Monday, September 28, 2009

weekend review

It's a nice change to write this post after a weekend when we didn't lose. Now let's try winning next weekend. Baby steps.

First, based on all the great comments (there was one) regarding the Blogpoll ballot, I hereby submit a revised one that gives Oregon a smidge more credit than they had before. I guess when you think about it, they really only have the one loss and it's to the #5 team, and two of their three wins are against teams that just missed the cut. One of those wins being by 39 damn points. So there we go: Oregon moves from #20 to #15, even though I sorta think their shellacking of Cal was probably more about the football gods trying to send a message about their uniforms than actual football prowess.


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



Dropped Out: California (#5), Washington (#9), Pittsburgh (#14), North Carolina (#15), Florida State (#17), Brigham Young (#18), Mississippi (#23).


Anyway, soccer: I'm officially perturbed about the offense, and I'm just going to slough off and let you go ahead and insert your own parallels-the-football-team joke this week. They practically write themselves.

So let's skip ahead to baseball. The schedule is out. At first blush it looks like basically the same as last year's, only with a couple early-season series against mildly respectable teams (ECU and Rhode Island.) In other words, ample opportunity for Tim Weiser to be a dick again.

It still is basically not a super-strong schedule, but swapping out Bucknell for ECU to open the season and then adding a series with tournament-snub URI isn't the only change. There's actually also been something of an upgrade in the midseason weekday games - the three New York puffballs we played have been replaced with instate puffballs. And George Mason is one of them and they're not actually a puffball, they were a tournament three-seed. Plus we might actually get to play the Coastal Carolina game this year. All in all we've upgraded the average RPI of the nonconference schedule from 179 to 130. And if that's not enough, WE PLAY IN THE ACC.

(Just to be clear, if you offered us a clean slate and a proper seeding in the tournament and the chance to see how that played out, I wouldn't trade it. Doesn't stop the committee from being retarded, though.)

We're skipping the recruiting board update this week. Nothing's happening. Nada. But they're still playing high school football, so let's see what's going on with that.

ADRIAN GAMBLE: Scored a touchdown in Independence's 35-13 win over East Mecklenburg.

KEVIN PARKS: Three more touchdowns as West Rowan shut down South Rowan, 28-0.

TYLER BROSIUS: Tuscola won 62-0 and Brosius threw for 171 yards and three touchdowns; as his team scored five touchdowns in the first quarter, presumably he did not play the whole game.

That's all I got in that category, and if that seems thin, blame the thin, lower-profile recruiting class. Last year at this time we had 17 in place, not counting the future decommitments.

OK, once around the ACC:

- GT looked a lot more like the team I thought they'd be in trouncing UNC, 24-7. Tar Heel Mania figures GT also did a better job graphically depicting the game and just rolls with it.

- Florida State is the new Maryland. After following up their woodshedding of BYU with a bedshitting against South Florida, Tomahawk Nation has words for those who are not True Seminoles.

- Boston College edged Wake Forest, 27-24, and BC Interruption declares the quarterback competition over. Blogger So Dear self-censors in an admirable show of restraint.

- Clemson joins the lost-to-TCU club, 14-10, and Block-C politely requests more actual scoring when the team approaches the end zone.

- NC State beat Pitt 38-31, and YANCSTSB calls it Russell Wilson's best game of his career.

- That other Virginia team absolutely housed Miami (and yes I threw up in my mouth shortly after submitting a ballot that ranks them #2) and Gobbler Country reacts in the traditional fashion, which involves bourbon. The 7th Floor also reacts in the traditional fashion, which involves vodka, and also is very pissed off so for good measure deploys an indirect Cho Seung-Hui sideswipe - yeowch.

- Maryland got smoked by Rutgers; Testudo Times is talking buyout for Beanpole Ralph.

- Finally, Duke made good on their second chance at a I-AA team. Why didn't we think of scheduling the one that just made the jump from D-II?

No comments: