long overdue update

OK, so as you probably know, Tony Bennett is en fuego this week, and the basketball team has its third commitment in K.T. Harrell from Alabama. I will do the usual for him later. For the short term, know that this is more or less the end of the line with Mychal Parker, who will probably end up a Twerp now. Not that I'm complaining - Harrell sounds beastly talented by all accounts. Today, though, we need to get to the recruiting board, which is in dire need of an update, and this looks like the best chance to get around to it. Tomorrow is almost certainly going to be the next season preview with Clemson in the hopper, and Harrell is probably Friday. The bonus to all this extra content that needs to get out there, for you anyway, is that weekend posting is probably in the cards. Plus, doing this recruiting board update gives me an excuse to throw in a few tidbits I want to touch on that don't really merit their own post.

First, we've been snubbed - twice. You probably saw ESPN's silly mock draft of 40 college teams yesterday, which is snub #1. You also probably don't need me to point out the idiocy of claiming to be selecting a "modern meritocracy" and then including Texas A&M and Michigan State. Actually, the whole exercise being what it is (a way to better crown a national champion) strikes me as having the lesson that the more "perfect" a system you create for deciding a national champ, the more you destroy the traditional underpinnings of college football. Snub #2: Gobbler Country's list of 10 ACC games he's looking forward to this season. Apparently Baylor vs. Wake Forest is more interesting to a diehard Hokie than a certain Thanksgiving matchup? We need to beat these people more often.

I've also been meaning to register my disappointment about the changes to the NFL draft. This was a much better event when you could kick it off at like noon on Saturday or whenever and commence knocking back beers until the shindig was over Sunday evening. It's officially no longer fun when spread over three days and in prime time. The better for cramming obnoxious "analysis" down your throat and having to watch more ads.

Finally, Jeff White offers a list of freshmen that might see playing time this year, and, surprise surprise, the list is full of defensive linemen.

OK, let's bother ourselves with this recruiting board, it needs a little polishing.

- Gone are QB Stephen Morris (Miami), DE Marcus Rush (Michigan State - dammit now I look foolish for calling him a future Hoo and even worse he's gonna be a Spartan), and LB Holmes Onwukaife (Florida State.)

- Added DE Ethan Farmer to yellow. We offered a while ago but I didn't bother because he's listed as a tight end. Should have known we'd be recruiting him for defense.

- Re-added CB Urell Johnson to red. For whatever reason I still don't have any sense of confidence he'll end up here, but he decommitted from Southern Miss so whatever, he's back on the market and therefore back on the board.

- Also re-added S Nick Dew to yellow. If he was anything but the huge Tech fan he's rumored to be, he'd probably be in the blue (and obviously wouldn't have been dropped in the first place) but still. We'll just have to see what happens after he visits. By the way there is like this huge screaming discrepancy between ESPN's evaluation of Dew and the other two. He's very much middle-of-the-road to Scout and Rivals: Scout says, 71st-best safety in the country. ESPN thinks he's the #48 player overall and the #6 safety. This is what happens when a recruit chooses the Under Armour game over the Army All-American one.

- Lastly, added DT Johnathan Hankins to yellow. If I didn't think he's sort of got one foot already in Columbus I'd put him in the blue, but this is a guy that the Michigan fan in me has been following for a little while. Michigan didn't offer, by the way. They told him he needs to get in better shape. Seems like a little bit of a red flag, but there are a lot of other high-profile offers on his kitchen table and he's huge and just the sort of space-eating defensive tackle the 3-4 needs.

So many projects, so little time. Clemson tomorrow, K.T. Harrell Friday, and probably something over the weekend, like Duke maybe. Plus I want to finish the videos sometime this month so I don't have them hanging over my head come football time, plus the depth chart needs an update already. Gee, I sure hope someone doesn't commit to the football team soon so I have even more to do here. That would suck, right?

season preview: Boston College

Note: Today, we kick off the season previews throughout the ACC, in alphabetical order. As promised earlier, there will be one for each ACC team, plus one for each team on our non-conference schedule. Busy month. Kick back and enjoy.

Schedule:

9/5: Northeastern
9/12: Kent State
9/19: @ Clemson
9/26: Wake Forest
10/3: Florida State
10/10: @ Virginia Tech
10/17: NC State
10/24: @ Notre Dame
10/31: Central Michigan
11/7: BYE
11/14: @ Virginia
11/21: North Carolina
11/28: @ Maryland

Skip: Duke, Miami, Georgia Tech

Projected starters:

QB: Justin Tuggle (rFr.)
RB: Montel Harris (So.)
FB: James McCluskey (rJr.)
WR: Rich Gunnell (5Sr.)
WR: Justin Jarvis (Sr.)
TE: Lars Anderson (rSo.)
LT: Anthony Castonzo (Jr.)
LG: Emmett Cleary (rFr.)
C: Matt Tennant (5Sr.)
RG: Thomas Claiborne(rJr.)
RT: Rich Lapham (rJr.)

LDE: Alex Albright (Sr.)
LDT: Kaleb Ramsey (So.)
RDT: Damik Scaife (rJr.)
RDE: Jim Ramella (5Sr.)
SLB: Dominick LeGrande (So.)
MLB: Mike McLaughlin (5Sr.)
WLB: Nick Clancy (rFr.)
CB: DeLeon Gause (Jr.)
CB: Roderick Rollins (Sr.)
SS: Marcellus Bowman (5Sr.)
FS: Wes Davis (rJr.)

K: Steve Aponavicius (Sr.)
P: Ryan Quigley (So.)

Coach: Frank Spaziani (1st year)

(Italics indicate new starter.)

Media prediction: 6th, Atlantic Division

All-ACC:

2008 1st team: OG Cliff Ramsey, DT B.J. Raji, LB Mark Herzlich
2008 2nd team: TE Ryan Purvis, OT Anthony Castonzo, DT Ron Brace
2008 HM: OG Thomas Claiborne, C Matt Tennant, S Paul Anderson
2009 preseason: OT Anthony Castonzo, C Matt Tennant

(Italics indicate departed player.)

The good Jesuit priests at Boston College must have been saying the rosary all wrong in 2008, because the offseason could not have been more eventful in all the wrong ways. A fired coach, a disciplined-then-transferred quarterback, and then the team’s marquee player is diagnosed with, of all things, bone cancer. BC lost a ton of talent when the eligibility clock ran out and then spent much of the offseason losing much of the talent it could least afford to lose, leaving them trying to patch up holes everywhere.

OFFENSE

Eagles fans were looking forward to the Dominique Davis reign under center, but academic responsibilities, or the failure to complete such, put an end to it before it really started. That left a quarterback competition between a bunch of guys whose collective college experience under center wouldn’t fill a thimble. Codi Boek is the oldest, but he spent last season playing fullback. Justin Tuggle and ex-minor league baseball player David Shinskie are also vying for the job. You and I have seen this story before; it reminds me of 2006 when a competition between Christian Olsen and Kevin McCabe resulted in Jameel Sewell being named the starter. It’s probably not going to come up roses for BC.

It’s not all bad for BC on this side of the ball though. Actually, quarterback is the only really rough spot. They return two excellent sophomores at running back, where Montel Harris made the bigger name for himself last year and was accompanied by Josh Haden. The two make a dynamic pair at running back. However, it’s the trenches where BC really gets it done. The offensive line may be the best in the conference. Anthony Castonzo and Matt Tennant are preseason all-conference selections, and they’re joined by Tom Claiborne, who, like the other two, earned all-ACC votes at the end of the season. Boston College has only to replace one starter, and that’s at left guard where redshirt freshman Emmett Cleary looks to take over from another departed all-conference player.

DEFENSE

The strength of this unit is going to be the secondary, where three out of four starters return, and the fourth spot should be filled by fifth-year senior Marcellus Bowman, who leads returning players back there with three 2008 picks. None of these guys have eye-popping talent, but the whole unit is very experienced.

That’s the good news. The bad news is the front seven. LB Mark Herzlich was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma in the offseason, ripping the heart and soul out of Boston College’s defense, not to mention their best player. Herzlich’s absence isn’t the only hurdle to overcome: LB Mike McLaughlin is projected as the starter, but that’s if a torn Achilles doesn’t keep him off the field all year. Will Thompson will take his place until he’s ready, which means BC will have new starters at all three linebacker spots. They also lost a stellar pair of run-stuffing, quarterback-terrorizing tackles to the NFL in the offseason and will have to replace first- and second-round talent in the middle. It’s not all bad news on the line: Alex Albright and Jim Ramella are manning the ends, and both are seniors who will provide the only badly-needed experience in the front seven. BC’s pass defense should be acceptable but the tattered state of the rest of the defense could make it hard for them to control games by stopping the run.

SPECIAL TEAMS

The Eagles bring back both their kicker and punter. K Steve Aponavicius hit on just 2/3 of his field goal attempts last year, though he was perfect on PATs. P Ryan Quigley is solid with an average just shy of 40 yards.

OUTLOOK

You wouldn’t really want your offseasons much more tumultuous than this. About the best BC fans can say for it was that nobody went on a raging alcohol bender and earned massive amounts of Fulmer Cup points. There were plenty of headlines without that stuff, though. It probably was not the time for the BC administration to play hardball with their coach as he peeked around at other job openings; new head coach Frank Spaziani is generally well-respected but inherits a mess at quarterback and a team in sore need of some talent to step to the plate. Some continuity would have been nice here. As it is, BC has several decent pieces in place, and it’s very hard for me to totally count out a team with a near-dominant offensive line such as theirs, but the quarterback issue probably won’t go away all season. They should handily win their first two games, but beyond that it’s hard to see where the wins are going to come from to earn a bowl bid. It would not surprise at all if the Eagles found themselves coming out of their bye week in early November needing to win all three of the remaining games – two of which are on the road – in order to achieve bowl eligibility. I don’t think they’ll reach that mark, and a basement finish in the entire ACC is not out of the question here.

***

Please note the following about the projected starters: These are put together using last season's depth charts where available, last season's statistics where applicable, preview articles where findable (in this case, from USA Today and from Heather), and finally, cross-checked against theACC.com's highly useful "12 Days of ACC Football" series. Sometimes they just come down to an unscientific guess on my part. I'm not always right.

the recruit: Joe Harris

Back from vacation. Back and ready to attack. And I was going to kick off the season previews around the ACC right away, but I figured it'd be better to do some actual Virginia stuff first since that's what we do here, and today's news - Tony Bennett's second verbal commitment in SG Joe Harris - is the perfect excuse.

Name: Joe Harris
Position: SG
Hometown: Chelan, WA
School: Chelan High School
Height: 6'5"
Weight: 200

Rivals: 3-star
Scout: 3-star
ESPN: 91, #40 SG

Let's go back a couple months. Back when all the talk around Virginia basketball was which glamorous, millionaire coach was going to beat down our doors for the chance to coach here. Suppose someone came to you from the future and told you all about it: Your coach will not be anyone on that star-studded list. He will come from a basketball backwater in the hills of the state of Washington, and his first two recruits will be two white guys named Will and Joe, one of which is a holdover recruit from Washington that the coach had already been recruiting to his old Washington school and whose offer list included the in-state schools (and not even Gonzaga), Portland, and San Diego. This doesn't sound too appealing, does it?

Fortunately, you and I know better. Will Regan is, of course, excellent to say the least, and here's what I figure about Harris: Tony Bennett clearly knows what he's doing on the recruiting trail. He's going after all the right players. He's almost got Mychal Parker back to where he was before Leitao was fired, and he's even got us in the race for five-star point guard Kyrie Irving. There are plenty of targets with very stiff competition here out east that we need to be recruiting, and Bennett's doing a fine job of it so far. So the fact that he's got this target-rich environment on the East Coast to work with and still thinks Harris is worth bringing in all the way from BFE, Washington (and believe me Chelan is not part of anything remotely resembling a major - or minor - metropolitan area) says something to me.

Now, the other part of the truth in the first paragraph is that Harris isn't just a complete unknown except to the West Coast Conference. Georgetown, Gonzaga, and Notre Dame, among others, were in touch, so speaketh Rivals, and they tend to know. ESPN, besides being a little more generous in their ranking than the other two (91 roughly means a low four star or high three) thinks he should be a "high-major recruit," which he pretty much is, now. And Scout notes that he was the 1A player of the year in Washington, 1A being the fourth-highest of six divisions. Scout also points out he was earning first-team accolades as a sophomore, but it doesn't stop there: look, there he is as a li'l freshy, grabbing all-district honors. Didn't take him very long to become Chelan's big fish.

I also happen to like that very bottom bullet on that last link there: "Team Sportsmanship: Chelan High School." You might know that Chelan is coached by the elder Joe Harris, and he's been doing it for a long time, unless it takes no time at all to rack up 400 wins. So the Harrises know a little something about sportsmanship which I mean there's absolutely nothing not to like about that.

Now, as for Harris' projection to college. Hard to tell, to be honest. It doesn't take a very extensive Googlesearch to find all sorts of game recaps where Harris was the leading scorer, dropped 30+ points, whatever. He's basically the 800-pound gorilla of 1A basketball in Washington, at which I have no idea what kind of competition he's facing, but it probably doesn't include too many other D-I talents. He plays quarterback on the football team, which I think isn't actually all that telling because Chelan has like 3,000 residents and it's not hard to figure what you'd have the most athletic one of those residents between the ages of 15 and 18 doing during the fall. He did go down to the Rose City Showcase in Portland and earn all-tournament honors, FWIW. There's some quality talent on that list; that Terrence Jones is the same one with five stars and offers from Oklahoma and Florida and Indiana and everyone. Aaron Bright is going to Stanford. It's not a schmo tournament.

Fact is though, all this stuff is par for the course for any ACC recruit. It means you can get past the velvet rope and in the door; it doesn't get you all the ladies once you're inside. Harris' development floor should probably be labeled "Keith Friel" - you remember him, came off the bench and shot three-pointers for his bread, did it very well, and had few other marketable basketball skills, and it still made him one of the more popular players of his day. Damn could we have used Keith Friel last year, we had nobody who could shoot. Well, Harris can shoot, and if he doesn't lose his touch, he will be an asset to the team, there's no doubt about it. But I don't think the competition he's faced is enough to tell us (or me, anyway) how the rest of his skill set will translate to the ACC. The good news there is I'm just the blogger banging away at a keyboard, and Tony Bennett is the guy who's seen him play and thinks differently.

So three slots left. Why three? Earlier I was thinking it might be wise to hold one back for 2011 - five is a big class, and I think you want to spread things out some and not have to have a year where you have a little tiny class because your other ones were huge. You know, like this year's with just Spurlock and Evans. But then I bothered to look at the roster and realized if we hold over a scholarship, we'll still have five slots in 2011 anyway, and you never know what Sylven Landesberg is gonna do. So I think Bennett fully intends to sign five and only leave it at four if all his targets go elsewhere. We're sitting pretty right now, too. We have two recruits we like a lot, and enough open spots to still be very aggressive with quite a number of other targets we also like a lot - in many cases, much more - and what's more, we're well-positioned with several of them. It's a great place to be in, recruiting-wise.

preseason balloting

Well, I'm not back from vacation, not exactly. But I promised I'd try and roll out a little somethin' somethin', so. As you're probably aware, the ACC had its media week this week, and I don't really find a lot of value in obsessing over every question-and-answer session, but the voting that results, you know, the projected standings and the preseason all-conference team, those things are worth a look. And the Real Serious Media guys aren't the only ones who get to have all the fun. Gobbler Country hosted a blogger vote as well, with everything the media does minus a full-out all-conference team. So: Media results are here, blogger results are here.

They're not surprising, really, as far as the UVa representation. Fifth in the division, ahead of Duke, both times. The writers tossed us a bone and named Ras-I Dowling to the preseason team. If Vic Hall were still a cornerback, we might have swept that position: UNC's Kendric Burney, the other CB, had the fewest votes of any selection. By the sounds of it, though, Hall is the likely starter at quarterback come September 4.

You're probably wondering what my own ballot looked like when Gobbler Country came calling for inputs. Even if you're not, here you go:

Atlantic:

1. FSU
2. NC State
3. Clemson
4. Wake
5. Maryland
6. BC

Coastal

1. GT
2. VT
3. UNC
4. UVA
5. Miami
6. Duke

Conference champ: Georgia Tech

Offensive POY: Jonathan Dwyer
Defensive POY: Dekoda Watson
ROY: Tajh Boyd

For whatever reason, I'm really bullish on Georgia Tech this year. I was actually about to vote for Morgan Burnett for DPOY, too, but I thought of those votes as a prediction, basically, and if there's a comparable front seven player in the running the media tends to go that route over selecting a safety. GT returns basically all their key players. VT seems to be the more or less consensus pick to win the conference no matter what subset of pundits you ask, but they have plenty of warts and question marks of their own and I think the reasoning tends to go "well I can't figure out how it could be anyone else." Fair enough, I suppose. Last year Clemson was supposed to have their year, and they didn't, and this year, what have you got? Same as last year, basically: eight or nine teams that would all be third or fourth best in any other major conference in the land. So you pick the team with a defense that probably won't fold too often and at least has a proven coach. Unless you're me, then you go with the team whose performance last year surprised everyone but you because you sort of predicted they'd do that.

Anyway, all this comes without having yet done any of my season previews, which are as much to educate me as they are you, so I reserve the right to change my mind.

A couple other tidbits:

Getting cautiously optimistic that Jeff White's move into the athletic department is going to work out nicely after all. His stories are good stuff. For example:

- Might have mentioned it already, but DE Kevin Crawford is off the team now as well as previously-noted TE Rod Wheeler. The scholarship crunch is coming to an end. My depth chart file isn't on this computer, so I'll count later, but I think that brings us to 86.

- The freshmen are way behind on their conditioning - that's to be expected, of course - but S&C coach Brandon Hourigan noted a few that are in good shape: Tim Smith, Perry Jones, Quintin Hunter, Javanti Sparrow. Those are the guys you'd want to watch out for in fall camp, especially Smith (obviously) and Sparrow, who play a position where suddenly we can't have enough depth. With the tremendous trop in DE depth we've taken this offseason, it's too bad a DE wasn't on that list somewhere.

Also, the 2011 recruiting class already has its first member: WR Adrian Gamble. No, I have no intention of starting the 2011 recruiting board. And no, I have no idea if this guy's any good. He's fast, they say. Great. Actually, what it tells me is that we're probably going to sign a full 25 in 2011, if Groh's already got that class cranking up. We didn't have our first '09 commitment til December '07 (that was Owah, who decommitted eventually) and we didn't have a '10 commit until February this year. Gamble's way ahead of the curve. Guys who do that usually fall into two categories: either they're committing to their dream school and getting it done early, or they have no idea of the attention they're going to get just for playing football, and decommit once they see some offer letters. It'll be interesting to see what kind of schools will try and pry Gamble out of our clutches.

get the hell off my lawn

I belong to the first generation to really grab hold of the Internet and grow up with it, as well as one that thinks Motley Crue is classic rock (they basically are), but I still tend to be really crotchety about my college football. You've already seen me go all-out in my insistence that there should not be a playoff, and what's setting me off now is the emergence of the neutral-site game as a fixture in early-season scheduling.

Our rivals from up in the hills are embracing this neutral-site thing like few others. They have a game in Atlanta this year, and recently hooked up with Boise State to play at F***x Field for next year.** Army's got them beat, however - games at Yankee Stadium basically every year for the foreseeable future, including Notre Dame. And speaking of Notre Dame, they'll be taking on Washington State in - what the hell??? - San Antonio. San Antonio?

I mean, I get it, yeah? Money money money. The Alamodome is huge and the game would get way more exposure than in Pullman, Washington. The revenue for Notre Dame will be like an eighth home game. But still. Look. Let me make this clear for you kids who are running all over my lawn: College football should be played on college campuses, in college stadiums. OUTDOORS.

Some colleges, of course, fail to do these as a habit. Miami and Pitt borrow the nearby NFL stadium. UConn built their own stadium, but it's 25 miles away in Hartford. Syracuse commits the cardinal sin of having a dual-use basketball/football arena/stadium. It's a big reason I didn't apply to Syracuse. All of these are lousy, in my opinion, because they take away from the whole experience. And worst of all, the student body should not have to arrange caravans and drive across town or across the state or across the country to see what should ostensibly be a home game. Neutral-site games are the same thing. I'm glad UVA decided to schedule a home-and-home with USC; had we done it like Tech did with Alabama, the students are deprived the chance to see a marquee opponent in their backyard, and that ain't right.

Somebody somewhere, I totally forget where I read this otherwise I'd link, offered a list of neutral-site games and neutral-site opponents they wanted their team to play. I got such a list too, here's the neutral-site games I want to play: Orange Bowl, Peach Bowl, Gator Bowl. Sound good? Sounds good. About as good as getting to see Penn State, USC, South Carolina - all excellent games we have played/will play - right where they belong in Scott Stadium.

Three other items for your rumination:

One, congrats to the boys at TheLegacyx4, who are now the boys at From the Rumble Seat. Got their own URL and their own SB Nation blog. Golf clap and a round of whiskey, clear.

Two: Heather, Heather, Heather. She was doing pretty well as far as UVA went in her preseason unit rankings - at least, I found I couldn't put up an argument with them that didn't involve my orange and blue glasses - but the preseason predictions are just .... ugh. Prediction #3 is sound enough, but Heather - when you say Al Groh will not lose his job (prediction #1), you don't sound as if you mean to add "if he does well this season." Heather is now on record as basically the only person to write a word about UVA and suggest Groh will stay coach even with a lousy year, and that's quite a position to be in. Bully for her if she turns out right, but as she points out, this is a transition year and we lost a lot of talent - but you know, it's not like we did real well last year, either. Making a transition from bad to worse, which she clearly thinks we're set up for, does not typically save coaches' jobs. Prediction #2 suggests we don't have the playmakers to execute the new offense, which uh I don't know what that makes Vic Hall then.

Oh, and sixth-best secondary in the conference? No, no, no. The aforementioned glasses turn it into the best in the league, but it's still top three without them.

Three: remember to read and heed the programming notes in yesterdays post below. No content for the next few days and not much for the next week, but if you're not back and ready to roll with the rest of us on August 3 I'm afraid you'll be missing out.

**Tech gets a little bit of a pass for the Boise State neutral-site game. Can you imagine them going there, with those hideous colors, and playing a game on that violent blue field? It might not be so bad if you still have rabbit ears on your TV, but HD viewers would get a full blast of visual assault and battery and would risk total blindness.

recruiting board update

It's that time again, time to update the ol' board o' recruiting, but before we get there, a word about next week, please. I'll be going on a nice little summer vacation starting Friday and lasting a week. Yes, a whole week. Don't look at me like that, I've spent this whole offseason putting forth content when there's no games to be watching. It's break time. Now: a post tomorrow is probable but not guaranteed, I need to pack and stuff too. I can basically guarantee you no content at all from Friday to Wednesday. Thursday through Sunday, maybe a post or two, maybe.

The next Monday, however, is go time. We'll be in full-on preseason mode. Play time is over. Through August, you can expect, just like last year, a season preview of all 11 other ACC teams, plus our four non-conference opponents (William & Mary, TCU, Southern Miss, and Indiana for the forgetful) and of course, a post each devoted to our own offense and defense. I've just promised you seventeen posts over about thirty days in addition, obviously, to recruiting board updates, potential August commitments, and whatever else might happen. Plus, some high school seasons begin in August, plus the Blogpoll is gearing back up, so I will have ballots and roundtable entries. It will truly be full-out football time. I hope you're ready.

Now, you may have your update:

- Removed elsewhere commits LB Brian Laiti (VT), WR Tyrek Cheeseboro (Maryland), DE James Kittredge (Vandy.) Laiti never actually had an offer, I just kept him on there because I figured the coaches might get around to sending one if everything else failed. I'm glad he committed somewhere finally, now I don't have to weakly justify his presence to myself.

- Moved all the safeties to red and dropped a few off the list. As well, those who once were corners are now safeties. We're still out recruiting actual cornerbacks and not safeties.

- Speaking of corners, CB Rijo Walker moves up to blue, and CB James Scales is added to yellow.

- Moved DT Harold Legania up to yellow.

- For the second time this year, removed TE Josh Lovell. I decided I can't see us recruiting any tight ends.

- Rivals just did a big shakeup of their star ratings, so that column is updated some.

As you can see, the list is getting way slim. Used to be half again as big as it is now, but for about two months now, names have been coming off faster than new ones have been added. We have, I think, 5-7 more spots open. Recruits now are split up basically into two camps: those that want to get their decision out of the way before their season begins and not have to worry about recruiting, and those that want to use their official visits and take their time. By September 5 I expect it to be quite a bit slimmer.

numerology

The incoming freshmen were added to the official roster today, and I like to think you can learn stuff by looking at the numbers they were assigned. Let's take a look, shall we? Here are the numbers:

Oday Aboushi - 72
Lovante' Battle - 37
Luke Bowanko - 74
Sean Cascarano - 79
Paul Freedman - 88
Will Hill - 93 (he was already there as an early enrollee)
Quintin Hunter - 15
Perry Jones - 33
Corey Lillard - 29
Jeremiah Mathis - 58
Connor McCartin - 51
Ross Metheny - 13
Justin Renfrow - 54
Laroy Reynolds - 26
Kevin Royal - 82
Bobby Smith - 85
Tim Smith - 14
Jake Snyder - 90
Javanti Sparrow - 16
Hunter Steward - 76
Brent Urban - 99
Cody Wallace - 78
Dominique Wallace - 21
Tucker Windle - 39

Observations, speculations, etc.:

- Conspicuously absent is Morgan Moses. Prep school now seems a near certainty. No truth to any rumors that Moses is so dominantly massive that the delay is due to the school petitioning to allow him to wear #100.

- Dominique Wallace has been given a running back's number. Some say he would make an excellent linebacker and might eventually be slotted there, but guys with #21 don't practice with the linebackers. This pleases me. Dominant linebackers are fun, and there's a school of thought that says Wallace would make a terrific linebacker, but personally, running back is my favorite position. There's no substitute for an unstoppable force at running back behind a line that's at least respectable. It's how you control the game on offense, and it's spectacular to watch. And Wallace has a chance to be an unstoppable force at running back. I can't wait.

- Either Luke Bowanko is a guaran-damn-teed redshirt, or the presence of Patrick Slebonick is a mistake. Slebonick, as you might recall, was not asked back for a fifth year, or that was the report in January. But there he is. Slebonick, were he to play this year, would exist on the fringes of the depth chart, but he would be on the depth chart nonetheless, and the two have the same number (74.) You can give two guys the same number, they just can't be on the field at the same time.

- The other same-number clash on the O-line between two scholarship players involves #78, shared by Cody Wallace and Isaac Cain. Wallace is listed as "Unk" instead of "Fr." - either he should be worried, or he should kick the ass of the intern assigned to fat-finger the roster in. Wallace is also a guaranteed redshirt, though you don't need the number on the jersey to tell you that, just look at the number in the weight column.

- Speaking of weight, look at Sean Cascarano. 255?? Is that for real? His recruiting profiles all listed him as 270.

- Nobody gets #7. Interesting. I thought Metheny might get it, but he's #13.

- #39 is a really weird number for a linebacker, but that's what Tucker Windle got. There's just no room in the 40's and 50's.

- Tim Smith with #14. I know WR's often get numbers in the teens, but that sticks out a little bit. Looking forward to seeing that kind of impact on the field.

- Laroy Reynolds and Javanti Sparrow still haven't been officially slotted on offense or defense. They both have WR/DB by their names. Sparrow has a number (#16) that's more a WR's number than a DB's (but there are exceptions) and Reynolds is the opposite at #26. Doesn't mean anything official, but I think it's at least a hint toward which way they're leaning.

- Observations on the pictures: Maybe it's the lighting, but Oday Aboushi looks a lot less chubby in the face than before. (Before, After.) Like he's lost some baby fat. Still listed as 300 pounds though. Dominique Wallace has some 300-pound dreads, which are excellent. Can't decide whether Metheny, Reynolds, or Bobby Smith is the goofiest-looking. Tim Smith and Brent Urban are going to be carded at establishments for the next twenty years, although Urban being 6'7 might eventually dissuade a few would-be bouncers. Sean Cascarano is the only one with hair to match the orange on his uniform, which makes it all the bigger shame that he has no profile linked. As a rule, the entire team seems to have been told to pose for the pictures as if they just buried their dog.

Anyway, I've updated the depth chart accordingly. Last year's senior class is now gone, and replaced with next year's recruiting class. The scholarship count, as best I can tell, stands at 87. I took Moses off and put him with next year's class, and I took out Kyle Long, too, the chances of him coming now look dim. Also gone: TE Rod Wheeler. Slebonick returns for now, and for whatever reason I didn't have Isaac Cain on there, my bad. So that's what brings us to 87. That means two more people have to leave the team, but the rumblings are there about who that might be (Jameel Sewell? Uh-oh?), and meeting the 85 limit doesn't look like it'll be so hard any more.

Last, but not least - in fact, probably "most": a new UVA blog has arrived on the scene. Go check it out, you must do this. It is called The Great Blog of Virginia, and if the scenery is any indication it looks promising indeed, though it breaks with not-long-at-all-established tradition of pulling the blog name from the Good Ol' Song. There are entirely too few Virginia blogs inhabiting the blogowebz at the moment, so go check it out.

from the emails

I'll call this my First Mailbag Post, although that's kind of cheating and you'll see why in a bit. But hey: mailbag, yo! Here we go.

I did get sent this, conveniently enough right around the time I was hunting around looking for something to write about. Stu from Danville** helpfully informed me of the existence of a blog dedicated to covering the Cape Cod League, inside which they have nice little scouting reports on some of our own UVA ballplayers like Tyler Wilson and Jarrett Parker. Also Dan Grovatt and Phil Gosselin.

Grovatt and John Barr were All-Stars, by the by.

The full list of Hoos in the Cape Cod League, by team:

Bourne - Robert Morey
Brewster - John Barr, Jarrett Parker
Harwich - Phil Gosselin, Dan Grovatt
Hyannis - Tyler Wilson
Orleans - Matt Packer

And while we're on the subject, the list of Hoos in the New England League, a slightly less well-known summer league:

Keene - Jared King
Newport - Will Roberts
Sanford - Chad O'Connor

If you're wondering how they're doing, I know of no blog that covers the NEBCL, but it's just as well. King is hitting .143, Roberts has pitched in all of three games, and O'Connor has gotten into just one.

The next mailbag item is sort of cheating because it came in the SabreMail. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Mark Bradley decided to make the mistake of using a trivia question to turn over writing duties to a "guest blogger", who should probably stick to trivia night at the bar instead of writing. The topic? Why Tech Will Finally Win At UVA. (That's the Georgia variety, in case you missed the Atlanta thing.) This deserves deconstruction. Let's begin:

There are several reasons why Tech will beat Virginia:

• UVA will be running a new offense this year — a spread (I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery) and Jameel Sewell, the projected starting quarterback, has not played in a year because he was not in school last season. He has to get back into playing shape while he learns a new system under a new offensive coordinator. So the area that is the one question mark for Tech — the defensive line — should see an offense that is a pale imitation of what it’s used to seeing in practice. That also means, hopefully, that Coach Paul Johnson and Coach Dave Wommack will be better equipped to defend against this offense.

Leaving aside the jealous little sneer about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I - no, wait. I'm not going to leave it aside, because any brickhead could watch the two offenses in action and realize there's absolutely nothing similar about the offenses, except for the use of the word "spread." I guess all spreads are alike to Guest Blogger. Never mind that we've already converted half our running backs to wide receiver because we don't have enough to properly fill out a depth chart that has to account for plays with five receivers on the field. Paul Johnson's offense uses three running backs at a time. We barely have three running backs on scholarship any more. Pale imitation my ass. It will look nothing like Paul Johnson's offense. If there's a single I-A offense less able than any other to prepare a defense for ours, it's probably Georgia Tech's.

Interestingly, Guest Blogger seems to think he knows something about who our starting quarterback will be. Perhaps he'll let Al Groh know too.

• Tech has had a year to grow with this offense and Paul Johnson has said that he will be throwing the ball more. Virginia’s secondary is young with one senior starter, so that will also be an advantage for the Yellow Jackets.

Senior starter? Vic Hall, right? The quarterback, right? If he meant Chris Cook (who at the moment, probably isn't a starter), he'd probably feel the need to bring up the lost year last year, like he did with Sewell, so I think he means the guy who spent all spring under center. As for the rest, well, he's right: Ras-I Dowling's inexperience means he only made second-team all-ACC last year, the big loser. He'll be a junior this year, but a way inexperienced junior unlike GT's Morgan Burnett, who is a very old, experienced, seasoned junior.

Interestingly also, GT's nominal secondary starters are Rashaad Reid (sophomore), Dominique Reese (junior), Burnett (junior), and Mario Butler (junior). All that senior experience ought to really help.

• The biggest reason is this: Coach Johnson plays to win, as opposed to Chan Gailey playing not to lose. I was at the game in 2007, and Tech had plenty of chances to win. After taking a three-point lead, it began to play conservative football and that ended up contributing to the loss. I am aware Tech lost to Virginia last year in Atlanta under Coach Johnson.

I am aware I just torpedoed an entire bullet point with one sentence.

Tech is a contender in the conference, while UVA will finish with five wins. Al Groh is on the hot seat while Tech has its coach for the future.

Every single one of these points was also precisely true last year. When we won. In Atlanta. But you were aware of that.

If we do lose to the Jackets this year, which I concede is not unlikely, it will be because of our young, inexperienced linebacking corps getting torn up by an offense unlike any other they've seen. Mr. Guest Blogger does in fact mention this, but loses half credit for making it a one-sentence bullet and glossing over it. Do you know what irony is, Guest Blogger? Irony is a Georgia Tech fan who can watch his team use a novel offense never before seen in a BCS conference to defy legions of naysayers and win nine games, and then claim another team (which he has not researched) will struggle because of a new offense.

**I made that up, it's more fun than not doing it and sounds better than just saying "Stu told me" as if I was trying to explain which of my drinking buddies told me the whopper you're about to hear.

the recruit: Christopher Brathwaite

Name: Christopher Brathwaite
Position: OLB
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
School: Holy Cross (Queens)
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 250

ESPN: NR
Rivals: NR
Scout: NR

There ain't much out there on Brathwaite, to be honest, which is a shame, because irregardless (THAT'S NOT A WORD) of his future football prospects at UVA, it's clear we're getting a solid person. He's already qualified, which should come as no surprise: Holy Cross is a distinctive private school, and you might have heard of some of their more well-known recent alums: Kevin Ogletree and some basketball player named Sylven Landesberg.

So those concerns aside, what are we getting on the football field? It'll all depend on how well Brathwaite makes the transition from the defensive line to linebacker. Brathwaite is a "classic tweener": short for a defensive end, and biggish for the standard 4-3 linebacker. Ah, but we play a 3-4, as you well know, and Al Groh sees Brathwaite in the Darryl Blackstock/Clint Sintim role: rush linebacker that often plays with a hand on the ground.

Trouble is, Brathwaite plays defensive tackle at Holy Cross. As defensive tackles are not called upon to do any pass coverage or any linebackery stuff, Brathwaite knows he has a learning curve ahead of him. 250 pounds, however, is not big enough to play DT at the college level, and if he were likely to get substantially bigger he'd have more I-A offers than the one he currently holds, so this was going to be the case no matter what.

As the above link will tell you, he's been tearing up the camp scene, and garnering words of praise from Mike Farrell, who has this to say:

On defense, Flushing (N.Y.) Holy Cross defensive end Christopher Brathwaite, coming off his MVP performance at the NIKE Camp in Virginia, dominated the one-on-ones. He has superior strength, a very quick first step and a tenacity and motor you can’t teach. Only Vardaro was a match for him on the day.

"Vardaro" is Boston College commit and offensive tackle Robert Vardaro, FWIW. The dude is also 6'5", 307. If it takes an extra 57 pounds to match up with our boy here, I think I like that.

Brathwaite's almost certainly looking at a redshirt year, so he can learn how to play linebacker. And it's probably fair to wonder what might become of him if Groh is let go after this year and a new regime installs a totally different defense. But I have to admit this: During the course of researching this post, Brathwaite quickly became a personal favorite. I'm on record as being mildly annoyed about all these guys who nobody but us recruited, and Rutgers really was the only other I-A team looking at Brathwaite and they hadn't offered. And sure, when it comes to covering recruiting, certain things are ubiquitous and unavoidable. Effusive quotes from the high school coach. "Academics are a priority." You see it so often, you stop noticing. For whatever reason - maybe it's the high school, maybe it's the camp performances or the really mean look on his face in all the pictures - I drank the Kool-Aid here, and I see Brathwaite as the Kevin Parks of the defense: a guy who'd be way up everyone's charts if he were differently sized. Brathwaite underscores how uniquely tough it can be to recruit at UVA: the school is one of a select few that actually does more than pay lip service to the notion of a student-athlete, to the extent of frustrating many fans. I think in Brathwaite, Al Groh has found precisely what he's looking for in all his recruits.

my stance on Al Groh

I anticipate a lot of ups and downs this season. I think there will be games in which I'm cussing out at least half the coaching staff, and others that prove everyone involved with UVA football is a bloody genius. This is, I think, a Season of Truth, so to speak. With that in mind, I want to get this on the record so there will no confusion and no accusations of waffling. Going to put it out there for all to critique, how exactly I feel about our esteemed head coach and what the future should hold.

To sum up in one tidy sentence: I am absolutely not in the Groh Must Go camp, but I am getting there.

How is this? Let's bulletize:

- Groh is as loyal a Virginia Cavalier as you're ever likely to see. That's worth something in my book. This is a guy that had a taste of the biggest of the big-times. Of all the tiers of football coaching in the country, "head coach in the National Football League" is the rarest, and the pinnacle. And Groh wasn't coaching just anywhere, he was coaching in New York, the hand-picked successor of the most respected mind in professional football, Bill Parcells. The opinion of Parcells is pure, solid gold as far as football minds are concerned. Groh had it made. You just don't get a better deal than that.

And then he left. Gave it up to come to Charlottesville and coach his alma mater. Here's a guy whose dream job was not the New York Jets, or Dallas Cowboys, or Notre Dame or Alabama or USC. It was the University of Virginia. If that doesn't count for something, then you might as well pack up now and buy an ugly maroon sweatshirt. Groh busts his ass every day for this team, and his players notice it and support him. I've no doubt that whenever Groh's tenure is over, there will be much sentimentality and well-wishing because of this stuff; it would be nice to take a moment out of the Groh-bashing to recognize it before he moves on.

- That said, I also think it's clear we've seen what Groh's ceiling is. It should be noted that one thing Groh has never done is win less than five games in a season. It's nice that we've never been Duke-bad, but Groh has also shown he's capable of taking any recruiting class, be it all five-stars or all two-stars, and turning it into an 8-win team. That's the baseline. Anything more is rare and sometimes takes 14 games to achieve (see 2002); anything less tends to be considered a disappointment. Eight years of Al Groh has shown us that the Groh regime isn't cut out to turn this team into a perennial contender.

That's fine for now, if Groh can keep us expecting that level of success all the way until the end of his tenure. He's 65; he's not gonna be coaching ten more years. It's fine because it keeps expectations high enough that the admin won't have to settle for a retread or roll the dice on an unknown assistant.

But two of Groh's three 5-7 seasons have come in the past three years, right at a time when the ACC is ripe for the taking for anyone opportunistic enough. We can't be going 5-7 again. And I needn't remind you that Groh has beaten VPISU just once, five seasons ago.

- This season, then, needs to be make-or-break. People will set specific conditions on this season: have to go to a bowl, have to beat Tech, etc. etc. I won't. Say we do both, but it's a 6-7 season with ugly blowouts and a sorry-looking loss to some crummy MAC team in a bowl? Do you keep Groh then? I don't. We need a successful season, the exact definition of which will come sometime after November 1, but will probably include some combination of enough wins to keep us contending in the Coastal all year, a bowl game not played in Mobile, and yes, a win over Tech.

More important, though, is the desperate need for a sense of direction and purpose. We don't need a successful season for a successful season's sake. We need one because certain personnel decisions last year (Mike Groh, Peter Lalich) displayed loud and clear that Groh is hanging on a thread. Two years in a row of letting him dangle like that ain't fair to Groh and it ain't right for the program. I promise you every recruit we've ever been in touch with this year is being told Groh is a lame duck, and how can we refute that when that's how we feel ourselves? The worst thing that can happen is to have another weak-ass season floundering in the wilderness and for the admin to allow the lame duck to continue. It's not the right thing to do by the program, but not only that, it's not the right thing to do by Groh: making him coach with a sword of Damocles over his head, crippling him on the recruiting trail and taking decisions out of his hands that 119 other D-IA coaches have control over.

At some point this season, the decision needs to be made. And frankly, we should know the answer before Thanksgiving - before the Tech game. If the admin silently decides Groh should be fired but allows him to coach out the season, that's fine, but no one criterion should be the deciding factor here. Because it's not about this coming season, it's about this coming decade. I hope for the best here. I really do. I don't want to see Groh fired, I want him to come out blazing this year and set himself up to go out on his own terms, whenever that might be. But as my take on Dave Leitao might have tipped you off to, I tend to stick by a coach long after most everyone else has called for his head. If I start thinking it might be time to go, it probably is. And we're in real danger of getting there.