Being a fan of two teams can be a little strange. Especially when the two teams follow eerily similar paths through the college football journey of destiny. Maybe when you have two favorites, it's near-impossible not to create parallels in your head, but over the past couple years, they've jumped out like a Magic Eye puzzle. You don't have to squint to see them, you just sort of.....unfocus, and there they are. This offseason more so than ever. Both teams making a radical shift to a spread offense. Both teams with high hopes for that offense and paper-thin defenses. Both teams with coaches on something of a hot seat, and both teams with three quarterbacks with the coaches saying all three will take snaps.
Some of these similarities are of the highly undesirable sort. Neither team has beaten its end of season rival since 2003, for example. Neither team went bowling last year. And now, there's yet another concurrence between the fates of these two teams. One that I was hoping never to have to see again.
Terminally ill patients are said to go through five stages of grief. "Terminally ill" is a pretty good way to describe a season opener in which your team was not expected to be good and looked worse. Anger's over with. There's also denial. I like denial. Let's roll with denial for a bit. Not to pretend it never happened, but we'll ignore the obvious fallout from the game and not go down the path of "how long does Al Groh have?" That's played out before it even begins. Anyone hoping for a diatribe on Groh's coaching is going to be disappointed, and frankly, you did it to yourselves. Here we are, finally legitimately wondering if this is the end of the line, and already it's gotten stale because that question got brought up years too soon. If that happens this season, then it happens, but there's no sense worrying about it quite yet because it's certainly not going to happen before next week.
In fact, let's take denial a step further. No, the season isn't toast, and I'll tell you why: seven turnovers. I think the defense acquitted itself OK and had we not turned the ball over seven times, the general theme would be "the offense needs to improve but the defense looks good." (In other words, a watered-down version of the theme of last year's Richmond game.) The 16 points off turnovers turned a really lame win into a horrible loss. I'm willing to bet we don't commit seven turnovers in a game for another four years.
That said, the offense does need to get better, turnovers or no. How that will be, I have no idea. It'd be nice to start by figuring out who the quarterback is going to be. It's pretty obvious what the pecking order was to start the game: Sewell, Hall, Verica. Having already thrown two interceptions, the coaches had enough confidence in Sewell to let him go out there and throw another one. In fact, I'd say a lot of our preconceived notions about the quarterbacks came absolutely true, mostly on the pessimistic side. Verica can't really run the ball. Hall can't really throw it. Sewell can do either but not especially well - the wax paper was out yet again in full force. The season isn't lost, but it's going to be very soon if a quarterback doesn't step up.
One can only hope the similarities between Michigan and Virginia don't stop any time soon. You may recall that Michigan put together a respectable 9-4 season after losing to a I-AA team. History says anything's possible: you may also recall that Jameel Sewell threw two interceptions in a 23-3 loss to Wyoming on that same September day in 2007, and that season turned out OK too. This is what people call "grasping at straws," but what else is there to do?
Showing posts with label sunshine and rainbows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sunshine and rainbows. Show all posts
Monday, September 7, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
weekend review: the sunshine edition
Ah spring. We had a fine weekend indeed, did we not? The sun shone and the jackets and sweatshirts came off, and I finally understand why people do spring cleaning, because all that sunshine streaming in makes you realize how godawful dirty the house gets over the winter when it's dark and you don't see what a mess you've been leaving. So, energized by the successes of our mighty athletes, I busted out the Swiffer and did some serious cleaning around the house. Gone is the dust of despair; a new breeze of success is in the air, and so I promise you a post today that's 99% emo-free.
Basketball
Maryland vanquished, we turn our eyes to Boston College. I stick with my earlier sentiment that success of any amount in the tournament is simply a bonus. However, that doesn't mean hope is out the window. I may have been in the Conte Forum in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts on Saturday, but the host team went out of their way to make me feel at home. I watched a team whose superstar was double- and triple- teamed all day and made most of his points on free throws, who bricked 15 of 18 three-pointers, and who looked like a clown show inbounding the ball. Sound familiar? If nothing else, Thursday's game will be mighty entertaining every time a ref hands someone the ball underneath the basket - BC threw at least two inbound passes straight out of bounds again without them even touching another player.
BC is probably going to the tournament regardless of what happens in our game. But after dispatching Maryland to the NIT, it would at least be fun to make Eagles fans a bit nervous on Selection Sunday, no?
In the Good For You Department, ACC honors came out this week, and Sylven Landesberg is a unanimous selection for the all-freshman team. He's also honorable mention for the all-conference team, by the way Wake Forest's Al-Farouq Aminu is the other unanimous pick, setting up an interesting announcement tomorrow for ACC ROY. Let's see what the arguments are for both:
Landesberg:
- Freshman scoring leader
- Freshman minutes leader
- Carried team on shoulders as go-to guy
- More Rookie of the Week honors
Aminu:
- Better rebounder
- Rookie of the Week selections came mostly during actual league play
- Team doesn't suck
Personally I would vote for the guy without whom his team might not have won a single ACC game, and that's objectively speaking. Tyler Hansbrough is a stone-cold lock for POY, and people don't much care about DPOY, so the ROY selection tomorrow is the interesting one.
Baseball
If Landesberg loses the ROY selection to Aminu, we can always point out the godsmacking the baseball team put on Wake this weekend. My God. 47 runs in three games. Wake threw two freshman starting pitchers at us in the three-game series and we gave them such a welcome to the conference they must still be hearing PING in their nightmares.
The starting lineup is now hitting .415 on the season. With a couple of military academies rolling into town this week (Navy and VMI), I don't really see that getting smaller in the next two games. It might interest you to know that VMI's team ERA is 7.07. All this is exciting, but I will hold off judgment for a bit yet. The next two weekends feature three-game home series against FSU and Miami, both of which were in Omaha last year, and both of which swept us but good last year too.
By the way, I'm considering for a weekend project, a sabermetrics addition to the library over on the side there. You can get all the standard stats at the official site, of course, but sabermetrics in college baseball are tougher to come by. Let me know if this stirs any interest. I might do it anyway, whether or not I hear from anyone, but a response or two or ten would go a long way toward reassuring me I'm not wasting my time with that.
Lacrosse
The baseball team isn't the only ones lighting up the scoreboard. Their challenge this week will be to match the lacrosse score against VMI: 19-3.
That's not what's got me all sunshiney though. I'm allowing myself to get genuinely excited about the chances for a national championship, because this week saw two of the biggest concerns melt away with the last of the snow into virtual nothingness. One, faceoffs: Chad Gaudet is the ACC Player of the Week. A faceoff specialist. 11-of-13 in the second half against Cornell had everything to do with it, which segues beautifully into the second concern. The Hoos proved they can play after halftime by outscoring Cornell - that's "#4 Cornell" - 8-3 in the second half.
To wrap up the feel-good-itude of this post, here's a great little article from yesterday's CDP about Mo Diane. See how beating Maryland puts a little pep in your step no matter how bad the season?
Basketball
Maryland vanquished, we turn our eyes to Boston College. I stick with my earlier sentiment that success of any amount in the tournament is simply a bonus. However, that doesn't mean hope is out the window. I may have been in the Conte Forum in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts on Saturday, but the host team went out of their way to make me feel at home. I watched a team whose superstar was double- and triple- teamed all day and made most of his points on free throws, who bricked 15 of 18 three-pointers, and who looked like a clown show inbounding the ball. Sound familiar? If nothing else, Thursday's game will be mighty entertaining every time a ref hands someone the ball underneath the basket - BC threw at least two inbound passes straight out of bounds again without them even touching another player.
BC is probably going to the tournament regardless of what happens in our game. But after dispatching Maryland to the NIT, it would at least be fun to make Eagles fans a bit nervous on Selection Sunday, no?
In the Good For You Department, ACC honors came out this week, and Sylven Landesberg is a unanimous selection for the all-freshman team. He's also honorable mention for the all-conference team, by the way Wake Forest's Al-Farouq Aminu is the other unanimous pick, setting up an interesting announcement tomorrow for ACC ROY. Let's see what the arguments are for both:
Landesberg:
- Freshman scoring leader
- Freshman minutes leader
- Carried team on shoulders as go-to guy
- More Rookie of the Week honors
Aminu:
- Better rebounder
- Rookie of the Week selections came mostly during actual league play
- Team doesn't suck
Personally I would vote for the guy without whom his team might not have won a single ACC game, and that's objectively speaking. Tyler Hansbrough is a stone-cold lock for POY, and people don't much care about DPOY, so the ROY selection tomorrow is the interesting one.
Baseball
If Landesberg loses the ROY selection to Aminu, we can always point out the godsmacking the baseball team put on Wake this weekend. My God. 47 runs in three games. Wake threw two freshman starting pitchers at us in the three-game series and we gave them such a welcome to the conference they must still be hearing PING in their nightmares.
The starting lineup is now hitting .415 on the season. With a couple of military academies rolling into town this week (Navy and VMI), I don't really see that getting smaller in the next two games. It might interest you to know that VMI's team ERA is 7.07. All this is exciting, but I will hold off judgment for a bit yet. The next two weekends feature three-game home series against FSU and Miami, both of which were in Omaha last year, and both of which swept us but good last year too.
By the way, I'm considering for a weekend project, a sabermetrics addition to the library over on the side there. You can get all the standard stats at the official site, of course, but sabermetrics in college baseball are tougher to come by. Let me know if this stirs any interest. I might do it anyway, whether or not I hear from anyone, but a response or two or ten would go a long way toward reassuring me I'm not wasting my time with that.
Lacrosse
The baseball team isn't the only ones lighting up the scoreboard. Their challenge this week will be to match the lacrosse score against VMI: 19-3.
That's not what's got me all sunshiney though. I'm allowing myself to get genuinely excited about the chances for a national championship, because this week saw two of the biggest concerns melt away with the last of the snow into virtual nothingness. One, faceoffs: Chad Gaudet is the ACC Player of the Week. A faceoff specialist. 11-of-13 in the second half against Cornell had everything to do with it, which segues beautifully into the second concern. The Hoos proved they can play after halftime by outscoring Cornell - that's "#4 Cornell" - 8-3 in the second half.
To wrap up the feel-good-itude of this post, here's a great little article from yesterday's CDP about Mo Diane. See how beating Maryland puts a little pep in your step no matter how bad the season?
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