what the hell?

In retrospect, maybe we should've seen this coming? For the third year in a row now, Al Groh's Hoos have picked a random game that looked just like any other going in - which is to say, trouble - and gone all SUPRISE BUTTSECKS on some hapless opponent. The only difference between Indiana '09 and Maryland '08/Miami '07 is the meaningless touchdown at the end. The shutout would have been nice, but it's the least of anyone's concerns. The point is that random, out-of-nowhere blowouts that make you scratch your head and ask yourself the above question somewhere around "27-0 in the second quarter" have been something of a hallmark of the Groh Decade.


It's so funny how I learn, every year, how quickly the fortunes of our football team can swing, mid-season. You'd think in my 10th year of UVA fanhood I'd have learned this lesson by now, but you'd be wrong; apparently I am not a fast learner. Two weeks into the season - actually one week, really, because eight days is all it takes to end up 0-2 - everything was DOOM. Two weeks after being 0-3 - again, actually just one week - I'm about to open my fat mouth about bowl games again.


Yes, bowl games. Before the Southern Miss game, you may recall I opined that our trip to Hattiesburg was a must-win game, because three out of the next four would keep us in bowl contention but UNC was already penciled in as a loss. One UNC upset and an Indiana-stomp later, here we are with a very good chance to pull off that 3-of-4 trick that looked very possible even at 0-3.


The lesson to be learned from Saturday is merely this: We will have an actual chance in every game left on the schedule - and in several cases much more than just a chance - because the defense is legit. I don't care if it was "just" Indiana or "just" UNC's bland, thoroughly predictable offense. Carolina has many problems but talent is not one of them, as evidenced by their ability to rack up large numbers of points against crappy teams. And Indiana has played Ohio State - one of the top ten defenses in the country - and wouldn't you know it, the defensive statistics match up pretty well. Hell, we're top-20 ourselves, and ninth (ninth!) in the country (the country!) against the pass, with opponents averaging just five yards per attempt. God, if only the offense could follow suit. For one fantastic Saturday afternoon, Indiana found out what happens when they do.


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


It almost makes no sense to analyze the game, because usually that involves "what went right" and "what went wrong." Yesterday it was what went right, what went right-er, and what went more-er right-er.


- The offense was absolutely sparkling. That's the first time we've been able to say anything nice about the offense without adding ten major caveats afterwards. Take away the bad snap over Verica's head (which is a "rushing attempt" only in the most technical sense) and we averaged 5.5 yards per carry. A less statistical way of saying this would be that I thought we'd be able to run pretty much at will against IU, and we did. The offensive line spent all day bulldozing the IU defensive line, and Messrs. Simpson, Jackson, and Mack reaped the rewards.


- Duh. It seems so obvious. Hm, Vic Hall is not outplaying Jameel Sewell at quarterback and our wide receivers aren't outplaying anybody? What to do, what to do. Huh. Hey, let's line Hall up at receiver and throw at him a lot. You'd think this sort of thing would occur to me earlier, but I'm glad it occurred to the coaching staff this week, because Hall's pass-catching was huge. The only other receiver that's shown enough flashes of brilliance to give me hope for the upcoming weeks is Kris Burd, who had just two catches against IU. But they were big ones. In any case, though, I like the idea of Hall at receiver and wholeheartedly endorse it going forward. He's got a little catching up to do but if he stays there the rest of the season, he'll lead the team in receptions.

- Sooner or later someone is going to figure out that they need to watch the running back who we just play-faked to.

- I do not fault Al Groh for having Simpson in the game just long enough to get hurt. I've always felt, if you're blowing someone out, you should keep your foot on the gas pedal until the fourth quarter. Or until you have a triple-digit lead, whichever comes first. And Simpson was not being overworked: 15 carries in 2 and a half quarters works out to 24 in the game, which isn't excessive. He's barely had any work this season. Last week was the first time all year he'd gotten a decent number of carries. After that drive would have been the right time to sit him, but seven minutes left in the third quarter is still too soon.

- I do wonder what the hell we were doing going for two in the 2nd quarter. I dunno, maybe Al wanted to work on something, but not only was that some bizarre timing, it was a whacked-out play that was doomed from the start. It couldn't have been more obvious we were going for two, and that being the case, why send the kicker out there? I don't get it.

- Two weeks in a row now the tackling has been impeccable. Big reason why our pass defense is so good. Enemy receivers are getting no yards after contact at all. That's how you turn third-and-four into fourth-and-one instead of first-and-ten.


So about that bowl thing. It's back on the radar, but it's still a long uphill climb. Of the opponents left on our schedule, three are ranked and four are not; getting to a bowl requires beating all those unranked teams and/or scoring a major upset. No slip-ups allowed. The good news is, does the ACC really scare you very much? Only two teams in the conference remain undefeated in ACC play, and one of 'em lost to William & Mary. Yay crappy conference. One week at a time, and if all goes well we too can aspire to play in a bowl game in Mobile, against a third-tier MAC team, sponsored by a bailed-out bank. Sounds like fun.

Blogpoll ballot, Week 6

Ballot below, suggestions encouraged, etc. etc.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama
2	Virginia Tech
3	Florida	1
4	Texas	1
5	Southern Cal	2
6	Ohio State	2
7	Boise State	2
8	Cincinnati	2
9	Miami (Florida)
10	Iowa	4
11	Georgia Tech	1
12	LSU	2
13	Oregon
14	TCU	1
15	Penn State	2
16	Nebraska	4
17	Oklahoma State	1
18	Brigham Young	6
19	Oklahoma
20	Houston	5
21	South Florida	1
22	Kansas
23	South Carolina	2
24	Pittsburgh
25	Utah
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Auburn (#11), Georgia (#18), Wisconsin (#23).

Not much by way of explanation here. Auburn and Wisconsin drop out because the only thing keeping them around was an undefeated record. Auburn took it in the nuts from a team they shouldn't have lost to, and their defense is frankly appalling. And Wisconsin's flimsy resume doesn't look any better now that there's a loss attached to it. I'm still not particularly enthused about anything below Oklahoma, though. I expect a lot of shuffling in that part of the ballot in the coming weeks. Kansas is a fraud and cruising for an ass-whooping in two weeks, but they're an undefeated fraud, and hey, at least they didn't lose to NC State, Pittsburgh.

Anyway, suggestions encouraged as always.

game preview: Indiana

Date/Time: October 10, 3:30 PM

TV: ESPN360, which isn't really TV

Last matchup: Never

Last week: UVA 16, UNC 3; OSU 33, IU 14

Line: UVA by 6.5 (!)

Opposing blogs: The Crimson Quarry

Injury report:

(coming tomorrow)

So I've spent all week trying to decide which angle to go with for this preview. Is this a toilet-bowl matchup of two assed-out teams trying to decide which one is going to miss bowl eligibility by a slimmer margin? Most of the rest of the country seems to think so, hence the relegation to ESPN360 among other indignities. Or maybe we're on our way to showing we're not that bad, and Indiana is the crap team they've been since forever and we should stomp them but good. Or maybe, heaven forbid, it's the other way round, although that last was never under consideration for use in this article. Anyway, I still haven't decided.

Regardless, though, this is a must-win. Maybe the mustest-win on the whole schedule. Maybe ever. In history. My reasons are a lot more selfish than "Al Groh's on the hot seat," mind you. See, I have this cousin. He's good people. And his college football fanhood followed much the same track as mine: grow up worshiping one team, then go to a different school and simply add that school to the pedestal. I grew up rooting for Michigan. My cousin? He grew up in Ohio. And he's the kind of guy who thinks a bottle opener that plays the OSU fight song when you open a bottle is the perfect Christmas gift for a Michigan fan. So you can imagine what holiday dinners have been like. We have been banned from discussing this subject at the dinner table. Literally. Shut up, we have been told. Car rides have been made miserable for other family members. And you might have guessed by now that my cousin is an Indiana grad. Which, of course my brother would go to Purdue so that these get-togethers would be just that much more interesting. Anyway, we have to win, otherwise Christmas is going to suck.

HOW WE CAN KEEP MY THANKSGIVING FROM BEING RUINED

- Press coverage from the cornerbacks. When airing it out, Indiana favors a dink-and-dunk passing attack that relies on a high completion percentage, and they throw primarily to wide receivers Tandon Doss and Damarlo Belcher. We have three excellent cornerbacks that have plenty of athleticism, and IU's offense is similar to UNC's in this respect, so there's no reason to lay off with soft coverage. Have Dowling, Cook, and Minnifield get up in their grill and take away the short game.

- Heavy doses of Mikell Simpson. Just like last week. Michigan gashed Indiana something fierce in the running game. Or, more specifically and correctly, Michigan's Carlos Brown gashed Indiana something fierce. Brown carried 11 times for 83 yards - a sparkling 7.5 ypc - and Michigan's running plays look a lot like ours did against UNC, as both are run out of the shotgun. (Michigan uses more zone read, but the end result, if it's a handoff, is the same.) And Carlos Brown and Simpson are very, very similar running backs. We can rack up some rushing yards the same way Michigan - and incidentally, Ohio State with Brandon Saine - did. I'd like to see a little more Torrey Mack too so that Simpson doesn't disintegrate in November, but regardless Simpson is a weapon we should lean on this Saturday.

- If the wide receivers could get open, that'd be sweet, so that Jameel Sewell doesn't have to dance aimlessly in the pocket and make previously unknown defensive ends look like superstuds.

HOW WE CAN MAKE SURE I GET AN INDIANA BOTTLE OPENER TO GO ALONG WITH MY OHIO STATE ONE

- Indiana has some reasonably frightful running backs and a pretty creative running game to the outside. If the outside linebackers have a subpar game, IU's Darius Willis has a sneaky second gear and a way of running away from people that results in long running plays.

- Frankly, IU's defense is pretty nondescript, but they're good enough to make bad teams have bad days. Western Michigan put up all of 22 rushing yards on them. But as implied above, they're also bad enough to let good teams have good days. So our performance is entirely on us, and Southern Miss aside, we have yet to reach the 20's in the points department. If we don't get any offense, we're in for a struggle no matter what the defense does, and yes, our offense is definitely bad enough to lose us this game.

- Turnovers. Notice what happened last week when we ceased handing free possessions to the other team. Are we actually through with that William & Mary, 7-turnover bullshit? Or are we just going to be a turnover-ridden team this year? This is a good game to find out, because the one turnover answer we do have is that the offense isn't going to rack up enough yardage to overcome stupid turnovers, so going forward, you can consider this a pretty standard item. Yes, "don't turn the ball over" is good advice for any team that wants to win a game, but it's more than good advice for us - it's an essential.

HOW THE GAME WILL GO

Well, ESPN's Heather picked us last week and we vindicated her, as she likes to remind you (hey, she was the only one. She's got bragging rights) and she's sticking with it this week. I feel obligated to mention it because there has to be some kind of good luck charm running around somewhere and this might very well be it. I haven't picked us to win since Week 1 and we all know how that turned out, but this week I'm joining Heather in the Go Us category. The defense, too, is starting to get a little ESPN-style love and they use some very sabermetricy numbers to bear that out, so it's not just blabbermouthing. Indiana is an unspectacular team that is good at several things but not really outstanding at anything. This is an improvement over the Indiana that everyone knows and loves to have for Homecoming so that the alums can enjoy a stress-free Saturday afternoon and write big checks to the football team, but I think we match up well against them. We're coming off a feel-good win, it's our own Homecoming, and Anthony Poindexter is getting his big day - the fans should be feeling a lot less mutinous than they were to start the TCU game. I think we'll win this game. It might actually be closer than the UNC game, and it will almost certainly be just as low-scoring. Our offense and defense are the worst and best units on the field, respectively, and I don't think either team will make the 20-point mark. But I think we'll get the win.

REST OF THE ACC

Boston College at Virginia Tech, 12:00
North Carolina vs. Georgia Southern, 3:30
Duke at NC State, 4:00
Maryland at Wake Forest, 6:30
Miami vs. Florida A&M, 7:00
Georgia Tech at Florida State, 8:00

the replacements: Tommy Tuberville

Every Wednesday-ish for a while, until such time as it stops being useful to do so, I'll pick one name and yak about what I think. I won't be getting to every name on the Which Coaches post, nor will I limit myself to the names on that list. And no, last Saturday's win doesn't lift Al Groh off the hot seat. Not sure when that'll be, but I'll probably know it when I see it, and that wasn't it.

To get the suspense out of the way, today's spotlight is on my #1 choice to fill the job should Groh be let go. #1 by a long, long shot.

Tommy Tuberville

Main qualification: Compiled an 85-40 record at Auburn in ten seasons, including a 13-0 season in 2004.

Coaching resume:

1980-1984: Arkansas State (DE/LB)
1985-1993: Miami (various, eventually DC)
1994: Texas A&M (DC)
1995-1998: Mississippi (HC)
1999-2008: Auburn (HC)

Tuberville will probably have his pick of coaching jobs after this season. Given his record, any AD that doesn't at least put in a phone call is either a dope, or working in Division II. But it's a thin year for coaches looking to get hired. Check out the list of schools with coaches on the hot seat. Akron, Kent State, UNLV....this is not a heavyweight list. The only BCS schools where the coaches look very, very gone are Colorado, Louisville, Illinois, Florida State, and of course, Virginia.

TFSU is out of course, because of the whole Jimbo Fisher thing. And even if you scroll on down to "medium heat", you only add Maryland and Clemson to the BCS list, neither of which are going to fire their coach this year. Friedgen's buyout is keeping him safe, and Dabo Swinney has only just now coached the equivalent of a full season for crying out loud.

So yeah: Colorado, Louisville, Illinois, or Virginia. I feel pretty secure in declaring our job, should it come open, likely to be the single most attractive anywhere in the country this offseason, unless someone like Georgia does something stupid. At Colorado you don't have much of a recruiting base and you have to deal with some pretty well-entrenched superpowers in your conference. Illinois has similar problems, if not of quite the same magnitude, but there's a lot of lousy history there and a very distinct "basketball school in a football conference" feel to their team. Louisville, well. I suppose if you like playing Connecticut every year and recruiting against both the Big Ten and SEC. Meanwhile, here at UVA we sit on a gold mine of instate talent if we could just stop it going off to LSU and Alabama, and the ACC is so ripe for the taking it's not even funny. This is parityville, and a really good coach can make a huge dent right away. See: Johnson, Paul, 2008. Probably the only downside is that we require our student-athletes to actually major in something and furthermore actually attend class and get actual grades. If there's a coach that sees this as too much of an obstacle, we're probably not meant for each other.

(This, by the way, is also a good argument for making a change this year. Next year who knows what jobs might be open. When you're looking like the best option in a buyer's market for coaches, that's fortuitous timing if you can take advantage.)

Alright then. So having made the case for why Tommy Tuberville should choose Virginia, why then should Virginia choose Tommy Tuberville?

That's the easy part. Tuberville can frickin' coach. The record speaks for itself. An SEC championship - not an easy accomplishment - and his list of bowls looks like a tropical kitchen. Three Citruses, two Peaches, a Sugar and a Cotton. And a Music City thrown in there on an off-year. Tuberville also achieved a 7-3 record against Alabama, and that's not to be ignored in a rivalry where Alabama has a 39-33 edge. No sense doubting his recruiting chops, either. If you can recruit against the SEC you can recruit against the ACC.

Some Virginia fans would likely be upset by his tendency while at Auburn to mine the jucos and prep schools for talent that might not have had the easiest time getting qualified for NCAA competition, and probably also by Auburn's skirting the edges of legality in keeping their players qualified once at school. This is where UVA's often-frustrating insistence on actual academic achievement would come in handy: Auburn - the school itself - has never had any problem looking the other way when it came to the rulebook. There's quite a messy history there. In fact, Tuberville is probably to be praised for his restraint in running a near-completely clean program in an atmosphere so permissive of shenanigans that the school president himself once flew out to Louisville to meet in secret with an under-contract coach whose AD most definitely had not given anyone permission to speak with anyone. While Alabama and Kentucky and such were getting in serious hot water in the early part of the decade for recruiting violations, Tuberville kept his hands clean in that regard. Any rulebook issues Tuberville might bring are minor to the point of non-issuedom, and almost certainly easily quashed by a much less permissive administration at UVA.

Tuberville offers, quite simply, the fastest route to success. He's the most pedigreed candidate out there and far and away the most known quantity. The level of success that he had at Auburn would probably not be duplicated here, but it wouldn't be out of the question either. Tuberville is 55 years old and has another 10-12 years of coaching in him. The major question is whether the administration would be willing to fork out. Al Groh makes about $1.8 million, and Tony Bennett about $1.7. Tuberville was getting $2.8 million in base salary at Auburn, and other compensation pushed his total yearly value north of $3 million. I've been working under the assumption that the administration would be willing to pay a new coach a salary similar to Groh's, but not much more if at all. Would it take $3 million to hire Tuberville? I don't know. But if it does, I think UVA will consider itself priced out and look elsewhere, which would be a disappointment.

Certain interwebz message-board-type rumors have Tuberville halfway in the job already. Watching tape of our recruits, chatting up the admin, already overusing the word "circumstances", that sort of thing. Not being the sort to believe everything I read on the interwebz, because most of it turns out to be, you know, complete horse hockey, I will buy these stories when the ink is dry on the contract. But you have to admit these kinds of stories are better than the opposite. Because Tuberville, assuming he's affordable and therefore taking care of the balance sheet viewpoint, makes sense from every angle you can think of. He'd bring instant credibility, being the kind of guy the boosters would be happy to loosen their wallets for. Plain and simple, this is the coach we want.

weekend review

This'll be a little abbreviated because I'm nervously watching the Tigers play this make-or-break playoff-before-the-playoff against the evil Minnesota Twinkies and their spawn-of-Satan manager, Gardenhire. Die Minnesota die. Anyway. Just a couple bullets, plus the usual features: recruiting board update, senior seasons, and the blog review to see what everyone else thought about the weekend.

Bullets:

- Some honors for UVA footballers both past and present. Anthony Poindexter will have his jersey retired in that confusing ceremony where they "retire" something but don't actually retire anything. Can't we call this "honoring the number" or something like that? So that'll be before the Indiana game this weekend. Makes you wonder why it took so long.

- Also, how about this for cool: Robert Randolph and Matt Conrath get ACC PotW honors as co-specialist and co-defensive lineman. Good things happen when you win. Also, the ACC continues to be quite good at honoring folks whose biggest contributions don't necessarily show up on the stat sheet; this week, that'd be Conrath, whose three blocked passes only appear in the box score as more incompletions for T.J. Yates.

- The Maryland game is on at 4 on ESPNUVA. Works for me: Any game not relegated to ESPN360 is a good one.

Recruiting board update! Nothing good. Recruiting continues to be dead in the water, and in fact going backwards as no doubt you've heard we had our first decommitment.

- For decommitting and booking it to NC State, Tyler Brosius does not get removed. Decommitments don't get off so easy. No, the punishment for this is to be sent to the very bottom of the board and enshrined in a special set of particularly hellacious colors. Random thought: Now that we've beaten UNC it'll be interesting to see if NC State does too, as any Pack fan will tell you that UNC is their biggest rival and follow it up with a Go To Hell Carolina.

- Removed is Nick Dew who surprise surprise committed to Tech. I wonder why I didn't do that a while ago.

- Added DTs Brandon Sparrow and Ainsley Miller and OT Michael Justice. In some cases this is the sort of thing I warned you about; Justice, for example. Justice is almost certainly a fallback plan if both Kolb and Havenstein look elsewhere. We absolutely cannot stick ourselves with just one offensive lineman in the class.

Here's what went on this week in the high schools:

KEVIN PARKS: I probably ought to start getting used to calling him KP. Parks has run for 1,341 yards and 19 touchdowns, which would be pretty damn impressive in a full season. Over seven games it's unreal.

E.J. SCOTT: Just one catch for nine yards in Good Counsel's 21-7 win over McNamara. It's been a quiet season for Scott. The bigger news is this Friday's showdown between Scott's Good Counsel team and Kyrrel Latimer's DeMatha.

RYAN COBB: Caught a touchdown and had five tackles in Don Bosco's 49-8 win against Passaic.

TYLER BROSIUS: Oh wait I don't care.

Now for the rest of the ACC. We'll save the best for last, too.

- Gobbler Country did not enjoy the Hokies' trip to Bizzarro World as VT had a bit of an interesting time against Dook.

- Willy Mac at Block-C had the same criticism of his own team's offense as I had for UNC's, which obviously would not be good for Clemson. Also, losing to Maryland causes Block-C to cease caring about what week it is, which is really nothing more than the usual symptom of lost-to-Maryland-itis. Take two Vitamin Dukes and call me in the morning. Meanwhile, Testudo Times points out that the ACC Atlantic is now basically a complete flip-flop from the predictions. Dude, Maryland is the only undefeated team in that division, how did that happen?

- State Fans Nation is grumpy after NC State's loss to Wake.

- With Florida State's loss to BC, Tomahawk Nation is fed up with Bobby Bowden. Very fed up. Extremely fed up.

- Finally, let's enjoy a last little bit of UNC schadenfreude before we finish. We'll start with Dr. Saturday, who doesn't have any schadenfreude for us but his ACC roulette wheel is a fun read nontheless. I do take issue with one statement:

...the Tar Heels finished with a pathetic 173 yards total offense on 2.9 yards per snap, but probably suffered more from committing three turnovers to the Cavaliers' zero, one of which led to the game's only touchdown.

Actually, I think the 2.9 yards per snap hurt them way worse than the turnovers. One was the recovered punt, which led to another punt. One interception was just the game-ender, which by that point the game was almost certainly a foregone conclusion anyway. One interception did lead to a touchdown, but as it was already 9-3 and Carolina didn't score again, it was mainly icing on the cake. UNC only advanced past the 50 three times and never into the red zone, and turnovers had very little to do with that.

Anyway, UNC. Actually, the prevailing opinion tends to be "wow, we suck", the offensive line and coordinator being the main targets of blame as the Carolina fanbase starts to wonder about basketball season. No, the main thing is that Heather Dinich appears to be the only one who called this the right way. Which, uh. Yeah. I didn't see it coming and neither did the Carolina faithful:

Despite the dangerous nature of a desperate UVa team, UNC should win this game and it should not be close. Anything else is simply going leave the Heels open to more questions about their toughness coming off a loss not to mention doubts galore.

UNC 35 UVa 10

Actually, the money quote is in the comments section:

Just to cheer you guys up, the coaching was actually probably worse in last year’s UVa game. Feel better….?

Which, he's right: if you recall, Butch Davis had about exactly as much time as Verica used up to move the ball fewer yards downfield than Verica had to and try to kick the game-winning field goal, and instead opted for overtime. You can tell UNC - no offense, really, it's just the truth - is a basketball school because if this was Clemson who kept losing to us like this, the fans would not only have backed a moving van up to Davis's house but in the dead of the night they'd have broken in and packed it up, too.

I'll leave you with three lines from Carolina March: one which is so hilariously true, one which is just hilariously hilarious, and one which should be just enough to keep you enjoying these little UNC wins:

It's almost as if The Oldest Rivalry in the South exists solely to annoy the SEC by being battled over by two basketball schools.

So funny because it's true.

Let's make this perfectly clear. There is no way Virginia can win on Saturday.

So funny because it turned out not to be true at all.

There's no excitement, no hatred, just a distaste towards Mr. Jefferson's bourbon-breathed imbecilic followers.

See you in Charlottesville, same time, next year.

UNC video is up

Finally. The videos page now contains the highlights from Saturday's win over UNC. It is recommended, for your health, that you go check this out. A new season means I get the chance to debut some NEW AND IMPROVED features, plus, it wouldn't be a very good video if I didn't immortalize Al Groh's classic "hard to stick a fork in" line. Which I did. You have to admit, the man gives great sideline interviews. Anyway, off you go to watch the first football highlight video of the new season.

Blogpoll ballot Week 5

I am a bad, bad Blogpoller for not having this in for the early deadline, but circumstances didn't allow it. Al Groh is in his ninth season as our coach, so you know by now how circumstances can make a mess of things.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama
2	Virginia Tech
3	Texas
4	Florida
5	Boise State
6	Cincinnati
7	Southern Cal	4
8	Ohio State	4
9	Miami (Florida)	4
10	LSU	7
11	Auburn	3
12	Georgia Tech	6
13	Oregon	2
14	Iowa	6
15	TCU	8
16	Oklahoma State	7
17	Penn State	5
18	Georgia	8
19	Oklahoma	3
20	Nebraska	1
21	South Carolina	2
22	South Florida	2
23	Wisconsin
24	Brigham Young
25	Houston	17
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Michigan (#21), North Carolina State (#25).

This seems nepotistic to me. Why is Oklahoma State ranked so high? Well, they beat Georgia, that's why. Why's Georgia ranked so high? Well, they only lost to Oklahoma State. And LSU, which is now pretty high up there because they beat Georgia. It's a vicious circle. Much the same is true for Oklahoma and BYU. The problem is, who do you replace them with if they're not worthy of ranking? The waiting list includes Pitt, Michigan, Stanford, and Boston College, all of whom have losses to teams that ranked teams shouldn't lose to and not much in the way of a marquee win.

Also, TCU took a big drop which seems weird, except it seemed weirder to keep them ranked in the top ten when their best win of the year is Clemson, which just gacked against Maryland. Us beating UNC did not counteract that very much at all. I sort of had an epiphany and realized their schedule so far really kind of blows. So I dunno, I guess there's still a lot of perception bias in this thing. One thing I did try to reward is being 5-0, which only eight teams can claim. They're all on there now, even though Wisconsin has played nothing but crummy teams and squeeeeeaked by four of them.

As for programming this week, the weekend review thingamajig will just have to wait til tomorrow. One win does not, unfortunately, lift Al Groh off the hot seat, so Wednesday we'll look at another potential replacement. Hopefully I can squeeze Akil Mitchell in there somewhere.

How Ya Like Us Now?

Dear ACC, And By Which I Mean Those Of You Who Follow The ACC For Fun, Or Perhaps Like Me It's Your Job To Blab Your Opinion At Everyone Else,

How's your weekend going? OK? Everything you asked for? Myself I'm doing alright. Maybe some of you are too, but the way I've heard it things aren't the way you were hoping. Sorry about that. You guys in Clemson and Chapel Hill probably have had better days, and there will be some other sad faces by the time today is done, quite possibly in Tallahassee the way things are going. Sorry to hear it.

Ha! No. That was a lie. I'm not sorry one bit. In last week's ACC Roundtable, our Terrapin rep Testudo Times apologized for Maryland's piss-poor showing in the non-conference schedule. Our has been worse, and I don't apologize at all. Was it a little annoying to the rest of you that the bottom fourth of the conference wasn't holding up its end of the bargain against the invaders from the rest of the country? Gee, that must have been some inconvenience, huh?

Well lemme tell ya something. September sucked. No matter how much you guys clucked your tongue and fretted over the ACC's reputation, you didn't have it as bad as it could have been. I'll tell you about bad. That might have been the worst September in UVA history since the Reagan administration. The first Reagan administration. Why should we have to apologize to you?

Because, admit it. You were happy to pile on. You thought it was funny when your rivals were losing to I-AA teams, and while you wished we weren't making the conference looked bad, you were just happy it wasn't you. I get it. I've been there too. I like my schadenfreude as much as anyone. The flip side of schadenfreude, though, is that when it's your turn, you better take care of business.

And if you thought the ACC looked bad before, hooooooboy you ain't seen nothin' yet. Wait'll you see what people say about this conference when two of the three teams you declared the bottom tier, wrote off, and told everyone you couldn't be responsible for how they represented the conference, when those teams sit atop their respective divisions. Undefeated. And you have only yourselves to blame. And We're. Not. Sorry. At. All.

Sincerely,

Virginia

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

Undefeated. It sounds so sweet, especially when it doesn't coincide with "also, winless." Will it last? No. Come now, let's not delude ourselves. Reality is still out there, lurking. Tomorrow, Al Groh's job will still be in jeopardy. Tomorrow, there will be a game next week, and one of the most dangerous kinds: a bad team with a good offense. There are eight games to play this season, and tomorrow, every single one of us will know that we'll certainly lose our share of them and probably lose more than we think is fair. Today? Today we won, and there's nothing like tomorrow and yesterday to remind us why today is so much fun.

Game balls go to every swingin' dick that has anything to do with the defense, from Al to Zane. It's hard to remember a better defensive performance. We've pitched some shutouts lately - two last year, one in 2007 - but I think you have to go back further than that to find a better all-around defensive game.

Let's get this part out of the way first: It helps that North Carolina is exactly what I've been telling you all this time. Their playbook is like, Tecmo Super Bowl creative, only smaller. They apparently have just three running plays: Left, Middle, and Right, and judging by our linebackers' ability to get at them, their signals are equally complex. They threw the ball downfield I think three times. They make Bo Schembechler look like Mike Leach. They have now scored 10 points in two games, and UNC fans right now ought to be howling for Butch Davis to try adding another page to their play-pamphlet, because right now the offense has fewer wrinkles than a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant's uniform.

That said, let's not take away from the defensive effort today. What went right? Everything:

- The tackling was just outstanding. No other word for it. Shaun Draughn is a guy I've praised in the past for his bullrushing style, and Ras-I Dowling - a cornerback - flattened him. There were no yards after contact today.

- The defensive line made T.J. Yates eat dirt all day long. Minnifield's interception was because Nate Collins made a mess of Yates's throw. Matt Conrath batted down three passes. Zane Parr made a name for himself.

- Al Groh dialed up the blitz at all the right times and kept UNC off-balance with different formations and excellent defensive playcalling in general.

- The secondary had a largely unheralded effort, but make no mistake they were absolutely outstanding. They had a blanket on every deep ball UNC threw, and not one play ever got behind them. You can look pretty good when the quarterback is being pressured, but the safeties were fantastic in run support and the corners didn't give Yates anything to throw at.

On offense? For every plus, there's a minus. UNC has one of the better defenses in the conference, and Robert Quinn is a fine player - that much is true. But he's not quite the player the announcers were talking up, and Landon Bradley had an absolutely brutal day going up against him. And he compounded that with a really dumb penalty that wiped out a big gain. Bradley was the glaring goat of the day; a close second would be the whole wide receiving corps, which spent the day not getting open unless UNC was - for some inexplicable reason - playing zone.

The rest of the offensive line picked it up in a big way, though, mainly in the run game. Mikell Simpson had running room all day. The spread-style shotgun handoff to Simpson worked, and worked, and worked, because both guards, Cabbell and Pasztor, were exploding holes in UNC's vaunted defensive line. Quinn might have had himself a day, but Marvin Austin, who's supposed to be the star of the unit, was anonymous.

So. Sewell was decent. Simpson was good. The offense did what it had to for the most part. (Except convert third downs.) Going forward, though, we're not going to score any points if the wide receivers can't keep defenses honest. We'll face worse defenses than this, but this is becoming a pattern. Five receptions by the receivers is awful - Mikell Simpson had four and Rashawn Jackson had four more. For today, we can let it go - the defense made everything OK. For the future, it has to get better. Has to.

I said it earlier, though: That's for tomorrow. Today, it's Carolina that has to figure things out. We're 1-0 in the only section of the standings that matter anymore, and it's going to stay that way for two weeks. Nothing like a win to make everything seem alright.

game preview: North Carolina

Date/Time: October 3, 12:00

TV: Raycom

Last matchup: UVA 16, UNC 13 (Highlights!)

Last week: UVA off; GT 24, UNC 7

Line: UNC by 13

Opposing blogs: Tar Heel Fan, and ACC Roundtable member Tar Heel Mania

Injury report:

OUT: S Matt Leemhuis, RB Dominique Wallace

DOUBTFUL: none

QUESTIONABLE: QB Vic Hall, S Corey Mosley

PROBABLE: CB Chris Cook, NT Nick Jenkins, S Rodney McLeod, CB Chase Minnifield, RB Mikell Simpson

UNC season preview

Sweet. It's finally October, which means it's time to stop dicking around with the nonconference slate and time to start losing the games that really matter. And this is Carolina, so it really matters. I'm just happy the game's in Chapel Hill. I'll take my chances with the streak next season; this is not the ideal time to try and keep that going. Besides, there's a common thread to our post-bye-week struggles the past couple years: the games have been at home. This is a team that needs to focus on the game and not all the outside peripheral shit. That's best accomplished on the road.

One more reason to enjoy this game: It'll probably be the only one this year where we're the team ahead in the ACC standings.

HOW WE CAN WIN

- On defense, it all starts with the line. More so this week. Carolina hasn't been very good at keeping the pressure off of T.J. Yates. Getting some linemen in his face will be the thing to keep our suddenly-ailing secondary (did you see that damn injury report? I mean damn) from having to be the playmakers. Yates hasn't been too consistent this year either, and there's nothing like the close proximity of 280-pound bruisers with bad intentions to keep that pattern going. Moreover, Carolina's running game is a grinding, Big Ten-style attack. Stuffing it starts and ends with winning the battles in the trenches.

- More creative play-calling and new formations. We took a big lead on Southern Miss because they were thrown completely out-of-whack when we came out in formations and ran plays that looked nothing like the ones we'd run in the first two weeks. It's obvious by now we can't out-talent most of the defenses we'll face, least of all this one, so the coaches are going to have to coach their asses off and keep UNC off-balance.

- Take the time-of-possession battle to one extreme or the other. Look what Georgia Tech did in that regard. They just sucked the life out of UNC. Carolina is the closest thing to an old-school Big Ten team you'll see outside of that actual conference. They win with defense, they run the ball straight ahead, and they run when they want to and pass if they have to. How do you beat that kind of team? Either the Georgia Tech way, which is to run the ball 70 times and drain them of their will to live, or with demoralizing quick-strike big plays on offense, defense, and special teams.

HOW WE CAN LOSE

- Regress. In any area. This seems obvious, but here's the thing: We took some baby steps against USM, but we're clearly not good enough to do the two steps forward, one step backward thing and win. We have to do everything well that we've done well in the past. Everything.

- Let their receivers run apeshit. Yates is iffy sometimes, but his receivers - particularly Erik Highsmith - have proven dangerous. They're not deep there and you know exactly who the targets are going to be, but the battle between Highsmith and whoever's covering him - Dowling probably - is going to be what decides if UNC's offense is one-dimensional and stoppable, or not.

- Bring wax-paper Jameel Sewell on the trip instead of last-game-in-the-OB Jameel. If he doesn't have ice water in the veins, we lose.

HOW THE GAME WILL GO

Heather says we got this. So, uh, hmm. I'd dismiss that out of hand but Heather's proven a prophet regarding our season so far, her only real miss being the idea that Groh wouldn't be on the hot seat with a bad season. Which was wackity to begin with.

Still, I just can't see us breaking the post-bye-week jinx we've been under for a while. If I do say so myself, the Carolina season preview has been one of the most right-on I've written. Carolina is who I thought they were: a team with an inconsistent offense that would grind the ball and ride the ups and downs of T.J. Yates, and use their shutdown defense to stay in the game. They're one of just ten teams in the country to hold offenses to less than four yards per play. A defense like that at home is one of the best things a football team can have going for it. And going against our lame offense? Carolina's offense would have to really, really stink up the joint. A low-scoring affair is in the cards here, as with last year, but so is our fourth loss.

In this case though I sure wouldn't mind letting Heather get the better of me again in the prediction arena.

REST OF THE ACC

Virginia Tech @ Duke, 12:00
Clemson @ Maryland, 12:00
NC State @ Wake Forest, 3:30
Florida State @ Boston College, 3:30
Georgia Tech @ Mississippi State, 7:30
Miami vs. Oklahoma, 8:00

Akil Mitchell commits

Who? I dunno either. Talk about your out-of-left-field recruits. Mitchell appears to be a project and wasn't even in the Rivals database before last night but is well-thought-of by those who have gotten around to rating him.

Tony Bennett has now officially locked up a full recruiting class in less than six months. I mean wow. This page's deeper look at Akil Mitchell will come Tuesday. For now I think it's mostly fair to say that Bennett has taken commitments from several ready-now type players and can afford a development project like Mitchell - one that looks promising down the line.