hoops in review, part 1

This was promised to you much earlier, but then I realized: if I write this before Justin Anderson makes his decision known, the whole thing will be littered with uncertainty and caveats.  Now we know, so we can get the show on the road.

#0 - Devon Hall - rFr. PG

Preview quote: "UVA's backcourt is fairly young this year, so a good-sized contribution from Hall is more important than it might seem."

This didn't turn out that way, because there was such a quantum leap forward from other players.  Justin Anderson, of course, and London Perrantes also became more of a scorer.  Hall was decidedly the last rotation option in the backcourt, and scored more than three points just three times.  He sat out 11 games entirely, and in ACC action, saw just over five minutes a game - that is, outside a particular stretch late in the season.

That would of course be the stretch that Anderson missed.  Hall didn't play against Pittsburgh, but averaged 15 minutes in five others.  And when London Perrantes was suspended to start the season, Hall got his only start of the year, in game one against JMU.

And that in a nutshell was Hall's role: it was other guys who ran the show, mostly, but when a spot opened up, Hall was counted on for a decent share of the minutes.  Redshirting and then the understudy role probably wasn't what he envisioned to start his career.  But it's hard to say he deserved scads more time; his defense was OK but not outstanding (that said, the point guard isn't asked to be the star of the pack-line) and his offense wasn't as efficient as you'd like.  He showed some flashes at times.  The Wake Forest game - the curbstomping, not the close one - was a particularly excellent showing.  But overall he played about as well as his minutes imply.  Not lousy, or he wouldn't have been the first option to replace a regular in the rotation - but not much to take note of.

Anderson's departure opens up about 28 backcourt minutes.  Perrantes and Malcolm Brogdon are just about maxed out, but the competition is still going to be fierce for them.  Darius Thompson joins the fray next year, and it's whispered he brings a quickness and slashing dimension to the team that was lacking this year.  Marial Shayok is due for a big increase too.  Hall will have to work his tail off this offseason if he wants to make a large dent next year.  His role should increase, but it probably won't be til 2016-2017, after this large crop of rising seniors graduates, that he really becomes one of the front-and-center players.

#1 - Justin Anderson - Jr. SF

Preview quote: "He's got to take some part of his game - any part of his game, it really doesn't even matter - up a level or two."

I don't know.  Do you think he might've accomplished that?

I guess if going from under 30% to over 45% behind the arc counts.  Anderson actually cooled off as the season went on, because he started up over 60% - after Tennesee State, which he buried with 5-for-5 three-point shooting, he was over 68%, five games in.

That was enough to capture a lot of attention nationwide, but Anderson also gave a few other parts of his game a lift - he became more dependable from the free throw line, he fouled less and played better defense overall (though with fewer circus blocks, unfortunately) and he took better care of the ball.  He singlehandedly answered the question of who would replace Joe Harris's scoring, and became the infectiously enthusiastic face of the whole team.  And then, because We Can't Have Nice Things, he broke his damn hand.

That was really what drove home the point about what he meant to this team.  UVA only lost one game without him, but they weren't easy wins, and three out of his four games after his return were a mess.  He scored zero points in the whole ACC tournament and only defensively-challenged Belmont allowed him to look like his former self.  Anderson's play suffered, and along with it basically the whole offense.

A terrific shame.  Anderson was an exciting player his first two years, but he was a ridiculously athletic curiosity for the most part.  An X-factor, but the game was dominated by others.  This year he took over and became the guy Maryland fans are still pissed off about missing out on.  This is what's most disappointing about Anderson leaving.  The team, actually, will be just fine.  Tony Bennett is working on a nice track record of seeing his players take huge strides in the offseason, and no doubt someone will do the same this year.  Or a couple someones.  In fact, the team might be best off in the long run for this - if Anderson returned, the backcourt would've been incredibly crowded.  Now, some younger guys will get extensive playing time and the baton will be more easily passed off in later years.  But a full year of a guy like Justin Anderson in a starring role would've been some of the best entertainment in all of college hoops.

#2 - B.J. Stith - Fr. SG

Preview quote: "Stith has a good head on his shoulders and a dad who won't let him screw himself up, so I'll put in a SWAG here and say Stith redshirts."

Well, that was over quick.  Stith didn't redshirt, but he might as well have for all the playing time he got - almost exclusively with the walk-ons at the end of blowouts - and amid a smattering of talk that cracking the rotation might not ever be in the cards, Stith decided to rejoin his father and brother at ODU next year.  We won't get to see the second chapter of a Stith lighting it up in a Virginia uniform after all.

#4 - Marial Shayok - Fr. SF

Preview quote: "Shayok's calling card when he came in was his versatility."

Honest, I totally forgot that I'd written that as I watched Shayok this season and thought, "man, this guy can score a lot of different ways."  Versatile was exactly the word for what he did with the ball.  He showed he could get to the rim; he showed he could shoot the three; he showed he could create a few chances for his teammates.  He played a reasonably steady 15 minutes a game - right about average for the fourth guy in the backcourt rotation - and had a higher assist rate than everyone but Perrantes and Brogdon, the team's highest steal rate, and the backcourt's best block rate.  A better block rate than Anderson, in fact, and Anthony Gill as well.

You can't ask for a lot more out of a bench guy, and you can't ask for preseason impressions to turn out much more accurate than that.  Shayok didn't do anything dominatingly well, and he was plagued with occasional freshman inconsistency, but he did a hell of a lot of different things at an ACC level.  Out of a fairly large group of freshmen, Shayok was easily the best.

A guy who can score a lot of different ways is a good bet to find chances to do it more often.  Shayok doesn't have the kind of wild athleticism you see in early draft entrants, and that means Tony Bennett might have hit the sweet spot in recruiting here.  Shayok appears to have a well-developed court sense and has a great chance to be a four-year star for the Hoos.  And for that matter, a three-year starter.

#5 - Darion Atkins - Sr. PF

Preview quote: "Atkins probably won't start many games, if at all, and isn't a huge scoring threat. He probably trusts his hook shot a little too much."

Nice preview.  Atkins started 27 games, in fact, including all of them but one after New Year's, and in that one he played 31 minutes.  Oh, and he was one of the most indispensible players on the team.  ACC Defensive POY.  That hook shot I thought he trusted too much became a deadly weapon.  Simply put, he was one of the ACC's best interior forces anywhere.

Atkins got back all the bounce and athleticism he'd lost when the shin splints struck him two years ago.  And he played with a chip on his shoulder, as if making up for lost time and getting revenge on the fates that robbed him of a year and a half of usefulness.  It was so much fun to see him get that redemption and his year in the spotlight that nobody minded a bit when he got a technical for hanging on the rim against VT.  Sometimes you just let a guy have a moment.  This was the player that UVA and Notre Dame fought over in the recruiting wars.

Stories like his are what make college hoops fun.  Now there's a small conundrum.  Before the season the whole fanbase figured that "only" losing Atkins would mean basically the exact same team would come back next year, only a year older and stronger and wiser.  Now he's gotta be replaced.  It won't be easy; whereas Atkins was plausibly seen as very similar to Akil Mitchell, there isn't anyone left in that mold, nor much experience among the candidates.

#10 - Mike Tobey - Jr. C

Preview quote: "Keep him on the development curve at the same time and he's got a chance to open a lot of eyes in the ACC this year."

There hasn't been a more polarizing UVA basketball player since Sammy Zeglinski.  With Tobey, whether you like his game or not, there's evidence to support your position.  Tobey was only a secondary scorer at best, and his minutes actually dropped from last year.  He's really not useful against teams without big traditional centers, because he's fairly easily beaten on the block by smaller, quicker forwards.  His defense is a little slow and he doesn't appear to be a natural in the pack-line.

On the other hand, he's extremely useful against teams that do have traditional centers, because he's almost always much more skilled than they are, able to guard them with relative ease thanks to the security blanket of the pack-line and his better athleticism, and he has little trouble scoring against slow-footed galoots.  This season was easily his best offensively.  He was much more efficient than last year; he shot free throws as well as most guards, he was a terrific rebounder especially on offense, he made good outlet passes, and he turned the ball over very little.

I think a lot of criticism directed at Tobey - much of it to do with a perceived lack of effort - is unwarranted.  It's not any more valid than the idea that Atkins was disgruntled and unhappy because his face was kinda hangdog all the time.  Amateur psychology.  That and the expectations heaped on him when he was recruited.  If there were no such thing as recruiting analysts, Tobey would catch a lot less flak.  That said, he can be maddening at times.  He needs to find ways to get himself on the court more.  If he does, he's still got it in him to be an all-ACC player.

lacrosse bracketology

This wasn't a big week for change; most if not all of the top 8 seeds are in the same place they were last week.  Even Cornell, which took a big Brown dump this week.  The biggest effect of that loss is to put Princeton in the Ivy lead this week, bid-thieving Marquette in the process.  The Tigers lurk as a dangerous bubble team in what is basically a fight between Ivy (Brown, Princeton, Yale) and Big East (Georgetown, Marquette) teams for the last few bracket slots.

Prognosticators suggest that a UVA loss to Penn next week could knock the Hoos out of hosting duties.  Don't you buy it.  Cornell is still the #9 RPI team and thus still a strong win, and Georgetown is only a couple spots behind.  The Hoos have nothing to show against the major national contenders, but have still firmly established themselves ahead of the rest of the pack.  Simply put, the resume isn't wonderful, but there's nobody else to knock them out of the top eight.

Other notes:

-- Towson also suffered a bad loss, and while they're still in the CAA driver's seat, it put them behind the Patriot League rep in RPI and thus forced them to the play-in game.

-- Look who's back - kinda.  Hopkins is 6-6 and now technically eligible, but they're further from real consideration than that graphic implies.

Last week's games of interest:

-- Maryland 10, Ohio State 9: The third one-goal win in a row for the Terps - this one in OT - is starting to raise a few questions about their ability to compete for the title.  You don't almost lose to Rutgers.  Their resume is largely unimpeachable, though, with only the Yale loss to blemish it.

-- Duke 15, Marquette 8: Marquette is a decent candidate for a berth and could certainly make it, but they don't inspire a lot of confidence they can upend their eventual host.  This could hurt them in the committee room.

-- Virginia 12, Georgetown 9: That should seal up a tournament game at Klockner.  No, scratch "should" - it absolutely will.

-- Brown 15, Cornell 6: This game was in Providence, so it's not that surprising Cornell lost; it is surprising they lost by nine.  Fortunately for UVA, Cornell stays in the RPI's top 10.

-- Notre Dame 15, North Carolina 14: My system doesn't give the Domers that big of a lead over Cuse and the Heels for the #1 spot, but that's because it doesn't take into account the size of the gap in various stats, only whether Team A is ahead of Team B or vice versa.  Also, the committee takes into account "average RPI of your losses" and Notre Dame's RPI is so flippin' high they're skewing the teams they beat way upwards.  None of that matters; ND is in fact so far in first place that I think they'd keep the #1 seed even if they lost in the ACC tournament.

-- Albany 12, Yale 11: I said last week UVA wanted the Danes to win, and they delivered.  The threat that Yale might move up to a top-8 spot is all but eliminated.  Albany, meanwhile, got a little insurance against losing the A-East tournament.  It's not ironclad, but it'll help.

Next week's important games:

-- Patriot League tourney: It's a 6-team affair with Bucknell playing Lehigh and Army against Loyola, with Colgate and Navy awaiting the winners.  (I've been erroneously assuming four teams, but nope.)  Not one of these teams is even a remote threat to get an at-large, so there are no bid thieves here; just one spot on the line between a lot of evenly matched teams.

-- ACC tourney: Notre Dame vs. Duke and UNC vs. Cuse.  The system churns out all four of these teams as the top four in the country; I moved Denver ahead of Duke for the head-to-head result.  Even so, you can see the implications; Duke could easily move up by winning this shindig.  This tournament is obviously going to help decide the seeding at the top of the bracket, and that's no small thing because the top six seeds are clearly a cut above everyone else.  The 7 and 8 seeds - at the moment, Cornell and UVA - are much less of a threat, while nobody wants to play Maryland at #6, nor Denver either.  Being top two will matter.

-- Denver at Marquette: Yet another chance for Marquette to prove themselves.

-- Princeton at Cornell: Princeton looked finished after bad losses to Stony Brook and Lehigh, but they could earn a lot of redemption here.

-- Brown at Dartmouth: You wouldn't think Dartmouth would ever figure into tournament seeding, but here's the deal: Brown is 3-2.  So are Cornell and Yale, and Penn is 3-3.  Brown loses every possible tiebreaker combo among all these teams but one: Brown-Cornell-Penn, which would come down to goal differential.  There's no way they get into the NCAAs if they don't make their conference tourney, which makes Dartmouth a must-must-win.

-- Johns Hopkins at Maryland: A Hopkins win here would light a fuse.  Would a 7-6 Hopkins team, with losses to six tournament teams (as long as Towson is one) and one marquee win, be worthy of inclusion?  Hopkins fans are so fed up with their team they probably wouldn't consider it a snub if the answer was no - but if the answer was yes, you can count on a lot of furious talk about protecting the old guard and TV ratings and such.  I think they'd still have a hard time getting past teams like Brown (assuming Brown takes care of business) but for the sake of sanity it's probably best for everyone if Maryland wins.  (A phrase I can't believe I just said.)  Hopkins would then be forced to get the autobid or nothing, and the decision would be out of the committee's hands.

stupidball

Dom Starsia's formula for success has never really been a secret.  Recruit the most athletic players he can find, emphasize hard work and effort, and give them copious freedom to operate.  When it works, it's dynamic and entertaining.

Alas for Starsia's less-talented squads, "play smart" isn't a top priority.

This has been eminently on display the past couple weeks.  UVA had three times as many turnovers as goals against UNC, and over twice as many against Duke.  When we got a peek into the timeout huddle during the Duke game, I thought Dom might suggest, just once, that a handy trick for winning the game might be to observe the fundamentals of passing and catching.  He didn't.  He did exhort his team to have an extended possession, which might have been a roundabout way of doing so.  They must've decided 30 seconds was extended enough, because about that much game time later Duke was merrily clearing the ball and finding a nice easy path to the goal.

Observing the fundamentals of passing and catching has been awfully damn elusive of late.  Simply put, this is some horsecrap sloppy-ass lacrosse they're playing.  I'd like to blame it on youth, but there was Owen Van Arsdale lazily reaching toward a lazy pass, and missing.  There was Tyler German with a laser focus on reaching the corner of the box to complete a clear and no plan at all upon arriving, coughing up the ball as a result.  There was Ryan Tucker dodging his way straight into a double-team and freezing, paralyzed with indecision at the gall of the defenders to be defending.

Of course this team went 0-4 in the ACC; it's unrealistic to expect any wins when the offense, supposedly the highly efficient hallmark of this team, keeps shooting itself in the head.  I could deal with it if opposing defenses were taking the ball, or their goalie was putting up a stone wall, but what's really frustrating to watch is when two former weaknesses stop being weaknesses, and the strength of the team suddenly turns into brainless mush.

This team will still make the tournament and will probably host a game.  For all its irritating foibles, it's still one of the top eight teams in the country.  That's pretty amazing after losing to the whole ACC in ugly fashion, but it's taken really good teams to expose UVA's flaws enough to beat them.  I mean, at least we're not Hopkins, which just needed two overtimes to beat 3-8 Penn State.  The angst here is rooted in not being much of a national title contender.  At least if we're gonna be angsty about lacrosse, it's the right kind of emo.

Notes and stuff:

-- Matt Barrett, man.  UVA just wasted two of the best performances by a UVA goalie in I don't even know how long.  Very often in lacrosse, good goalie play is indistinguishable from bad goalie play until after the fact.  It's not like hockey where a bad goal sticks out like a sore thumb; you just sort of start coming to the realization that your goalie has let in too many shots.  If that realization doesn't happen, you've been getting good goalie play.  That's what Adam Ghitelman was like.  That's not what Matt Barrett has been like; he's made stops goalies have no business making.  My personal favorite was having his pass intercepted from a foot and a half away - very bad - then making the save from the same distance - even better.

-- Remember how Matt White kept playing midfield when he should've been playing attack and everyone was all "WHY??" It's almost like having Greg Coholan at attack is balancing that out.  The only difference is everyone knows why Coholan is playing attack.  (No Pannell.)  Frankly, though, it's a shame the depth at attack is such that it's preferable to cannibalize the midfield.

-- Stupidball, by the way, has not been limited to these last two games.  UVA won the Hopkins game despite taking multiple pages out of the Mike London Textbook of Personnel Management.  This included but was not limited to a player entirely forgetting that he was supposed to be on the field and wasting most of an EMO as a result.  I bring this old news up to illustrate what a season-long struggle this has been.  And the announcers, by the way, made a habit of pointing out a number of bad substitutions on UVA's part against Duke.

-- At least UVA gets a moral victory by not pulling off the Duke game's worst moment.  No, that was Duke's befuddling clear attempt in the second quarter, forgetting entirely about the 30-second clock.  It was a hell of a lot of fun to watch Duke piddle the whole time limit away for absolutely no reason, spoiled only by the announcers completely ignoring it and carrying on their talk-show conversation about something totally unrelated.  You want to know why people don't watch lacrosse as much as you'd like?  It's because when little-used rules come into play, the announcers are too busy blathering to explain the odd situation on the field.

-- I said it as part of bracketology yesterday, but it bears repeating: Beat Georgetown and a tourney home game is a lock.

lacrosse bracketology

Lacrosse TV announcers - and Paul Carcaterra in particular - have this really annoying habit where instead of calling the game in front of them, they instead host a lacrosse talk show with a live game in the background.  Thus it was that during the Michigan-Ohio State game, Carc and his announcing partner got in a heated debate over whether UVA would be a lock to make the tournament or not.

It was a pretty stupid debate, because neither of them, in their spirited repartee over whether wins over Cornell and Loyola were good enough to be tournament material, managed to remember the upcoming game against Georgetown.  At times though, the debate veered in the direction of sanity; Carcaterra (who took the side of UVA and declared the Hoos a lock) demanded to know who in the at-large realm had anything better.

Therein lies UVA's salvation.  An 0-4 record in the ACC is a failure by all definitions, but the other salient point made by announcers (this one by Ward and Shraf during the UVA-Duke game) was that even the loser of that game would probably be the best team in any other conference.  Only two teams anywhere outside the ACC can claim a win over an ACC team - Denver (twice) and Maryland.  For this reason I struggle to say UVA would be the best team in the Big East or Big Ten this year, but Bill Tierney and an ACC exile is not bad company either.

Denver and Maryland are accordingly seeded above UVA, where they'll stay.  Take a look at the rest of the at-large contenders and their resumes; you might say you shouldn't get to the tournament based on who you lost to, but UVA combines a win over Cornell (still a strong contender) with no bad losses.  (Detroit over Ohio State, anyone?  Bellarmine over Marquette?  And those are teams actually in the bracket.)

So if you're tempted to worry UVA isn't even a tournament team let alone a seeded one, don't.  UVA can lock in a seed with a win over Georgetown, and even, heaven forbid, with a loss, isn't out of contention to host a game.

Some other notes:

-- Princeton, already with a tenuous grip on their tourney spot, shat the bed like crazy with a loss to Lehigh.  They can't be counted totally out, but that loss was absolutely murder.

-- If it weren't for that pesky rule about not matching up teams from the same conference, this bracket would've been fairly easy to put together from both a geography and a seeding standpoint.  (The committee claims that they don't seed the road teams because travel is the main concern, but results have shown they do in fact care about, say, not putting the #9 or #10 team against the #3 or #4 seed.  They don't totally scramble the pecking order in favor of travel.)  Yale ought to play Cornell and Marquette ought to play Denver in this bracket, but they can't.

-- The system I use says Syracuse should stay above UNC.  I was like, nah, they shouldn't.

Last week's games to watch:

-- Notre Dame 14, Marquette 7: As it turns out, Marquette can in fact get back into the field just by losing this game.  They needed that Princeton loss, too, though.

-- Maryland 11, Loyola 10: An incredibly close game that would've put Loyola in the field had they won it.  Drop Marquette, move Georgetown to the Duke game, and give Loyola a rematch against Maryland; that's what the field would look like this week with just a break or two the other way.

-- Yale 16, Brown 10: The Bears are starting to play the Hopkins role of boat-floater.

-- Navy 10, Army 7: Big win for the Middies that secures them a top-two seed in the very parity-laden PL tournament.  Despite the loss, though, Army is also in, and the field is set with Colgate and Loyola rounding it out.  Right now, Navy sits in the play-in game, but whoever comes out on top of the PL tourney will have a big resume-booster that should get them into the real first round.

-- Towson 8, Fairfield 7: The Tigers are slowly locking up the CAA, which they'll need to do with no blemishes in order to stay out of the play-in.

-- North Carolina 17, Syracuse 15: Goes to show how much lacrosse is really left in the season even when it's technically half-over; Syracuse looked unassailable a few weeks ago.

-- Duke 15, Virginia 8: One of these years, man.

Next week's games to watch:

-- Maryland at Ohio State: To borrow Bubble Watch terminology, OSU "should be in" but beating Maryland would make them a lock.

-- Duke at Marquette: Meanwhile, Marquette has "work left to do" - although they quite honestly could lose their way into the tournament.  They have Duke, Denver, and then almost certainly Georgetown in the Big East tournament - all of which are on their way to being in the bracket themselves.

-- Georgetown at Virginia: I'll guarantee you right now that UVA hosts a first-round game if they win this one.  Write it in stone.  If not....maybe still, but I'd rather not think about that.

-- Cornell at Brown: Cornell has two big games in a row; Brown and then Princeton.  Both teams will be gunning for the Big Red as their only path to a dance ticket.  Your rooting interest is Cornell so as to keep it a marquee win for UVA.  If Cornell crashes, the committee will look at Yale and Ohio State and probably consider that a team with a marquee win and a bad loss is a better hosting choice than a team with decent wins and no bad losses.

-- North Carolina at Notre Dame: A battle between #1 and #2, both in the conference and nationally.

-- Yale at Albany: The Elis are knocking on the door of a seed, and probably ahead of Ohio State in the pecking order to get a home game.  Since UVA is one of the teams they'd be taking that seed from, an Albany win would be helpful here.

lacrosse bracketology

**Note - it was Easter yesterday, I hope the Easter Bunny brought you enough candy to stuff your face for a year, since he didn't bring you any bracketology posts and in retrospect was never going to.  Lacrosse bracketology will serve for this week's Monday post, but a basketball season retrospective is also just around the corner, so keep an eye out for that.

Johns Hopkins continues to make me look like an idiot; right after I said the field was close to all set, they lose to Ohio State and in doing so launched OSU so far into the field they hardly know what a bubble looks like anymore.  Hopkins is the gift that keeps on giving.  Common sense says that beating a 4-6 team that's only beaten mediocre teams at best (Villanova, Navy, Rutgers, and UMBC) shouldn't be a tournament resume-builder.  RPI says otherwise.  I don't think RPI is as bad as many people say, but it's a very blunt instrument.  The fact is that Hopkins probably would actually be favored over most if not all the teams below it in the RPI, which means RPI isn't quite as stupid as it looks - but the other fact is that resume-wise, theirs is in absolute tatters and therefore they really shouldn't be the boost that they are.

But RPI and its offshoots like "top-20 wins" are the tools the committee uses, so there you go.  Ohio State now looks to be in decent shape.  With Yale being the only Ivy contender that didn't fall flat on its face this week, the new bubble battle is between Princeton and Marquette - and Marquette has such a tough schedule coming up that their RPI can't help but go up, so counting them out of the field at this point would be crazy.

Here's what happened in last week's big games:

-- Syracuse 17, Albany 12: Albany would be in the field without the autobid - this week - thanks to the RPI boost from just playing Syracuse.  The rest of Albany's schedule is mostly crappy, though, so it's a short-lived jump.  The one possible exception: if they can pull off a win against Yale.

-- North Carolina 10, Virginia 6: UVA's three losses are now 1, 2, and 3 in the bracket.  I promise that's not just me being a homer.  With a top-ten RPI, UVA is a little bit like a good Johns Hopkins.

-- Loyola 17, Navy 7: Proving that the Patriot League is still bats.  It opens up a new and interesting race: If Towson remains the CAA representative, there's a battle brewing between them and the PL champ to stay out of the play-in games.  Navy currently has the autobid because rules (they're 5-2 while the next best team is 4-2) but Loyola and Army both have better resumes.

-- Notre Dame 15, Duke 10: The Domers are solidifying their #1 seed.

-- Ohio State 15, Johns Hopkins 12: We see the results of this game above.  OSU is suddenly a contender.  Hopkins, on the other hand, must either win out the regular season or earn the autobid - those are their only two paths to the tourney.

And next week's games of import:

-- Marquette at Notre Dame: Can Marquette get back into the field simply by losing this game?  Very possible.

-- Loyola at Maryland: The Greyhounds aren't out of this yet.  Bubble life will be interesting if they win this.  Most of the Ivy League is rooting against them.

-- Brown at Yale: Brown's star is fading fast; they can reverse that trend quickly with a win here.

-- Army at Navy: Huge game for PL leadership.... which will probably be superseded by whatever happens in the conference tourney anyway.

-- Towson at Fairfield: CAA leadership is on the line here, and this game - like those in the PL - has implications for the play-in game as well.

-- Syracuse at North Carolina: Seeding battle.

-- Virginia at Duke: The winner is positioned extremely well for a middle seed, at least a #6.  The loser has to sweat out the Ivy League to hope someone doesn't steal a hosting spot.

lacrosse at midseason

It's not strictly midseason when you've got 10 games down and three to go in the regular season, but really, in the lacrosse season, only when it's half over does it really begin.  It's a good time to take stock of things.

Shame it was, that the best game of the season also happened to come the same weekend as the abrupt ending of the basketball season, which demanded attention.  The Hopkins game deserved a bunch of attention too; it was the second OT win over Hopkins in a row, and I say it was UVA's most entertaining win since Bucknell.  UVA-Hop rarely disappoints.

Hopkins is having a crappy season; they're at critical risk of missing the tournament for the second time in three years.  That doesn't make them not fun to beat and it doesn't make them not dangerous.  The effort put forth in winning - despite a major disadvantage in possessions thanks to the usual faceoff deficiencies - was impressive.  Hopkins was held below their usual efficiency as I calculate efficiency, marking a solid game by the defense.  And let's not kid ourselves here, an excellent game by Matt Barrett, who is starting to look like the four-year starter we need him to be.  13 saves and 15 goals don't tell the story.

Interestingly, I think the game provided ammo to both sides in the debate between people who think lacrosse needs to be faster, faster, faster, and the side that says lacrosse is basically fine and slowing down is often a perfectly legitimate strategy.  (Far as I can tell, the latter contingent consists of me.)  This was a high-possession game, and the see-saw goal-scoring is a huge part of what made it entertaining.  Not to mention it helps strengthen rivalries; any Virginia fan who didn't get really damn sick of the Hopkins clap-along every time they scored, is deaf.

On the flip side, Hopkins came under quite a bit of criticism for not stalling at the game's end.  With two-plus minutes on the clock, a two-goal lead, a two-man advantage, and the ball, Hopkins looked like a damn safe bet to win.  The refs wouldn't have put a shot clock on until after the penalty was over and Hopkins could easily have burned half the time remaining just by playing four corners.  Instead they slung the ball aimlessly at the net, which set off a sequence of events that gave UVA a goal shortly after.  Then they generally failed to anticipate that Dom Starsia would pull the trigger on the most obvious move in the book - pull the goalie in order to double the ball - and got burned again.  By the same token, UVA benefitted tremendously from stall tactics - again the obvious move of sacrificing 15-ish seconds of man-up time in order not to risk a faceoff to start OT.  People who want a shot clock in lacrosse ought to remember that it really puts a team who's earned a lead at a big disadvantage.  Maybe that's a feature and not a bug, I suppose.

Anyway, very nice game.  What's it say about the rest of the season?

The same thing the Cornell game said, I think: This is a team with a split personality, which doesn't change from game to game or even quarter to quarter - it can switch from Jekyll to Hyde minute by minute, possession by possession.  It can utterly stink for an entire half, it can make amateurish mental mistakes, and then it can do magic tricks to astound the mind.  The result is a team that is close to a lock to not only make the tournament, but even host a tournament game, when frankly I'd've been hard-pressed to expect that before the season.  It's also a team at severe risk of going 0-4 in the ACC and being left out of the ACC tournament for the second straight year.  Between UNC and Duke, the easier game is clearly Duke, at least on paper; in the realm of the sport supernatural, Duke remains an insurmountable obstacle.

UVA will probably lose to both, then beat Georgetown and Penn and roll into the NCAA tournament seeded somewhere 5-8, where the most likely outcome is a win and then a loss.  Since making the Final Four with some regularity is the expectation around here, and UVA is at risk of sending a graduating class on their way without ever going, you'd be forgiven for considering that a failure.  On many levels it is.  But this is still the second take on rebuilding since the national title in 2011.  And I think the words I wrote to cap off the season preview still ring true: "But if this is a rebuilding year, it looks like a much better one than the 2013 disaster, and this rebuild has a much better chance of clicking."  It hasn't been the ideal we-don't-rebuild-we-reload process over the past few years.  But this version of the process is building up a lot of valuable experience and still remaining relevant on the landscape, unlike, say, 2013, or our Baltimorean rivals.  I can't complain.

lacrosse bracketology

That's this week's bracket.  I present it without a lot of distracting blather this week.  I'm usually pretty confident in the outcome, but this week even more so.  Some weeks are like that.  Everything just makes sense this week.  If Towson and Richmond - the teams with the best resumes in their conferences - were getting the autobids at the moment, it'd make even more sense.  But it wouldn't change much about the placement of teams in the bracket.

A few notes:

-- Ohio State continues to be just a sliver behind Yale for the last spot, and once again the difference is OSU's bad losses.  The system figures them incredibly close, but using actual judgment makes it easy.

-- Brown is also knocking on the door; let's see what happens when they get around to playing Yale.

-- Nobody else is close.  Very small bubble this year.  Towson has nothing but CAA games left, and the CAA isn't good enough to earn someone an at-large bid.  Villanova wouldn't be in without a lot of help even if they beat both Denver and Georgetown, the next two games on their schedule.  The rest of the so-called bubble is Patriot League teams, who are just going to beat each other up.

-- All this also means that bid thieves should be close to nonexistent.  I only see three realistic possibilities: Villanova, Ohio State (if you can call moving up from "first team out" bid theivery) and Johns Hopkins.  Nova is likely to be the 4th seed in the Big East tournament, but even then, if they win it, they'll probably just replace another Big East team - Georgetown, say.

The Hop is a huge wild card.  They're the joker in the deck.  At 4-5 they don't qualify to be in the conversation right now, and they have OSU next week.  If they win that, they'll appear on the page somewhere, but probably not actually in the bracket.  If they lose, it'll be weeks before we even discuss them again.  They could make an upset-run through the Big Ten tourney and make the B1G a two-bid league.

But that's the only one-bid league that can become a two-bid league.  Albany is close, but a loss to anyone in their crappy league would torpedo any at-large hopes they ever had.  (They do have Yale on their schedule, which could make things interesting, but still.)

Last week's games of interest:

-- Albany 21, Harvard 18: Albany is doing their best, though.  I think they've been hamstrung a bit by their schedule; Drexel, UMass, and Harvard were all supposed to be good schedule-boosting teams, and they just haven't been.

-- Colgate 11, Loyola 4: This is what I mean by the Patriot League beating itself to death.  Loyola is - or was - the team in this matchup with the far superior resume, and Colgate crushed them.

-- Navy 14, Boston U. 6: It's a bit amazing that Navy has managed to stay above it all.  Pity they had that one loss to Bucknell - it's standing between them and the insulation of a possible at-large bid.

-- Notre Dame 13, Syracuse 12: And in two overtimes.  A game between the two best that didn't disappoint.  The Domers are now in the driver's seat, and their schedule is tough the rest of the way.

-- Towson 6, Massachusetts 3: Towson does look like the strongest team in the CAA, but it's a very parity-filled league as well and the race for the auto-bid there is just getting cranked up.

-- Army 12, Bucknell 4: Five of the PL's nine teams now have exactly three wins, and four of them are 3-2.

-- Denver 19, Georgetown 7: As it turns out, Georgetown's resume withstood that blow pretty well.

-- Marquette 9, Villanova 8: The bubble could've been a deal messier if Nova had won that one, but Marquette remains in very solid shape.  Richmond made a very big deal out of getting to the tournament in their first year of existence, and that's nice work and all, but for my money, Marquette earning an at-large in year 3 would far more impressive than winning the fledgling Atlantic Sun (now Southern) Conference.

-- Brown 10, Princeton 8: If Hopkins is everyone's resume booster, Bucknell is everyone's resume ruiner.  I was a little surprised this didn't push Brown higher on the food chain, but they've played too many crappy teams to overcome their Bucknell loss.

-- North Carolina 15, Duke 14: Duke's resume is surprisingly soft.  Their best win is Georgetown; otherwise it's more about who they've lost to than who they've beaten.  The only reason they're hosting a game in this week's edition is because nobody below them has a better win.  Naturally, they're still going to beat the hell out of UVA just because.

This week's games to watch:

-- Albany at Syracuse: This is how Albany could earn at at-large bid.  Otherwise, forget it.

-- North Carolina at Virginia: Mainly for seeding purposes, and for the Hoos to try and avoid the Penn game.  Which itself would be a big help in seeding.

-- Navy at Loyola: Let's see how Navy handles the last two games on its schedule, probably the two toughest it has in conference play.

-- Notre Dame at Duke: Duke's chance to put a marquee win on its resume and leapfrog a bunch of teams.

-- Johns Hopkins at Ohio State: I built this great spreadsheet that calculates RPI and all the associated doodads that go along with RPI that the committee uses for its selection criteria.  That means that often I can kind of cheat on bracketology if a Sunday game or three look easy to predict.  I just enter the result before those games actually end, or, in some cases, before they begin.  Next week I have no hope of this.  This is the last game of the week and it has just enormous bubble implications.  An OSU win would likely put them in the bracket, because of the boat-floating nature of Hopkins and because Yale is only playing Dartmouth.  And Hopkins wouldn't even be able to be considered for another two weeks.  If Hopkins wins, OSU is almost certainly sunk and the Hop would probably appear in the "first four out" section, with a decent chance of moving into the bracket in later weeks.  Either way, Yale is looking over their shoulder.

2011 recruiting class in review

This is a regular yearly feature these days that I don't want to let slip, so, bonus Thursday post.  The 2011 recruiting class is either gone or going into their fifth-year-senior season, so for the most part we know how things have shaken out.  Usually one or two players blossom in the upcoming season enough that they finish their career in a better category, but hopefully we're now doing this late enough that we're done with attrition from this class, which wasn't the case last year when Jake McGee made it into the "stars" category only to transfer.

2011 was Mike London's first real recruiting class, and if you think back to Signing Day 2011 you might even remember what it was like to feel optimism about the football program.  London was beating Virginia Tech for recruits, which hadn't happened in lo these many years.  It was a big class, a darn good one at the time, and it was supposed to be the foundation of the revival.

The stars next to the player are the number that Rivals gave them, for consistency's sake with previous editions.

DECOMMITMENTS (3)

S Matt Bailey *** (Edna Karr - LA)

Short version: Decent semi-regular at Tulane

Bailey was actually a Groh commitment, one of the last vestiges of the era.  Groh wanted very large defensive players and a lot of his recruits got shifted closer to the line by London.  In Bailey's case, London likely thought Bailey much too big to play safety, and the decommitment was at least mutual if not largely engineered by London.  Bailey wound up at his hometown school, Tulane, and played as a true freshman - but at linebacker.  His peak year was 2012, when he started the majority of games; he started a handful of games each of the following seasons, too, but never really built on his sophomore season.

S Jordan Lomax *** (DeMatha - MD)

Short version: Exploded in 2014 for Iowa

Lomax decommitted from UVA very late in the cycle; barely a week before Signing Day, in fact.  Rumors of it were swirling beforehand, and it didn't sound like the cleanest of divorces.  When asked about it, Lomax refused to give any details, or even any broad statements.

For three years there wasn't much career to talk about.  Lomax saw spot duty in 2011 and 2013, sandwiched around a shoulder injury that forced him out of action in 2012.  He did start a game in 2013, but injuries continued to hold him back.  Then, this past fall, he got into the starting lineup and never looked back.  As Iowa's starting free safety he had 92 tackles, six PBUs, and a pick, and made honorable mention all-B1G.  Additionally he's a two-year academic all-conference performer too.  UVA hasn't actually been lacking for decent safeties, so losing him didn't hurt UVA much, but it's not often one of our decommitments does so well.

TE Darius Redman ** (H.D. Woodson - DC)

Short version: TE who moved to lineman at VT

This was another at least quasi-mutual decommitment; London did recruit Redman but it wasn't quite the fit that it felt like in the beginning, and truth is Redman wasn't the last instance of London having trouble getting DC public school players through admissions.

Redman has been a lightly-used player most of the time in Blacksburg.  As a redshirt sophomore in 2013 he started two games and saw between 10-15 plays a game on offense, but his role diminished big-time last year and he hardly played.  This spring - just a few days ago, in fact - Redman moved to the offensive line to shore up Tech's depth issues.

DIDN'T MAKE IT THIS FAR (12)

DE Diamonte Bailey ** (Hermitage - VA)

Short version: Left team

One minute he was there, and then he wasn't.  Bailey didn't transfer, and his departure wasn't publicized.  He participated in spring practice 2013; by the summer, he was off the roster with hardly a peep.  Bailey never played in a game for UVA.  

DE Thompson Brown *** (St. Christopher's - VA)

Short version: Switched to lacrosse

Brown had a few plays here and there as a true freshman, but unlike most players in this section, he did sear one big moment into the memory of UVA fans.  With UVA clinging to a lead against Miami after giving most of it away, the Canes were down to one last play with a legitimate shot at the end zone.  Part of a three-man rush, Brown blew through the line early and forced Canes QB Stephen Morris to take off running before any of the routes could develop.  Morris scrambled and was brought down to end the game, and Brown looked like he might be a future force on defense.

It didn't last long; Brown decided after one season to jump to Dom Starsia's outfit instead, where he's a reserve defender who missed 2014 (his junior year) with injury and has gotten in a couple blowout games when healthy.

OT Tim Cwalina *** (Mt. Lebanon - PA)

Short version: Medical scholarship

Getting an offensive lineman that Wisconsin offered is a pretty good deal.  But Cwalina never played a game for UVA; he redshirted as a freshman as most linemen do, but sat out the following spring with mono and then was sidelined for good when it was discovered he had a heart condition.  Just before the 2012 season began, Cwalina was placed on medical scholarship, ending his football career.

WR Adrian Gamble *** (Independence - NC)

Short version: Transferred to Tennessee

Talk about your lengthy sagas.  Gamble committed to UVA in July of 2009 - not only giving his commitment to Al Groh but doing it before his junior season.  Then, after sticking with it through the coaching change and two of his high school seasons, he had to wait yet another season to suit up, forced to take a postgrad year at FUMA.  (Which seems odd; he did have two years where he knew he was going to UVA, you'd think that'd be enough time to get his transcripts in order.)

At any rate, he finally got on the field in 2012 and 2013, but despite his blazing speed, wasn't able to push very far on the depth chart.  He only played in five games in 2013, and caught just three passes in his UVA career, which might have helped his decision to transfer.  He decided, before the 2014 season, to walk on at Tennessee, meaning he was actually a Hoo for less time than he was anticipating being a Hoo.  Having redshirted in 2014, he'll have two more seasons to try and make his mark in Knoxville.

ATH Kevin Green ** (Petersburg - VA)

Short version: Never even enrolled

Not really a decommitment, because he did sign, Green never landed in Charlottesville.  Required to prep a year to get eligible, I don't recall that he even did that.  Thanks to his disappearing act and having a common name, Green is nigh-unGooglable; most results for "kevin green virginia" turn up a convincted murderer who was executed in 2008.

OT Kelby Johnson *** (DeMatha - MD)

Short version: Academic issues sent him to juco; landed at Louisville

Johnson was always going to be a boom-or-bust prospect.  Recruited out of then-pipeline DeMatha, Johnson had a rocky two years at UVA.  He played as a true freshman and then sat out 2012, and watched his grades spiral into irrecoverable oblivion.  He was forced to fix his grades in junior college, ending up at a place called ASA College in Brooklyn, NY.  Bobby Petrino was tipped off to his existence, and after a season spent at juco in 2013, he went to Louisville.

Once there, he was considered a candidate to compete for a starting tackle role, instead, he was basically a special-teamer.  He'll have one more year to try and rescuscitate his career.

DT Marco Jones *** (Boys' Latin - MD)

Short version: Never played

Another D-lineman who never set foot on the field for UVA.  A combination of two things sank his career: injuries, for one, as he missed most of his redshirt freshman season in 2012; also, he was a tweener in a big way.  Never really quick enough for DE and couldn't get on the field as a DT.  Shame, because Jones had a lot of promise coming out of high school.  Jones was still in the plans as late as July 2014, but was no longer on the roster by the fall.

LB Darius Lee ** (St. Stephens & St. Agnes - VA)

Short version: Special teamer who recently left

If we'd done this a week ago, Lee would be in the "never panned out" section, but the roster was updated for the spring recently and Lee wasn't on it.  That's about the extent of the fanfare his departure got.  Recruited as a safety, he was moved to outside linebacker, but it didn't get him on the field on defense.

Lee did, however, play very regularly on special teams for three solid years.  Sort of the poster child for "why would you ever play a true freshman there" when guys like Lee are willing and able.  By what little indications we had, Lee appeared to be a well-valued teammate who simply wasn't talented enough to get snaps on defense; the fact that he played so much on special teams and was, multiple times, named the scout teamer of the week suggested that the coaches thought quite highly of him.

S Kameron Mack *** (I.C. Norcom - VA)

Short version: Left to "focus on academics and personal life" and never returned

Those quote marks above come from Mike London, not Mack.  Mack played on special teams as a freshman, but shortly before fall practice in 2012, London told him to take a year off.  Mack was, at the time, still enrolled at UVA; he isn't anymore.

RB Clifton Richardson **** (Menchville - VA)

Short version: Kind of drifted away

I'll admit: I had really, really high hopes for Richardson.  Richardson played for a really awful high school team and in such a situation where almost everyone good (in Virginia, anyway) transfers schools, Richardson stuck it out.  He also showed a huge soft side in an article that detailed how he took care of a nephew of his who'd suffered awful burns as a toddler.  Combine it all with excellent, almost effortless athleticism of the four-star variety, and it looked like Richardson would be a huge favorite going forward.

It just wasn't to be; Richardson had some nagging injuries from the get-go, and maybe, simply lost interest in football as well.  In late spring of 2013 he decided to transfer out of UVA and landed at Liberty.  He lasted just one season, though.  In a run-heavy attack he was a clear backup in 2013, running for 399 yards on 94 carries. Just less than a year after he transferred from UVA, Liberty quietly announced he was no longer on the roster, putting an end to his football career.

LB Caleb Taylor *** (Phoebus - VA)

Short version: Transferred to ODU, then dismissed

Taylor only wore the UVA uniform for a season, in which he redshirted.  After a year, he decided, with a newborn daughter at home, to transfer back closer to home.  Though he started for ODU at linebacker in 2012, his job slipped away in 2013, and shortly after the start of that season, he was suspended, then dismissed, for "repeated violations of team rules."  He hasn't played football since.

QB David Watford *** (Hampton - VA)

Short version: One fairly disastrous season as a starter

Watford was hailed by some fans as an important recruit, not for his position or for having offers from everywhere, but for his high school: Hampton, where UVA typically had zero success in the past.  

His career was probably nothing like he envisioned.  Watford battled for the starting job as a true freshman before the coaches realized Mike Rocco was doing a much better job and yanking them both in and out wasn't helping.  (It's very likely Watford was partly hamstrung by having played in a run-almost-exclusively offense in high school.)  He then took a rare second-year redshirt in 2012, and emerged from that year's enormous controversy as the starter in 2013.  London then made the opposite mistake, refusing to consider another quarterback even as Watford struggled mightily all year.  He finished with only 8 TDs against 15 INTs and led the Hoos to a 2-10 season.

That earned him the back seat in the 2014 competition, and after about half the season he re-emerged with some reps at wide receiver, probably a reward for maintaining a solid attitude through a roller-coaster ride.  Very soon after the season, he announced his transfer back home to Hampton University, where he'll finish his college career.  It's a near-certainty the coaches told him he wasn't going to get another shot at quarterback; he will at Hampton.

NEVER PANNED OUT (3)

DE Rob Burns *** (Stone Bridge - VA)

Short version: Moved to tight end

In retrospect, a huge lanky 6'7" guy at DE wasn't likely to work out that well unless he was an athletic freak.  Burns isn't.  He redshirted 2011 and was moved to tight end during fall camp 2012.  Since then he's been a blocker for three years.  He has three career catches: one in 2013 for no gain, and two in 2014 for 11 yards.

That said, he'll be the only tight end this year who's ever set foot on the field.  Brendan Marshall is a converted quarterback and Evan Butts is a redshirt freshman; everyone else is still in high school.  Burns has maybe the best chance of anyone on this whole list to move up a category in his fifth season.

DT Vincent Croce *** (Good Counsel - MD)

Short version: Moved to fullback

Between Croce and Marco Jones, this class was supposed to set us up at DT for a good long time.  Croce could never get into the lineup, though.  After two seasons, one a redshirt year and the other in which he sat most of the year and finally got into the last four games on special teams, he was moved to fullback, or H-back, however you want to call it.

It's hard to say which, because the move didn't help his playing time much.  Croce has still been mainly a special-teamer.  In 2014, he finally did get some spot duty as an H-back.  This was exclusively in a blocking role, though; Connor Wingo-Reeves moved ahead of him on the depth chart almost immediately, and Croce has yet to carry the ball or catch a pass.  He has one more season, in which his role in the offense may expand, but probably only slightly.

S Mason Thomas ** (Kempsville - VA)

Short version: Special teamer

Thomas's offer came at the very end of the recruiting cycle, and raised a few eyebrows since he was barely recruited by any D-I teams and was very lightly rated.  If he's ever played a down on defense, I've missed it.  Like Darius Lee, he's been on the field a decent amount, all of it (or almost all of it) on special teams, and serves on scout team duty.  His role isn't likely to change this year.

USEFUL (2)

LB D.J. Hill *** (Newton - GA)

Short version: Solid backup linebacker

Hill would be a good poster child for why you should redshirt your freshmen.  He was never quite good enough to start during any of the four years of his career, except as an injury replacement - though when he did start, he acquitted himself quite well.  It's not entirely his fault, as linebacker has been one of the strongest position groups on the team during his whole tenure.

Hill was a little bit limited physically compared to the starters, but you always at least felt like the defense was in good hands when he was on the field.  This impression took off when he got a couple starts late in his sophomore year after La'Roy Reynolds got hurt.  The linebacking corps is wildly inexperienced this year with the departure of literally every starter; having Hill around to help bridge the depth chart gap would've been great if he hadn't been tossed out mainly on special teams as a freshman.

WR Dominique Terrell **** (Osbourn - VA)

Short version: Has only ever teased with his production

Being one of the most highly-rated members of the class of 2011 has helped make Terrell one of the most maddening.  He had a few moments as a true freshman, but a sophomore season with 38 catches and 475 yards made it seem as if he could really take strides as an upperclassman.

It wasn't to be.  Watford's crummy year in 2013 didn't help, but Terrell regressed down to 14 catches for 107 yards.  Through it all, he's been sent out to return punts and making UVA fans set records for use of swear words with his inexplicable decision-making.  Terrell has shown he can be a quality receiver when he focuses on the game, but he habitually makes awful choices regarding which punts to field and which ones to let slide - often attempting to pick up bouncing balls, or making mad dashes to try and catch punts headed to a spot nowhere near him.

Last season, rather than try and force him to play through nagging injuries, the coaches decided to shut him down and give him one last fresh start in 2015.  One of their smarter moves; his absence wasn't really felt last year and he's still got enough talent that it's worth seeing what he can do at full health.  I wouldn't bet on stardom, but this is still a golden opportunity for him after spinning his wheels as a junior.

CORE OF THE TEAM (4)

OL Ross Burbank *** (Cox - VA)

Short version: Back and forth between center and guard

Burbank's career has kind of advanced in fits and starts.  The coaches made more than one attempt to make him the starting center; it didn't always take.  He got some snaps there as a redshirt freshman, and some starts there as a sophomore, but never could quite hold down the job.  Last season might have made the move permanent; he started 11 games there.

When not playing center, Burbank moved over to guard; even if he wasn't holding down one particular job, he's always been holding a job.  With Jay Whitmire questionable for the season with a back injury, it might be that Burbank turns out to be the top O-lineman of the 2011 class.

WR Darius Jennings **** (Gilman - MD)

Short version: A top target for three years

Jennings and Terrell both committed on Signing Day, turning a good class into a great one.  Getting the two of them was considered a tremendous coup.  Two four-star receivers - it never would've happened under Groh, and it was supposed to lay the foundation for a terrific offense.

The quarterback situation didn't help at all, but neither really lived up to their billing.  Jennings was a good, not great, player for four years.  As a freshman he was decent, but only a complementary player - and really only needed to be, since Kris Burd was busy piling up nearly a thousand yards.  Jennings more than doubled his output as a sophomore, finishing with 48 catches for 568 yards.

He never matched it, though.  In 2013, he averaged less than 9 yards a catch, right around the time he was expected, as a veteran, to start helping out his quarterback.  His senior year was a rebound year, and he finally became the big-play threat we'd been hoping for, averaging over 19 yards a catch.  Still, he only scored twice, and managed just 27 catches - just seven more than his freshman season.  Jennings was always a fixture on the field and someone the passing game depended very heavily on, but he only ever showed flashes of being a game-changer.

CB Brandon Phelps **** (Damascus - MD)

Short version: Versatile DB who bounced between CB and S

One of quite a few true freshmen who played in 2011, Phelps started his career at cornerback.  There was more opportunity at safety in 2012, though, so that's where he went in fall camp.  For two years he toiled as a safety, where he was pretty good, most of the time.  Which smacks of damnation with faint praise, because really, cornerback was always his better position.

Which made it a good thing he moved back there as a senior; again, he went where he was needed, this time after Demetrious Nicholson went down with an injury.  (It also created room for Quin Blanding to get on the field.)  Phelps had the athleticism for safety but never the instincts needed to be a star there; he was a much more natural cornerback, able to use his size greatly to his advantage.  Fans were often frustrated with him; unfairly, I usually felt, as he wasn't far off from being one of the better-known DBs in the league and his versatility played against him in that regard.  You wouldn't call him a lockdown player and he didn't rack up the stats, but he wasn't a weak link by any stretch of the imagination.

OT Jay Whitmire *** (T.C. Williams - VA)

Short version: Still hoping to come back from a back injury

The offensive line has its depth issues, and I'll shout it from the rooftops how badly I think London has screwed that situation up.... but this hasn't helped.  Whitmire jumped onto the depth chart as a redshirt freshman and looked on his way to becoming a stalwart on the line.  Especially the next year, in 2013, when he was the line's most versatile player and probably its most talented not named Morgan Moses.  Whitmire started at both guard and tackle that year, depending on need.

Last year - nada.  Back injury.  Though the coaches tried to make noises about the possibility he'd play, it was pretty much evident from fall camp that he wouldn't.  Whether he will this year is anyone's guess.  Shame, because in a sea of offensive line question marks, he should've been the one exclamation point.

STARS (4)

DT David Dean *** (Green Run - VA)

Short version: Disruptive three-tech tackle

I kind of made it sound like Croce and Jones were the big hope at DT for this class, but Dean was just as much a part of the optimistic outlook as any of them.  Dean redshirted, and saw very limited playing time in 2012, but it felt like more; he was usually making his presence felt on the few occasions he was in the game.  That team had Will Hill, Chris Brathwaite in his good season, and Brent Urban on his way up, so Dean's time was always going to be limited.

2013 saw him force his way into the starting lineup, though, and for him it's been all uphill since.  This past year he played well enough to be on the coaches' third team all-ACC and honorable mention to the media; it's likely he'll get noticed in the upcoming season as one of the league's top returning D-linemen.  He's certainly the team's best one.

S Anthony Harris *** (L.C. Bird - VA)

Short version: Led nation in interceptions as a junior

Which pretty much made him a lock for any team with "all-" in front of it.  Harris's career trajectory was odd.  As a true freshman he was a special teamer and that was it.  The next year he was starting all 12 games at safety and ending up third on the team in tackles.  He started 35 games in all over three years.

It's really hard to duplicate the feat of picking off eight passes, so just going by his honors, Harris would appear to have peaked as a junior.  Don't be fooled; as a senior, Harris pulled off the very difficult feat of leading the team in tackles as a safety on a good defense.  That's normally a sign you have a crap defense; if your defense is good, it's a sign you have a damn good safety.  The idea of having to replace him next year is scary.

CB Demetrious Nicholson **** (Bayside - VA)

Short version: Has never played in a game he didn't start

Quite a feat, really.  Nicholson started 25 games his first two seasons, which amounts to all of them.  When healthy, he's unquestionably a top cornerback; fast, fluid, and with a real know-how for the position.  Over those two seasons he racked up 23 PBUs and added four more in five games as a junior.

Unfortunately, we haven't seen him in action since early in 2013.  OK, he came back for one game in 2014, which only proved he wasn't ready to come back.  UVA was deep at cornerback, so his absence didn't hurt too badly - though given the outcome of the VT game and the manner in which we lost, it's fair to say Nicholson might've been able to turn that around.  This season he'll be a solid bridge to the future; his return gives the coaches the ability to move Maurice Canady to safety to fill the obvious gap there.

LB Daquan Romero *** (Phoebus - VA)

Short version: Early enrollee became part of one of the league's top linebacking corps

Romero joined David Watford in spring camp 2011.  He made it pay off in a big way; while he didn't start any games as a freshman, he played regularly, and not just on special teams.  By the next year he was starting ACC games, and never looked back.  Along with Henry Coley, Romero formed a linebacking tandem that would've made Al Groh proud.

Playing on the outside, Romero made it a particular specialty of his to sniff out screen passes and crush them.  Announcers often said something to the effect of UVA was really good at defending screens because they ran them so often in practice.  It was probably true to some extent, but it was also usually the same guy blowing them up.  Romero never earned any all-ACC recognition, which was a shame because he loaded up with a smorgasbord of stats; he had numerous TFLs, a couple sacks, a pick, and a blocked kick.  For sure one of the best of the class.

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

The verdict on this class is very boom-and-bust.  More bust than boom.  If you can get half of every class to fill in the top two categories you're in good shape, but this one managed just 8 really good players out of 25, and two more who've contributed.  15 of them never really did, and almost half washed out before even getting to this point.  That's not at all good.  A dearth of players in the "Useful" section really hurt the fortunes of the team, and even some of the players I called "Core" didn't fully live up to their promise.  As a comparison, the 2010 class that I profiled last year had three "Useful" players, and that was the much smaller coaching transition class.  And it only had four (of 18) who left early - five, I suppose, counting McGee.

I chalk some of it up to London's inexperience.  He did a great job convincing players who had lots of options to come to UVA.  But he didn't do so hot identifying players with staying power, took more than a few flyers, and didn't see any of them pan out.  The players who turned out really well were all players who were supposed to turn out that way, with the possible exception of Harris and Romero - who weren't exactly sleepers.

All in all, the 2011 class was at best a moderate success.  I suppose the only conclusion is that the class that was supposed to set the foundation for UVA's future, did.

culture shock

This is the post I should've written before Sunday, so you'd know what was coming.  I only managed to nod suggestively in its direction.  Now it's just about making sense of what happened.

Because to make sense of what happened, you have to get Michigan State.  Darion Atkins doesn't, or else he wouldn't have talked sideways about his teammates not wanting it enough.  No, I don't actually blame Atkins one bit.  He's frustrated, he just walked off a college basketball court for the last time, and to the uninitiated, what just happened really did look an awful lot like one team wanting it a lot more than the other.  But I'd venture to say nobody in the UVA locker room really gets Michigan State, nor do 99% of UVA fans.  After this, you'll know the true story of UVA's 2015 tournament exit.

See, MSU is built on a certain culture that Tom Izzo has cultivated.  It's a culture of birthright, of entitlement.  It makes them arrogant.  There's a hint of punk in their game.  Not Joey Ramone punk.  Think Greivis Vasquez punk.  The Spartans are cocky to an extreme, and it works extremely well for them.  They've been brought up to believe two things: one, that it's their right to beat Michigan, and two, that it's their right to excel in March.

This doesn't make them complacent.  On the contrary, it makes them hungry.  I often say that getting college kids to believe they've been disrespected is the easiest thing in the world.  They view the very existence of an opponent as disrespect.  That you would think you have any claim to winning a game against their birthright is disrespect on the order of making a rival claim to the throne.

As a result, they're really sore losers.  Some say that's a good thing; Vince Lombardi was the sorest loser in history.  "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser," he said.  Several years ago, Michigan made the U-M/MSU game a rivalry again by reeling off three straight wins; when MSU got one back, Draymond Green boasted that "The world is back into place."  He wasn't kidding.  Green had been recruited to MSU under the premise that beating Michigan is something you do as naturally as breathing.**   Three straight losses threw off his world order.  Izzo and his players have developed a pattern of saying in post-loss press conferences, "I'm not here to make excuses," and then rattling off a dozen excuses to rationalize why the world didn't turn out the way they expect.

-- After losing to Duke in the 2013 NCAA tournament, Gary Harris complained about a free throw disparity; MSU had shot 24 free throws to Duke's 16 before the first stop-the-clock foul.

-- After losing to Michigan last year, Izzo bemoaned Keith Appling's sore wrist as a reason for his poor shooting night.  Appling's sore wrist had put together two straight 20-point games just a couple weeks before and would follow up the Michigan loss with a 3-for-6 performance from three against Iowa.

-- The same loss to Michigan, in the very same press conference, saw Izzo simultaneously complain that he couldn't get Appling enough rest, and that Appling was in foul trouble too early and had to sit.

MSU takes this attitude into the postseason.  This is why I called them a zombie team.  It played out exactly like that on Sunday.  Every time the momentum looked like it might shift, something happened, and it didn't.  Darion Atkins gets a huge block and starts a mini 5-0 run; MSU gets re-energized by a wide-open dunk and then immediately gets the benefit of a TV timeout to let their momentum simmer.  UVA gets within two just after the half, misses the shot that would put them in the lead, and Denzel Valentine hits a three on the other end, sparking another run.  UVA gets a brilliant double team and a potential turnover, only to have the refs give them a loose-ball timeout and follow it up with an all-ball foul on Darion Atkins, sending our one effective post guy back to the bench.  Zombies.  You shoot and shoot and shoot and they don't die.  All that stuff conspired to remind MSU that March is their birthright, and they kept on playing like it.

Dollars to donuts, the pregame speech in the MSU locker room had a theme like this: "Hey.  This is March.  This is what we play for, and this is our time.  Those guys over there - they're January warriors.  They're great in the regular season.  Now they think they're gonna stroll in here and take what's ours?  They don't know March.  They can't handle March.  We know March."  They don't view you as an obstacle; that would be giving you respect.  You're in the Michigan State Show.  You think you're ready to make your run and beat them, they simply make a play, slap the floor, strut a bit, and that's that.

Michigan finally beat them and made it a rivalry again by finally being sick of their shit.  In 2011, Michigan finally swept the Spartans for the first time long enough that everyone had to look it up; the second game - at Michigan - got a little woofy, and Michigan's Darius Morris told MSU's Kalin Lucas to "Get the fuck off my court."  This is not a paraphrase or a metaphor.  The only response Lucas could muster was to throw the ball at Morris.

That's one way to beat them, but it took years of abuse.  UVA had one loss to them, not ten years worth of losses.  The other way to beat them?  Develop a winning culture of your own.  Our two years of being near the top of the world is nice, but it's not enough.  Here are the teams that've knocked MSU out of the tournament in the last ten years:

Connecticut, Duke, Louisville, UCLA, Butler, North Carolina, Memphis, North Carolina, George Mason, North Carolina.

That list is all blue-blood teams, with three exceptions: the first of two Butler teams to reach the championship; Derrick Rose; and a George Mason team that didn't know any better and wound up in the Final Four.  In fact, seven of those ten teams went to the Final Four; four went to the national championship, and two won it all.  These are teams that laugh when you slap the floor, because they've earned the right to do so.  Any other reaction and you're doomed.

That's what UVA was up against.  Probably a Final Four team now.  Oklahoma, bless their heart, is screwed.  MSU will look at them like a less-talented version of UVA and walk all over them.  The only team left in this region with a chance is Louisville.

To be fair to our players, there's a lot of breaks that, had they bounced the right way, we'd be scouting Oklahoma right now.  Hitting two end-of-shot-clock three pointers while your opponent goes 1-for-13 is part been-there-before and part luck.  But I can look at that game and find ways to win without a single one of those missed threes going down.  And so damn much of it can be chalked up to a culture that we just don't have yet.

**He'd also been recruited to MSU with the promise of playing in a Final Four.  Izzo literally had every single one of his recruiting classes go to the Final Four at least once, a streak that was finally broken last year.  Guaranteed, though, the substance of the pitch is the same even if the exact words no longer are.

lacrosse bracketology

The show must go on.  The weekend wasn't a total loss, and this week's lacrosse bracketology reflects that.

I don't actually think UVA is the third-best team in the country, but then, you should already know that's not what this shows.  On the other hand, though, the Hoos' only two losses are to the teams that both RPI and LaxPower's computer consider the nation's top two.  So there's that.

In reality, UVA is probably peaking right now in the bracketology realm; it's hard to see them beating both Duke and UNC, and easy to see them losing both.  With wins over Cornell and Hopkins, though, it's tough to find teams with two really good wins like that.  YES I KNOW Hopkins is 3-5, but they've got such a nice RPI for 3-5 that they're floating the boat of everyone that beats them.

Some other notes:

-- Syracuse is definitely unreal at this point, and if they drop off that top line all season it'll be a huge shocker.

-- Georgetown is a surprise.  Awful last year and not having been to the tournament since 2007, right now they'd be in even without the autobid.  This bracket hoses them a bit on account of geography; strictly speaking, they should probably be playing Cornell, but since travel is a big consideration, this is how it goes.

-- Yale is in a dogfight with Ohio State for the last spot; the Elis get it for not having any bad losses like OSU's stumble against Detroit.

-- This field gets tougher if Towson claims the CAA autobid, which they can take a big step towards doing by beating UMass next week.  Towson is the only CAA team that can avoid the play-in games.

-- Duke and Cornell are almost completely interchangeable right now.

The effects of last week's games to watch:

-- Bucknell 10, Brown 9: Brown's offense decided to go to sleep, predictably throwing them right off the bracket while giving Bucknell no help at all.  Brown also got no help from Harvard, which lost in OT to Dartmouth, probably eliminating the Crimson from any tourney consideration at all.

-- Cornell 10, Colgate 9: The RPI, and therefore bracketology, sees no difference between winning by 1 and winning by a billion, so this throws no monkey wrenches into anything as far as Cornell is concerned.  Almost, though.

-- North Carolina 15, Harvard 10: In one week Harvard went from reasonable contender to also-ran.

-- Georgetown 13, Loyola 12: Two one-goal wins vaulted Georgetown from the bubble into the field.  Loyola has one other chance to prove itself, but are otherwise probably only vying for the Patriot League's one bid.

-- Navy 7, Colgate 6: Navy is 4-1 in the PL, but still has three difficult games remaining.

-- Georgetown 10, Marquette 9: It'll be fascinating to see if Marquette can hang on to their bid; their schedule provides both opportunities and challenges, which is a nice way of saying it's rather brutal from here on out.

-- Princeton 11, Yale 10: Yale has really slipped in the Ivy race, with two losses in a row.

-- Boston U. 11, Bucknell 9: Part of the reason Bucknell got so little boost from beating Brown is this loss to a BU team that's otherwise fattened up its record against nice frosty cupcakes.

-- Notre Dame 9, Ohio State 0: The RPI doesn't take into account margin of victory, but the committee members are human beings with the ability to process complex information.  This creates a triangle of doom between OSU, Denver, and ND, or it would if this game weren't likely to serve as comic relief in the committee lockdown room as well as all the reason anyone needed to tiebreak the Buckeyes right out of the tourney.

-- Virginia 16, Johns Hopkins 15: Hop's tournament chances have almost disappeared in about three minutes - the game time it took for them to go from 2 goals and 2 men up, to huddling on one end of the field while UVA celebrated on the other.  The Ohio State game in two weeks is, for them, a must-must-must-win.

-- Maryland 10, North Carolina 8: A signature win plus a Big Ten that's good enough to boost the Terps but not good enough to threaten them should ensure a tourney home game for Maryland.

-- Syracuse 19, Duke 7: It wasn't even that close.

Next week's games of interest:

-- Albany at Harvard: There is a very, very outside chance that Albany can set itself as a team not needing its autobid to get in.  Without it, they'd right now be sitting between Ohio State and Towson on the bubble.  They'll need to win this one to make that happen.

-- Colgate at Loyola: PL madness.

-- Boston U. at Navy: More PL madness.

-- Syracuse at Notre Dame: Heavyweights collide.  Just by virtue of being on each other's schedules, they'll both benefit.  This game should ensure that both are still occupying the 1 and 2 slots next week.

-- Massachusetts at Towson: Towson is a weird team, with both wins and losses they probably shouldn't have.

-- Army at Bucknell: More PL madness.

-- Georgetown at Denver: I'll be interested to see how Georgetown withstands a loss.  Should they win in the altitude, though, the Big East is effectively theirs until conference tournament time.

-- Marquette at Villanova: Marquette needs a bounceback win against a Villanova team that the UVA/Hop announcers called Hop's best win - before, that is, Villanova dropped a bad one to Fairfield.

-- Brown at Princeton: If Brown is the Ivy's real deal, this is their first chance to show it.

-- Duke at North Carolina: Whoever loses this game is the team UVA will badly need to beat in order to avoid the Penn game at the ACC tournament.