Well, not officially. Not til Thursday. But they finished up all the championships that go into this update, so I did some back-of-the-envelope type numbercrunchinating, and came up with the following projected standings at the top:
Stanford - 555.5
Florida - 548
Penn State - 521.5
Virginia - 515
North Carolina - 457
Oregon - 454
Florida State - 448
Just rough pinscratch figuring, mind you, but the standings should be just about right and the numbers probably not much more than, say, plus-or-minus eight. In any case three things are pretty clearly true:
- UVA's not falling further than 4th in this update.
- Despite that, UVA actually made up ground on first place.
- That's as good as it gets for the winter. We should stay in the top ten at the final winter update but won't look much better than that, and may drop further.
There's 25 more points coming this way - that's what you get for losing in the first round of basketball tournaments. It sucks gonzo that the women's team decided to be the 5/12 victim in their tournament - it cost at least 25 points in the standings. Plus, the men's swim team should probably be good for another 70 or so.
Winter sports are not usually our strong point, but there's a lot that went right so far, despite the lady hoopsters' Green Bay fiasco:
- The lady swimmers grabbed ninth place at nationals. Lauren Perdue grabbed three top-eight finishes, and the team would have ended up eighth but for a DQ'd relay. Not a big DC points difference, though.
- The wrestlers took 15th at nationals, their best finish ever.
- Robby Andrews' national championship earned a 20th-place finish for the Hoos.
All are among the top finishes ever for the program - in wrestling's case, best ever. So with a likely top-ten finish after the winter sports wrap up and the really strong stuff - the spring sports with baseball, lacrosse, and tennis - coming up, is this the year, somebody (us, natch) knocks Stanford out of the #1 spot?
Uh, no. Keep in mind Stanford owns at sports we don't even participate in, like water polo. You only get to count 20 sports toward your Director's Cup standings and because of that, Stanford always has to leave off points in some of their sports. But, if our powerhouse teams don't stumble at the wrong times, a top-five is definitely attainable.
********************************************************************
So speaking of the powerhouse teams, what did they do this weekend? Powerhoused, of course.
- Baseball swept Boston College, and in superdominating fashion. Game 2 only looked close because Kevin Arico, brought in to close out Robert Morey's gem, decided to make it interesting. The rotation absolutely killed the Eagles. In 21 total innings, Hultzen/Morey/ Winiarski gave up 10 hits and 2 earned runs. TWO. RUNS. Hultzen pitched eight of those innings and is a frickin' machine, as usual. Morey pitched seven and is a machine in training. Winiarski went six and probably extended his stay in the rotation til at least next week (I'd say it was probably do or die this weekend for him; there's only one weekday game and Roberts or Kline would be ready to go on Sunday if they had to be) and gave us reason to believe he can do a pretty good impression of a machine at times. We'll go as far this year as our pitchers can take us.
And the bullpen, outside of Arico who I'm really not worried about, was similarly sparkling. Not that the starters gave them much chance to work, but Halley, Davis, Wilson, and Mayberry didn't allow any runs at all. Mayberry had to work himself out of a little jam, but the nice thing about ten-run leads is they give the manager a lot of confidence in deciding to give his freshman pitcher more than enough rope to hang himself. Mayberry responded nicely, grew up a little bit, and the bullpen just got better.
Speaking of getting better, Halley's separated shoulder has done just that, as you might notice, and the bullpen has just gone from thin-looking to pretty damn robust. Get Halley and a looking-better-all-the-time Mayberry in the mix and suddenly Brian O'Connor has options and lots of them. I'd like to have another lefty in the pen, but Scott Silverstein can't stop getting hurt, so we have Neal Davis and that's it. Still, picky picky.
- Lacrosse didn't quite dominate the way they have the ability to, but hey: win's a win. The defense looks like it could really use Ryan Nizolek back, and took a lot of blame for letting Towson get closer than they probably should have. I say, throw this game on the pile with every football and basketball game we lost - the one labeled "sucky offense leads to sucky-looking defense." My take on lacrosse is: look, sooner or later, the other guys are gonna score, so you better be scoring too. The faceoff men were absolutely murdering Towson's in the first half, but when you turn it over eight times in a quarter, of course you're going to be losing.
Granted, there were at least three Towson goals that I can remember where I said to myself, hey, you got any clothespins? Cause we're hanging Ghitelman out to dry here. Like that third quarter goal where Lovejoy got burned on the restart. I mean, pay attention, dude. Lovejoy actually looked really good at times, but his mistakes were exceedingly visible.
Oh well. Guess it was nice that we could give Towson native Harry Prevas a start in Nizolek's absence. And it certainly speaks to our offensive talent that we can get 15 goals in a not-real-impressive showing. Yup, just another day at the office.
*********************************************************
I suppose it wouldn't be UVA if I didn't have the chance to crap on your parade route a little bit and mix in some bad news with all the sunshine. The football team will be short one more player for the upcoming season without Riko Smalls, and the basketball team is losing - yeah, you guessed - Tristan Spurlock. Both had played similarly miniscule roles with their respective teams - Smalls, in fact, never appeared in a game - so it's largely just a lot of potential being lost. In Spurlock's case that potential is probably a lot more real than with Smalls, who was heir to the Keith Payne mantle of "player most wildly and unrealistically overrated by overexcited Hoo fans."
And in Spurlock's case especially, you have to at least tip your hat and wish him well. I don't know what things were like behind the scenes any more than you do, but Spurlock made an effort not to be a public distraction when he clearly was chafing at the bit to get in the games. And he wasn't recruited to play this system, he was recruited to be J.R. Reynolds reincarnate. He gave it a shot anyway - I don't think you can ask for much more.
Once we get the official word that Landesberg is out as well - and believe me, I'd like nothing more than to be wrong about that - then you may commence random and almost totally useless speculation about what Bennett's rotation will look like next year. Useless because we pretty much have no way of knowing which of the six freshmen will adapt best to the system; did you honestly expect Will Sherrill to see more than 10 minutes of total floor time all year, let alone start a few games?
Showing posts with label smalls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smalls. Show all posts
Monday, March 22, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
the recruit: Miles Gooch
Name: Miles Gooch
Position: QB
Hometown: Decatur, GA
School: Towers
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 215
ESPN: 40
Rivals: 5.5, three stars
Scout: two stars
This is the kind of recruiting we were pretty much destined to do once Al Groh was officially shown the door; it is uncharitably known as "picking up the scraps" though I believe the preferred nomenclature is "looking for sleepers." Well, Miles Gooch is a bit of a sleeper.
There's no story to tell about his recruitment. Well, hardly any. Playing in a mid-level division out on the edge of the Atlanta burbs for a school that had a crap football team in 2008 contributes pretty heavily to the lack of attention paid to Gooch during this past season. He got offers from an assortment of local I-AA schools, plus Toledo and Western Kentucky. Last week he picked Toledo, but after receiving his offer from UVA, correctly deduced that UVA is the superior school in most if not all aspects and promptly switched. Up until today (because I checked yesterday while the news of his commitment was still behind a paywall) Gooch was unrated by Rivals and probably received three stars of the oh-look-you-committed-somewhere-where-people-will-pay-attention variety.
Gooch's stats are the usual high-level stuff you see from someone who's headed for D-I football, but not eye-popping, and the completion percentage is low. Arm strength is usually what people mention when they talk about Gooch. Honorable mention in the state of Georgia for his division; the quarterback who beat him out is going to South Carolina, though, so, no shame really in losing out. Also has the requisite BEST QUARTERBACK EVER (or at least, in the state right now) endorsement from coaches who've had to game-plan against him, so that's one vote.
Plain truth is, Gooch probably wouldn't have gotten a sniff if he were a pocket passer. Big guy, fast (runs track), strong arm, tough to tackle, but not the world's most polished quarterback. You could do a lot worse than having a linebacker-sized guy with receiver speed on your team, even if he's not still a quarterback by the time he sees the field.
Speaking of his future prospects on the team: I shouldn't need to tell you that he's not going to play a down at quarterback in 2010. If he does, which he won't, we really will be in major-league trouble, which we won't be, because he's going to settle himself into the fourth or fifth spot on the depth chart and develop. He also will not play quarterback in 2011, and probably not in 2012 either. In fact, by this time, his transition to some other position may already have begun, as it has with Riko Smalls, especially if the coaching staff has been bringing in quarterbacks in future recruiting classes. After all, "athletic backup quarterback" is often just another way of saying "future wide receiver." Smalls, in fact, is probably a perfectly apt comparison: Gooch isn't polished enough to definitely project as a college quarterback and athletic enough that UVA fans will (mostly sight unseen other than some exciting highlights tapes) ignore his position on the depth chart and loudly call for him to take snaps after getting fed up with the incumbent quarterback. In any case, it'll be a couple years before we learn what the story will be; regardless of position, though, if he's coachable and picks up what he has to, a player with the raw athleticism he has won't stay off the field for four years.
Oh, small blog-related note: recruiting board(s) will get their updates tomorrow.
Position: QB
Hometown: Decatur, GA
School: Towers
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 215
ESPN: 40
Rivals: 5.5, three stars
Scout: two stars
This is the kind of recruiting we were pretty much destined to do once Al Groh was officially shown the door; it is uncharitably known as "picking up the scraps" though I believe the preferred nomenclature is "looking for sleepers." Well, Miles Gooch is a bit of a sleeper.
There's no story to tell about his recruitment. Well, hardly any. Playing in a mid-level division out on the edge of the Atlanta burbs for a school that had a crap football team in 2008 contributes pretty heavily to the lack of attention paid to Gooch during this past season. He got offers from an assortment of local I-AA schools, plus Toledo and Western Kentucky. Last week he picked Toledo, but after receiving his offer from UVA, correctly deduced that UVA is the superior school in most if not all aspects and promptly switched. Up until today (because I checked yesterday while the news of his commitment was still behind a paywall) Gooch was unrated by Rivals and probably received three stars of the oh-look-you-committed-somewhere-where-people-will-pay-attention variety.
Gooch's stats are the usual high-level stuff you see from someone who's headed for D-I football, but not eye-popping, and the completion percentage is low. Arm strength is usually what people mention when they talk about Gooch. Honorable mention in the state of Georgia for his division; the quarterback who beat him out is going to South Carolina, though, so, no shame really in losing out. Also has the requisite BEST QUARTERBACK EVER (or at least, in the state right now) endorsement from coaches who've had to game-plan against him, so that's one vote.
Plain truth is, Gooch probably wouldn't have gotten a sniff if he were a pocket passer. Big guy, fast (runs track), strong arm, tough to tackle, but not the world's most polished quarterback. You could do a lot worse than having a linebacker-sized guy with receiver speed on your team, even if he's not still a quarterback by the time he sees the field.
Speaking of his future prospects on the team: I shouldn't need to tell you that he's not going to play a down at quarterback in 2010. If he does, which he won't, we really will be in major-league trouble, which we won't be, because he's going to settle himself into the fourth or fifth spot on the depth chart and develop. He also will not play quarterback in 2011, and probably not in 2012 either. In fact, by this time, his transition to some other position may already have begun, as it has with Riko Smalls, especially if the coaching staff has been bringing in quarterbacks in future recruiting classes. After all, "athletic backup quarterback" is often just another way of saying "future wide receiver." Smalls, in fact, is probably a perfectly apt comparison: Gooch isn't polished enough to definitely project as a college quarterback and athletic enough that UVA fans will (mostly sight unseen other than some exciting highlights tapes) ignore his position on the depth chart and loudly call for him to take snaps after getting fed up with the incumbent quarterback. In any case, it'll be a couple years before we learn what the story will be; regardless of position, though, if he's coachable and picks up what he has to, a player with the raw athleticism he has won't stay off the field for four years.
Oh, small blog-related note: recruiting board(s) will get their updates tomorrow.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
BEST DAY EVER
This is my blog - there are many like it, but this one is mine. My own humble little spot in the big wide InterBlogoWeb where I get to write what I like. That means, just every so often, you will find me wandering off track to write about other stuff I like besides Virginia sports. Not terribly often, mind you, not at all; but this is going to be one of those times, because if it isn't now, it never will be. If you don't care about the NFL or just want to skip ahead to the Virginia stuff, feel free. It's down a few paragraphs, you can't miss it.
Today, all is sunshine and daisies and butterflies and gumdrop rivers. Because, you see, I am a Detroit Lions fan. And today is the day that all of us have been waiting for, who cheer on the Honolulu Blue and Silver.
He's gone. Matt Millen. Fired.
The Lions I grew up with, you see, were maddeningly inconsistent throughout the '90s. They would do things like beat the defending Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football, only to get waxed at home the next week against the Cardinals. They would start a season 2-6, then rip off an 8-game win streak to roll into the playoffs, guarantee a win.....and give up 56 points in a blowout loss. Millen was hired to fix the inconsistency. Bill Ford "stake[d] his reputation on Matt's success."
Did he ever fix the inconsistency. It got to the point where us Lions fans no longer minded the losing, because we knew it was coming, we knew who to blame it on, and it just gave us one more reason (84 in total) to pile on the anger.
Millen inspired a movement. Fire Millen became a slogan. This was not just some loudmouth with his www.FireCoachX.com website. This was new, unique, a first of its kind. Fire Millen showed up at Michigan basketball games. At Tigers games. At Red Wings games IN ANAHEIM! The local radio station bought a billboard. Millen inspired the only other-team's-color-out as fans went with orange for the Cincinnati Bengals' visit. (Three years and 11 wins ago. And yes, the Lions lost that game.) FireMillen.com is so popular they're putting out press releases about this. A blog! Putting out a press release.
Needless to say, I'm thrilled. And a little worried. If the Lions continue to suck - I mean, past the time they're supposed to not suck any more - the only person we'll have left to kick around is the owner, William Clay Ford, and he can't be fired. But that's OK. The Lions could go 0-16 and the 2008 season would be a rousing success. Because Fire Millen just became Millen Fired.
WE NOW RETURN TO REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING.
Pretty typical midweek stuff. We'll start with Marc Verica again, because the Wednesday after his first ever start seems to be a pretty good time for fluff articles. Did you know he plays the piano? I didn't either, but Doug Doughty and Jeff White are dying to tell you this. The Washington Post gets in on that action too - that's three in one day, in case you lost count. Verica plays the piano, was put into a similar situation in high school, is unflappable, etc. etc.
Switch gears for a quick second over to the soccer team, which beat CCSU 4-0 last night. Tony Tchani, who is a frickin' hoss, scored twice.
Switch back! The UVA notes in the RTD update us on Sean Gottschalk:
Peter Lalich is going to Oregon State, which in Oregon-hippie fashion has a weird class schedule and has not started classes yet - a big reason for the selection.
Saved the best for last - the depth chart and the coach's press conference. Depth chart is mildly interesting. No changes on the O-line, at least not among the starters. Biggest shakeup is in the secondary (which needs it.) Ras-I Dowling returns to the depth chart, backing up Mike Parker in OR status with Chase Minnifield. Brandon Woods is demoted to backup and redshirt freshman Corey Mosley takes his place. Nick Jenkins and Nate Collins switch spots at nose tackle - Jenkins is now listed as the starter, though chances are the roughly 60-40 split of snaps will continue.
From the presser:
- Groh wants to keep the redshirt on Riko Smalls but realizes the circumstances may end up dictating otherwise.
- Hints that Verica had a little more notice to prepare for the UConn game than was generally known.
- Fluff fluff fluff, Duke's a tough team yada yada yada.
Today, all is sunshine and daisies and butterflies and gumdrop rivers. Because, you see, I am a Detroit Lions fan. And today is the day that all of us have been waiting for, who cheer on the Honolulu Blue and Silver.
He's gone. Matt Millen. Fired.
The Lions I grew up with, you see, were maddeningly inconsistent throughout the '90s. They would do things like beat the defending Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football, only to get waxed at home the next week against the Cardinals. They would start a season 2-6, then rip off an 8-game win streak to roll into the playoffs, guarantee a win.....and give up 56 points in a blowout loss. Millen was hired to fix the inconsistency. Bill Ford "stake[d] his reputation on Matt's success."
Did he ever fix the inconsistency. It got to the point where us Lions fans no longer minded the losing, because we knew it was coming, we knew who to blame it on, and it just gave us one more reason (84 in total) to pile on the anger.
Millen inspired a movement. Fire Millen became a slogan. This was not just some loudmouth with his www.FireCoachX.com website. This was new, unique, a first of its kind. Fire Millen showed up at Michigan basketball games. At Tigers games. At Red Wings games IN ANAHEIM! The local radio station bought a billboard. Millen inspired the only other-team's-color-out as fans went with orange for the Cincinnati Bengals' visit. (Three years and 11 wins ago. And yes, the Lions lost that game.) FireMillen.com is so popular they're putting out press releases about this. A blog! Putting out a press release.
Needless to say, I'm thrilled. And a little worried. If the Lions continue to suck - I mean, past the time they're supposed to not suck any more - the only person we'll have left to kick around is the owner, William Clay Ford, and he can't be fired. But that's OK. The Lions could go 0-16 and the 2008 season would be a rousing success. Because Fire Millen just became Millen Fired.
WE NOW RETURN TO REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING.
Pretty typical midweek stuff. We'll start with Marc Verica again, because the Wednesday after his first ever start seems to be a pretty good time for fluff articles. Did you know he plays the piano? I didn't either, but Doug Doughty and Jeff White are dying to tell you this. The Washington Post gets in on that action too - that's three in one day, in case you lost count. Verica plays the piano, was put into a similar situation in high school, is unflappable, etc. etc.
Switch gears for a quick second over to the soccer team, which beat CCSU 4-0 last night. Tony Tchani, who is a frickin' hoss, scored twice.
Switch back! The UVA notes in the RTD update us on Sean Gottschalk:
Gottschalk, a graduate of Deep Run High, hopes to resume his football career, but it's not clear if he'll play this season. Even if Gottschalk were to return to practice today -- and that's not expected to happen -- he would need three or four weeks of training before he's ready to play again, Groh said."Hopes to resume his career." That is not promising.
Peter Lalich is going to Oregon State, which in Oregon-hippie fashion has a weird class schedule and has not started classes yet - a big reason for the selection.
Saved the best for last - the depth chart and the coach's press conference. Depth chart is mildly interesting. No changes on the O-line, at least not among the starters. Biggest shakeup is in the secondary (which needs it.) Ras-I Dowling returns to the depth chart, backing up Mike Parker in OR status with Chase Minnifield. Brandon Woods is demoted to backup and redshirt freshman Corey Mosley takes his place. Nick Jenkins and Nate Collins switch spots at nose tackle - Jenkins is now listed as the starter, though chances are the roughly 60-40 split of snaps will continue.
From the presser:
- Groh wants to keep the redshirt on Riko Smalls but realizes the circumstances may end up dictating otherwise.
- Hints that Verica had a little more notice to prepare for the UConn game than was generally known.
- Fluff fluff fluff, Duke's a tough team yada yada yada.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)