of solid ball.
Sunday was the only difficult game. Scott Silverstein struggled through five innings and gave up four runs; the fifth was really the best. Then the roof fell on ECU, and good thing too because Kirby allowing five runs in the ninth wouldn't have been conducive to heart rates in Charlottesville if he hadn't been handed a nine-run cushion. The best part of the day though: a surprise appearance by Whit Mayberry, who ended up with the win.
It'll be interesting to see what Nick Howard does tomorrow against Bill 'n' Mary, because Trey Oest made a strong case for the regular rotation with six shutout innings against St. Peter's this afternoon. OK, yes, St. Peter's. But with the rotation as in flux as it's likely to be over the next month, Oest is going to be one to keep an eye on as well.
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Then there's lacrosse, which almost ruined my weekend and needed about eleven seconds of overtime to rescue it. Oh, what the heck though, I can't be mad at the lacrosse team for doing the same thing they do every year, which is play a close game against Drexel.
The main story is probably the mad-scientist experimentation we got out of Dom Starsia. Oh, sure, he tinkers with his midfield lines as much as any coach and doesn't always have them perfectly set up by the first game. And sure, there've been years where we have three faceoff guys, any one of whom might be sent out for the next one. That was more desperation than experimentation, though. As expected, Mick Parks took most faceoffs and Tanner Ottenbreit took a couple; as not expected, Tyler German and Ryan Tucker also tried their hand.
And as might have been expected, by and large the faceoffs were a wreck. During the game I thought to myself "we're not winning any of these, and what's going to happen is I'm going to look at the box score later and be surprised by winning a hell of a lot more than you'd guess." I think winning half counts as surprising given how bad it looked. Keeping in mind also that three of the 14 "wins" were Drexel violations, so really our guys won 11. And the win to start OT wouldn't have been one if Drexel's wing guy, who consistently beat ours to the play, had made the scoop like he should've. Just as the bats at Davenport announced that we won't have a ton of hitting-related concerns this year, the faceoff guys put up a flashing neon sign that said this is going to be a problem. Or didn't put up a new sign so much as polish up the old one that's been there every year.
The other glaring problem seems to have been defending the front of the crease. Dan Marino made 15 saves and looked good doing it, with only one Drexel goal being one I thought he really should've had. He wouldn't have so many goals blemishing his record if there wasn't constantly a Drexel Dragon showing up unannounced on his front porch and leaving a bag of flaming poop. It was hard to tell the extent of this problem during the game because the guy operating the live feed was having a grand ol' time switching between camera angles and seemed to especially love the ones that provided no information at all about the play;** the highlights did a better job of showing just how often an opponent was allowed to cut to the front of the net.
As for the tinkering with the offense, really it wasn't limited to just the midfield lines, as we got a look at James Pannell at attack and Matt White got time at both attack and midfield. And with Mark Cockerton on a 1-game suspension, we haven't seen the last of playing around with the attack. But man I would be surprised if any particular permutation of midfielders was out there more than three, maybe four possessions tops. Technically the starting combo was White, Rob Emery, and Chris LaPierre, playing with a knee brace. Dom also ran like five or six other guys out there in various combinations; there was a fairly surprising amount of Greg Coholan and Pat Harbeson (who played a very solid game aside from his dipshit conduct penalty) plus plenty of Charlie Streep, Ryan Tucker, and a smattering of Matt Florence as well, whom along with Coholan I didn't even mention in the season preview.
If the rules tweaks this season do in fact lead to more transition game as the writers hope, then it will also mean less futzing around with getting your matchups perfect and more emphasis on putting fresh legs out there. Which means interesting combinations will show up, and not by design. I like that and I don't. Transition is fun. Midfielders who can play two ways, like Tucker, ought to still be relevant, if not highly important. But I also like the idea of me getting my best guys out there and you getting your best guys out there, all fresh, and let's see who wins. One thing I'm sure I don't like: long-sticks in transition. I mean, OK, it's a lot of fun when a long-pole guy races down the field and nobody thinks he's a threat and suddenly he's dropping one past the goalie. What I don't like is watching two long-poles passing to each other trying to set up an obviously doomed fast break, especially since one by definition has to be a close-in defender and should never be 70 yards from his net. That's just wasteful. Like if Mike Tobey got a semi-long rebound and tried to celebrate by dribbling the length of the court.
Numbers I liked from the game: Scott McWilliams and his five caused turnovers, and Nick O'Reilly and his six assists. This latter number is amazing. People aren't talking about this enough. Steele Stanwick had a ton of five-assist games but only one with more than that (he had seven against Vermont last year.) The last game O'Reilly played in was the championship game against Maryland two years ago, where he had four assists, so in his last two he's got ten. I think I really like the idea of him quarterbacking the offense.
**Seriously dude they don't give you cinematography Oscars for this. I know the camera guys at field level like to feel important too but those cameras are for highlights. Just show the regular whole-field camera so I don't get vertigo trying to find the ball. And yes I realize that I ought to feel a little bit lucky that I can even watch a game like this or the VMI game when lacrosse on TV was unheard of not that long ago. And I do. But I also shelled out $6.95 a month, which gives me both the privilege of watching the game and a license to occasionally criticize.
*******************************************
I'm going to wait til tomorrow to post up the season sim results, in conjunction with the Miami preview, instead of tonight. I promise it'll make sense.
This being the ACC, though, you don't come away from a loss at Carolina without having something to say about the refereeing. Which was the usual debacle. I have three instances on the top of my head of obvious bullshit that went UNC's way:
-- Brice Johnson pulling up his dribble at the free-throw line, landing with both feet, long-jumping past a defender, landing again, and ending with an easy dunk.
-- Joe Harris deflecting a pass, running after it, being clipped at the waist by the guy he deflected it from (I think Strickland) and being called for a foul.
-- McAdoo shoving Akil Mitchell halfway out of bounds while jostling for position and somehow getting Mitchell to be called for the foul.
It wasn't caught on TV, but those at the game - and the radio guys - described Tony Bennett's heated confrontation with a ref during a TV timeout. Like, actually heated, with voice raised and everything. I know it's standard to complain about the reffing when playing a team from the state of North Carolina, but Tony thus far has usually limited his expression of distaste for the reffing to subtle body language cues and the occasional glare. This is a guy who's earned the right to be taken seriously when he's pissed about the officiating. Although frankly, Coach K is well-known for being just this side of the line between "proactive" and obnoxious in dealing with the referees; it probably wouldn't hurt if Tony moved his zebra interactions a little closer in that direction.
As usual, UNC fans will say that the gap in fouls and free throws - in this case, 11 to 21 and 30 to 11, respectively - is due to superior athleticism and other teams having to hack to keep up. And as usual, bullshit: Akil Mitchell can match anyone in Heel blue for athleticism. Also as usual, the pinnacle of irony is when a dissatisfied wail goes up in either Cameron or the Dean Dome when the home fans feel hard done by the refs.
As for the non-ref portions of the game, it was an odd one. UVA hit 58.5% percent of its shots and 57.1% of three-pointers. That's pretty awesome. Scoring 1.17 points per possession wins you most games. Unless your point guard turns the ball over 6 times and you give up 1.35 PPP on defense. Both numbers are almost totally foreign to a Bennett-coached UVA team. If UVA hadn't shot so well I'd hate to see what the score would look like, because UNC wasn't exactly cold from the floor and got a 15-point advantage from the stripe besides. (Dammit there I go again with the reffing.)
What we're really starting to see is the effect of a thin lineup. Many times during this game UVA was simply unequipped to play defense against a Carolina team that could not shoot wrong. No Mike Tobey means no center, and eight minutes out of Darion Atkins isn't what we envisioned either. (Atkins is clearly a shell of the player he was at the start of the season, so his eight minutes barely count.) It leaves Evan Nolte to defend players he simply can't defend, especially when our lone actual post player is in foul trouble because the zebras are stupid. (Dammit there I go again with the reffing.)
Not to fear, however. Yes, it would've been nice to have that one to help cement a tourney bid. However, the mainest goal this regular season is to finish no worse than third in the ACC standings and then win a game in the ACC tourney. Our one-game lead on NC State is really a two-game lead because we beat them for the tiebreaker. If we have to tiebreak against UNC - over whom we still have a one-game lead - it'll fall to the how-did-you-do-against-#1 rule. UNC is 0-2 against Miami and has lost to Duke and NC State this year; we'll finish 1-0 against NC State. That means one of the following must happen for UNC to win the tiebreaker over UVA:
-- Beat Duke and hope we lose to both Duke and Miami.
or
-- Hope NC State falls behind FSU and/or Maryland, then polish off a season sweep against whichever one does (they have two left against FSU and one against Maryland, whom they've already beaten) and hope we don't do the same.
In a nutshell, UNC has to work so that the tiebreaker doesn't drop to how we did against NC State because they've already lost that one. So things look good. UVA still has to not screw this up, but the Hoos still sit in the drivers' seat, and ohbytheway can still get in position for 2nd with a win over Duke.
*******************************************
The baseball team, on the other hand, also went one state south and had a much better time of it. They're now 3-0 after two wins over East Carolina and one over St. Peter's - the latter game being a surprise bonus after Sunday's game got washed out and St. Peter's had their entire Longwood series cancelled as well. Only Saturday's ECU game was especially close, and that partly because Nathan Kirby, brought on in relief to put a nice easy end to the contest, got bombed instead. So he's going to be climbing out of an ERA hole for a little while.
The bats looked nice. Nice enough that I don't think it's out of line to say we probably won't have too many worries about them this year. Maybe here and there, but you know, when you start off the year getting two grand salamis in the same game from one player (Kenny Towns, who had no other hits all weekend) you're in good shape.
Saturday was more or less a breeze, thanks to nearly five very good innings from Brandon Waddell. If Waddell can keep that up all season it'll be huge. Towns gave the Hoos a 4-0 lead in the top of the first and then helped cement the win as part of an eight-run seventh. Josh Sborz and David Rosenberger made it an all-freshman day on the mound and combined for 4 1/3 innings of solid ball.
Sunday was the only difficult game. Scott Silverstein struggled through five innings and gave up four runs; the fifth was really the best. Then the roof fell on ECU, and good thing too because Kirby allowing five runs in the ninth wouldn't have been conducive to heart rates in Charlottesville if he hadn't been handed a nine-run cushion. The best part of the day though: a surprise appearance by Whit Mayberry, who ended up with the win.
It'll be interesting to see what Nick Howard does tomorrow against Bill 'n' Mary, because Trey Oest made a strong case for the regular rotation with six shutout innings against St. Peter's this afternoon. OK, yes, St. Peter's. But with the rotation as in flux as it's likely to be over the next month, Oest is going to be one to keep an eye on as well.
*******************************************
Then there's lacrosse, which almost ruined my weekend and needed about eleven seconds of overtime to rescue it. Oh, what the heck though, I can't be mad at the lacrosse team for doing the same thing they do every year, which is play a close game against Drexel.
The main story is probably the mad-scientist experimentation we got out of Dom Starsia. Oh, sure, he tinkers with his midfield lines as much as any coach and doesn't always have them perfectly set up by the first game. And sure, there've been years where we have three faceoff guys, any one of whom might be sent out for the next one. That was more desperation than experimentation, though. As expected, Mick Parks took most faceoffs and Tanner Ottenbreit took a couple; as not expected, Tyler German and Ryan Tucker also tried their hand.
And as might have been expected, by and large the faceoffs were a wreck. During the game I thought to myself "we're not winning any of these, and what's going to happen is I'm going to look at the box score later and be surprised by winning a hell of a lot more than you'd guess." I think winning half counts as surprising given how bad it looked. Keeping in mind also that three of the 14 "wins" were Drexel violations, so really our guys won 11. And the win to start OT wouldn't have been one if Drexel's wing guy, who consistently beat ours to the play, had made the scoop like he should've. Just as the bats at Davenport announced that we won't have a ton of hitting-related concerns this year, the faceoff guys put up a flashing neon sign that said this is going to be a problem. Or didn't put up a new sign so much as polish up the old one that's been there every year.
The other glaring problem seems to have been defending the front of the crease. Dan Marino made 15 saves and looked good doing it, with only one Drexel goal being one I thought he really should've had. He wouldn't have so many goals blemishing his record if there wasn't constantly a Drexel Dragon showing up unannounced on his front porch and leaving a bag of flaming poop. It was hard to tell the extent of this problem during the game because the guy operating the live feed was having a grand ol' time switching between camera angles and seemed to especially love the ones that provided no information at all about the play;** the highlights did a better job of showing just how often an opponent was allowed to cut to the front of the net.
As for the tinkering with the offense, really it wasn't limited to just the midfield lines, as we got a look at James Pannell at attack and Matt White got time at both attack and midfield. And with Mark Cockerton on a 1-game suspension, we haven't seen the last of playing around with the attack. But man I would be surprised if any particular permutation of midfielders was out there more than three, maybe four possessions tops. Technically the starting combo was White, Rob Emery, and Chris LaPierre, playing with a knee brace. Dom also ran like five or six other guys out there in various combinations; there was a fairly surprising amount of Greg Coholan and Pat Harbeson (who played a very solid game aside from his dipshit conduct penalty) plus plenty of Charlie Streep, Ryan Tucker, and a smattering of Matt Florence as well, whom along with Coholan I didn't even mention in the season preview.
If the rules tweaks this season do in fact lead to more transition game as the writers hope, then it will also mean less futzing around with getting your matchups perfect and more emphasis on putting fresh legs out there. Which means interesting combinations will show up, and not by design. I like that and I don't. Transition is fun. Midfielders who can play two ways, like Tucker, ought to still be relevant, if not highly important. But I also like the idea of me getting my best guys out there and you getting your best guys out there, all fresh, and let's see who wins. One thing I'm sure I don't like: long-sticks in transition. I mean, OK, it's a lot of fun when a long-pole guy races down the field and nobody thinks he's a threat and suddenly he's dropping one past the goalie. What I don't like is watching two long-poles passing to each other trying to set up an obviously doomed fast break, especially since one by definition has to be a close-in defender and should never be 70 yards from his net. That's just wasteful. Like if Mike Tobey got a semi-long rebound and tried to celebrate by dribbling the length of the court.
Numbers I liked from the game: Scott McWilliams and his five caused turnovers, and Nick O'Reilly and his six assists. This latter number is amazing. People aren't talking about this enough. Steele Stanwick had a ton of five-assist games but only one with more than that (he had seven against Vermont last year.) The last game O'Reilly played in was the championship game against Maryland two years ago, where he had four assists, so in his last two he's got ten. I think I really like the idea of him quarterbacking the offense.
**Seriously dude they don't give you cinematography Oscars for this. I know the camera guys at field level like to feel important too but those cameras are for highlights. Just show the regular whole-field camera so I don't get vertigo trying to find the ball. And yes I realize that I ought to feel a little bit lucky that I can even watch a game like this or the VMI game when lacrosse on TV was unheard of not that long ago. And I do. But I also shelled out $6.95 a month, which gives me both the privilege of watching the game and a license to occasionally criticize.
*******************************************
I'm going to wait til tomorrow to post up the season sim results, in conjunction with the Miami preview, instead of tonight. I promise it'll make sense.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
auburnscouting: the defense
In the final installation in our weekly series looking at UVA's Peach Bowl opponent, we'll check out the somewhat-maligned Auburn Tiger defense. It wasn't up to SEC standards; Auburn finished in the bottom half of the country in all major categories, and the result was that DC Ted Roof "left" to take the same position at Central Florida.
Auburn's defensive scheme is not complicated. Gene Chizik's roots are on the defense - he was a DC at four prior stops (Auburn included) before taking the head job at Iowa State, and he'll play that role during the bowl game as well. Chizik and Roof run a very basic 4-3 defense that's not especially different from the one run here at UVA. They spend a lot of time in Cover 2 with two deep safeties and the corners playing close to the line of scrimmage. So there isn't much that an experienced offensive coordinator hasn't seen before; Auburn depends on being able to recruit faster, better players and letting them make plays.
One media report suggests Roof was let go because Auburn has had trouble against the pass even while being stout against the run; I don't know about past years but the truth in 2011 was that more opponents than not outgained their per-game average on the ground, and the reverse was true through the air.
This defense has a few playmakers, but nobody quite like Nick Fairley, who's off to the pros. It's a very young defense. There are no upperclass starters on the defensive line and only one in the secondary. Nickel corner Jermaine Whitehead and starting DT Gabe Wright are both true freshmen; starting cornerback Jonathan Mincy is a redshirt freshman. They start five sophomores, too. The only veteran unit is the linebackers.
Probably the best player is DE Corey Lemonier, who has 9.5 sacks and 15 QB hurries, as well as 13 TFL, better numbers in all cases than anyone on UVA can offer. He's also forced five fumbles. Lemonier is absolutely the real deal. But the rest of the defensive line is so-so at best; a lot of the playmaking is done by the linebackers. OLB Daren Bates is an excellent, rangy player who has 96 tackles, and MLB Eltoro Freeman is solid too.
At cornerback is where Auburn's biggest issues lie. T'Sharvan Bell was the best they had, with two picks and seven breakups, but he wrecked his knee in the Georgia game; that's partly why there are so many freshmen in the secondary. Out of Auburn's 10 picks this year, only one came from a non-Bell cornerback, so look for safeties Neiko Thorpe and Demetruce McNeal to be the secondary's biggest playmakers. They are the second- and third-leading tacklers on the team, respectively; probably not a great sign overall for the defense, but Thorpe in particular is a player worth watching. He's one of just two senior starters on this defense (Freeman is the other.)
Statistically speaking, there's not much that jumps out. This isn't really a good defense, but it's not a terrible one. Individually, Lemonier is the only one with eye-popping stats, although Thorpe and Bates make their mark pretty well, too. They've had some really good days; wins over South Carolina and Florida were defensively dominant. But Clemson, Mississippi State, and Georgia gashed the shit out of them. Those five teams cover a pretty wide range of talent; these performances are the kind of inconsistency that shouldn't come as any surprise with so many underclassman starters.
Overall though, the results weren't good. As mentioned, the Tigers were in the bottom half of the country in everything, and second-from-last in the SEC against both the pass and the run. Only 2-10 Mississippi was worse. And even the Somalia States of their schedule moved the ball pretty well. Samford and FAU each managed over 300 yards. (We should be hoping for more than that, but this is 1-11 Florida Atlantic we're talking about.)
UVA should be well able to pick up yardage. In terms of YPC-allowed, the most similar run defenses we've faced are GT and Maryland. (Auburn allows 4.66 per carry and is 88th in the country; GT and Md. allow 4.53 and 4.68, respectively.) In both those games, UVA picked up over 200 yards on the ground and controlled the tempo this way. It's possible Auburn could jump all over the Hoos and we could have just a terrible game on offense; their defense is a little bit like playing Russian roulette. You might get your face blown off like South Carolina, but chances are you'll spin the chamber and come out OK.
*****************************************************
A couple items to clean up the stuff I haven't addressed yet, before we go on break here:
-- In this case, stuff I've been sitting on for a long time and generally forgetting about, from lacrosse: the Nick O'Reilly suspension. Which is for the whole year. O'Reilly, you might remember, played a starring role in the NCAAs last year, especially in the championship against Maryland where he had four assists. He might well have been John Haldy's replacement on the first offensive midfield this year. So it's a little bit of a test of our depth; with Colin Briggs and Rob Emery more or less having two spots locked up on the first unit, Mark Cockerton is the next option. Coupled with the Connor English transfer, it leaves us with a very formidable top six on offense - maybe the best in the country - but not much that's proven after that. Matt Kugler is OK but no superstar, and most every other option on either attack or offensive mid has only ever seen garbage time (Pat Harbeson), redshirted (Owen Van Arsdale) or is an incoming freshman (Carl Walrath, etc.)
-- More spring sports: we're getting more baseball on TV! ESPNUVA is expanding its baseball coverage - finally, the SEC isn't the only regular season college ball on TV - and UVA is on three times this season, more than any other ACC team except FSU, which also has three dates. (In fact, only one of the baseball broadcasts doesn't feature either FSU or UVA.) The downside is that these games are all on Monday - meaning three of our weekend series are moved from Fri-Sun to Sat-Mon. It's weird, but it's a smallish price to pay for getting watch the UVA nine in action on national TV. Our Monday games against FSU, Wake, and Miami are gonna be on the tube. Excellent, excellent news. (This is one of the more palatable byproducts of the conference arms race - the games are part of the ACC's deal with ESPN.) The national exposure is huge, as is the obvious implication that Virginia is one of the marquee teams in one of the nation's marquee conferences.
-- Let us never schedule Seattle again in basketball. That is all.
-- Offensive tackle might have been a major depth issue with next year's football team. But Oday Aboushi has made it clear he's coming back, and Morgan Moses very likely will as well, so we should be in great shape. We'll have to replace most of the interior, but the pass protection ought to be excellent.
-- I know that every offseason, you hear of football players doing knuckleheaded-ass things, but the kicker is usually squeaky clean. But the home-invasion story out of Blacksburg that resulted in VT kicker Cody Journell's suspension is a pretty epic one, as these stories go. If you're gonna get charged with home invasion, "they stole our weed" is a way funnier motive than "they were calling us names." The fact that the home-invadees (one of which happens to be VT's star hoopster Dorenzo Hudson) chased down and beat hell out of Journell's chucklehead buddies is even better. I'm not even mad that Hudson didn't get charged with assault. Apparently the chucklehead buddies tried to get the police to do so, but the local constabulary usually has little interest in sympathy for people who wave pellet guns at people in order to break into their house.
*****************************************************
Christmastime appears to be nigh upon us. I can tell these things. It's a gift. The good news for you is that I'm not traveling anywhere for the first time in a while. Instead of a week off, which I typically end up taking, I'm rolling with four days. I return Tuesday. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Bah Humbug, and all the rest to you and yours.
Auburn's defensive scheme is not complicated. Gene Chizik's roots are on the defense - he was a DC at four prior stops (Auburn included) before taking the head job at Iowa State, and he'll play that role during the bowl game as well. Chizik and Roof run a very basic 4-3 defense that's not especially different from the one run here at UVA. They spend a lot of time in Cover 2 with two deep safeties and the corners playing close to the line of scrimmage. So there isn't much that an experienced offensive coordinator hasn't seen before; Auburn depends on being able to recruit faster, better players and letting them make plays.
One media report suggests Roof was let go because Auburn has had trouble against the pass even while being stout against the run; I don't know about past years but the truth in 2011 was that more opponents than not outgained their per-game average on the ground, and the reverse was true through the air.
This defense has a few playmakers, but nobody quite like Nick Fairley, who's off to the pros. It's a very young defense. There are no upperclass starters on the defensive line and only one in the secondary. Nickel corner Jermaine Whitehead and starting DT Gabe Wright are both true freshmen; starting cornerback Jonathan Mincy is a redshirt freshman. They start five sophomores, too. The only veteran unit is the linebackers.
Probably the best player is DE Corey Lemonier, who has 9.5 sacks and 15 QB hurries, as well as 13 TFL, better numbers in all cases than anyone on UVA can offer. He's also forced five fumbles. Lemonier is absolutely the real deal. But the rest of the defensive line is so-so at best; a lot of the playmaking is done by the linebackers. OLB Daren Bates is an excellent, rangy player who has 96 tackles, and MLB Eltoro Freeman is solid too.
At cornerback is where Auburn's biggest issues lie. T'Sharvan Bell was the best they had, with two picks and seven breakups, but he wrecked his knee in the Georgia game; that's partly why there are so many freshmen in the secondary. Out of Auburn's 10 picks this year, only one came from a non-Bell cornerback, so look for safeties Neiko Thorpe and Demetruce McNeal to be the secondary's biggest playmakers. They are the second- and third-leading tacklers on the team, respectively; probably not a great sign overall for the defense, but Thorpe in particular is a player worth watching. He's one of just two senior starters on this defense (Freeman is the other.)
Statistically speaking, there's not much that jumps out. This isn't really a good defense, but it's not a terrible one. Individually, Lemonier is the only one with eye-popping stats, although Thorpe and Bates make their mark pretty well, too. They've had some really good days; wins over South Carolina and Florida were defensively dominant. But Clemson, Mississippi State, and Georgia gashed the shit out of them. Those five teams cover a pretty wide range of talent; these performances are the kind of inconsistency that shouldn't come as any surprise with so many underclassman starters.
Overall though, the results weren't good. As mentioned, the Tigers were in the bottom half of the country in everything, and second-from-last in the SEC against both the pass and the run. Only 2-10 Mississippi was worse. And even the Somalia States of their schedule moved the ball pretty well. Samford and FAU each managed over 300 yards. (We should be hoping for more than that, but this is 1-11 Florida Atlantic we're talking about.)
UVA should be well able to pick up yardage. In terms of YPC-allowed, the most similar run defenses we've faced are GT and Maryland. (Auburn allows 4.66 per carry and is 88th in the country; GT and Md. allow 4.53 and 4.68, respectively.) In both those games, UVA picked up over 200 yards on the ground and controlled the tempo this way. It's possible Auburn could jump all over the Hoos and we could have just a terrible game on offense; their defense is a little bit like playing Russian roulette. You might get your face blown off like South Carolina, but chances are you'll spin the chamber and come out OK.
*****************************************************
A couple items to clean up the stuff I haven't addressed yet, before we go on break here:
-- In this case, stuff I've been sitting on for a long time and generally forgetting about, from lacrosse: the Nick O'Reilly suspension. Which is for the whole year. O'Reilly, you might remember, played a starring role in the NCAAs last year, especially in the championship against Maryland where he had four assists. He might well have been John Haldy's replacement on the first offensive midfield this year. So it's a little bit of a test of our depth; with Colin Briggs and Rob Emery more or less having two spots locked up on the first unit, Mark Cockerton is the next option. Coupled with the Connor English transfer, it leaves us with a very formidable top six on offense - maybe the best in the country - but not much that's proven after that. Matt Kugler is OK but no superstar, and most every other option on either attack or offensive mid has only ever seen garbage time (Pat Harbeson), redshirted (Owen Van Arsdale) or is an incoming freshman (Carl Walrath, etc.)
-- More spring sports: we're getting more baseball on TV! ESPNUVA is expanding its baseball coverage - finally, the SEC isn't the only regular season college ball on TV - and UVA is on three times this season, more than any other ACC team except FSU, which also has three dates. (In fact, only one of the baseball broadcasts doesn't feature either FSU or UVA.) The downside is that these games are all on Monday - meaning three of our weekend series are moved from Fri-Sun to Sat-Mon. It's weird, but it's a smallish price to pay for getting watch the UVA nine in action on national TV. Our Monday games against FSU, Wake, and Miami are gonna be on the tube. Excellent, excellent news. (This is one of the more palatable byproducts of the conference arms race - the games are part of the ACC's deal with ESPN.) The national exposure is huge, as is the obvious implication that Virginia is one of the marquee teams in one of the nation's marquee conferences.
-- Let us never schedule Seattle again in basketball. That is all.
-- Offensive tackle might have been a major depth issue with next year's football team. But Oday Aboushi has made it clear he's coming back, and Morgan Moses very likely will as well, so we should be in great shape. We'll have to replace most of the interior, but the pass protection ought to be excellent.
-- I know that every offseason, you hear of football players doing knuckleheaded-ass things, but the kicker is usually squeaky clean. But the home-invasion story out of Blacksburg that resulted in VT kicker Cody Journell's suspension is a pretty epic one, as these stories go. If you're gonna get charged with home invasion, "they stole our weed" is a way funnier motive than "they were calling us names." The fact that the home-invadees (one of which happens to be VT's star hoopster Dorenzo Hudson) chased down and beat hell out of Journell's chucklehead buddies is even better. I'm not even mad that Hudson didn't get charged with assault. Apparently the chucklehead buddies tried to get the police to do so, but the local constabulary usually has little interest in sympathy for people who wave pellet guns at people in order to break into their house.
*****************************************************
Christmastime appears to be nigh upon us. I can tell these things. It's a gift. The good news for you is that I'm not traveling anywhere for the first time in a while. Instead of a week off, which I typically end up taking, I'm rolling with four days. I return Tuesday. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Bah Humbug, and all the rest to you and yours.
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