game preview: Florida State

Date/Time: Friday, March 14; 12:00

TV: ESPN2

Record against the Noles: 20-22

Last meeting: UVA 78, FSU 66; 1/18/14, Charlottesville

Last game: Md. 75, UVA 69 (3/9); FSU 67, Md. 65 (3/13)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 61.4 (#343)
FSU: 66.9 (#149)

Offense:
UVA: 114.1 (#25)
FSU: 111.9 (#47)

Defense:
UVA: 90.2 (#4)
FSU: 98.0 (#54)

Pythag:
UVA: .9367 (#5)
FSU: .8209 (#38)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (5.1 ppg, 2.3 rpg, 3.8 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (12.6 ppg, 5.6 rpg, 2.6 apg)
SF: Joe Harris (11.4 ppg, 2.9 rpg, 2.4 apg)
PF: Akil Mitchell (7.1 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 1.3 apg)
C: Mike Tobey (6.6 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 0.4 apg)

Florida State:

PG: Ian Miller (13.7 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 3.0 apg)
SG: Aaron Thomas (14.1 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 2.0 apg)
SF: Montay Brandon (8.0 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 1.6 apg)
PF: Okaro White (13.3 ppg, 6.6 rpg, 1.0 apg)
PF: Michael Ojo (2.7 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 0.3 apg)

Working your way into the top five in the rankings and winning the outright regular season title are terrific things, but they come with their own set of problems: namely, you get to this time of year and it's like they didn't happen.  Especially if you fail at taking care of business.  UVA earned the ACC's double bye in the tournament, which means it's now time for business.  Florida State put an early end to Maryland's tourney run (and probably, their NIT bubble hopes) in the 8/9 game, and thus is UVA's Friday opponent to open up UVA's postseason.

At stake on Friday: simply the chance to do something UVA hasn't in almost 20 years, which is play on Saturday.  So if the Hoos lose, it's just par for the course historically, but expectations render that excuse even more undesirable.  Time to get it started.

-- UVA on offense

Speaking on FSU's statistical profile, they remain basically the same team they were in January when UVA demolished them twice.  They do most things pretty well.  They block a lot of shots, courtesy mostly of their seven-footers, Michael Ojo and Boris Bojanovsky.  Okaro White gets in on that action as well.  They also rebound like crap.

This remains utterly bizarre, as FSU is one of the very tallest teams in the country.  Bojanovsky is a pitiful defensive rebounder given his size.  (In fairness, Mike Tobey has similar numbers, but there's a reason for that: UVA's defense forces a ton of long shots, which take rebounding opportunities from the centers and give them to the guards.  Also, there's nothing wrong with Michael Ojo's rebounding.)

It's a little strange, then, that UVA's elite offensive rebounder - that'd be Tobey - didn't have great games either time out against FSU.  He did score 13 in Charlottesville, but not via mega-rebounding, and put up a goose egg in Tallahassee.  Still, he, as well as Akil Mitchell and Anthony Gill (both registering in the national ranks of offensive rebounders in their own right), ought to be a weapon - the odds favor it happening sooner or later.

Despite what FSU does well, though, they've been sliding downwards in the defensive rankings.  When last we met, the Noles were the KenPom #6 defensive team in the country.  Now they're 54th.  Even being among the top teams in the conference in field goal defense, they're in the bottom half in total D-rating in conference play - the result of too many second chance shots and, for that matter, first chance shots, as they rank pretty low in getting turnovers, too.

For a team like UVA, then, who shares the ball and doesn't depend on individual playmakers trying to get through the teeth of the defense, and who doesn't turn it over and who also happens to rebound well, this is the right matchup.

-- UVA on defense

The Florida State starting lineup has changed since January; back then, they brought a lot of scoring off the bench, but Ian Miller and Aaron Thomas were semi-recently moved to the starting lineup.  Miller took over starting point guard duties from Devon Bookert, and forward Robert Gilchrist has seen his minutes reduced to almost nothing after spending two-thirds of the season in the starting lineup.

Like on defense, FSU has one tremendous flaw: turnovers.  This hasn't improved all season; even in the win over Maryland, they turned it over 19 times.  UVA took full advantage of this tendency in both games against the Noles, getting free possessions more than 1 out of 4 FSU trips down the court.  Having no point guard exacerbates this problem; neither Miller nor Bookert are suited for those duties and the disastrous Montay Brandon experiment ended ages ago.

If they didn't turn it over so much, they'd be pretty dangerous.  In ACC play the Noles were the best 3-point shooters in the conference.  Bookert and Miller are very dangerous in this regard.  They're very selective about when they pull the trigger, though, preferring to work inside when they can.  Okaro White has always been really athletic and he uses this to good effect.  Boris Bojanovsky is an efficient and probably underused scorer - though he does have a lot of similarities to Mike Tobey in terms of consistency and is a lousy passer.  There's a lot of synergy between their inside game and their distance shooters, and they really just need a London Perrantes to orchestrate things.

They haven't got one, though.  They have two turnover-prone shooting guards trying to play the point.  And those guards don't get a lot of help from the team.  White is the least turnover-prone of the whole bunch, and his 17% turnover percentage (which isn't terrible) is bettered by no fewer than five Hoos.  The turnovers sabotage this offense to a tremendous extent.

-- Outlook

Based just on point margin in games against the 8 and 9 teams, it was clear which was the better matchup for UVA.  Statistics back it up - and UVA is well-suited to take advantage of FSU's glaring weaknesses.  Any trepidation I have about this matchup is based on history and being a UVA fan and knowing how that goes - not the opponent.  FSU is just good enough to take advantage of history, but not if Tony Bennett keeps on smashing that history to pieces.

Final score: UVA 67, FSU 56

the recruit: Jamil Kamara

Name: Jamil Kamara
Position: WR
Hometown: Virginia Beach
School: Bishop Sullivan
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 210

24/7: 95, four stars; #9 ATH, VA #6, US #106
ESPN: 82, four stars; #36 WR, VA #9, East #26, US #263
Rivals: 5.9, four stars; #17 WR, VA #6, US #123
Scout: four stars; #28 WR

Other offers: Florida, Clemson, South Carolina, Virginia Tech, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Michigan State, West Virginia, Vanderbilt, Pittsburgh, Miami, NC State, Illinois, Boston College, Connecticut, various other non-BCS

We interrupt your previously scheduled programming of Two-Star Theater to put another marquee name on the board.  Andrew Brown and Quin Blanding comprised two of the big three targets for 2014, and the first two made their preference known pretty quickly.  Jamil Kamara, on the other hand, waited until the calendar actually changed before making his commitment.

This is a name that's been on the radar for a very long time.  Rivals has articles going all the way back to March of 2011 when Kamara was a freshman.  His history is not only long, but well-spotlighted - that article list clocks in at 127 separate features that at least mention his name.  24/7 tops that with a whopping 242 (although they include various board posts by their gurus in that count.)  Verbal offers began right around that time and the only reason they ever stopped was because written offers started being allowed eventually.  Suffice it to say: Kamara is one of the most heavily-scouted prospects you'll ever find.  He also played the recruiting game to just about the fullest extent possible.  Kamara camped all over, he took most if not all his official visits, he transferred schools for the sake of visibility and coaching (originally, he played for Princess Anne, one of the bottom-feeders of the 757 public-school circuit), and he joined several other prospects in playing the hat game at the Army All-American game.

It's no surprise, then, that the scouting sites are pretty much in agreement not only about his ability levels but his general traits as well.  No matter where you look, the basic book will be the same: very physical, great hands, good routes, speed OK but not great.  Kamara certainly does have the size; at 6'2", 210, he fits right into the mold of your prototypical big receiver.  His hands are what set him apart, which, let's hope so because a Rivals article on Andre Levrone that just came out today pointed out the following stat: UVA's receivers in 2013 were credited with 118 catches and 82 drops.

Kamara was already going to get a long, hard look against the first defensive unit in fall camp with every opportunity to get to the top of the depth chart, and a redshirt is unlikely except in the case of injury.  If he's showing off sticky fingers in August and everyone else is continuing their rockhanded ways from last season, look out; you'll see a true freshman hit the first string faster than you can say Wali Lundy.

What the receiver mix will look like next year depends a lot on camp performance, simply because the unit played so badly last season.  Not many jobs are safe.  However, the chance certainly exists that the top pairing could be Kamara and Keeon Johnson, the one receiver from last year to actually draw compliments for his play.  If so, that would represent a drastic departure from the beginning of last season when the top two were Darius Jennings and Dominique Terrell - both listed at 5'11", 175.  A little less speed, a lot more size.

Kamara's ceiling, obviously, with this kind of excitement, is a three-year career and early exit to the NFL - but I don't think that's the likely outcome.  That lack of electric speed means he won't dazzle headline writers and be the Next Great Freshman Sensation (and it's probably why the offer list is solid but also unspectacular) and it nips any Sammy Watkins comparisons in the bud.  Instead I'm gonna go ahead and break out the Billy McMullen analogy.  Big guy, not all that fast, sometimes caught from behind, caught everything in sight and won all the jump balls, never dropped anything that I can remember, and was just plain productive.  That's what we have in Kamara if he lives up to his scouting reports.  I could live with that and I suspect we all would.

2015 big-picture recruiting

One of these days, a 2015 recruiting board is going to hit the streets.  Cross my heart for real.  I'm hoping you've been distracted by basketball.  For now, we need to take the annual look at the likely positional makeup of the class.

First, we establish the actual size.  The answer: big.  The senior class now sits at either 20 or 21 by my count (I'm not totally sure if Chris Brathwaite got his scholarship back, but I'm assuming he has unless I ever read otherwise.)  At that number, you're taking 25 in the class if you can, that's all there is to it - unless you take more by counting some early enrollees toward 2014.  This is a limited-only-by-imagination class, essentially.

This is actually bad news if you buy into the likelihood that this will be a transition class between coaches.  For purposes of today, we'll assume it won't be, since obviously the coaching staff is not going to recruit with that in mind.  But hold no illusions about the obstacles we have to overcome: 2-10 will have poisoned the well for a lot of recruits, who simply won't bother returning any phone calls with a 434 area code.  Most of the key assistants are in the second year of a two-year contract.  London's seat is the hottest in the ACC, quite possibly the country. This is the sort of thing Li'l Shane Beamer knows by heart and will remind our recruits of approximately once every four seconds.

Before embarking, some depth chart notes.  I updated it for spring, by the way.  Not a whole lot of position changes; those are hereby detailed:

-- Kwontie Moore from LB to DE.
-- Sean Karl from OT to OG.
-- Eric Tetlow from OG to C.
-- Ross Burbank from C to OG.
-- Wil Wahee from CB to S.

For the record, the official roster lists just five OTs.  Sweet.  And that's with putting Jay Whitmire back at the position where the coaches wanted him all along, which is tackle.  Karl's move to guard is a byproduct of his being bypassed, but the center moves are sending a more pointed message: Ross Burbank probably ran out of chances to win the job, and drops into the shuffle at OG.  Hopes are now apparently pinned on Eric Tetlow, who nosed his way into the depth chart last year as a freshman.

Kwontie Moore's move is the other major thing here; this is probably a combination of two things.  The first is the admittal that he wasn't going to crack the lineup at linebacker unless he wanted to wait til he was a senior, and even then maybe not.  That's as much because of Henry Coley as anything.  Two, DE certainly does need some shoring up.  Far too many unknowns there; not having any real known quantities except for Eli Harold, you might as well add another unknown just to boost your odds of finding a workable combo.

Jake McGee is still listed as a TE here, just for giggles if nothing else.  His roster position is "TE/WR" and he's been doing some more actual WR work than nose-to-the-ground TE work, so we'll see if I change my mind later.

The following names are gone from the list (not including graduated seniors):

-- Adrian Gamble
-- E.J. Scott
-- Pablo Alvarez
-- Matt Fortin
-- Kyrrel Latimer

Scott will spend a graduate year at Wake Forest.  Latimer sort of faded away as early as last year - he was still on the roster, but in sort of a ghost capacity.  Gamble is transferring to parts unknown as of now.  Alvarez has been extraordinarily injury-prone and there was probably a fair amount of mutuality in not bringing him back for a fifth year.  Fortin is going to chase his dream as a Navy SEAL.  (Long-snapping wasn't exciting enough?)

This leaves 88 names on the roster, so, attrition of a minimum of three more is to be expected.

Now, on with the show.

QUARTERBACK

I won't be surprised if the coaches take one.  I won't be surprised if they don't.  You should probably take one each year, but things don't work out in that highly idealized fashion, particularly if you've spent the last couple years fumblefucking the position.  UVA will have five on the roster this year, and, assuming no attrition (quite a stretch, honestly) they'll have five on the roster next year, too.  So I'd look for either one or none in the 2015 class, and I don't think either answer is wrong.  If we take one, it means either we got one the coaches are really high on - think Nick Johns - or they know of some impending attrition.  Or both.  If we don't get one, I don't mind going into next year with this same group of five.

RUNNING BACK

With two good ones graduating this year, it leaves four on the roster for 2015 (not including Daniel Hamm), and that's if LaChaston Smith never makes the move to linebacker.  Two backs in the 2015 class would be a very sound investment.

WIDE RECEIVER

This position got slammed with attrition during the offseason; nevertheless, it remains fairly deep.  Three seniors will graduate - Gooch, Jennings, and Terrell - leaving behind seven.  I don't think it's especially nuts to carry 10 on the roster, and you know how Mike London is about generic athlete types.  Let's say anywhere from 3-5 as a possibility.  I'd prefer three or four, as the junior class consists of just one player (Caanan Severin) and you risk glutting up the position again if you go all the way to five.

TIGHT END

We lose Zach Swanson, and if truth be told, Rob Burns and Mario Nixon aren't likely to be big-timers at the position.  Tight end recruiting is one of the positions most susceptible to offensive philosophy - no matter who you are you need linemen and quarterbacks and so on, but recruiting a tight end is a choice you make, one that's often sacrificed in favor of prospects elsewhere that you want to close on or lose.  Still, there's a need here, and some viable targets, too (Chris Clark would be the dream candidate) and it's a safe bet we'll take at least one, maybe two.

OFFENSIVE LINE

You know how I am about this.  We have a grand total of 12 scholarship players lined up for 2015's roster.  That's before attrition.  So we could take ten linemen and I wouldn't bat an eye.  Well, I would out of sheer surprise, but certainly not in protest.  Five OLs usually constitute a big class - and if we took five I'd still consider the position undermanned.

Need-wise, the barest of bare-bones minimums here should be four.  That's still not enough, but when someone is starving - I mean actually starving - you don't feed them a big steak dinner.  I'd like to take seven, on account of thinking 19 linemen (again - you need a hedge against attrition) is about right, but that would cause problems down the road.  Namely, needing huge classes again later on.  I'll settle for five in the class - the undermanning of the depth chart just isn't going to be fixed in one year.  It's going to be two or three before we have this thing back up to snuff, and that's if we don't neglect the recruiting again.  Call the target 4-6.

DEFENSIVE TACKLE

In only losing one player after 2014, this will be a fairly well-stocked position if it's recruited correctly.  Signing at least one is a must, because five DTs doesn't do the job; I'd rather see two and wouldn't exactly mind three.

DEFENSIVE END

Moving Kwontie Moore to DE puts us at 10, which is a big number, but it solves nothing long term because that junior class is five large.  Getting three (maybe four depending on what you call J.J. Jackson) in the 2014 class was smart, even if they're mostly projects - we needed numbers.  We need them again in 2015 because that junior class will eventually leave and we'll be up on the rocks unless we can get two or three more DEs.  Three would give us the appearance of having just way too damn many in 2015, but that would serve to smooth out the numbers a little, and the best part is they could be redshirted.  I'd say 2-3 is the target, but Jon Tenuta's philosophy might muddy up the numbers a little, particularly in the distinction between DE and LB, and we're probably looking at also continuing to recruit another tweener or two.

LINEBACKER

No complaints about the numbers here; even with four in the senior class, I wouldn't complain if they were replaced with three signees - maybe even two, if one was really good.  Again, the tweener factor complicates the numbers a bit.  This class does have to include, however, at least one prototype middle linebacker, as Henry Coley is graduating and the only other one listed is Micah Kiser.  I'd say a class of 2-4 would be in range, with three as the probable sweet spot.

DEFENSIVE BACK

Honestly, the need here in terms of numbers is really slim, which is why I'm combining CB and S into one.  Even with four graduating seniors, we could honestly get away with sitting tight right where we are, which is to say, one commitment in the form of Juan Thornhill.  I have him listed as a safety, which gives us seven and the luxury of being tremendously picky with any more safety candidates.  One cornerback is all I'd bother taking as well.

What I absolutely wouldn't do is replace all four graduating seniors.  Some of those are scholarships that need to be reallocated, stat.  OL or DT would be a good start.  OL as well, and possibly OL and even OL too.  London's been doing this long enough that it seems safe to declare his philosophy as one of building a football team on athletes that you can try and turn into football players, and most of those generic athletes end up as defensive backs, so if we took four I'd sigh and be totally unsurprised; if we took five I'd complain loudly and still be totally unsurprised.  One more DB besides Thornhill is all I want, but in the business of predicting, 3-4 total seems like a more likely bet.

KICKER

We offered two last year - neither of which took the bait - and will probably try again.  One kicker/punter type is the target, but there's no point offering a scholarship to just any kicker, so it'll probably be another this-guy-or-bust year.

Here's the sum total, then:

QB: 0-1
RB: 2
WR: 3-4
TE: 1-2
OL: 4-6
DT: 2-3
DE: 2-3
LB: 2-3
DB: 3-4
K: 0-1

That's a range of 19-29.  19 won't suffice to fill up the roster, so if this wasn't a hot-seat year I'd say lean hard to the upper end of all those ranges.  This is a combination of a prediction and a wish list; a true wish list would say 5-6 OLs and 2-3 DBs while a true prediction would say more like 1-2 DTs.  Recruiting is a really fudgy science and I'm allowed to do that. It's even fudgier when you throw in the potential transition; you never know how the recruit pool will react.  Al Groh actually managed to recruit a pretty balanced 2010 class before he was fired, but an extremely small one.

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

It was a foregone conclusion, but Tony Bennett is the ACC COTY.  As no coach in ACC history has ever improved his team's ACC record in each of his first five seasons - and yes, that includes his first one, as Tony went 5-11 to follow up Dave Leitao's 4-12 - it's fitting timing for the award.

The voting went like so:

ACSMA 2013-14 Coach of the Year Voting
Tony Bennett, Virginia (68)
Roy Williams, North Carolina (6)
Jamie Dixon, Pitt (1)
Brad Brownell, Clemson (1)
Jim Larrañaga, Miami (1)

That Roy Williams got six votes doesn't surprise one bit - it just tells us that there are six voters, certainly all within the borders of North Carolina, that aren't aware the conference extends beyond said borders.  We knew that.  I'm just surprised it wasn't more.  Don't take this as me suggesting Williams is the least bit deserving, of course.

Brad Brownell is not a completely batshit selection.  Certainly much less so than Roy.  This same media poll picked Clemson 14th in the conference, and they finished 6th - that tends to earn some worthy COY consideration most years.  Jim Larranaga (when, by the way, did he start using that ñ?) is a bizarre decision.  I guess finishing 10th when you were picked 12th is overachieving?  As Jamie Oakes pointed out, though, Miami provided Virginia Tech its only two conference wins.  That's much closer to grounds for firing than Best Coach In The Whole Damn Conference.

The real space-cadet pick, though, is Dixon.  Who the hell voted for Jamie Dixon?  Pittsburgh was supposed to be one of the league's pacesetters.  Instead they'll be watching Selection Sunday and hoping Wisconsin-Green Bay doesn't steal their bid.  (Hey, all I'm sayin' is, one school beat UVA, and one didn't.)

I tried to find Caulton Tudor's ballot for all these awards, just so we could all point and laugh at the homer, but have been unsuccessful.  However, I did find this gem from 2011:

With today’s announcement that no one from the regular-season champs was voted first-team all-conference, the Tar Heels were clearly low-balled by voters.  Never before has an outright regular-season ACC champ failed to have a player on the first unit.  This season’s first-team members — Duke’s Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler, Maryland’s Jordan Williams, Virginia Tech’s Malcolm Delaney and Boston College’s Reggie Jackson — had big seasons.  But can anyone seriously think the championship team didn’t deserve at least one first-team berth?

Read more here: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/accnow/tudors-take-tar-heels-robbed-in-all-acc-voting#storylink=cpy

Emphasis mine.  Do you think Tudor voted for any Hoos this year on the first team?  Yeah, me neither.

Read more here: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/accnow/tudors-take-tar-heels-robbed-in-all-acc-voting#storylink=cpy

weekend review

After writing all that stuff last week about fate, was I convinced this weekend that a Sunday 2-1 lead for the baseball team at Duke wasn't going to be enough?  Damn right I was.  Fortunately, I'm just a worrywart.  Baseball, in its lately-traditional role of weekend-saver, made sure the whole thing wasn't a loss, and secured a series win.  You'd like to sweep Duke, of course, because Duke is usually highly sweepable, but I'll take it.  I'll also take an alarm clock for the bats, which have hit the snooze button on the season, but we'll just go for now with the prevailing theory that they'll heat up when the weather does.  July, at this rate.

(Seriously: Brandon Downes hitting .235?  Cogswell, .216?  Kenny Towns, 3-for-32, which translates to .094?  It's OK to be a little nervous for now.)

As for lacrosse, I didn't watch the game (the only way was to pay for the Ivy League subscription thing, so, yeah, no) and even if I had I doubt I'd be able to explain what the bloody hell.  Let's just accept that this version of the lacrosse team is 1) better than last year and 2) still amazingly inexplicable, and move on.  I will point out one thing: only one stat on the sheet was lopsided in any one direction - saves.  We have two #1 goalie recruits in the country on this team.  Just throwing that out there.

This leaves basketball as a topic of discussion.  The Maryland game didn't go quite as planned, but let's just take this opportunity to point out that in UVA's two ACC losses, after 40 minutes the combined deficit was four, which was entirely accounted for by the Duke game.  One OT loss and one defensive rebound away in the other one - I'll take it.  Mostly because there's a banner going up anyway.

Admittedly, two games of evidence is enough for me to believe Maryland just happens to be a team that plays us tough this year, rather than there being some fluke about what happened in those matchups.  Maryland and Florida State is the 8/9 matchup of teams lucky enough to draw UVA as their reward for winning on Thursday; with a combined margin of +24 against one of those teams and +2 against the other, I know which one I'd rather see.

Tournament draws aren't the only thing out today, though; ACC awards, all but Coach of the Year, were announced today.  Between the coaches and the media I think the the media did a better job; the coaches put Malcolm Brogdon on the 1st team in place of the media's choice of K.J. McDaniels (the other four are the same) and even speaking as the homer of homers, that's hard to justify.  The rundown of UVA's media honorees:

Malcolm Brogdon - 2nd team
Joe Harris - 3rd team
Akil Mitchell - defensive team / honorable mention
London Perrantes - rookie team
Justin Anderson - 6th man of the year

That's five honorees in six spots.  The differences with the coaches (as far as we're concerned) is that the coaches nudged Brogdon and Harris each up one level and chose FSU's Ian Miller as 6th man.  Not a completely wacky choice.

This means that UVA is the only school that can put together a full team from its honorees.  UNC is closest with four, and I raise a very skeptical eyebrow at the selection of J.P. Tokoto to the defensive team.  I think that's your Carolina Bias choice; Syracuse's Rakeem Christmas would've been a much wiser choice.

Coach of the Year is to be announced tomorrow.  Ballot spoiler: all voters save one will choose Tony Bennett; certified moron Caulton Tudor will select Roy Williams, and will write an idiotic column about "early season adversity" and "unbalanced schedules" that strains the bounds of credulity much as Mae West strained the bounds of virginity.

(Random tangent: I'm watching the SoCon championship - a damn sloppy game if ever I saw one; there's apparently a reason the SoCon is KenPom's worst conference outside of the HBCU ones - and the announcers just made the case for Wiscy-Green Bay's tourney resume by saying, and I quote, "don't forget that early season win over Virginia."  Emphasis very much theirs.  All things being equal I'd rather not lose, but isn't it nice when each one of your losses are being referred to in that tone?)

Anyway, Tony's a lock for this thing.  Jim Boeheim blew it when he couldn't figure out how to operate his coat sleeves; he was a shoo-in before that, I'm sure.

Fun fact: the next two weeks of basketball are the best two weeks the sport has to offer.  Even this sloppy-ass SoCon game is fun - these low- and mid-major tournaments are a blast, particularly the championship game where everyone knows what's at stake and the emotion is running at the red line.  If there's a place where the purity of the game still exists, it's probably in this not-big gym - and it is a gym despite the word "arena" in its name - with surprisingly passionate fans of tiny little schools.  Ain't it nice to be active participants in the madness for once?

game preview: Cornell

Date/Time: Saturday, March 8; 12:00

TV: None

Record against the Big Red: 9-4

Last meeting: CU 12, UVA 11; 3/9/13, Charlottesville

Last game: UVA 17, Cuse 12 (3/1); CU 19, Canisius 6 (3/4)

Rankings: UVA #2/#2. JHU #15/#15

Efficiency stats:

Faceoffs:
UVA: 51.8% (#30)
CU: 60.6% (#9)

Clearing (offense):
UVA: 89.8% (#17)
CU: 88.6% (#21)

Clearing (defense):
UVA: 77.6% (#7)
CU: 85.3% (#34)

Scoring % (offense):
UVA: 40.2% (#11)
CU: 43.2% (#6)

Scoring % (defense):
UVA: 35.5% (#43)
CU: 31.3% (#28)

O-rating:
UVA: 17.59 (#13)
CU: 18.56 (#8)

D-rating:
UVA: 14.26 (#22)
CU: 15.33 (#33)

(Ratings are my KenPom-esque measures of efficiency for lacrosse. Numbers are schedule-adjusted. National average is about 15.4.)

I'll bet you expected a Maryland thing.  Two reasons this ain't that: one, the game means nothing except for maybe sending Maryland off to their new Midwestern friends in style (admittedly, I actually really want that for them.)  Two, there's a fair enough chance that Maryland will be the Friday opponent in the ACC tournament and thus I don't want to use up all the material this week.

Lacrosse it is, then.  UVA travels to Ithaca this weekend as the yardstick portion of the schedule starts to kick into gear.  Last week's win over Syracuse did little to dispel questions about whether this team is good enough - but it did change the scope back to what we're used to.  Instead of "can they get to the tournament" we're back to "can they win the whole thing."  (Almost definitely, and probably not.)  Wins over Loyola and Syracuse provide a decent resume foundation, and with VMI and Bellarmine yet to be played, getting to eight wins (you need to be over .500) should be little trouble.

On the other hand, this team is almost definitely overrated at #2.  Despite the torrid scoring pace put on by Mark Cockerton and James Pannell, the O-rating in my system is less elite than I would've expected.  This is due somewhat to the earliness in the season; it takes a while for those to settle down and UVA has played six games whereas most teams have not - when others catch up, a lot of the teams above UVA will regress to the mean some.

Still, there are legitimate concerns.  Faceoff percentage is a component of that rating, and UVA needed a faceoff blitzkrieg last week just to nose slightly above 50%.  Cornell will not be the faceoff pushover Syracuse was; FOGO Doug Tesoriero has won 61 of 100 this year so far (I hope I don't need to translate the percentage) and ought to be salivating this week.

Cornell hasn't been especially excellent this year, but not through any fault of their offense.  Though they've played some pretty awful defensive teams, they've certainly taken advantage, increasing their goal-scoring from game to game all year and culminating with a 19-goal outburst against Canisius this week.  They've got some good shooters; veteran attackmen Dan Lintner and Matt Donovan have stepped out of the shadows of Rob Pannell and Steve Mock to lead Cornell with 15 and 12 goals so far, and midfielder John Hogan has proved a shooting threat as well.  All are shooting at least 43%.

Cornell's defense has left something to be desired, though.  Goalie Brennan Donville has had a tough time filling the shoes of A.J. Fiore, starting his career as a starter with a .458 save percentage.  They've had their share already of close shaves against really bad teams; down 7-6 after three quarters to (currently) 0-4 Hobart, they needed a 6-1 4th in order to close it out.  And third-year program Michigan took them to overtime before succumbing, 15-14.  The same Michigan team that scored just 7 goals against High Point in their next game.

This game looks a lot like Syracuse redux.  Two offenses that are way ahead of their defenses.  Despite what the ratings say I think UVA has an edge on offense, and you don't need ratings or anything else to see how Cornell's defense has struggled as well.  UVA simply isn't going to have the kind of faceoff and groundball dominance they held against the Cuse though; meanwhile, Cornell's D looks kind of bad but UVA has some players who could make it look really bad.  Two undefeated records are on the line here; cautiously, I like the Hoos to pull it out, but they need to at least win more than 4 of 10 faceoffs.

Final score: UVA 16, CU 14

the recruit: Darrious Carter

Name: Darrious Carter
Position: DE
Hometown: Indiana, PA
School: Indiana Area
Height: 6'5"
Weight: 200

24/7: 85, three stars; #89 ATH, PA #33
ESPN: 73, three stars; #136 ATH, PA #44, East #192
Rivals: 5.4, two stars
Scout: two stars

Other offers: Temple

As the offseason went on, Mike London continued to address the class's gaping hole at DE by pilfering decent-looking athletes from other schools; that process continued shortly before Christmas Day with Darrious Carter's switch from Temple.  Carter was the second of three DEs to flip-flop to UVA.

The first thing you ought to've noticed here is the number 200, as in, pounds Carter weighs.  This is hilariously light for a defensive end; Eli Harold came in around 210, and this was more than duly noted by most observers, the difference being that Harold was a freak of nature.  Carter, though athletic enough to not only play wide receiver but rack up over 1,000 yards doing so, is not Haroldesque in his freakitude.  ESPN observes that his athleticism is enough to "excite non BCS schools and even possibly some lower level BCS ones."  Hey, that's us.

Carter was recruited to be a pass-rushing DE, though - and like Michael Biesemier, in no small reason because of his frame.  Whereas Biesemier is seen as a prototypical strong-side guy with the ability to bulk up into a run-stopper, Carter is on the other side as a weak-side pass rusher.  He's one of those guys with a long-limbed basketball build, something the coaches like about his potential.  Scout and ESPN agree that he's ok-quick off the line, not high-level in that regard, but note that lack of elite athleticism hasn't stopped him from being a playmaker.

Whatever plays he makes in a UVA uniform will probably have to wait quite a while.  Because he's so extremely lean, Carter is the least likely of the three signed DEs to see the field soonest.  As he's probably not going to be able to explode past ACC tackles the way Harold can, Carter needs to put on probably 30-35 pounds as the barest of minimums.  Probably more like 40-45 before he's hitting his full potential.

The likely long development curve, and the obvious lame-duckitude of the coaching staff, put Carter at risk of being recruited over in a couple years.  Probably more so than most of the rest of the class, which as a group carries various degrees of risk in that regard.  It'll be in his best interest to bulk up as fast as possible.  Carter ought to have three full years of separation between himself and the current sophomores at DE (Harold, Michael Moore, etc.) after what damn well better be a redshirt year, and after that the only DE between them and this class is Jack English, who's more a SDE type if someone doesn't decide he's more a TE type.  So the good news is the path is wide open, and when Carter's a (redshirt) sophomore in 2016, he'll be among the most experienced DEs we have.  Now, that's a really lousy situation for the defensive outlook in general, but if Carter doesn't seize that opportunity, then he was never going to see much time in the first place.

orange, out

By and large, I'd say we UVA fans are a pretty fatalistic bunch.  Whether more so than other fans, I couldn't say, but I'm sure Michigan fans don't have a Rule 2b, so there's that anyway.  But pretty damn fatalistic, some of us very seriously and earnestly so.  To varying degrees, UVA fans are convinced the refs have it out for us, the conference has it out for us, and the very fates have it out for us.

The events of Saturday can only make this fatalism worse - the difference, of course, is that for once, the fates have a benevolent side.  Most of the action can be chalked up to big-time coaching from Tony Bennett, big-time shooting from the shooters, and big-time rebounding by the rebounders.  Thomas Rogers - the senior we all forgot - hit a three-pointer, though, and right then it went from sanity to storybook.

The first thing I thought, after thirty seconds of gleeful laughter at the sight of the UVA bench going more totally apeshit than they had all season, was this: My lacrosse prediction is so screwed.  It doesn't take a lot of prolixity to write the story now, not anymore.  Senior Day, championship, scholarship, pandemonium.....it's so tailor-made for the fairy tales, just throw some conjunctions and stuff in between and you're all set.  Rogers's shot didn't even hit rim.  With the gods smiling on Charlottesville so, could there be any doubt how the lacrosse game would go?  Syracuse, on both fields of play, played just well enough to let the Hollywood scriptwriters get their moment of tension in the movie that's surely coming out any day now.

Why, the day even moved Tony Bennett to sideline emotions.  The man has two emotions on the sideline: stoic, and blind seething fury at jag-off refs.  The latter is expressed with an eye-roll.  The roof was already blown off the place and sailing toward the ionosphere and Tony sat in his crouch, watching the defense for any sign of a missed help or hedge, as if that was going to let Syracuse make up 19 points in as many seconds.  Later his eyes glistened.  Shortly after the horn.  We all saw it - living proof that it means something to the guy to really and truly be able to follow through on the promise that brought his seniors to Charlottesville in the first place, one of them from three time zones hence.

As this very same stoic coach will remind his team fifty times a day between now and Saturday, there's still work to be done.  The great part about this team and this coach is there's never a doubt the message will sink in.  The other great part about this team and this coach is that we just had enough magic to last the next 30 years, and probably won't have to wait that long for the next batch.

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Further stuff.....

-- Along the same lines as the above, let me tell you this.  Steve Yzerman - hockey fans know the name.  Absolutely revered up here in Detroit.  The man could drive a tank through a nunnery while firing live puppies out of the cannon and half of us would blame the nuns and the other half, the puppies.  Living legend.  He is to Detroit what, say, John Elway is to Denver, Larry Bird is to Boston, and so on.  So it's with a small amount of pride that I say I was there the only time he was ever booed in Detroit, and furthermore took part lustily.

It was at his number retirement ceremony.  Stevie Y got up there when it was his turn to speak, and because he's Stevie Y and shits more class and humility than anyone you care to name, talked about how it really wasn't his night, it was all thanks to his teammates.  Right, Stevie.  692 goals, 1,063 assists, one each of the Conn Smythe, Selke, and Masterton trophies (this latter is for the player who "best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to ice hockey"), 6th on the NHL's all-time scoring list, three Stanley Cups, and it had nothing to do with you.  Whatever.  Also, boooo.

This is how I felt listening to Tony say he "didn't deserve this" or whatever he told the sideline reporter lady.  Listen, Tony.  You da man.  I know you're a God-fearing man, but if you don't deserve this, who does?

-- Tony's attacking of the zone was masterful.  Syracuse started with heavy on-ball pressure and denial of wing-to-wing passes.  Relatively heavy for a zone, at any rate.  UVA was looking, however, to go inside, and did as much as possible.  So much so that players were passing up fairly open looks at the three, and forcing it inside to what looked like a worse look.  All else being equal, would you rather have an open Brogdon three-point attempt or the ball in Akil's hands, ten feet from the rim and right on the baseline, guarded by shot-blocker extraordinaire Rakeem Christmas?

I'll take the Brogdon three any day, but that wasn't the game plan; the obvious strategy was to force-feed the post and look for anything they could get from the free-throw line in.  Jim Boeheim then made exactly the half-time adjustment Tony wanted: he tightened up his zone to deny the post, at which time the launch pad was open for business.  UVA took five threes the entire first half; they needed just five minutes of the second half to take that many and finished with 11 in the latter 20 minutes.  Generally you figure, when you play a zone defense you try and loosen it up with a barrage of threes so you can do the work you want to inside; UVA went the opposite and saw it work to perfection.

-- Occasionally something is made of the "unbalanced schedule" that UVA has.  The schedule has been unbalanced since 2005, of course, and nobody decided to taint anyone else's championship with such accusations.  In 2007, when UVA went 11-5 and shared the title with UNC, nobody seemed to mind that UVA played 10-6 Maryland and VT twice and UNC only once, but anyway that's beside the point.  The point really is this.  Pick any team you like among the contenders - Cuse, Duke, UNC, Pitt.  Find all the instances of any of those teams playing each other twice.  Let them replace one loss with a win against a scrub team.  For example, Duke and Syracuse - we'll let them each take credit for the win against each other and wash away the loss.  Still, none of them can catch UVA.  Duke isn't 12-4 because of too many games against Cuse and UNC.  They're 12-4 because they failed to take care of business against Clemson and Notre Dame.

-- Storybook Saturday was so compelling that it trashed preconceived notions of what the storyline would be.

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Let's talk lax.  I said "show me" before the game.  I consider myself shown.  UVA won by dominating the stat sheet and letting the goals come.  More than 3 out of 4 faceoffs, and almost 5 out of every 7 ground balls, went UVA's way.  If the ball's on the ground, and you have a 5-in-7 chance of getting to it, you're going to get your way more often than not.

This is not the sort of thing that will happen every game, but we've now also managed to establish that UVA has a damn offense.  You got two guys on pace for 50-goal seasons without even counting the tournaments.  They're gonna need it, as they're getting no help from the defense and goalie in particular,

-- 32 is the new 6.  James Pannell has 22 goals and is a damn sophomore.  But what got Steele Stanwick comparisons running through my head was a goal he scored in (I think) the second quarter.  While the announcers were all fired-up about his "question-mark dodge" which reminded them of his brother Rob, I was more interested in the shot itself, sort of a twisting jump shot that snuck into an impossible corner of the net.  Stanwick announced his presence as a freshman with exactly that sort of otherwordly accuracy.

-- It's very, very difficult to assess a goalie's play on any individual shot, in real time.  It's real easy to look at 5 saves and 12 goals and not be real happy with the result, but I got at least one chance to find a spot where Matt Barrett ought to have made a save.  On one Hakeem Lecky shot, the ball would've flown straight into the pocket of Barrett's stick had he just stood there like a statue (not that I advocate this as a strategy.)  Instead he flinched, moving his stick away from the shot, and by the time he recovered it was obviously too late.  Maybe he's overthinking these shots; regardless of the cause, I think we're deep enough into the season to declare this a Problem.

-- Cornell is next.  Whatever they're ranked when they enter the game, it'll be too high.  They've played three really bad teams so far and struggled to put away all of them.  There's a very good chance UVA will be 7-0 and match their win total from last season halfway through this one.  With VMI yet to appear at Klockner, getting that Cornell win would clinch, at a minimum, "team that everyone hates for getting into the tournament with a lousy record" status.

-- Keeping in mind that you actually have to work to make the ACC tournament this year, that was a very big win.  Theoretically two conference wins should do the trick.  With this offense, it shouldn't be at all impossible to find one more in four more conference games.

there will be banners

ohhhhhh yes

game preview: Syracuse

Date/Time: Saturday, March 1; 4:00

TV: ESPN

Record against the Orange: 1-3

Last meeting: SU 73, UVA 70; 11/28/08, Syracuse

Last game: UVA 65, Mia. 40 (2/26); SU 57, Md. 55 (2/24)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 61.6 (#344)
SU: 61.0 (#345)

Offense:
UVA: 112.4 (#41)
SU: 114.4 (#22)

Defense:
UVA: 88.9 (#3)
SU: 92.5 (#9)

Pythag:
UVA: .9366 (#4)
SU: .9206 (#10)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (4.8 ppg, 2.2 rpg, 3.7 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (12.4 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 2.4 apg)
SF: Joe Harris (11.5 ppg, 2.9 rpg, 2.4 apg)
PF: Akil Mitchell (7.0 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 1.4 apg)
C: Mike Tobey (6.7 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 0.4 apg)

Syracuse:

PG: Tyler Ennis (12.0 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 5.6 apg)
SG: Trevor Cooney (12.8 ppg, 2.0 rpg, 1.3 apg)
SF: C.J. Fair (16.5 ppg, 6.1 rpg, 1.3 apg)
PF: Jerami Grant (12.3 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 1.4 apg)
PF: Rakeem Christmas (5.8 ppg, 4.8 rpg, 0.7 apg)

Finally.  The moment you've all been waiting for.  Fortunately, the basketball team we root for is better at staying in the moment than the fans are, or this game might have fizzled before it even began.  No disappointment here, however.  It's the biggest game of the weekend across the whole college hoops landscape.  Tickets are going on the secondary market for more than the price of buying that seat for the whole season.  Dickie V is in town.  Big, big time college basketball is coming to the JPJA.

It's also Senior Night for Joe Harris and Akil Mitchell.  Only two of Tony Bennett's heralded six-man class remain with the team.  Two of its least-hyped members, too.  These guys came in at the bottom and rode to the top - or more accurately, brought the team there themselves.  "Buying in" is such a hackneyed phrase, but if you want to know what it actually looks like, you can't do better than to trace the careers of these two.

Add it all up and it's the most can't-miss event that ever took place on the JPJA floor.  No wonder it costs a cool G to get in.

-- UVA on offense

The 2-3 zone is all anyone talks about when talking Syracuse defense.  They're one of the very few teams whose KenPom defensive fingerprint is "mostly zone."  Other teams deploy the 2-3 to try and take back control of the pace and the game on the defensive end; Syracuse uses it as their base defense.

Because of that, you can bet they don't play it the same every time down the court.  There will be different looks - Cuse will change the level of pressure on the ballhandler, their spacing, the amount of ball denial to certain places on the court.  They'll change help assignments on screens.  They'll throw out a lot of different looks, much the same way a spread offense team in football will line up in the same formation every play on the same drive and then change the playcall.

UVA's answer will generally come from the experience they've got in playing against 2-3 zones in the recent past, some of which have required large adjustments.  They've used four-guard lineups, multiple different players in the high post, and various approaches to force the zone to space out more than it wants to.  Moreover, I suspect the second half will be higher-scoring than the first, for the simple reason that's when the teams shoot at the end where their bench is.  I expect Tony to be pretty heavily involved; the coaches will help London Perrantes and all the ballhandlers out as much as possible by being more involved than usual in trying to pick the best approach for the defensive approach they're seeing.  Probably the first 10-15 seconds or so of the possession will be used to feel out the defensive call.

I don't have to tell you that three-point shooting is huge.  It doesn't matter who gets hot, but someone has to.  Perrantes's explosion against Miami had to cause a little bit of an oh-shit moment in the Syracuse coaches' meetings; it was clear that the Canes had been told to deny Harris and Brogdon and take their chances with Perrantes bombing away, and it cost them.  It wouldn't surprise me if Jim Boeheim had been planning a similar tactic.  That alone might've loosened up the zone just a little.

Personnel-wise, Syracuse has two thoroughly deadly shot-blockers in Rakeem Christmas and Baye Moussa Keita - the fortunate provenance here is that they don't ever play together.  The defense is designed to let one or the other patrol the middle and have them swat any stray layup attemps that might've gotten past the very long, lanky, and athletic wings and forwards.  C.J. Fair, Jerami Grant, and the very little-used Tyler Roberson all measure in around 6'8", 210, and play a lot of denial in the zone, discouraging both entry passes and drives to the rim.  Michael Gbinije is built much the same, and two and sometimes three of these players are in at all times.

Because of these guys, don't be fooled; the 2-3 is the most conservative of all defenses, except in the hands of Syracuse; they're as good at getting steals as any team in the country.  If I didn't know London Perrantes better, I'd say we were in real trouble with a freshman point guard.  He'll still have to play with care and realize the defenders between him and the pass recipient are bouncier and more athletic than what he's used to.  Despite the heralded abilities of Syracuse's scorers, it's their defense that worries me the most.

-- UVA on defense

First thing to understand: Cuse is not a very deep team.  Right or wrong, primary scoring is limited to four players.  I say "right or wrong" because a couple of those guys not on that list are in fact pretty dangerous and maybe should be more involved.  Michael Gbinije is a .400+ three-point shooter, and Rakeem Christmas only scores like six points a game but is in fact the team's second-most efficient offensive player, just a hair behind Trevor Cooney.

Yes, Cooney, not Tyler Ennis or C.J. Fair.  Fair is - wait for the surprise here - actually somewhat of a volume scorer.  UVA will defend him much the same way they defended Lamar Patterson, as Fair is a very similar player.  Like Patterson, his efficiency drops off a cliff if he can't get to the rim, which is exactly what Tony's defense will try to make happen.  Even though he's Cuse's leading scorer, he needs to shoot almost 29% of Cuse's shots while he's on the court to make it happen.

It's Cooney's three-point shooting that's probably the most dangerous thing here.  Even more so against a pack-line defense that prefers that you shoot over top.  Cooney launches threes at an astounding clip and will probably shoot his 200th attempt on the season in this game.  He lands them at a 40% pace, too.

At point, Tyler Ennis is all he's cracked up to be.  His ratio of a 32.5% assist rate to a 14.2% TO rate is among the very best in the country.  The scoring facets of his game demand respect, too.  And if Cuse misses a shot, they will crash the boards extremely hard to try and gather up another chance; UVA's stellar defensive rebounders will get a strong test from Grant, Christmas, and Keita.

All this said, offense has been SU's Achilles heel lately.  They actually have not shot the ball well; this is a team that will do absolutely everything right on offense and then clank the shot, which is why pace (Syracuse's is as slow as ours) is only part of the explanation as to why they haven't gotten any higher than 60 points since February 3.

UVA will have one other advantage, which I think is miniscule but worth mentioning: while the Hoos have faced a number of different 2-3 zone looks in the past month, Syracuse has not seen the pack-line except on film.  And then finally, there's the fatigue question; lots of folks are wondering if Syracuse is hitting a wall, a fair query given that four players play over 30 minutes a game, where UVA has only one such player (Brogdon) and he still lags behind all of Syracuse's big four in average minutes.  In terms of numbers, UVA isn't actually a great deal deeper than Cuse given that Darion Atkins and Evan Nolte are only half members of the rotation, but there's a hell of a lot more substitution.

Still, these are by no means game-breaking advantages.  They just tilt the field a tiny bit our way.  There are lots of ways Syracuse can tilt it back.  Lots of talent.  UVA should be able to defend this team, but that is the least given of all things.

-- Outlook

Could Syracuse win this game?  Easily.  They're the #4 team in the land for a reason; they reeled off a 25-game win streak for a reason; they scored 91 points in 68 possessions against Duke for a reason.  Talent abounds, and going through a rough patch doesn't mean you'll stay in a rough patch.

However, that's quite the rough patch.  The Syracuse offense is struggling hardcore.  Failing to score a point a possession against Boston College, which is not even a top 300 defense in the country, at home, should be a five-alarm bell.  C.J. Fair ballhogged and shot 7-for-23 while being guarded by such defensive luminaries as Eddie Odio.  While the complaint that UVA has benefitted from an unbalanced schedule is a fair one (I can hardly complain about this since I pointed out at the very beginning that we had the easiest schedule in the league by far) it's also true that Syracuse has not faced a defense like ours.

Objectively speaking, then, how can one pick the Cuse?  UVA is at home and playing elite defense, rolls more bodies on the floor, with the further intangible boost of trying to send the seniors off in style.  Syracuse is on the road, playing poor offense by the standards of an aspirational #1 seed, and looking for all the world like they're doing a slow dive into a brick wall.  No, I wouldn't be awfully surprised to see Cuse win - but if they do, it'll be close.  A lot of trends would have to suddenly reverse themselves for the Orange to walk out of the JPJA with a win, though.  I haven't picked against UVA in a long time.  I read these same tea leaves when UNC came to town, and was not disappointed.  Now is not the time to buck the trends.

Final score: UVA 55, SU 48

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Bonus!  It's a very Cusey weekend, and I would hate to omit lacrosse from the festivities.  UVA is 5-0, which is very nice and a better start than they had last year.  But we're also 0-0 against all the teams which we measure ourselves against.  One of them is coming to town this weekend.  Time constraints don't permit me to write a full-blown preview, but some bullet points and a prediction would be handy.

-- Syracuse was the #1 team in the country, but relinquished that distinction after being blown out at home by Maryland last week, 16-8.  The Cuse is now #8 with a 2-1 record; UVA is ranked #4, which is kind of scary high for a team that doesn't look like they've got it all figured out right now.

-- The Orange attack is a two-headed monster of Kevin Rice (2 goals, 11 assists) and Dylan Donahue (12 goals, 2 assists.)  You can see how this combo works out.  Midfielder Henry Schoonmaker also has a nice shot, and Randy Staats has been a good all-around guy with 7 goals and 5 assists.  Pretty much most of the names you hear when Syracuse has the ball will be unfamiliar.
-- Both teams need a lot more out of their goalies than they've been getting; Matt Barrett is at a .480 save percentage and Cuse's Dominic Lamolinara isn't much better at .488.

-- Faceoffs are a problem, as with always.  Mick Parks and Jeff Kratky are combining to go .434.  A surprise bright spot is on the roster in the form of defenseman Nate Menninger, a D-III transfer who got his first action against Rutgers and went 9-for-15.  His 18 total faceoffs are an itty-bitty sample size, though, and last season at Hamilton College his win percentage was only .468.  Syracuse still has excellent face-off guy Chris Daddio, who is at .557 right now, so a long day at the X seems likely.

-- Expect a high-scoring affair here.  Both teams' defenses have disappointed.  UVA had a really nice start for two quarters against Loyola and then fell off like a rock.  Syracuse had to squeak by Albany, 17-16, and gave up another 16 goals to Maryland.

Being 5-0 is nice, but UVA has yet to put together a full four quarters.  You can get away with that against Rutgers and Richmond.  Syracuse might struggle to stay out of the ACC basement this year but they're still a notch above anyone UVA's seen this year.  I'm in show-me mode right now, so....

Final score: SU 16, UVA 13

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Double bonus!  ACC sims are updated, with one small wrinkle.  Go see.

defense travels

Background: During the Notre Dame game this past Saturday, the announcers were discussing UVA's sterling road record and the amount of success they've had away from the JPJA, particularly in ACC play.  By way of explanation, Doris Burke said simply, "Defense travels."  I liked it instantly (not least because that's all she said, and didn't spend three possessions blathering on trying to explain it.)

The phrase had a certain elegance, because it made perfect sense.  Hostile crowds are always yelling at you on offense, but they shush when you're on defense.  You don't have to worry about shooting backgrounds, giant swirly cutouts during free throws, false countdowns, airball chants, and all the other stuff the crowd throws at you when you have the ball.  In general, offense demands execution while defense demands effort.  (Yes, I know Tony Bennett's intricate help systems will crash and burn if you don't execute.  But still.)  It's not hard to exert effort - it is hard to be mentally sharp enough to execute.

Simply making sense wasn't quite enough, though.  I wanted to see if I could quantify the concept.  I took, out of the KenPom rankings, the top 25 teams most skewed toward offense and defense, just by dividing a team's offensive efficiency ranking (out of 351) by its defensive efficiency ranking.  The 25 teams at either end of that list are the least balanced ones.

(This method skews rather heavily toward teams at the top of either list.  I thought of taking every team with a difference of, say, 35 spots between offense and defense, but there's a huge difference between being ranked #2 and #37, and being ranked #162 and #197.  One is being really good at one thing and decent at another; one is just mediocre at everything.  Clearly, it's not actually a bad idea to cherry-pick the teams at the top, since the edges of the bell curve is where we want to do this research.)

If defense travels while offense gets stuck at home, you would expect the defense-heavy teams to be about as good on the road as at home, maybe only adjusted by the standard 3-point advantage for home teams.  Similarly, you'd figure offense-heavy teams to struggle on the road.

I decided to look only at conference games, for two reasons.  One, the vast majority of the 50 teams in the study have played an equal number of home and road games inside the conference, while including OOC games would throw that out of whack.  Two, it levels off the quality of competition.  Teams in the ACC, Big Ten, etc., would play a bunch of crappy teams at home and skew the results.  This way teams are playing competition mostly equal to themselves.

The methodology was simply to average each team's margin of victory or loss on the road and at home and then average all those together.  The result is below.  (Offense-heavy teams are on the left, defense-heavy teams on the right.)

As an example in case the numbers aren't meaning anything to you, William & Mary has lost by an average of five points on the road and won by an average of 7.14 points at home, the difference being 12.14.  The average team in the offense column wins by 1.64 points on the road and 8.3 points at home.

The obvious, and rather disappointing, conclusion is that the hypothesis is bunk.  The defensive teams actually perform ever so slightly better at home vs. on the road than the offensive teams do - the margin, however, being so close as to be functionally the same.  The correlation between road vs. home performance and defense vs. offense is essentially zero - positively no relationship whatsoever.

About all I managed to affirm with this is that defensive teams generally play somewhat closer games than do offensive teams - like, duh, they do - and that the three-point home-court advantage that linemakers give is fairly spot-on.

But the evidence is plain: it doesn't matter whether your team is defensively-oriented or offensively-oriented, you're still subject to the difficulties of playing on the road.  I was really hoping to see a correlation for a couple different reasons.  One of which is that we have a defensive team.  As it turns out, we're just special.  Only three other teams out of the 50 I looked at have an average double-digit margin of victory on the road, and all three of the others - Davidson, Harvard, and Southern - are mid-majors running roughshod over crappy conferences.  It just turns out that UVA is good on the road not because they're a defensive team, but because they're good on the road.