weekend review

So.  Back from vacation.  Going on a long trip means things get a little out of date, so today I catch up a little.  And because it's my blog you also have to sit through the dreaded vacation slides.



Some people get a thrill out of meeting celebrities. I get mine from visiting celebrity cities. Standing on top of the Arc de Triomphe with all of Paris spread before you is like a personal dinner with Marilyn Monroe. I like my kicks better, because you can't meet Marilyn Monroe anymore. This first view of Paris - we went straight from the airport to the hotel to here - was indescribably sublime in a way that a stitched-up panorama on the screen could never convey.  It's above the city but not way above the city, so it's like being in all of Paris at once.  And it instantly became one of my favorite moments of my life.



-- Fortunately, UVA got through fall camp without getting too banged up in the injury department.  The only major camp casualty (besides Sean Cascarano's hip, which developed into a problem long ago) was Wil Wahee, who was coming along nicely as the fourth cornerback on the roster and now will miss the season.  It's a blow to the depth (and to special teams as well), and probably means peeling the redshirt off of Tim Harris.  But worse things have happened.

-- The same can't be said for Virginia Tech.  Injuries and just plain departures were rampant in Blacksburg this year.  Let's see if I can remember them all:

- Whip linebacker Ronny Vandyke and RB Tony Gregory are out for the season.
- OL Mark Shuman and RB J.C. Coleman are both in the 4-6 weeks range.
- A whole bunch of players simply left the program.  OLs Jake Goins and Adam Taraschke quit football, safety Davion Tookes left the team along with a couple defensive linemen, and CB Donaldven Manning transferred out after losing a camp battle.
- DL Corey Marshall is, according to Tech, "out indefinitely while resolving some personal issues."

Our Hokie friends like to spin this as just normal attrition, but normal attrition happens in the spring and summer.  It's not exactly the total unraveling of their progam either, but that is not how a good, healthy training camp goes.  They've had to move Wyatt Teller away from his more natural defensive end position to try and shore up the offensive line, which is unraveling.

We also visited Cologne, Germany.  I had never had Cologne on a list of places I just had to see, but the opportunity presented itself and we took it.  Paris is awesome in the most literal sense of the word, but I also get a kick out of going to unexpected places, which is to say, ones that it never even crossed my mind to visit.  In that sense it's like Jakarta, Indonesia.  I've always loved traveling and have a really long list of places I want to see.  Neither Jakarta nor Cologne were ever on them.  The difference is, though, I'd go back to Cologne.  

-- I don't think I'm done talking about VT just yet.  I've already gone over their offensive troubles in the previews, but their recent fall camp scrimmage really drives it home.  The two quotes I like best from Bitter's article on it:

"As mentioned before, the protection wasn’t great. The first-team o-line was (from right to left) Laurence Gibson, Andrew Miller, David Wang, Caleb Farris and Jonathan McLaughlin. Even the second-team defensive line was giving them trouble, though."

"Likely starter Trey Edmunds only got one carry. Running backs coach Shane Beamer didn’t want either Edmunds or Mangus running behind the second-team offensive line."

The second-team offensive line at VT is so bad that the coaches were afraid they'd get their running backs hurt.  That is priceless.

-- Regarding our own offense, Steve Fairchild recently gave his end-of-camp press conference, in which I thought his utter refusal to answer anything worth answering was telling in and of itself.  Several of the questions asked ("How much has working with Mike Martz influenced you?") were cleverly but fairly obviously designed to see how much he'd reveal about his plans for the offense, and Fairchild was too smart to take any of the bait.

Nevertheless, I think there's a lot to be learned even from that.  The scrimmage highlights on VSTV included at least one read-option run, and word has leaked out all during camp about things like the pistol formation.  I don't think we're looking at a major tear-down and revamp such as what Gregg Brandon attempted to do, but pistols and read-options have never been a thing at UVA before.  Bill Lazor ran a pro-style offense, and they're calling this one a pro-style offense too, but I think it's plain to see that the changes will be much bigger than that bit of terminology would indicate.

Victor Hugo wrote, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, "There exists in this era, for thoughts written in stone, a privilege absolutely comparable to our current freedom of the press. It is the freedom of architecture."  Those medieval architects, given the freedom to build what they couldn't write down, knew what they were doing.  It's a tremendous testament to their abilities that their creations, 700 years later, still have the power to awe and amaze - and survive four years' worth of visits from Allied B-17s to boot.

-- Baseball is generating some news too.  Phil Gosselin, this past week, became the 32nd former Hoo to appear in the major leagues, getting the call-up from the Braves and making his mark pretty well with a 2-for-4 game in which he scored what would eventually be the winning run.  Gosselin made his debut against the Nationals, and if Stephen Strasburg hadn't been ejected from the game (actually Gosselin's second, but he was only a defensive replacement in his first game), might well have had his first MLB at-bat against him.  Gosselin's claim to fame, of course, is drilling the home run in Irvine that handed Strasburg and San Diego State the loss in the opening game of the regional.

Also, his old teammate Tyler Cannon is coming back to UVA as a student assistant coach - probably a one-year deal unless a more regular spot opens up, since he's back mainly to finish his degree.  Cannon made it as high as AA-ball in his career.

-- The hoops schedule came out, and I have to say it's not impressive.  I think we might well be in for another season of worrying about whether the OOC SOS will drag us down again.  The marquee game is Wisconsin in the ACC/B1G Challenge; elsewise, as far as headliners go, there's a trip to Tennessee, a neutral-site game against Davidson, and VCU.  Most of the rest of it is filler; assuming we don't make a mess of our preseason tournament, the prize at the end is a game against Texas A&M.  Which isn't a good team, residing in the dregs of a decent-not-great basketball conference.  This doesn't capture the imagination.  We're stuck basically hoping A&M isn't bad enough to lose to whatever mid-major they drew in their end of the preseason tournament and that Larry Brown can get SMU (also on the schedule) up to speed in record time.

I'm not really complaining about being the star attraction in this Corpus Christi Whatever preseason tournament (it's brand-new, so without looking, it probably has the word "Classic" in the name); I mean, we can't go to Maui every year.  But another big game or two would go a long way on this schedule, which still has too many sub-250 RPI teams on it.  I continue to say we need to schedule a regular series with Georgetown just to stick it Maryland's eye.

Paris, of course, is one of the most popular literary (and dramatic, cinematic, etc.) settings of all time.  To me, if I'm standing where an angry mob tore down the Bastille or where Marius first caught a glimpse of Cosette, or whether it's the location of an early Middle-Age siege of the city or a fictional masquerade, it's all the same.  You have to use your imagination to picture either one, so landmarks made famous by literature are just as interesting as those made famous by history.  Often they're made famous by both anyway.  This is why I felt the gentleman who, during our tour, challenged the veracity of the relics of the Magi (which are held by the Cologne Cathedral) was completely and utterly missing the point - as well as being a bit of an asshole.

-- I need to do a little bit of a recruiting board update, if only because one of the events of my vacation was Gary Wunderlich's highly disappointing decommitment.  Don't know what appeal an Ole Miss diploma holds when you've got an offer to get a Virginia one, but fandom came into play here, I think.  The changes:

- Moved K Gary Wunderlich from orange to maroon.

- Removed RB Madre London from yellow.

- Removed RB Joe Mixon from red.

I suspect there will be new offers going out as the coaches have a chance to see some players during their senior seasons.

And speaking of which, it's time for that feature to get a start as well.  Unless some people commit quickly, this is gonna be a very short feature this year; there are only nine players to follow.  Four were in action this weekend, two in preseason games.  Caanan Brown and Evan Butts were those.  Following the proper format for the other two....

Peachtree Ridge 23, Walton 17 - Jordan Ellis had a very good start, scoring what turned out to be the game-winning touchdown and grinding out 136 yards.  Ellis flashed a little pass-catching ability too.

Western Alamance 37, Cummings 0 (Will Richardson)

Next week, everyone but Andrew Brown and Oscar Smith are in action.

We visited the Louvre.  You have to visit the Louvre.  It's way cheaper than you'd think, for one thing.  About $15 to look at as many Virgin-Mary-with-Child's as you can cram into your eyeballs, and for the privilege of getting elbowed in the gut by little Chinese ladies for the right to stand as close to the Mona Lisa as they'll let you.  It's a little hilarious how much morbid shit these Renaissance artists churned out, too.  It's like there was this competition to see who could depict St. Sebastian with the most arrows sticking out of his ribs.  I've never been confused with an art connisseur, but I know what I like.

weekend review

So it's been kind of a crap spring so far, relatively speaking.  It's much colder than last year's, I've had all this damn work to do, and worst of all from the actual perspective of the blog, the lacrosse team has stunk up the joint.  We've been spoiled, man - I've gotten used to spring being the season when being a UVA fan is at its peak.  Weekend reviews speak of glorious triumphs on two fields at once.

So this weekend was pretty refreshing.  Even if the lacrosse game ultimately meant very little in the grand scheme, hey, at least it was a Senior Day win, and it was nice to watch the ball go in the net for once.  Nobody's scored 12 goals on Bellarmine all year, not even likely #1 seed Denver.  A few bullets on that game:

-- Mark Cockerton scored four goals, but the game's MVP is Tyler German, who won two out of every three of his faceoffs.  Mick Parks was absent for personal (not disciplinary) reasons, and might find his seat taken when he gets back.  German was only 5-for-14 coming in, but certainly deserves a few shots against Maryland next weekend.

-- Also, while we're on the subject of faceoffs, anyone who didn't enjoy watching Thompson Brown truck his opponent on the garbage-time faceoff he took must not actually like lacrosse.

-- I'll touch on this more when the season's over and I write a seasonal postmortem, but one thing I've gotten tired of is watching our shooters try the same shot over and over with the same result, which is usually a save.  I lost track of how many times our guys were on the doorstep and tried to lob the ball into the net as if there were no goalie, which was a failed strategy every time.

-- I was incredibly surprised to see UVA credited with 23-of-24 on clearing attempts.  We had to be worse than that.  Had to be.

-- Maybe the best thing of all was scoring a goal with three seconds left in the third quarter after watching every team all year do that to us.

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Baseball brought the brooms to Davenport this weekend and knocked Florida State off their top-5 perch.  Before the series I wrote a Sabre post that said something to the effect of: if the team could simply go .500 in the rest of their ACC games and win all the nonconference ones, they'd be in the conversation for a top-8 national seed in the tournament and a near-certain regional host.  That'd have put them at 41-14 plus whatever happened in the ACC tourney.  Now they've swept a team that they could've easily dropped two games to.  It's not a stretch to say they could win their next ten in a row and be 45-6 going into the Carolina series.

That said, finals break is before the Duke series.  At the moment, Duke is in the 9th slot overall in the ACC, with VT in the 8th slot, a mere one game ahead.  Duke has Maryland this coming weekend, so the odds are decent that they'll pull ahead of the Hokies.  So just to be dicks I think we should sweep VT and then activate our secret powers of post-finals suckery to get swept by Duke.  Just for a laugh at the Hokies' expense.  And as a public service - to spare ACC tournament viewers the agony of the eyes.

Yet more bullets from the weekend:

-- It's pretty amazing how we're 36-5 and we don't even have any good players.  The ACC media has not yet seen fit to award even one single player of the week honor (or pitcher) to a Cavalier.

-- It's time to put some padding on the wall next to the right-field bullpen.  Past time, really.  Joe McCarthy jammed his finger (that's not, like, Kevin Ware-gruesome, but you click on that link, you'll see a finger going a direction it weren't ever meant to) catching a foul ball, and slammed his elbow on the cement top in the process.  And later, FSU's right fielder Jameis Winston nearly broke his kneecap sliding into it in another foul ball attempt.  Winston happens to be FSU's selection for starting quarterback in the fall - we'd have looked like a bunch of assholes if he missed the year because of our brick wall.  I seem to recall an Irvine player taking a hard run at that wall as well, and coming out rather the worse for the encounter.  Let's get some padding there before someone breaks their skull open.

-- Winston, by the way, is one of the least comfortable-looking players I've ever seen patrol an outfield.  When Derek Fisher hit his three-run triple, I swear Winston ran right past the spot where the ball eventually landed.

-- Pretty much every pitcher we ran out to the mound had themselves a really nice weekend.  Scott Silverstein pitched seven innings of shutout ball and FSU was held to one hit in a game for the first time since 1998.  Nick Howard was wild for two innings and then got himself together - and that's the kind of thing pitching coaches love.  They know you'll be off your game sometimes.  If you can get back on, mid-contest, that's the mental makeup they're looking for.  I'm awfully surprised at the impotence of FSU's bats, though.  Much credit goes to our pitchers, but you have to cast an eye at the FSU bats as well, who might've hit two or three balls hard all weekend.  So many of their hits were Texas Leaguers or choppers that slithered just past the infielders.

-- Kyle Crockett's instructions for his trip to the plate on Sunday (necessitated by the lineup shifts following McCarthy's injury removal) basically boiled down to this: Just keep the bat on your shoulder unless they're all fastballs, in which case I guess sure why not try a swing just for giggles.  He will probably never let his teammates forget the resulting base hit.

-- The following batter was Brandon Downes, and the strategy looked awfully odd.  Downes was still bunting with two strikes.  My guess: The coaches decided that even a foul-bunt strikeout or allowing the out at third was preferable to the possibility of Crockett having to try and slide to break up a double play.  As it turned out, the out at third is what happened, and at that point, Crockett was moved up a base and he wasn't going to be caught up in any double plays.  Good thing he didn't have to slide into home, though.

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I'll do a recruiting board update later, but yes, J.J. Jackson committed to basically take Chris Nelson's spot - which, assuming we can land Andrew Brown, is a good positional tradeoff because Jackson plays a position of much greater need.  The coaches were dead serious about trying to land Jackson even though his offer list sucks, so they must like something.

Even more interesting, really, are these two Monday developments: the post-spring depth chart and the ACC's media rights thingy.  The depth chart doesn't change too many of my post-spring impressions, but does leave a few surprises.  The list of position switches that I can see:

-- Pablo Alvarez from the bottom of the secondary depth chart to the bottom of the WR depth chart.  This is a likely indication that Alvarez isn't to be counted on for contributions.  Injuries played a major role in that.

-- Luke Bowanko to LG and walk-on Jackson Matteo to center.  That's the top surprise right there, and somewhat related is Sean Cascarano sticking at RG while Conner Davis moves to the second string and Jay Whitmire has the RT job.  (And Cody Wallace now backs up Whitmire instead of a guard.)  This Matteo thing could either be really good or really bad.  A walk-on freshman beats out a senior for one of the most important positions on the line.  I could see that turning out very badly, as Matteo hasn't played a single down of college football.  It's just as possible that Matteo is a minor prodigy with a talent for the nuances of the center position that Bowanko never had; center is a tricky thing to master.  This brings us the potential to have four years of the same center, which is the kind of continuity that coaches salivate over.

-- Kelvin Rainey at safety is also interesting.  As is Wil Wahee at second string corner.  After Matteo, the next thing people are talking about - in this case putting up a whiny fuss about, more than anything else - is Maurice Canady backing up Drequan Hoskey.  Even if the crowd that thinks he's the second coming are correct, being the third cornerback is like being the third wide receiver.  He'll have plenty of time on the field.

Part two of the weekend review runs tomorrow, as the brave new ACC - which includes the first wave of Notre Dame games - deserves its own post.

the recruit: Divante Walker

Name: Divante Walker
Position: CB
Hometown: Virginia Beach
School: Salem
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 160

24/7: 83; three stars; #89 ATH; VA #32
ESPN: 71; two stars; #186 RB; Atlantic #284; VA #61
Rivals: 5.3; two stars
Scout: N/R

Other offers: instate I-AAs only

Almost a year ago to the day since Divante Walker committed on Sunday, UVA took Mason Thomas's commitment, a surprise since Thomas's entire profile (what there was of it) screamed I-AA and nobody had ever heard his name and UVA's in the same sentence.  The more things change.  Like Thomas, Walker was an uncommitted recruit (this year, he was the only one) at UVA's Verbally Committed Recruit Extravaganza and All-Weekend Party, so he was surrounded by a bunch of guys saying "you're coming too, right?"

Walker is a little bit different though, which means a little bit more optimism.  For one thing, he was first-team all-region as selected by the coaches, and made the Virginian-Pilot's first-team all-Tidewater as well.  (Thomas was only second-team in the district.)  Walker got these honors on the strength of his work at running back, where he totaled nearly 1,400 yards rushing.  One recruiting site offers a really high rating for a guy who had no other I-A offers; in fact, 24/7 has him higher-rated than guys like Sean Karl (BC and Syracuse offers), Kye Morgan (Illinois, Cincy, BC), and Demeitre Brim, who Wisconsin and Miami tried to pull away from a UVA commitment.  To them he's the #32 prospect in the state, and that's still not as optimistic as it gets; Doug Doughty ranks him 28th, ahead of four UVA commits and three Tech ones.

The other sites, though, are way down on him, dropping mid-to-low two-star ratings.  Why the huge discrepancy?  I'm willing to bet it's not a coincidence that the optimistic assessments are the ones that think he's 175 pounds (as Doughty does) and the pessimistic ones list him at 157.  Somebody, somewhere, made a typo, and it spread, and I don't know which it's supposed to be.

Truthfully, I don't believe either.  It's probably in the middle.  He doesn't look like 175 pounds in his pictures at all.  On the other hand, I'm 5'7" and can't get down to 157 to save my life.  Walker is 5'10" or 11", if he weighs 157 pounds he's got no muscle and is strong like mosquito, which would explain all the low ratings.

The problem with those accolades, of course, is that Walker won't be playing RB for us.  At this point there's no need for yet another small back.  There is a need for athletic bodies with cornerback experience, so toss Walker into that very large mix of incoming freshmen.  Walker will redshirt because he's not 175 pounds, and after that.....well, the cornerback shuffle in this class will sort itself out somehow.  Walker has a little bit of a disadvantage because he's not as fast as C.J. Moore, not a pure corner who played the position every day like Kelvin Rainey, probably not quite as athletic as Maurice Canady, and not as big as Wil Wahee.  Yes, the deck is stacked a little bit against him, but it'll be interesting to see who comes out of that big spin cycle on top.

the recruit: C.J. Moore

Name: C.J. Moore
Position: CB
Hometown: Buford, GA
School: Buford
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 165

24/7: 80; three stars
ESPN: 75; three stars; #68 CB; Southeast #512; GA #107
Rivals: 5.4; two stars
Scout: three stars; #87 CB

Other offers: Wake Forest, Air Force, Navy, Rice, Memphis

This is the third prospect named Moore that it's been my pleasure to profile this year, so get all the "all your Moores are belong to us" jokes out of your system before we move on.  Moore is the new Wallace, yes?  Actually let's hope not, because two of our three Wallaces washed out.

Anyway, C.J. Moore - he is fast.  Moore has a genetic advantage in the speed department, as he is a nephew to three-time Olympic gold-medal sprinter Gail Devers.  He's a talented cornerback on a powerhouse high school team; he had seven interceptions last year and I think he's got about five this year (but I'm nowhere near sure.)  Buford is mighty as hell.  (If I were them I'd change the school's name to Buford T. Justice High instead of just plain ol' Buford, but I don't get to make those decisions.)  In case you missed it in the weekend review, they are going for their fifth state championship in a row.  They've churned out over 50 college players in the last decade.  They only play in the 2A division in Georgia (which goes up to 5A), but I think it'd be a mistake to cast a skeptical eye at the competition they play.  Buford usually schedules up when they can.  Their league isn't the Beach District, but it's not terrible; remember, they finished the year with Greater Atlanta Christian, which is where we got Malcolm Brogdon.

Despite playing at a place that every school in the South knows about (Buford sends people everywhere in the SEC and beyond), Moore got a pretty weak set of scholarship offers.  Likely this is because of his size.  He doesn't project to grow much, either.  Demetrious Nicholson is skinny but with room to add on.  Moore doesn't look like he's got the ability to add a lot of weight and still keep his speed.  Despite that, he gets a reasonable consensus of lowish three star ratings from the services, except for Rivals which has him pretty far down the list.

The other three services agree, though, so we're going with that.  ESPN is very complimentary of his cornerback skills, largely on the mental side of the game - positioning, timing, etc.  They praise his zone coverage ability and have some questions about man-to-man.  Naturally, a guy Moore's size will have trouble sometimes with man-to-man coverage in college; bigger receivers will almost always be able to get the drop on him.

Run support is a little questionable too; ESPN points out his high tackling form, and that's backed up by his highlight tape.  He's not ready for the college run game; a 5'9", 160-165 pound kid trying to tackle high is gonna be someone's highlight-reel broken tackle.  It's happened to Nicholson a few times this season already and he doesn't even try to bear-hug.  But that's not a difficult habit to break - it might be broken by the time the bullets start flying next September.

Which raises the question; will Moore be on the field?  You know how it is with cornerbacks right now.  It's a bad situation depth-wise, covered up by the fact that we have an all-conference future NFLer manning the position for now.  Said star will be gone next year, as well as the top backup, Dom Joseph, leaving us with exactly three cornerbacks: Nicholson, Brandon Phelps, and track star walk-on Drequan Hoskey.  There are numbers in the incoming freshman class, but it's awfully thin on field-ready talent like Nicholson.  Maurice Canady is playing quarterback right now.  Wil Wahee is more of a two-way athlete right now than a cornerback who moonlights on offense, which is what C.J. Moore is.  I don't know whether Hoskey is ready to assume a nickel-back, in-the-rotation role like what Dom Joseph does now.  Even if so, cornerback is the one position almost certain to see some true freshmen on the field.

And I think Moore has as good a shot as anyone; only Kelvin Rainey in the class of 2012 is as much a natural cornerback as Moore is.  If all goes according to plan, Phelps and Nicholson will own the position for a while, and there's a decent chance the 2012 crop of cornerbacks gets recruited over in the following years.  So I don't see Moore ever really owning the starting job; if he does, it's a while down the road yet.  But his speed alone will get him on the field, and he brings a lot of tools with him; there may or may not ever be a starting position available for him, but there'll almost always be a role.

the recruit: Wilfred Wahee

Name: Wilfred Wahee
Position: CB
School: Norfolk Christian
Hometown: Norfolk
Height: 5'11"
Weight: 179

24/7: 79; two stars
ESPN: 75; three stars; #102 athlete
Rivals: 5.3; two stars
Scout: two stars

Other offers: none

At the beginning of the recruiting season, the group of sought-after athletes from Norfolk Christian was thought to be a trio.  Colleges were after a fourth, though, and when Will Wahee got his offer from UVA, he became the first of his teammates to commit.

Let's get the uncomfortable part out of the way early: with near-consensus two-star ratings, being ranked #37 out of the top 40 recruits in the state by TheSabre/TSL (it's a safe bet that nobody else outside the top 30 will land at a BCS school), and the lack of offers despite the high-profile teammates, it's not totally unfair to wonder if Wahee was offered in order to help convince his besties on the team to also consider UVA.  Kwontie Moore committed a couple days later, so the theory has backup.

That said, it's also fair to wonder if scouts overlooked Wahee because of his smallish size, and assumed that his production was the result of being ignored by opponents in favor of his bigger and generally more talented teammates.  Wahee's athleticism is undeniable and would have gotten him a set of offers eventually anyway.  He had the second-best shuttle time of 4.09 (twice) at the 757 Combine and will undeniably be one of the faster players in the class.

His position in college is more about projection than high school history.  Wahee lines up in the slot on offense, except for when he lines up at tight end.  On defense he's a linebacker at NCA, and was second-team all-state in VIS D-III and racked up 105 tackles.  At that size, though, tight end and linebacker are out of the question.  You could envision him playing in the slot as a receiver, but cornerback seems likeliest, especially as per his ESPN assessment which is far more optimistic than the rest of the services.

Given the state of the depth chart in the defensive backfield, Wahee will probably (and hopefully) find plenty of competition in this recruiting class.  And that's not to mention the two outstanding prospects slated for cornerback in this year's freshman class.  He's highly athletic but in order to play cornerback (or even safety, if that's his destination) he'll need a ton of retraining.  So in an ideal world, Wahee would spend a couple seasons learning the position and emerge as a nickel back in his redshirt sophomore year or maybe the year after.  A speedy, smallish bugger like Wahee would do well covering slot receivers.  In the black hole that is the UVA depth chart - and highly depending of course on what happens to our recruiting for the rest of this year as well as next - Wahee may be forced onto the field before he's 100% ready.