the wrong lesson

Occasionally, an argument you hear in favor of "scheduling for success" is that a losing team needs to "learn how to win."  That is, if you find yourself in a dogfight, it's better that said dogfight be against a little puppy instead of an ugly junkyard dog, to increase the odds of winning.   Then, when you fight the junkyard dog you'll have winning experience and you'll know what it takes to win.  "Walk before you run" is another way of putting it.

If that game was a lesson in how to win, it should get the teacher fired.  It's like if your driver's ed teacher just put on an hour's worth of clips of Ronin and The Bourne Identity and then tossed you the keys.

Frankly, I'd rather the team learned nothing at all from beating William & Mary than any "how to win" lesson.  If that game drove home "how to win," they'll go 1-11 this year, because the lesson is: You can get outmuscled, outsmarted, outcoached, and badly outdisciplined, and still win as long as the opponent lets you break open a whole bunch of big plays.

Two weeks ago, post-UCLA, I wrote about how nothing had changed, and we just keep going back to that.  Mike London has succeeded in stamping an identity onto the team just as well as Tony Bennett has.  Those identities are 180 degrees from each other on the discipline spectrum, but there it is all the same.  You can count on Tony's teams to come up with a big stop when they need one, and you can count on one of London's seniors to take an incredibly stupid penalty at a crucial moment.  (Kwontie Moore, step on forward.**)

Worse yet is that for an entire half and a good portion of the second, UVA was dominated in the trenches.  By William & Mary.  Dominated.  The Tribe ran all over them.  They double-teamed David Dean and nobody else could shed a block.  The UVA offensive line and that wonderful power rushing game which was never going to happen, was putrid.  Lemme state this once more for effect: William & Mary dominated UVA in the trenches.

That's how you almost lose to them.  UVA was rescued by its athletes, which is basically London's recruiting gameplan.  Unfortunately, the other ACC teams have good athletes too.

**Mike Moore was hit with the penalty, and he's kind of culpable, but the reason it looked like he ran over the quarterback on that roughing-the-passer call was because Kwontie Moore gave him a totally unnecessary shove, into Mike's path.  Totally asinine.

-- First bullet point has to be this: Why in the blazing blue fuck can't this coaching staff figure out how to substitute????  How basic is this?  How did any of them get an actual coaching job not being able to do this?  Why is the whole lower deck screaming at them to put an 11th man on the field?  Normal teams have to burn a timeout, I dunno, maybe once every other game or so, over a little substitution confusion.  Even most lousy staffs can handle this.  This staff burns all three timeouts of the half with that problem.  Un-flippin'-believable.  If the complete unpreparedness for onside kicks and total lack of discipline by seniors didn't clue you in on the attention to detail paid by this staff, the chronic inability to execute a fundamental aspect of football should help you figure it out.  "Uncompromised Excellence" has devolved into "Uncompromised Incompetence."

-- I'd feel a lot more confidence in the offense if they put together more drives like the first drive of the day. Big plays are neato, but if you can consistently march methodically down the field like that, you're in business.  They sputtered a bit at first, but then the ball just kept on going, right through the red zone as if their usual red zone issues didn't exist.  I liked it a lot better than Taquan Mizzell's screen-pass touchdown, which was nice but not repeatable.  W&M blitzed a screen pass and Mizzell is faster than anyone they got, that's all.

-- How bad was the running game?  Mizzell busted a big play which was rather well-blocked.  But you always take out the biggest play - if you still average 3.5-4 yards after that, you're doing well.  Take that out, and take out Jordan Ellis's touchdown run which was incredibly poorly blocked and 100% Ellis's efforts (Ellis ran 39 yards on that play, 38 of which were after contact), and also take out anything Matt Johns did because those are sacks and scrambles.  Here's what you get: 33 yards on 21 carries.  Power running game!

-- Have to like seeing the passing game opened up lately.  I don't have any confidence in the running game, but this team will pull off a couple surprises - hell, they could still go bowling, despite everything - if they put the game in the hands of Matt Johns.  Incredibly boneheaded interception aside, Johns is quietly playing like one of the top QBs in the conference.  Only Miami's Brad Kaaya has more passing yards.  Good thing Johns is doing so well, because Greyson Lambert is absolutely tearing it up for UGA.  Johns is on pace to set the UVA single-season record for passing yards, and the way he's going I'd be more surprised if he missed it than if he made it.

what's new is old again

Welp.  Didn't take long.  It hardly seems worth writing about the latest chapter in the Mike London story because it's so uncannily similar to most of the other ones.  Talk up the latest new schemes, surprise with some swaggy hype-azz uniformz, lose by the book, chapter and verse.  OK, sure, it lacked a little something in the clock-management dumbassery department, but London did burn at least two timeouts that I can remember just because of play-call confusion.  So let's check that box.

Other boxes to check: annoying playcalling, offensive line depth biting us in the ass again, undisciplined penalties committed by seniors, crappy special teams, red zone ineptitude.  The list goes on.  A whole offseason and literally nothing has changed.  I sound surprised here, which I guess I am a little, because this time I'm really gonna get to kick that football.

I really hated those helmets, by the way, which you can chalk mostly up to my reflexive get-off-my-lawnism about uniforms.  UVA seems to be working on building a pretty solid brand identity.  You can instantly recognize those gorgeous home whites the baseball team wears, and the school uses a uniform wordmark across most other teams, if not all of them.

Football?  There's no brand identity anywhere.  The navy blue helmets would work at least to anchor the zillion other looks they think are wonderful attention getters.  Naw, let's ditch 'em and go with the marshmallow look.  And the look on Saturday was a horrible mishmash.  The pants are pure throwback - literally, because they come from the 1960s throwbacks they wore a while ago.  The jerseys are a clean, unadorned, modern take on a classic look.  And the helmets were $WAGGY HYPPPEEE, Oregon $tylez.  Pick a look.  (Preferably not swaggy hype.)  There's absolutely no attempt at a brand, an identity, a foundation, it's just "hey this would be a cool idea," and they slap it up there and there's no reason to do it or even any connection with the rest of the athletic program.

I wouldn't usually spend two paragraphs on the uniforms, but if by now you can't get the connection to the actual state of the program then we'll just have to leave you here.

Notre Dame comes to town next weekend.  Of the three difficult OOC games this is the one I expected to be toughest.  They just got done steamtrucking Texas, so I think I'm still thinking that.  If UVA is to steal an OOC win in one of those three games, Boise State is the place to look.

Some player-focused observations:

-- I was surprised Kelvin Rainey was credited with only five tackles.  He seemed to be all over, making tackles in front of the secondary and generally being much more visible than you'd expect from a first-year starter.  I liked it.  And it looks clear too that Micah Kiser is the real deal.

-- I was much less pleased with the defensive ends.  Mike Moore didn't look like a senior.  Kwontie Moore was hardly visible.  Trent Corney showed off his athleticism by actually juking his blocker, but then looked surprised that Josh Rosen actually moved away from the pressure.  Fortunately, he kind of moved toward the rest of the defensive line, but Corney's tackle attempt on that particular play looked like he still hasn't picked up a lot of fundamentals.

-- Matt Johns reminds me of a youngish NASCAR driver who clearly can drive in the lower series but moves up to the big time and is stuck on an underfunded team with an uncompetitive car, which he can't crash because they can't afford replacements.  He might compete for the winner's circle if he was allowed to drive aggressively into the corners, but he's just being asked to circle the track.  That's Steve Fairchild's playbook in a nutshell.  Johns can play quarterback, it's clear, but too often, he's not really allowed to.  Sure, he threw a pick when he cut loose, just like the driver might find a wall or two the hard way.  But in reading up about UCLA, one quote I saw was along the lines of Josh Rosen being handed the keys to a Ferrari, he just had to not crash it.  Well, Rosen took a shot downfield the very first chance he got, and it's obvious he's not just driving the Ferrari around the block.  Johns needs to be cut loose more too.  He's capable of making it work.

Until then we'll just keep throwing screen passes on every third-and-long of the game which they totally won't be expecting this time.

-- One game in and the offensive line is already a smoking wreck.  Eric Tetlow and Jake Fieler, out for the year.  Ryan Doull and Sadiq Olanrewaju, no telling when they'll be back.  Jay Whitmire, not ready to go full speed yet or he'd be out there at one of those positions somewhere.  The interior line was absolutely owned; UCLA's DTs were exactly the problem I thought they'd be, and the "power running game" went exactly as far as I thought it would.  I was openly skeptical of the power running thing; if I'd known we'd be missing four linemen going into the first game, I'd have been downright derisive.

That's OK, I'm sure we'll just recruit us a few more cornerbacks to make up for it.

It's pretty much official, I've skipped the optimistic, maybe-things-gonna-be-OK phase of the season and gone straight to snark.  With any luck that'll last the next eleven (or twelve, if Lucy doesn't pull that football away again) games and we can minimize the burning apathy, which is all that's left at the end.

the devil take it

I'd been preaching the past few weeks that it wasn't real likely that everything was gonna go right in the second half of the season, but I gotta admit I wasn't too sure what that would look like.  No, I wasn't very excited to find out, thank you.  In a nutshell, the answer is:

-- A really bad offensive game plan, badly executed
-- An opposing offensive game plan perfectly suited to nullify the strength of our defense

The latter is actually a little bit encouraging.  The pass rush was taken entirely out of the equation, Anthony Boone wasn't touched, and the defense still only allowed 20 points.  (Though aided somewhat by Boone's inaccuracy.)  There are definitely worse offenses left on the schedule, one of which was on display Thursday night.

Our own offense was a massive disappointment, though.  Yes, dropped passes hurt, and yes, Matt Johns missed some very open receivers deep.  That's not the worst part, though.  The worst part is that Duke's defense has been very, very amenable to jamming the ball down their throat, as evidenced by the fact that some of the shittiest teams in all of D-I football have done just that, and UVA elected to pass more than 60% of the time.

Let's put this in perspective: Duke has a very poor run defense and a very good pass defense.  You have a senior running back and a sophomore quarterback.**  You are presented with a wall of paper and a wall of brick, and you can either use a flamethrower on the paper or a rubber mallet on the brick.  You chose the mallet.

So yes, Matt Johns was mostly off-target with sporadic displays of brilliance, but nobody blames the foot soldiers for the failure of Pickett's Charge.  The coaches had an obvious chance to set their players up for success, and instead got outcoached on two weeks of preparation by a staff with one week of preparation.  It's not hard to see why there's still plenty of angst about the future of the program.

It's a sobering reminder of where our ambitions should be.  A division title would be cool, and jeez, even reachable, but we're probably gonna have to dial that back a bit.  I don't like it one bit, but an offense that spins its wheels as much as this one hasn't earned much confidence in the future.  13 points against that defense is just - ugh, I'm forced to deploy the word of choice for drunken Saturday-night quarterbacks everywhere - unacceptable.

**And your senior running back routinely turns in awesome performances in the state of North Carolina, because he's pissed off that none of the teams there recruited him.  GIVE HIM THE BALL!

Bullets:

-- Short-side east-west plays (the bane of my existence) and poor run-pass balance aren't the only coaching bugaboos to make a triumphant return.  Crappy timeout usage was also costly.  Not as costly as other stuff, but still.

-- I really do not like the orange helmets with gray facemasks.  Really ugly when not part of a throwback.  It's amazing how the wrong helmet turns one of the classiest looks we've ever had into one of the worst.

-- I don't want to do the research on this myself, because it'd take forever, but I wonder when the last time was that a college quarterback completed less than half his passes for over 300 yards.  Johns was nine yards shy of the sophomore record (Matt Schaub, 334) and would've threatened (if not completely blown past) the single-game record of 393 (Schaub, again) with a little more accuracy on some of those deep balls.  Or fewer dropped passes.

-- Another thing I hate: Receiving the opening kickoff.  You basically have to score right there, on that drive, or else you've blown the whole advantage of it.  Anything else - anything at all - and the other team, especially in their own stadium, gets to start the game on a momentum high.  Another reason, by the way, that all that passing was stupid.  Nothing would've been as perfect as taking the opening kick and spending the next seven minutes grinding out as many rushing yards as your heart desired.  Send the message that we're gonna do this all day so you might as well lose hope now.

 Prediction review:

-- Kevin Parks runs for over 100 yards. Well, maybe if he'd been given any carries.

-- Greyson Lambert (or our starting quarterback) attempts fewer than 20 passes.  I really need to stop making predictions based on what I would do.

-- UVA loses the turnover battle.  This did happen, although the general point was to build a narrative where UVA was good enough to overcome doing so.

-- Duke's run game is more than a yard worse than their average.  No, and Duke was surprisingly and annoyingly effective on the ground.

-- Quin Blanding has 10 or more tackles.  Blanding had nine; it was Anthony Harris who had the big day in the secondary with 14

-- UVA wins time of possession by six or more minutes.  The Hoos did win this battle, but not by that much.

New prediction stats:

14-for-35 on specifics (40%)
4-2 straight up
2-2-1 ATS

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Two things happened over the weekend worth discussing.  Well, Thursday and then Monday.

The Monday thing is Tony Bennett building up his 2016 class with the addition of Indiana guard Kyle Guy.  As with Ty Jerome, the first member of the class, I'm gonna wait til these guys finish their junior years before even bothering with trying a profile.  But know this: The Indiana schools normally have the state of Indiana on lockdown, and if not them, the state's high-profile recruits still choose a school close by.  In 2012, for example, the state produced eight four-star prospects (by Rivals' reckoning.)  Three went to IU, two to Purdue, and one each to Butler, Michigan, and MSU.

In fact, going back to the 2009 class, there've been about 30 four-star or above prospects (Rivals, again) to come out of the state of Indiana - exactly one of them went to a school somewhere other than the state of Indiana or one of its direct neighbors.  Guy is the second.

The 2016 class is shaping up to be perhaps Tony's most heralded class of his UVA tenure; it now needs some lengthy wing types, as the only three on the 2016-2017 depth chart is Marial Shayok.  Highly fluid is the world of basketball recruiting, which is why I don't cover it til after the commitments happen; that said, if you don't know the name Mamadi Diakite yet, learn it.

The Thursday thing was the VT game against Pitt, which I watched from start to finish, the first time I'd done so all year.  I came away with a few opinions, naturally:

-- VT gets horrible safety play.  Before the game I'd noticed, during my stat-digging, that they've been prone to giving up long pass plays, a surefire indicator that safeties aren't in the right place at the right time.  Kyshoen Jarrett's awful angle on a long Tyler Boyd touchdown, as pointed out by the announcers, drove that point home.  Their corners are more or less as advertised (which is to say, very good), but the safeties - woof.

-- Michael Brewer is a good quarterback about 25% of the time.

-- VT's offensive line is fun to watch, if you like defensive line play.  Pitt's Nicholas Grigsby is not an elite defender by anyone's measurement, but on one play he blew untouched past VT's right tackle, McLaughlin.  Eli Harold and Max Valles should have an enjoyable day on Thanksgiving weekend.

-- You would expect that at least VT's run defense would be up to snuff, but James Conner and Chad Voytik ran wild all evening.

-- Did the Hokies do anything right?  Not a lot, when you're looking at no first downs in the first quarter-and-a-half.  But besides their excellent cornerbacks, Isaiah Ford and Cam Phillips make for a very impressive pair of freshman receivers.  DT Corey Marshall did a nice job on one play of dropping back into coverage and it resulted in a pickoff, a dangerous thing for our short-tossing pass offense.  (Though, most short passes go toward the sideline rather than dunkoffs over the middle.)

I'm really rooting for Miami in Lane Stadium next week - I mean, besides the whole thing about let's not root for Tech to win anything, VT is in the middle of their special scheduling handjob the ACC gives them literally every year.  (Except last year, which caused them no end of distress about having to do something most teams routinely do.)  Seeing them go 0-for-2 on Thursdays, well, it'd be no less than they deserve for the special treatment they get.  Their next three opponents - Miami, BC, Duke - all have very strong running games, and if they don't get their run defense act together at least once, UVA will have the chance to deliver the death blow to their bowl eligibility hopes.

bipolar disorder

I was going to start this post with some variation of "I don't know whether to be happy or pissed off" based on the completely polar-opposite performances by the offense or defense.  Then I realized - duh - we lost.  So the answer to that question is pretty obvious.

Let's get the good stuff out of the way first before we descend into internet RAGE mode.  All of the good stuff is defense-related, obviously.  I really can't say enough what a great job the defense did.  The offense should spend the week bringing room service to the defense and otherwise catering to their every whim, in exchange for the terrible letdown they handed their teammates on Saturday.  Pitt does not have a good offensive line, but still - the domination at the line was a sight to behold.  It wasn't just the seven sacks.  It was the nonexistent Pitt running game, and the pressure on what must have been two of every three of Tom Savage's dropbacks.

The coverage deserves a hand, too.  Savage had 191 passing yards and would've had less than half that if not for some absurdly good NFL throws.  Several of his completions were despite beautiful coverage - and against two of the ACC's best receivers.  Between the total ownership of the line of scrimmage and the excellent pass coverage, I have nothing whatsoever to say against the defense and can't find enough words of praise to heap upon their performance.

I really wish, though, that I'd thought of Jerry Ratcliffe's line about Dominique Terrell before Ratcliffe thought of it - specifically, he called Terrell's punt-catching decisions "like watching a drunk chase a balloon near the edge of a cliff."  You just don't usually get that kind of color from the media and it's a shame.  I might have said "off a cliff" because that's where Terrell seems to want to send his team's fortunes.  At this point I've given up hope that Terrell will ever be a smart player, and it's just amazing to hear London talk about things like accountability and at the same time continue to put Terrell and his idiotically adventuresome decision-making skills out there in the spotlight.

So let's talk about our offense.

It's not so much that David Watford makes bad decisions.  He just doesn't make any decisions.  Occasionally, very occasionally, he keeps on a read option.  When passing, he waits for his first-option receiver to get to the point on the route where Watford should throw the ball, and then throws it.  Coverage be damned.

I really don't want to single out one person, though.  The offensive line blocked like shit.  Steve Fairchild called a shit game.  And on the rare occasions where Watford made neither a shit throw nor a shit decision, his receivers took a shit.

I have two main bitches about Fairchild.  One, God kills a baby angel every time an offensive coordinator runs a toss sweep or option play to the short side of the field.  Two baby angels if he does it on fourth down.  That is setting your offense up to fail, plain and simple.  Two, continually calling run plays directly at Aaron Donald.  I don't know whose fault it was that Donald kept being single-blocked, but there's never a good reason to run right at the best player on the defense regardless of how many blockers there are.

"Soul-searching" is probably the wrong word for what needs to happen in offensive meetings between now and next Saturday.  Imodium-searching might be more productive so the offense can stop taking a big diarrhea-shit all over the field.  Maybe someone can teach Watford that he has more than one receiver to throw to - or else just put nine guys in protection.  Maybe someone can teach the offensive line to stay between the defender and the ball.  Maybe someone can put stickum on the hands of the receivers.  For some really stupid reason UVA starts as a five-point favorite against Ball State - which puts a lot of faith in the offense to score more than five points.

Brief other stuff:

-- If the offense spends the week fetching water for the defense, they can include Alec Vozenilek in their rounds for the 77-yard punt that bailed them out from shitting around inside their own ten.

-- I'm not mad at London for going for it on fourth and almost-goal, down 14-3.  Anyone suggesting we should have kicked the field goal is saying that the offense would've been able to actually move the ball again.  That one drive included over 40% of the yards the offense gained the entire game.  77 of their 188 total yards.  What's easier: scoring a touchdown from the three yard line or your own 20?

-- It's possible, maybe probable, that Eric Tetlow is a better player than Cody Wallace right now.

-- The maddening thing about all the drops is that so many of them came from what are supposed to be our best receivers.  Two each, I think, from Jake McGee and Darius Jennings.  Settin' the example.

-- Piling on Dom Terrell a little bit more, how about this: we win if Terrell doesn't try to chase down that punt.  Even if the offense had gone three-and-out, they'd likely have ended up punting, putting Pitt in no position to score.  They don't score, they don't kick off and pin us deep where a bad snap gives Pitt the ball in the red zone again.  Just keep trading punts and eventually the turnovers our defense generated would've let us get a field goal here and there, and the Panthers likely would've been shut out.

Prediction review:

Before we start, I'm just gonna say that I'm not taking responsibility for bad predictions this week.  I'll still track 'em, but c'mon.  I deserve a break when the offense is more preoccupied with taking a shit than with moving the ball.

-- Daniel Hamm outgains Khalek Shepherd.  Null prediction as London mentioned Hamm left the game early with an injury.  I think minus that I would've gotten it, though, because Shepherd was in for just one series.

-- Watford manages about six yards per pass.  He got 3.3.  He might have made it to six without the drops.

-- Watford also contributes at least 30 yards on the ground.  He actually gained 50 yards going forward and lost 35 to sacks and shitty snaps.  I'm claiming this one as a win since his contribution to the running game was much bigger than previously, even against VMI, and it's not his fault his O-line politely allowed Aaron Donald and his DT cohorts to get all up in his stuff every other pass.

-- Aaron Donald and Eli Harold are the only players on either team to register a sack.  I actually got this half right.  One Pitt sack - a fumbled snap - was considered a "team" sack, and Donald got their other two.  I didn't really foresee the ass-kicking the rest of our line would deliver, though, and Max Valles deserves special recognition for making prophets out of the defensive coaches that put him way high on the depth chart.

-- UVA is able to keep Pitt's running game in check, with no more than four yards a carry.  If you include sacks, Pitt totaled eight yards on the ground.  Not including sacks they still got crushed, with only 2.2 yards a carry.  Niiiiice.

-- If both Tyler Boyd and Devin Street have fewer than 100 receiving yards apiece, UVA wins.  Null prediction as Boyd gathered in 111 receiving yards.  That's not why we lost, though.

Take away the two nulls and I actually went two-for-four.  8-for-20 is the season total, and since I predicted a win, I drop to 2-2 both real-time and ATS in the game-prediction department.  I should get another loss just for assuming the offense was a real offense, but that's not how this works.

say goodbye to 2012

weekend review of curses and cursebreaking

I know exactly when I crossed over from being a casual, score-checking follower of lacrosse and into full-blown fanhood.  It was somewhere in the second quarter of the semifinal game in 2006 against Syracuse, because that's when I found out they actually put the sport on television.  Being able to actually watch the games does wonders.

The nice thing about UVA lacrosse is that it's been an embarrassment-free ride.  Until Friday.  19-10 is the kind of score we're supposed to be laying on Mount St. Mary's, and yes Duke was running up the score because that's how they roll but certain teams aren't allowed to ever complain about having the score run up on them because they should never be in that position in the first place.  UVA is one of those teams.

The charges are as follows: 2nd degree failure to give a fuck about important ground balls.  Multiple counts of felonious turnovers caused by hotdog passes which were obviously doomed from the beginning.  Failure to clear.  Pylonic defense.  The charge of felonious faceoff suckage is dropped - surprisingly UVA was 17 of 31, which is surprisingly competent.  The problem is that it seems like every faceoff we win is won back to the defensive end of the field and then we have to work on clearing it out, which used to be our #1 strength and has turned into an adventure and a half.  And every faceoff we lose is also lost to our defensive end and then its transition goal time.  Six Duke goals came within sixty seconds of a faceoff on Friday and four of them came within fifteen seconds of one.

The guy I feel bad for is Adam Ghitelman, because he looks like ass out there and it's not his fault.  Transition goals are nearly impossible for a goalie to do anything about, and the man-to-man defense is a complete lost cause.  Last year the starting defenders were Ken Clausen, Ryan Nizolek, and Matt Lovejoy, and none of those three are on the field any more now that Lovejoy (always the shakiest of the three anyway) is laid up for the season.  We're getting hoist with our own petard now; Duke just put on an athletic one-on-one clinic and served notice that any team who wants to test its own middies and attackmen one-on-one against our defenders should feel free to do so.

So that was probably the season.  Ostensibly, the Penn game next week looms large as a real chance to get something done and salvage some kind of tournament seeding - perhaps as a host team - but I don't think it's even that big any more.  I'd say with a win we have maybe a 50/50 chance at hosting a game.  A loss makes it dead certain we won't.  Neither will we get knocked out of the tournament altogether, but do you really like the idea of trying to play a game in the thin air in Denver?  I don't.  The plus side is that the tournament is a win-win proposition: either we rally and make a nice long run toward recaptured glory, or the misery ends quick and we can focus on baseball.

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Speaking of baseball, baseball is nice.  I like baseball because in baseball we've only had to deal with four losses in 44 games.  NC State would be the first team to hand Danny Hultzen a loss this season because beating UVA has become NC State's only baseball tradition, but Tyler Wilson turned in a gem in the second game of Saturday's doubleheader and the bats came alive on Sunday enough to win the first rubber game we've seen all season.

Other than a little extra chatter on the field (I get the feeling NC State's aware of their usual death grip on UVA baseball) and the complete inability of the Wolfies to defend a stolen base attempt on Sunday, it was kind of a ho-hum series.  So let's bulletize the big-picture stuff.

- No, seriously, the way the Pack dealt with UVA baserunners was hideous.  Their pitchers - left-handed pitchers at that - repeatedly ignored the guy on first and his huge leads and gave up huge jumps to the baserunner.  And catcher Pratt Maynard couldn't hit the broad side of an aircraft carrier with his throws to second.  Except for one, which was a great throw but had no receiving end because the infielders forgot to cover the base.  NC State's coach pulled his starting pitcher in the middle of a second-inning at-bat because he ignored Chris Taylor on first (who would take three of UVA's six stolen bases) and at the same time hucked a pitch four feet wide of the plate and six feet in the air.

- You know about Robo-Danny's demolition of the school records, especially where strikeouts are concerned (he long ago passed the old career mark set by Seth Greisinger and is 42 away from the single-season record) but he's not the only one rewriting the books.  Steven Proscia's next RBI will give him sole possession of the UVA record in that category.

- UVA needs to go just 4-8 in its last 12 games to finish with a top-8 RPI.  Naturally they are the RPI top-ranked team, and only Florida also has the luxury of finishing top-8 with a losing record.  By this time next week it's possibly UVA has guaranteed itself a top-8 finish.

- Vote for Tyler Wilson!  Vote, damn you.  You can do it once a day.  He's losing ground.  Do not let that happen.

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In the other stuff department:

- Two ACC championships over the weekend: rowing and men's tennis.  We get a lot of those.  There probably isn't a more dominant team at UVA than men's tennis.  This is the year it should hopefully turn into a national title.  UVA now has four ACC championships on the season, second only to Maryland with five.  Only baseball and softball yet to be decided, neither of which Maryland will win.  GT is the odds-on softball favorite; we'll see about baseball, which is often subject to the whims of fate.

- Mike London has his second commitment on board.  Remember last week when I said something to the effect of commitments coming at this time of year will be surprises?  Yeah.  Demeitre Brim needed only a few days to decide where he wanted to go to school.  It could bear watching because Brim has never been to UVA, had little contact with the coaches prior to his offer, and has just one besides the UVA one.  Half the time that's a kid making a snap decision and regretting it later and half the time it's damn near the strongest kind of commitment you can make.  Board update tomorrow, which has plenty of good stuff and bad stuff.

- The ACC coaching carousel is done spinning for the year unless someone is caught shoving dead hookers in a trunk, with George Mason's Jim Larranaga going to Miami.  Larranaga's a fine coach and all, and this move makes sense for him since Miami is probably stuffing his pockets with good American money, but it might not make much sense for Miami.  How much shelf life does Larranaga have at 61?  He's an upgrade over Frank Haith, and if Miami gets as many seasons out of Larranaga as they did with Haith (seven) they'll have done well.  But that might be the upper limit of what he can give them.

uva lacrosse goes like this

.....and still pulls out the win.

So, so thankful that didn't result in a loss because I would've spent the rest of the afternoon punching walls.

Bigger breakdown of the derpgasm on Monday.

you have to give al groh this

His defenses at least waited til the second half to fall to shit.

Yeah, normally I write this column on Sunday after I'm done with my Blogpoll ballot, but I don't have anything better to do right now, and why waste a perfectly good foul mood? This was supposed to be the most winnable of the three test games that just occurred, and instead it turns out to be Free Football Night at Scott Stadium. Wear your Carolina blue and white and get a complimentary souvenir courtesy of our friendly quarterback crew!

Or maybe I'm being too harsh. Here, let me try the rational, objective approach. Let's list some positives and negatives from the game. Surely we can find something to talk about.

Positives:

- The new, more metallic blue helmets look really sharp during night games under the lights.

Negatives:

- The defense.
- The offense, other than Keith Payne.
- The special teams.
- The coaching, probably.
- Orange-on-orange uniform combo.
- The defense.

Well, that's quite a list. Let's tackle that one-by-one.

- First off, the players are fired from uniform selection duties, or they should be until they win. For the EMU game, simple old-fashioned blue-over-white. Need to remove distractions. And that's too bad, 'cause I'd really like to see the orange-over-white. But teams that lose by 34 don't need either the distraction or the privilege of frivolities like fashion design.

- Actually, the special teams weren't really a negative - not that they got much of a chance to flash their stuff. Except the kick return squad. Lot of field time, there. I should add that if we ever allow him to do his thing, instead of opting for the direct QB-to-defender method of transferring possession, that Jimmy Howell is really an excellent punter these days.

- I'll let the coaches' honeymoon last a little while longer, if they promise to do some tackling drills and never again call four straight Keith Payne runs up the gut that result in a turnover on downs. Like the whole state couldn't see that one coming. Ross Metheny was in at the time - if you're evaluating freshmen quarterbacks, anything other than an off-tackle handoff would be a good way to do it.

- The running game was actually not horrible. In fact it was perfectly functional, and had there been any kind of support from any other facet of the team, we'd be heaping praise upon Keith Payne for his effort tonight. As it is all he gets is to stop running gassers early.

Besides the obvious issues under center, I'll give one other player who had a very rough game and needs a lot of work: Morgan Moses. Big Mo moved side to side like he was standing in wet cement. I think I'd rather see him understudy at guard behind B.J. Cabbell (who played reasonably well and was the prime mover in opening that massive hole for Payne on Payne's touchdown) where he can be more of a mauler. I don't think a man that size is ever going to move side-to-side too well; at guard he won't have to, and he could probably be a holy terror when pulling to the other side.

- Alright. The defense. As if it wasn't obvious against Florida State, the "offense needs to stay on the field longer to rest the defense" excuse is as acceptable as a $3 bill anymore. When you're down 7-0 after the very first play from scrimmage, it's time to give that idea a rest. Now the defense is just bad.

And frankly, it's baffling. This is supposed to be an easier defense to learn, which means that the growing pains into a new system should be minimized. The linebackers are regressing, which I suppose you can chalk up to the fact that most of them are playing a new position in a new system. But why is the secondary so horrible? The responsibilities aren't that different, and that's supposedly the veteran core of the defense. It's officially time to worry about Devin Wallace - he got burned nice and toasty all night. The quarterback issue is frustrating but explainable. The defense is frustrating and completely baffling, which is a lot worse.

So what about the rest of the season? In order to get bowl-eligible, we'd have to beat one of either Miami or VT plus everyone else on the schedule. So that's the last time this year you'll see the word "bowl" around here. If next week is not a win, you might as well empty the bench; Eastern Michigan is one of the absolute worst teams in all of I-A football. Worse than Richmond. After that, I see two chances to put another number in the win column: Duke and Maryland. To take any measure of success at all from this season, both are must-wins. I shouldn't have to explain why.

illusions

Reminiscing on upsets past and joyous times of yore has a way of clouding the in-between. With Florida State in town, talk was of 1995 and 2005, and that was fun. In between those two big wins, of course, I graduated junior high, high school, and college, and FSU visited Charlottesville four other times and handed our ass to us with parsley and tartar sauce. Hooray, another one for the pile.

Any illusion that the offense can be consistently functional againt a bowl-worthy defense should be shattered about now, and abandoned in the way that one day you realize you're not growing up to play baseball in the majors. In two games against defenses worth a damn, the offense has scored exactly two touchdowns when those defenses were actually trying, only one of which was the result of an actual drive. Florida State brainfarted on defense, and Marc Verica and Kris Burd smartly took advantage. After that, Verica's inner Interception Man appeared and finished what FSU started.

UVA did, by the way, almost nothing I thought they should do in the preview. Never to say that that stuff would have worked, but their way didn't, either. To wit:

- John-Kevin Dolce, all 250 pounds of him, was consistently on the field on running downs and consistently ended up 5 yards downfield before the running back was at the line of scrimmage. The man is at his best when given a step of space where he can use his athleticism, like on the pass rush - he doesn't otherwise have the beef for DT and the FSU running game took full advantage.

- Rather than punt at the sidelines, or rugby kick, or do something different than a straight up boom at the sky, UVA allowed Greg Reid to field everything he could get near. And FSU's field position benefitted beautifully from it.

- The FSU linebackers were allowed the luxury of keying on the run game, and they made every stop. There was very little play-action and tight end involvement to keep the linebackers busy and very few draw plays, too. Result: 2.9 yards per carry for the tailbacks.

Fact is, Florida State has more talent everywhere you look, at every single position on the field except for possibly cornerback, and this last is also hard to defend given the play of those backups. (More on that later.) That is probably one of the only really complete teams in the ACC.

On that note, the optimism: that is probably one of the only really complete teams in the ACC. Except for those that expected to hoist the crystal in January, there isn't a 2-2 team anywhere that thinks their season is over. Two more losses like that might change my perspective a little, but take a look at what Georgia Tech and UNC have accomplished this season and see if you don't think they're beatable. Watch that Duke-Maryland game again and see if you don't really like what you see. There's still plenty to look forward to this season, which is all you can ask for, really.

Stuff that didn't fit:

- My God, Devin Wallace had a really bad day. At least three, if not all four, of FSU's touchdowns can be more or less directly attributed to something he didn't do very well, be it tackle or cover. Wallace and Dom Joseph have been fairly solid in their careers, but neither of them would ever want to repeat their Saturday performances.

- It absolutely is not time to replace Marc Verica. I've always said his performance on the season shouldn't be judged until halfway through, and I'm sticking with that even if he throws five picks against GT. One, there are still bowl hopes, and not gumdrop rainbow ones either. Two, Metheny looked pretty good but FSU had their second string out and was hardly trying. And three, the people ready to throw Verica under the bus will probably be the same people ready to do the same to Metheny or Rocco in 2012 and '13. There's a certain breed of fan that just is never satisfied with what they're getting. They're rooting for the laundry, frankly. I happen to think that rooting for the team also means rooting for the players, and it's hard not to root for a guy who worked hard, gained the starting job, lost it, worked some more, got it back, and is looked to for leadership by the whole team.

I said it long before the season, repeatedly, and I'll say it again: that's a discussion we should have after the FSU-GT-UNC stretch, and only if we really look well out of bowl contention and Verica has been totally ineffective. If UVA wins just one of the next two, they'll be 3-3 going on 4-3. That'd be no time for a change at the helm.

- On the other hand, there are some depth chart changes that I'd either really like to see or wouldn't be surprised to. Like I said earlier, JKD should revert to his pass-rush role; he's getting blown up against the run. GT will exploit that mercilessly. And the O-line is hopefully still an evaluation in progress. I'd also like to replace the blank spots on the depth chart behind the two-deep at defensive back with actual scholarship players, but we can't have everything.

argh

Doesn't take long to put an end to one's tournament dreams, does it? I'd say it took just over two minutes of game time - about what it took to lose a three-point lead in Cassell - to slam home the reality that what we have here is just what I called it during the Q&A lead-in to the GT game: a lower-mid-level ACC squad. Capable of beating you if doing things right, but only if for forty consecutive minutes. The hoopsters followed up the loss to Poly with a very balanced effort - crappy defense in the next game and crappy offense in the one following - and the result is that a very different style of bracketology is in the cards for the rest of the year.

I look at this two ways: one, I clearly jinxed the team to hell and back with that post that highlighted the team's offensive improvement; and two, they couldn't have done a better job proving that post correct. Other than the Maryland game (which was still as bad a meltdown on offense as the other four games in this losing streak) nothing has really changed on defense. Honestly. It's as solid (or not solid, whichever you think) as it's ever been this year. But the offense took a dump on the floor and rolled around in it. It's that bad. I could recite a litany of numbers to this effect, but I think the one that really matters is 15-for-81: that's the three-point shooting in these four losses. 18.5%, if you want to know. You'll never win basketball games like that.

What's going on, then?

- As you might have guessed from that statistic, Sammy Zeglinski is just completely ice-cold. Nothing he shoots goes in these days.

- Sylven can't go anywhere on the court without being hounded by two defenders. Obviously nobody is scared of anyone else ever hitting a bucket, and with good reason. Try to set a screen for Sylven and not only does your own defender switch over to him and cut off his lane, but Sylven's guy just drops underneath the screen and finishes the double team. He's also showing a pretty clear reluctance to try anything left-handed, and the defenders are giving it away knowing he won't take it.

- Florida State played pretty good defense, but even when they weren't, the team forgot all their junior-high fundamentals. They pump-faked open shots and then took the shot once the defender had arrived to contest. They drove the lane without any forethought whatsoever. They grabbed offensive rebounds and did the infuriating one-dribble before taking the shot back up. They got careless with the ball and lost the handle on it. They forgot about the shot clock entirely. They passed to phantom teammates. That game was 2009 redux: terrible offense leading to easy buckets for the opposition and making the defense look worse than it actually was.

- We have defensive players and we have offensive players, and the problem is the defensive players can't all be on the court at the same time and the same holds true for the offensive guys. I think Tony Bennett sees this and is awfully limited in his substitutions as a result. There are only three players who are about equally useful on both offense and defense: Scott, Sherill, and Farrakhan - and the latter is such a streaky shooter that he's really a stretch. The rest have gaping holes in their game on one end or the other. Ever see, for example, Sene and Meyinsse on the floor at the same time? Rarely, because you can't pass to either one of them in the post. Try putting Jones and Zeglinski both in the game at once and the perimeter defense is going to collapse miserably. Even Landesberg gets beat more often than he should. Jontel has no jumper and Baker has no handle, and you won't see them share a backcourt much, if ever. So rather than totally give up one end or the other of the court, Bennett pairs an offensive player with a defensive one and the result is predictable - sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. This is actually just fine as long as the offensive players are playing effective offense, but that hasn't happened lately.

There are lots of things we could try here and there to fix this mess and right the ship. Finding the open man when Sylven gets doubled off the screen would be a great start. Not letting Calvin Baker play the point would be another. Four out of five dentists agree, though: hitting your jump shots® is the most effective treatment for Shitty Offense Syndrome. It's amazing how many problems would fix themselves when the jump shots are falling and the defense has to care about that. It sounds overly simplistic, doesn't it? Sometimes that's the way things are.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, no, I'm not going to use the three-games-in-five-days excuse. Was it a factor? Maybe it was. Me, I hope it wasn't, otherwise we can forget about ever winning an ACC tournament.

Remember, now, I made no predictions for this season other than to guarantee an improvement over the 4-12, 11th-place showing from last year. This has been done, so theoretically everything else is gravy, but it sure would suck to end the season on a nine-game losing streak. Make that improvement feel like no improvement at all. There are two games left on the schedule against teams worse off than we are in the ACC standings, and both are on the road but not in the scariest gyms in the world. Winning these games, which happen to be against Miami and Boston College, would do wonders. Two lousy games, that's all we need. That would be good enough for the NIT, which has proven itself happy to take a 7-9 ACC team and doesn't concern itself much with resumes and strength-of-schedule wins and all that jazz that the big tournament cares about.

****************************************
Programming note: I am so sowwy for not having anything for you to read yesterday; it was supposed to be the first day of my ACC baseball preview, but circumstances conspired against me. So that gets pushed back to next week, because tomorrow the baseball team kicks off the season with a big series against East Carolina, and I want to do something to actually acknowledge that that exists.

it's hard to get angry at a bad team

Toward the end there, I was really starting to want that game. Obviously, you want the win; as a bonus, it would have knocked Boston College mathematically out of the ACCCG, which, sorry BC fans, but a third straight BC trip to that game would be awful for the conference. So there was a nice double whammy going, and damn if it didn't look like it was going to happen for a while there.

Then, of course, reality sank in, and here we are. And it didn't even suck too bad. Which, is that a bad thing in itself? If we were in contention for anything - anything at all - I'd have spent this whole day and probably most of the rest of the week brooding over the myriad single plays that could have swung the game the other way. If Randolph hadn't missed a field goal; if Vic Hall (of all people!) hadn't dropped a pair of passes on the same series; if we hadn't let BC out of a first-and-25 on their scoring drive; and most obviously, if Sewell could have picked up just six more inches. This is the stuff I'd have been brooding about all day. Instead I played a bunch of Civ and watched stock cars go round and round. I've come to the placid acceptance that the season is a wash. That combined with the beginning of basketball season and the happy glow from a surprise ACC soccer championship would seem to be therapeutic.

(The soccer would be a million times more exciting to me if they would ever televise a soccer game, ever. You'd think that's what ESPNU is for, but no, they'd rather broadcast "Inside the Big East" and replays of random shitty MAC games from the previous Tuesday. As it is the best I can do is nod happily.)

Anyway, this newfound numbness over losing is all well and good, as long as it's short-term and followed by a "change in the program's direction" in the offseason. You might remember I once opined that Al Groh's greatest contribution to the program has been to keep our expectations high. He might not always have met them, but he's done more than well enough to keep us wanting more. This is healthy. The last thing we want is to go the way of North Carolina, post-Mack Brown. Carl Torbush came in and let things slide, and people there lowered their expectations and stopped really caring, and it got to the point where six years of John Bunting seemed perfectly acceptable even as he flushed the football team down the crapper. I am hoping that expectations next August do not match those for next week.

*******************************************************

- BC fans ought to be furious this week. Livid. Here they are trying to stay alive for an ACC championship and their coaches came thisclose to pissing it away. I don't know who was calling the defense on our final almost-scoring drive, whether it was Spaziani or DC Bill McGovern, but they need first to be slapped and after that to learn how to scout the opposition. You are up against the second-worst offense in the entire country - worse than all the shitty Eastern Michigans, Washington States, New Mexicos, Ball States, and all the rest - and you have given up three points to that offense all day, and just because there are only two short minutes left in the game, that is the time to switch to a soft prevent zone? We haven't moved the ball like that all year because teams insist on never playing zone against us. Imagine that. It turned out OK for BC in the end, but it damn near didn't, and it would have been the Bad Decision of the Year for the Eagles. Hint to all future opposing defenses: Never ever deviate from man coverage and we will not score any touchdowns.

- Let's just agree to not play any running backs this season except for Rashawn Jackson.

- Special teams at the beginning of the season were just sort of crummy in a really boring way. Randolph has been near-automatic this year, which is nice, and Howell's a decent punter, but the return and coverage units were just wandering about in the wilderness. Somehow the special teams have made huge improvements and at the same time, regressed horribly. Now we block punts for touchdowns, return punts for touchdowns, and don't kick the ball out of bounds any more. It looks great. At the same time, we negate our TDs with the world's stupidest penalties and rough the punter on 4th-and-22. I don't know whether to give Ron Prince major-league credit for coming up with innovative punt rushes and improving the return blocking as the season goes, or rip him a new one for neglecting to coach his guys not to block in the back and dialing up all-out bumrushes on 4th-and-22.

- Putting us on national TV next week seems like a really nutty idea, but keep in mind: it's all about Clemson. They win, they set up a rematch with Georgia Tech in Tampa. Prepare yourself for the C.J. Spiller Heisman campaign as brought to you by ESPN, and for the announcers to be not entirely sure which team he's playing against. Besides, once you get past the ESPN2 game (BC-UNC) the next three games are disasters. I want to know where I can get the three-way parlay on TFSU, Miami, and Poly to each win by three touchdowns.

- It's basketball season, and Tony Bennett is 1-0.

how bad are we? this bad

So, in the middle of watching our putrid offense fumblefuck its way to another big loss, I had two minor epiphanies. I watched a ton of Jeopardy growing up and still enjoy it, so they came to me in the form of questions. The second I'll get to in a bit. The first was this:

- When's the last time we put together a real, honest-to-Jebus, actual drive? I mean actually drove down the field for a real live touchdown?

Both of our TDs against Miami were the result of a blocked punt, and the field goal was because we couldn't advance the ball after gettting nice field position on an interception. We didn't put the ball in the end zone against Georgia Tech at all, and our offense's one touchdown against Maryland was the result of a one-yard drive.

So I decided to go back and find out. Criteria for a drive in this instance:

- Has to start inside our own 35. In other words, we can't be handed gift-wrapped field position thanks to a turnover or a long return (which itself is pretty rare.)
- Has to result in a touchdown. Settling for field goals all the time is why we lose.
- Can't include a play that goes for longer than half the drive. So no heaving it down the field and making a lucky grab. We have to actually march the distance. Get positive yards, positive yards, positive yards, and keep doing it consistently and sustainably.

It turns out that we have exactly six such drives all season. Six! In nine games. The count is: one against William & Mary, two against Southern Miss, two against Indiana, and one against Duke. (There's a third one against IU that started on our own 36, just outside my arbitrary line, but it's balanced by the fact that one that I counted was basically just three long plays interspersed with incomplete passes. Besides, the Duke one started on the 34.) So they've all come in four games this season, which means that in the five other games, we've completely failed to mount a drive on offense and have either relied on the defense to put us in good position to score, or settled for field goals. Or just not scored.

It's kind of a useless number without a comparison, and they don't keep stats on that number, so I can't tell you that we're like 115th out of 120 or something. (We probably are.) I did look at two other teams though: UNC and Georgia Tech. UNC, because they're the next-sorriest offense after ours, and GT, because I figured they were probably the kings of long-ass drives.

UNC has seven such drives all season. Only one more than our six, but they have one in each of seven games. So they can actually depend on their offense to produce such a drive. GT has (hang on, lemme count up my tally marks) fifteen. Not only can they count on their offense to produce a long, clock-chewing drive, they can usually expect more than one such drive in a game.

So in the last four games, we've mounted one halfway decent drive for a touchdown, that being against, y'know, Duke. Two of the other five came against Southern Miss, whose coach admitted to being completely fooled that we'd scrapped the super-spread look of the first two games, so chalk those up to a surprise that works exactly once. Two more were against Indiana. I don't know where the 536 yards of offense came from, but I figure it's just our yearly "rochambeau some unsuspecting poor bastard at random" game that we can't ever duplicate. (Last year it was Maryland and the year before, Miami.) The other was against a I-AA opponent that we still couldn't beat.

So I've changed my outlook a tad, not that it much matters with three games left on the docket. I used to think if we were going to win a game, we needed to catch a bad defense. That's why I thought we could knock off Georgia Tech. Silly me: it doesn't matter what defense we play. Whether it's the Pittsburgh Steelers or Sisters of the Poor, the offense can't gain yards against it. If we're going to snag a win somewhere, our defense has to consistently be able to fuck someone up and hand us short fields or score themselves. It's no coincidence we have two ACC wins and they're against the other two worst offenses in the league, and two of the four with a negative turnover margin. (We don't play the other two.)

The next worst after those two is Clemson at 5.1 yards per play and a middling turnover margin. BC likewise is not great, with 5.4 yards and a dead-even turnover margin. We weren't ever going to actually beat a good offense like Miami and GT, because no defense in the world can overcome the massive talent gap that exists between our offense and a good one.

Which leads to epiphany #2:

- Has Latrell Scott torpedoed our entire offense?

The more I watch the offense, the more I'm disgusted with the wide receiver play. They had another brutal day against Miami, catching four of Verica's 11 completions. 5 of 13 against Duke. Our top wide receiver is Kris Burd, and he's 31st in receptions and 32nd in yardage in the conference.

I know we've never really been a receiver-heavy offense under Groh, but this is ridiculous. And I'm not letting the tight ends off the hook, either. Burd has outstripped all our WRs' production in 2007, but we had Tom Santi and Jon Stupar to pick us up. Joe Torchia hasn't stepped up.

Whether Scott is at fault for the putrid receiver play, though, is a lot harder to tease out of the numbers. He was only at Tennessee for one year, during which his charges showed neither marked improvement nor marked decline. And there are a lot of contributing factors here. The receivers are young and we lost our two best ones in the offseason. The offense has never emphasized the receivers and lives and dies by the short play. And so on.

It could be that this bunch just isn't supremely talented and is young to boot. If this is the case, then we were sold a bill of goods last summer. Jared Green had a good freshman season and is ready to step up. Matt Snyder has made a major impression in camp. Javaris Brown has tremendous speed. Tim Smith is an electric talent. None have made a dent in anything. Snyder has been glued to the bench all season. Green has regressed. Brown had two good games early in the season (in which two catches qualify as "good games" and has been totally invisible otherwise. Smith has been OK, but has suffered through all the freshman ups and downs.

You could blame the offense, but this is basically the same offense in which Ogletree and Covington combined for 90-odd catches last year. Al Groh's offense, despite the heavy use of tight ends and running backs in the receiving game, has never precluded us from having good receivers. You could claim the quarterback just isn't finding the receivers, but we've used three quarterbacks this year and none of them are finding the receivers.

All I know is that it's Scott's job to fix this mess and it ain't happening. I don't know whether that's because he has nothing to work with or because he's not a good coach. He's supposed to be this dynamic recruiter, but I'd sure like to see him teach our receivers to get open at some point - that being his primary job. Right now if I had to point to the number one cause of this rotten season, it's the inability of our receivers to get themselves open.

*****************************

Not many thoughts on the actual game. Not when we get beat by five touchdowns. However:

- Miami has got to be the worst sports town in the country. The Hurricanes were the only show in town yesterday. The Heat weren't playing. The Panthers were on the road (not that anyone in Miami knows what hockey is.) Even FIU was out of town. And the paid - not actual - attendance? 48,000. That stadium was sad-looking. There actually couldn't have been more than 35,000 in it. We can get 41,000 (paid not actual) customers to come watch our crap team play Duke, almost all of whom have to make at least an hour's drive to the middle of nowhere, relatively speaking, and a metropolitan area of five and a half million can't even come close to filling up a stadium with tarps over one-fourth of the seats to watch the #16 team in the land? Weak.

- There is one bit of comfort to yesterday's game. Miami players were talking afterwards about how it felt good to get some revenge for 2007. That game must have really stung if it takes two years' worth of wins to get revenge for it.

- After Littlepage's vote of no confidence this week (yes, that's what it was) if this isn't what the end of a coaching tenure looks like, I don't want to find out what does.

weekend review. also, i hate football.

One of my favorite things about Al Groh is his answers to media questions that he doesn't want to answer. Some people call this a negative. Perhaps, they say, the program's image would be better (at least, it would have been better pre-W&M - these days all bets are off) if he wasn't so cantankerous with the media. Myself, I don't agree. There's no more useless aspect of the media's coverage of football than the halftime sideline interview, and those people ask some of the dipshittiest questions known to man. My day is always brightened when Groh plays the crabby old man and hilariously refuses to answer. It's an endearing quality.

But I digress. Doug Doughty at the Roanoke Times asked one of those questions on Sunday that Groh didn't want to answer, and the result was vintage Groh, with a twist.

"What would you say to the people who are calling for a coaching change?"

After about a four-second pause, Groh responded, "I don't have anything to say."

He paused for another 4-5 seconds and then added, "I know a lot more about the situation than probably anybody. Maybe some day I'll say what that is."

Doughty writes that there was a "cryptic tone" to Groh's answer. Tone schmone. That answer is dripping cryptic-ness. The Windtalkers would be proud. Of course, what with the pauses and such, it could be that Groh is just simply tired of hearing about all this. No doubt that's the case anyway. It has to take a toll on a man.

Then again, it doesn't take a great deal of curiosity or biting insight to be able to read a lot more into that. "Maybe someday I'll say what that is." Given everything we've heard out of Groh in the past, it's easy to conclude that's just him being cranky as usual. And what situation? The one that got us where we are today and that Groh rather justifiably believes he knows more about than most of his loudmouth critics? Again, that would be vintage Groh. Or maybe "the situation" is Groh's actual job situation and there's actual information to be had on this and he doesn't feel like sharing, or has been instructed not to. If you're not so much a Groh supporter, it's easy to read that and hope he means he's already been privately axed and is being allowed to play out the string.

While we're on the subject of local writers, Jerry Ratcliffe thinks the lack of a run game was our downfall. Good lord, the man couldn't be more wrong if he told you Virginia Poly's uniforms were stylish. Take away Jameel Sewell's stats against Duke (in other words, throw out the sacks which really were pass attempts and stick with just the running backs plus Vic Hall's reverse) and we averaged 5.1 yards a carry. That's actually pretty good! Outstanding, Private Pyle, I think we finally found something that you do well! And it makes sense. There are four units on any offense: quarterbacks, receivers, running backs, and line. Three of those four are lousy, and they're the three required for a passing game. The problem is not that our running game is bad, the problem, obviously, is that we don't use it. The passing game is so pathetic and yet used so frequently that we actually averaged more yards per run play than per pass play. That's absurd. Stop passing the ball so damn much. It'll help the defense out, too.

I'd have had this link up sooner, but I didn't. Last week's ACC roundtable roundup is posted at the now officially defunct 850 The Buzz blog, which is now 620 The Buzz and doesn't really have a blog any more.

You might have noticed I'm just skipping all the usual weekend review stuff. This is because there's nothing worth bothering with on the recruiting front. But I think we will go ahead and take our usual spin around the ACC, only we'll just take a look at the losing teams, I think. Winning is for snobs.

- Wake got stomach-punched just like we did. And their loss might even have been worse because they were much better-positioned for a bowl bid than we were, and poised for a major upset that would have made that bowl thing happen. And then bam. And it turns out Blogger So Dear is also a Cleveland Browns fan, which is about the only NFL fanbase that is allowed to lord it over Lions fans in the misery department. At least the Lions only lose games. Cleveland once lost its whole team and needed two years to find it.

- YANCSTSB is chock-full of misery this week, and who can blame him? NC State is "where defense goes to die:"

When you watch your team rally to score a go-ahead touchdown with 3:50 and yet are convinced that the game is lost, that's the essence of N.C. State fandom these days.

Funny, we have the exact opposite problem. It's eerie. Duke scored to go up 18-17 with basically exactly that much time left on the clock. And I felt exactly the same way. When you have 3:50 to drive approximately 60 yards in order to score just one measly field goal and yet are convinced the game is lost, that's the essence of UVA fandom these days. I have an idea. We don't play NC State this year. Let's team up. Our defense, their offense. We'll be the North Virginia State CavPack (or Wolvaliers, that sounds kinda cool) and get ourselves bowl eligible. We can send our offense and their defense to go compete in the D-III playoffs.

- I couldn't do this without talking about Va. Poly. You know you enjoyed watching that game. You know you loved it. You know it was the best part of your weekend and that really sucks because it wasn't even our own game and it didn't even happen on the weekend. Losing to UNC took it out of College Game Balls pretty hard: he goes into what he calls a semi-angered rant in which the strongest word up to that point is "miffs." This from the guy who wrote this. That is a rant.

As for Gobbler Country, his game recap consists of a picture of a turtle. Your guess is as good as mine. I guess that's what they call art. Either the turtle represents the long, slow march to death that we all must take in our lives and therefore speaks to the futility of our efforts, or he thinks that's the particular ACC team the Hokies looked like on Thursday. Your call.

- It's hard to stand out in the misery-filled ACC this week, but I seem to have managed it. Thank God I waited to post until after I was done with my SEC-fan-on-Youtube stage or who knows what words of mine might have been broadcast for the wide, wide audiences of Greater Internetia. Actually, I do know what words I'd have used. All of them have four letters and I wasn't allowed to say them growing up.

So. Basketball season in eleven days. I'm excited for that, and with any amount of luck, February 1 will get here and I won't already be similarly counting down the days til baseball and lacrosse.

textbook

Most lessons from yesterday's game are pretty obvious and you don't need me to tell you them and I'm not going to insult your intelligence by doing so. "We Suck" is the general gist of all of them, and you can get that from the media and everyone else. One thing ESPN won't mention, though, is the page from the textbook on How To Get Yourself Fired As Head Coach that we got to see written afresh yesterday. It's a huge book, by the way. Massive. Coaches are writing new entries every year. Dennis Franchione has a whole chapter. Al Groh's new entry was on display on 3rd and 9 near midfield.

Now, mind you, normally I refrain from nitpicking Groh's decisions. Lord knows you can go to almost any ol' website devoted to UVA football and find more than enough of that. I happen to like Al Groh and so I keep my fat mouth shut - often on purpose, just to try and balance out the tsunami of vitriol that cascades from on high everywhere else. There's plenty else to yak about. But - rrrrggghh. I'm not lying when I say that when I saw Cam Johnson streaking toward the line of scrimmage at the snap of the aforementioned play, I did not like what I saw one bit, and naturally would continue hating everything I saw for the rest of the game.

Want to know how to get yourself fired as head coach, then? Keep certain facts in mind. We had six sacks and all of them were spread among the three defensive linemen: Dolce, Parr, and Collins. No blitzing linebackers had gotten to the quarterback all day. Thaddeus Lewis had, at least twice already in my recollection, burned us by throwing directly at the blitz and picking up huge yardage. There were four minutes left in the game, or just under; a fourth down would not have guaranteed an attempt to go for it. Not with nine yards to pick up. Many coaches would have punted. Indeed, given our own offensive brilliance, if I were Cutcliffe, punt is exactly what I'd have done on 4th and 9 from the 42. So the way to get yourself fired as head coach of UVA is to dial up a big ol' blitz on 3rd and 9 that leaves practically no help at all for the cornerbacks in man coverage. ARGH.

This whole thing has been weird for me to write, by the way, because if there's one concept I hate in all of football it's the prevent defense. In this case, though? A nice standard, non-prevent, non-blitz, four-man rush would have sufficed. When our linemen are eating theirs for lunch all day, I like our chances. That blitz was the last thing I wanted to see, except for what happened next.

So there go the bowl hopes, and there goes Al Groh. Hell, I've already got the official farewell post half written. We're probably not going to win another game all year. We won't see a worse defense than Duke all year, so don't expect to see us score any more than the 17 points we just managed, because we cannot pass and can barely run. Not unless the defense and special teams help out, and the latter won't, because we have no clue how to return a kick.

If you ask me, it's time now to forget all about Miami, BC, and Clemson. Punt the season. Practice, for the next four weeks, exclusively against VPI. If you can't beat William & Mary at home, and you can't beat Duke at home, you can't go to a bowl game, and at the end of the day there's no difference between 5-7 and 0-12. So, might as well put all our chips on the only game that matters any more. Practice a few new looks and don't use any of 'em in the next three games. Riko Smalls is Tyrod Taylor from now til November 28. Pull out all the stops and try to end this season with a bang.

Meantime, I'm going to see if I can get my money back for this weekend. UVA loses to Duke, Michigan loses to Illinois, the Lions lose to the Rams, and both my fantasy teams get crushed. I hate football.

we now return you to your regularly scheduled doldrums

So it was fun while it lasted. The driver's seat turned out to be more than our plucky little team could handle, and we got out and swapped drivers with Georgia Tech, who had just about the best Saturday they could have had. We can now stop pretending we were a contender for anything. Our position atop the standings was the result of a happy confluence of events that had us playing two of the crappiest ACC teams on the schedule (maybe the worst two) and everyone else playing all the good ones. Deep down, no doubt we knew that, but as long as they hadn't played the rest of the games yet, it was fun to play king of the hill.

Well, we know now who the king of the hill is. And not to brag, but actually yeah, to brag: I told you this at the beginning of the year. I let myself sorta believe we could swing a few key plays in our direction and pull off the upset, but deep down it's the same thing I've been saying all year - that was the best team in the ACC that just slobberknocked us. Clemson helpfully untied the messy knot in the Coastal by upsetting Miami, and Georgia Tech now needs only a pair of wins over Duke and Wake Forest and their ticket to Tampa is punched.

It's not a fun day when both your teams show up in the Yahoo college football headlines following the word "rips." The funny thing is, though, despite the similar losing scores for Michigan and UVA (35-10, 34-9) UVA put up one heck of a better fight. The game was closer than that. I will insist this. I know the defensive box score doesn't say so. But we were down 13-6 at the half, and if the offense wasn't a complete disaster, we'd have gone in there with the lead. Then, kicking a lamesauce field goal on our first drive of the second half would have felt less like a fraidy-cat copout and more like the smart play to get the points we need to be right there in the game.

Because, see, the thing about that 10-minute drive GT put together is that Paul Johnson does that every so often. It shouldn't come as a surprise. Back when he was coaching Navy, the Middies were in a bowl game against New Mexico and got the ball on their own 1, up 31-19 and 2 minutes to go in the third quarter. At 2:07 of the fourth, New Mexico finally got the ball back. The funny thing about a drive like that is, it can't happen unless you're getting stops. New Mexico held Navy to three yards or less on eleven plays in that drive. We did the same to GT nine times in their drive. Normal teams punt when you do that. We got our stops on that drive and we got our stops all throughout the first half. But the offense....

The offense let the defense down. Three trips to the red zone should result in more than two lousy field goals. (One field goal came after getting to the 21 and then going backwards.) I was mad that we didn't go to a power-I formation on the goal line and kept tossing it outside (and to the short side of the field no less - one of my major pet peeves) but really, every run play in your inventory longer than a QB dive should be good for two yards. When it mattered most, the offensive line rolled up and died. They even pass-blocked well all day, helped out by the new wrinkle of rolling Sewell out to his left and setting up a new floating pocket out there, but once in the red zone - gack. And the wide receivers - gack too. Kris Burd is supposed to be the one guy performing well and he drops a pass in the end zone.

This is now the part in the show where I come out and tell you What It Means Going Forward. Well, what it means is we're in a real scrap for bowl eligibility, and I have no idea whether we're going to get there. This game told us everything we need to know, and none of it's any use. The defense? Beastly, still, despite the 34 points. If they can keep us in that game they can keep us in any game. Any game, even Miami and Virginia Tech. They'll give us a chance in all of them. The offense? If they can't keep us in that game, what game can they keep us in? By now it's painfully obvious that the wide receivers can't get open and nobody's a guarantee to catch whatever's thrown at them; the line can't protect the quarterback and can only sporadically open holes for the running backs; the quarterback's accuracy is fair but not above average; and the playcalling is occasionally frustrating beyond belief. These are not issues that are going to be fixed. It's hard to see where we're going to get three of the next five, not with an offense that can't score a touchdown unless the defense hands them the ball on the one-foot line. That is literally how it's been the past two weeks. Forget the IU game - that was the one random, unexpected blowout that's allotted to us each year, and it came against a defense which just choked away a 28-3 lead against Northwestern.

So I dunno. What are you supposed to predict with a defense that looks like it's going to kick everyone's ass and an offense that couldn't find its way to the end zone with an atlas? It's gonna be a weird ride for the next five weeks - with any luck it'll end up in the E*******k Bowl or something.

ACC roundtable #6

I guess that's what we're on. Anyway, Tar Heel Mania hosts this week. A little hastily organized, but THM jumped in with questions that I just know they were saving in their back pocket for just such an emergency. Also, don't forget to scroll down for the Q&A session with the Georgia Tech folks. Here goes.

1. What player whom you were not even thinking about in August has made the most positive impact on your team? Conversely, what supposedly key player(s) has fizzled for reasons other than injury?

It's not like nobody was thinking about Jameel Sewell. Nobody ever ignores the quarterbacks. But in August, it was sort of hard to see how he was going to get on the field when he was coming off a missed season and the offense looked like it was ready to be handed over to the similar, but more athletic Vic Hall. But part of the reason for the improved offense over the past few games has been the stability at quarterback as the job essentially fell to Sewell.

For the flip side of the question, I could probably nominate the whole offensive line at one point or another, as their pass blocking has been, in general, atrocious. I'm going to pick on Landon Bradley, though. He's clearly still learning the ins and outs of his position and has been getting absolutely abused by opposing defensive ends. Bradley will be in a depth chart dogfight next year and frankly, it wouldn't surprise me to see Oday Aboushi steal the left tackle job this year.

2. UNC’s performances, and in particular the two losses, have felt like the ghost of Carl Torbush is roaming the sidelines. What part of your team’s past, positive or negative, has this season drudged up?

Let's see, how about last year, and the year before that? Even outsiders can see that Groh appears to be embarking on his now-annual job saving rampage through the ACC. Plenty of drama left in this one, though.

3. Because this is the ACC, no team is truly out of the conference race yet; 5-3 can still win the division. Find your inner optimist, no matter how bruised, and tell us why you’re still holding out hope for your team. (This is NOT the best-case scenario question; rather, what your team has shown to indicate success in the immediate future.)

First off, 5-3 probably is only going to be good enough to win the Atlantic. Actually, given the abysmal record Atlantic teams have against Coastal teams, 4-4 might well do the trick. Anyway, the answer is defense. The offense continues to scrape by on a game-by-game basis, but the first-team defense has now gone three full games without allowing a single touchdown. The only touchdown in that span was a meaningless one scored by Indiana against the second-string. That's beastly defense and it's been a treat to watch. As long as we have a fired-up defense like that and it stays healthy, there isn't a single team on the schedule we don't have a good chance against.

4. What remaining conference game not involving your team do you look forward to most and why?

I tried to think of one and couldn't. It's still just way too early to decide which games are gonna be the biggies. Part of the major problem is that the three teams generally considered contenders in the Coastal - GT, VT, Miami - have all finished playing each other already, and managed to end up with the hideous one-loss-each round-robin that calls for obscure tiebreakers.

5. Now for what Block-C would call the “shits and giggles” question.Offense in the ACC is…well, offensive. To solve this problem we’re putting four ACC offensive coordinators into Thunderdome, where only one man will emerge to smear a football field with his tactics again. Bryan Stinespring and John Shoop are shoo-ins. Nominate at least one more offensive coordinator (preferably, yours) and tell us why he deserves a 75% chance of doom.

Despite the apparent failure of the fancy new spread, I'm not tossing Gregg Brandon into the Thunderdome. I don't think the problem is the offense or the coach, I think it's just another exhibit in the growing case that in general, you can't shock the system with a radical new spread offense and expect it to be immediately successful. Georgia Tech is the exception, but Auburn was a particularly high-profile example last year, and Michigan was too.

No, I'll toss Jimbo Fisher inside instead. Here's the thing: It's pretty widely known that Bobby Bowden is at least half figurehead in Tallahassee. He delegates. A lot. Florida State is his team in name only for the most part. His assistants are generally believed to do most of the actual coaching. So why do people think getting rid of him is going to solve anything? It seems to me that the team is mostly Fisher's, and that the debacle currently going on in Tallahassee is also mostly Fisher's. Not that I don't enjoy watching Florida State flounder, but Fisher is the "offensive coordinator" most in need of replacement in the ACC.

weekend review

Let's start with the good stuff - the soccer - because the rest of it's just depressing.

Beating the #2 team in the land on their own turf is fun. As with always, the ACC is friggin' stacked at the top, and I'd really like not to have to try and fight our way through the minefield again in the tournament. No matter what, the top four or five are going to be beastly, which means if at all possible you want to get a top three seed. Next weekend's matchup is Clemson, with George Washington as filler in between, and Clemson is lousy. The real test is in two weeks at North Carolina - cripe, we have to go on the road to play all the good teams - and if we can eke out a win there and take care of things against the Clemsons and Virginia Techs of the world, we're in business.

But where on earth is the offense? I mean damn. Two goals in three games ain't gonna cut it. Yes, I realize we've been outshooting everyone (including Mount St. Mary's 18-2, yow) but at the end of the day I'd like to see a little less bombing from long range and a little more production out of the moneymakers. When Neil Barlow (first goal since 2007) and Mike Volk (first goal as a Hoo, ever) are your only two goal-scorers in three games, that is a problem, whether or not you won. Maybe they can borrow Gregg Brandon's spread offense, since the football team doesn't seem to be using it.

Speaking of which, the juxtaposition of these two articles caught my eye, and it's really not a good sign. First, "Offensive switch not enough," and second, "Special teams hardly such." Here are the two things we brought in hyped-up new coaches to fix - Gregg Brandon, the offensive wizard, and Ron Prince, the prodigal coach and supposed special teams ace - and they suck. Hard. (Not the coaches. The execution.) And it's the things that you notice without even trying to: lousy offensive production, long kick returns - that kick return touchdown by Southern Miss was a dagger.

It's also worth noticing in the offense article that part of the offensive excellence in the first half was because Southern Miss was totally not expecting the switch back to a regular offense. Think that was maybe our one chance to sneak up on anyone? Groh seems excited about having the bye week to reboot the offense, but the general rule has been the more time we have to prepare for a game, the worse we do, so I don't have high hopes for the UNC game.

The other lesson I've learned - twice now - is that you can't shock the system with a completely new offense and expect to be successful in year one. If we had time, like, a couple years worth, to get this offense installed, I bet it'd look pretty good, maybe as soon as 2010. We don't, so the only thing now is to try and mesh it with the old one. Which might be the way you ought to do things in the first place. We saw some of that on Saturday. Nobody missed the much narrower line splits, but the tailbacks and slots for the most part were in a spread-style formation. Not a bad way to go if you can get the offensive line to figure out who to block and how.

Some bullets, then on to the other standard stuff.

- Dominique Wallace is out for the year. No biggie. The medical redshirt he'll get will give him the redshirt he should have had - without the extra practice, but with some game experience to balance that out. We have enough tailback depth to cover it.

- The UNC game is at noon. Curses. Why must they always have games at the same time as the Michigan one?

Now for the really emo stuff: the recruiting board. Updates:

- Removed DE Andrew Tallman, newly committed to Miami.

- Re-added LB Aramide Olaniyan, who decommitted from Duke. I don't know why. Maybe just because the board is getting so thin. If he comes here I'll be dead shocked.

- Bumped DE Ethan Farmer and WR Brandon Coleman from yellow to red.

You might also notice there's no blue section any more. With the recruiting atmosphere at Scott Stadium as poisonous as it is, do you really think our chances of landing anyone can be called good? There are 14 recruits on the board, really only 8 of which have anything resembling a realistic chance of picking UVA. At best, we'll get two, mayyyybe three. At best. That puts this class size at 15, tops. There will certainly be transfers when there's a changing of the guard at head coach. There always are. On the bright side, we definitely won't have to worry about having too many scholarship players and not enough scholarships. If we're going to fill this class up, we're going to be scraping the bottom for players that were previously torn between Hampton and JMU. That's always fun.

And that doesn't even take into account decommitments, which there certainly will be. There always are. Ever since the William & Mary game the CavsCorner guys have been running around getting a hold of as many committed players as they can and checking the solidity of their commitment. (Who, exactly, is behind the paywall, except for the ones with headlines: Conner Davis and E.J. Scott.) Most - not all, but most - have said they're solid. (They made no secret of the fact that one guy they called is very concerned - again, "who" is behind the paywall.) Which is to say, they're solid while Al Groh is the head coach and the team is 0-3. When the team is 1-6 and Al Groh maybe isn't the head coach any more, are they still solid? You have to figure these guys are getting bombarded with negative recruiting. Some of them probably have Ralph Friedgen's number blocked so they don't have to hear from the king of "you don't really want to go there."

Anyway, speaking of the recruits, let's see how they're doing.

KEVIN PARKS: This is the one guy I absolutely do not want to see decommit. Another day at the office for Parks as he picked up 225 yards and three touchdowns on 25 carries. The next time he runs for over 100 yards - probably next game - he'll break the state of North Carolina record for 100-yard games. West Rowan is a dominant force. I wonder if we can sign up their linemen too.

TYLER BROSIUS: Handed the #9 team in the state a 34-21 loss with 184 yards passing and two touchdowns.

KYRREL LATIMER: Is injured.

OK, time to check in on the rest of the ACC and live vicariously through teams that get to win a game once every so often.

- I hate watching games on baseball fields. I also hate watching my preseason ACC champion pick get trucked, especially by Miami. Winfield wants to take it out on North Carolina, which, hey guys, beat them and all but please don't make them mad for the week after. The 7th Floor is, uh, just don't click, especially if you're at work and your boss would take exception to pictures of hairy - never mind.

- Speaking of UNC, they pulled it out over ECU, and Tar Heel Mania thinks a picture is worth a thousand words. Pictures of pirates, specifically. Yet more specifically, pirates getting beat the hell up.

- Boston College's offense is even better than ours. Boy, I can't wait for that game. I can already see how this will go. The drive chart is going to look a little bit like this: punt punt punt punt punt punt punt punt punt punt punt punt. The longest offensive play of the day will happen when Jimmy Howell sets up for his fifteenth of the game and finds his leg refuses to swing up and down any more, so he shovels it off to a blocker who rumbles past the chains, prompting the officials to award the game to UVA after secretly declaring sometime in the third quarter that the first first down wins.

What brings this on? The 54 yards of offense BC managed on Saturday against Clemson, that's what. BC Interruption, ironically and sadly, asked themselves on Friday if the two-QB system could work and concluded it could. Then their team let them down in the most spectacular way possible: Justin Tuggle - 4-for-20, 23 yards, three picks. Block-C is giddy about Clemson's defensive effort, which, you can't really blame him. That's another game I can't wait for, in a much more sarcastic way.

- Tech eeeeeeked it out against Nebraska, thanks to Tyrod Taylor running out of ways to suck and having no options left but to win the game. Still, Gobbler Country loves their offense about as much as we love ours. Also, Matt Millen was calling that game - with any luck, he stopped by Frank Beamer's offense after the game to offer some tips.

- Maryland. Hehehe. Thank God we pulled out that win over Middle Tennessee in 2007 because now any Twerp that wants to talk about William & Mary need only be answered with, "Middle Tennessee, twice." Testudo Times is already looking for a replacement for Beanpole Ralph.

- Florida State walloped BYU, like, pretty intensively, so I was curious to read the TFSU bloggers' opinions. I didn't get past, "After a wonderful experience in College Park last year..." Wait, what? Is that possible? Are you sure you were in College Park?

- Wake Forest and NC State beat up on some teams they were supposed to beat up on.

Later this week, look out for:

- Another ACC Roundtable
- A list of potentially poachable head coaches in I-A football. Yeah, it's that time. Ugh.