the school: Notre Dame

It pains me to say it, because Lord knows the Domers don't need larger heads than they've already got, but Notre Dame is not only a brilliant addition to the ACC, it's essentially a necessary one.  Everyone else has been looking to add to their conference a big, high-profile team, and of all the teams that actually moved conferences, Notre Dame has the highest of profiles.  The ND logo looks decidedly odd among all the other ACC ones, even the other two new schools, but it's a marriage of some necessity.  And the Irish bring a ton of instant, and very tangible, cachet.

Overall profile

Enrollment (undergrad):

1. Florida State: 31,800
2. Maryland: 26,800
3. NC State: 26,200
4. Virginia Tech: 23,900
5. North Carolina: 18,600
6. Pittsburgh: 18,400
7. Clemson: 16,600
8. Virginia: 15,800
9. Syracuse: 14,800
10. Georgia Tech: 14,500
11. Miami: 10,300
12. Boston College: 9,100
13. Notre Dame: 8,400
14. Duke: 6,500
15. Wake Forest: 4,800

Academic rank (USN&WR):

1. Duke (#8)
2. Notre Dame (#17)
3. Virginia (#24)
4. Wake Forest (#27)
5. North Carolina (#30)
6. Boston College (#31)
7. Georgia Tech (#36)
8. Miami (#44)
9(t). Syracuse (#58)
9(t). Maryland (#58)
9(t). Pittsburgh (#58)
12. Clemson (#68)
13. Virginia Tech (#72)
14. Florida State (#97)
15. NC State (#106)

Director's Cup average:**

1. North Carolina: 6.2
2. Florida State: 9
3. Virginia: 10.6
4. Duke: 12
5. Notre Dame: 18.4
6. Maryland: 28.8
7. Virginia Tech: 40
8. Clemson: 50.8
9. Syracuse: 54
10. Miami: 56.4
11. Georgia Tech: 59.6
12. NC State: 60.2
13. Boston College: 67.6
14. Wake Forest: 70.8
15. Pittsburgh: 113.6

**average finish in the last five years, including 2013.
When you think about it, having five teams that averaged in the Director's Cup top 20 in the past five years is pretty good.  It leaves less than four each to be scattered among the other four major conferences.  I think a world-class university should excel in everything it does, athletics included, and there are really only three schools in the ACC that can make a strong claim that they do.  (And one of them is muddling their way through a no-show class scandal with tutors who wrote papers for players and getting caught agents crawling around the place being buddies with "Coach Black Santa."  So.)

Anyway, Notre Dame.  Their academic prowess is well-known and their Director's Cup standings have been moving in the right direction as well, from 27th in 2010 to 9th in 2013.  People talk about how the ACC will add Louisville at just the right time, but basketball and football fame can be fleeting if they don't work to maintain their grasp and there's another whole season to go.  ND has their whole program moving upwards just as they hit the ACC.

Sports we play that they don't

Men:

Wrestling

Women:

Field hockey

Sports they play that we don't

Men:

Fencing
Ice hockey

Women:

Fencing

With 23 teams, UVA offers more varsity sports than most other schools.  I haven't counted, but I would guess maybe only 15 or so D-I schools offer that many or more.  We're talking Michigan, Ohio State, UCLA, Texas, that kind of school.  (Actually, I just looked it up and UCLA only has 22 if you don't count "sand volleyball.")  Anyway, with 24 sports, ND is one of those schools; they have 12 for men and 12 for women.  The big one is hockey (and it's a little surprising there's no women's team.)  There's also fencing, which I think will make them the only ACC team to have that sport.  We've got wrestling and field hockey; I'm a little surprised that a Midwestern school has no wrestling and that a rich kids' school has no field hockey.

Common sports

(The number after each year shows how many Director's Cup points were earned by that sport in that year.)

Baseball

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 78)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 64)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 83)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 25)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 64)

Totals: 0 (UVA 314)

Brian O'Connor will get a chance to go against his old team.  Irish baseball isn't much of a power, though; they're probably a notch or two below Pittsburgh and less likely than the Panthers to initially threaten to make the ACC tournament.  It might be interesting to see how they can recruit against other Midwestern teams that are stuck in Midwestern conferences, though.  UVA shouldn't find them to be a major threat to the upper echelons of the conference.

Men's basketball

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 0)
2009-2010: 25 (UVA 0)
2010-2011: 50 (UVA 0)
2011-2012: 25 (UVA 25)
2012-2013: 25 (UVA 0)

Totals: 125 (UVA 25)

Notre Dame hoops wasn't really a thing in the 90s, but made a reappearance on the national scene under Mike Brey, and it might've gotten even farther if it hadn't been overshadowed by an expanding and improving Big East.  Instead they became sort of an "oh yeah, also them too" kind of team when talking about how deep the Big East was, after teams like Syracuse and Louisville got mentioned.  Now they'll be sort of the same deal in the ACC: strong, almost always tourney-worthy, a step or two shy of being a national contender.

Women's basketball

2008-2009: 25 (UVA 50)
2009-2010: 64 (UVA 25)
2010-2011: 90 (UVA 0)
2011-2012: 90 (UVA 0)
2012-2013: 83 (UVA 0)

Totals: 352 (UVA 75)

There's a lot less parity in women's hoops than in men's, and ND has taken advantage of that, lately emerging as challengers to Tennessee and UConn and making three Final Fours in a row.  In fact, they recently became the first team to beat both of those schools in the same tournament.  They should be the ACC's top program instantly.

Men's cross country

2008-2009: 36 (UVA 48)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 45)
2010-2011: 24 (UVA 40)
2011-2012: 26 (UVA 0)
2012-2013: 46 (UVA 61.5)

Totals: 132 (UVA 194.5)

Women's cross country

2008-2009: 16 (UVA 22)
2009-2010: 28 (UVA 45)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 32)
2011-2012: 30 (UVA 34)
2012-2013: 60 (UVA 0)

Totals: 134 (UVA 131)

For what it's worth, Notre Dame is a perennial winner of the National Catholic Championship, which invites about 35 schools every year.  They have a solid CC program that should at least be a contender in the ACC, with outside chances at a championship.

Football

2008-2009: 45 (UVA 0)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 0)
2010-2011: 45 (UVA 0)
2011-2012: 25 (UVA 25)
2012-2013: 85 (UVA 0)

Totals: 200 (UVA 25)

Since Notre Dame isn't a football member of the ACC per se, it seems potentially not worth the discussion here.  But then, we'll play them more often than we ever play NC State or Clemson, so why not?  Anyway, I didn't have to explain Syracuse lacrosse to you and I don't have to explain Notre Dame football either.  This whole ACC deal might not have ever gotten done if ND hadn't agreed to always play a partial ACC schedule; it's pretty important for the ACC to have five televised ND games every two years.

Men's golf

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 46.5)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 65)
2010-2011: 21 (UVA 27.5)
2011-2012: 40 (UVA 51.5)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 39)

Totals: 61 (UVA 229.5)

Women's golf

2008-2009: 27 (UVA 70.5)
2009-2010: 24 (UVA 63)
2010-2011: 52 (UVA 80)
2011-2012: 28 (UVA 80)
2012-2013: 29 (UVA 42)

Totals: 160 (UVA 335.5)

I'm not terribly well qualified to talk about golf; you can draw conclusions from the numbers above just as well as I can.

Men's lacrosse

2008-2009: 25 (UVA 83)
2009-2010: 90 (UVA 83)
2010-2011: 60 (UVA 100)
2011-2012: 83 (UVA 60)
2012-2013: 60 (UVA 0)

Totals: 315 (UVA 326)

It seems like Notre Dame is still a newcomer to lacrosse's elite scene, and maybe they kind of are.  But it's been four years since they failed to get past the first round, and they've been a semi-regular participant in the Final Four the last couple years.  Adding ND to the ACC will help ensure the conference stays at the very top of the lacrosse world, especially with a new Maryland-based threat from the Big Ten.

Women's lacrosse

2008-2009: 60 (UVA 25)
2009-2010: 25 (UVA 60)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 25)
2011-2012: 25 (UVA 25)
2012-2013: 25 (UVA 70)

Totals: 135 (UVA 205)

ND's women's team isn't quite as accomplished as Syracuse's, and they have a Midwestern recruiting rival in Northwestern that might make it hard for them to move into the elite.  But they're still a solid team that should add to the ACC's degree of difficulty.

Men's soccer

2008-2009: 50 (UVA 50)
2009-2010: 50 (UVA 100)
2010-2011: 50 (UVA 25)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 25)
2012-2013: 64 (UVA 50)

Totals: 114 (UVA 250)

Unlike with the other two schools, the ACC is getting a pretty well-accomplished soccer program in the Irish.  They're coming off a Big East championship season - during which they also beat Duke and Clemson, mid-level ACC teams - and they tend to advance a round or two in the NCAAs each year.  They should be at least a respectable addition to the conference, if not a strong contender at times.

Women's soccer

2008-2009: 90 (UVA 64)
2009-2010: 83 (UVA 64)
2010-2011: 100 (UVA 64)
2011-2012: 25 (UVA 73)
2012-2013: 73 (UVA 64)

Totals: 371 (UVA 329)

The Irish have one of the elite women's soccer programs in the country; only North Carolina has been to more championship games, and ND took home the title in 2010.  Putting them in the same conference as UNC in this sport is, well, it's kinda like putting Duke and UNC in the same basketball conference, only with more geographical separation.  Even more so, really; men's hoops is a fairly large oligarchy, whereas there's no question in women's soccer that it's UNC, then ND, then the rest of the country.

Softball

2008-2009: 50 (UVA 0)
2009-2010: 50 (UVA 25)
2010-2011: 25 (UVA 0)
2011-2012: 50 (UVA 0)
2012-2013: 25 (UVA 0)

Totals: 200 (UVA 25)

For softball, the ACC is good, not great; Florida State went 18-2 in conference play this year and wasn't rewarded with a regional.  The jump for Notre Dame to the ACC isn't a huge one.  ND has been making the tournament with semi-ease and then not making it out of the regional for several years now; their performance in the ACC should be much the same.  UVA is near the bottom, looking way up, so Notre Dame will be more of a concern for the UNCs of the world that hover near the middle-top and the tournament bubble.

Men's swimming and diving

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 69)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 67.5)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 70.5)
2011-2012: 46 (UVA 60)
2012-2013: 33 (UVA 47)

Totals: 79 (UVA 314)

Women's swimming and diving

2008-2009: 43 (UVA 64.5)
2009-2010: 30 (UVA 69)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 63)
2011-2012: 51.5 (UVA 57)
2012-2013: 58.5 (UVA 56)

Totals: 183 (UVA 309.5)

As should be evident from the numbers above, ND's women's swim teams have generally been better than the men; the men, however, are on the rise, and broke through two years ago to claim the Big East championship.  Neither team has finished lower than second in the past two seasons.  UVA still has a better team, as long as we can find a worthy successor to Mark Bernardino, but the Irish present a threat.

Men's tennis

2008-2009: 25 (UVA 73)
2009-2010: 25 (UVA 83)
2010-2011: 50 (UVA 90)
2011-2012: 50 (UVA 90)
2012-2013: 25 (UVA 100)

Totals: 175 (UVA 436)

I mean, UVA hasn't lost a men's tennis contest in the ACC in something like six years.  Notre Dame has a decent outfit but UVA is the class of the conference in this sport, and ND won't be changing that.

Women's tennis

2008-2009: 83 (UVA 50)
2009-2010: 83 (UVA 50)
2010-2011: 50 (UVA 64)
2011-2012: 50 (UVA 64)
2012-2013: 50 (UVA 64)

Totals: 316 (UVA 292)

These matches, on the other hand, should be pretty tight.  Our women's team is good, and very competitive in the conference, but doesn't rise to the level of the men's team; ND made a couple Final Fours a few years ago and should slot in somewhere near the top of the ACC as well.  They knocked off 5th-placed (in the ACC) Georgia Tech twice in the past season, and easily handled NC State in the opening round of the tournament.

Men's track and field (outdoor)

2008-2009: 24.5 (UVA 24.5)
2009-2010: 5 (UVA 49.5)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 46)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 15)
2012-2013: (UVA 0)

Totals: 5 (UVA 135)

Women's track and field (outdoor)

2008-2009: 50 (UVA 36.5)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 0)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 44)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 0)
2012-2013: (UVA 0)

Totals: 0 (UVA 80.5)

Track is not ND's strong suit, but then, neither is it ours except in fits and starts.  UVA is much closer to changing that and fielding strong teams that regularly place athletes in the national meet than Notre Dame is.

Women's volleyball

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 0)
2009-2010: 25 (UVA 0)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 0)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 0)
2012-2013: 25 (UVA 0)

Totals: 50 (UVA 0)

One of ND's weaker programs nationally, the volleyball team makes occasional appearances at the tournament and doesn't generally advance.  That'll still put them at least in the middle-to-top of the ACC, and it'll be a while before UVA can consider competing with them.

the school: Pittsburgh

Continuing the deep-dive look at the ACC's newest members, we move on to the team that will join UVA in the Coastal Conference and become a yearly opponent.

Overall profile
Enrollment (undergrad):

1. Florida State: 31,800
2. Maryland: 26,800
3. NC State: 26,200
4. Virginia Tech: 23,900
5. North Carolina: 18,600
6. Pittsburgh: 18,400
7. Clemson: 16,600
8. Virginia: 15,800
9. Syracuse: 14,800
10. Georgia Tech: 14,500
11. Miami: 10,300
12. Boston College: 9,100
13. Notre Dame: 8,400
14. Duke: 6,500
15. Wake Forest: 4,800

Academic rank (USN&WR):

1. Duke (#8)
2. Notre Dame (#17)
3. Virginia (#24)
4. Wake Forest (#27)
5. North Carolina (#30)
6. Boston College (#31)
7. Georgia Tech (#36)
8. Miami (#44)
9(t). Syracuse (#58)
9(t). Maryland (#58)
9(t). Pittsburgh (#58)
12. Clemson (#68)
13. Virginia Tech (#72)
14. Florida State (#97)
15. NC State (#106)

Director's Cup average:**

1. North Carolina: 6.2
2. Florida State: 9
3. Virginia: 10.6
4. Duke: 12
5. Notre Dame: 18.4
6. Maryland: 28.8
7. Virginia Tech: 40
8. Clemson: 50.8
9. Syracuse: 54
10. Miami: 56.4
11. Georgia Tech: 59.6
12. NC State: 60.2
13. Boston College: 67.6
14. Wake Forest: 70.8
15. Pittsburgh: 113.6

**average finish in the last five years, including 2013.

Pitt is about 4,000 students bigger than Syracuse, but academically right in the same area.  They're a private school that behaves like a public one (funding from the state, lower tuition for instate students) thanks to the weird way the Pennsylvania higher education system is set up; otherwise, their profile is remarkably similar to Syracuse.  The differences on the athletic fields are much more pronounced, however.  Pitt will become the only ACC team to finish outside the top 100 in Director's Cup standings at any time in the last five years; worse yet, the only time in the past five years they finished inside the top 100 was in 2008-2009, when they were 93rd.  That's worse than all but one of Wake Forest's showings.  Thus, it's the Panthers that stand to gain the most from ACC membership of any of the three additions.

Sports we play that they don't

Men:

Golf
Lacrosse
Tennis

Women:

Field hockey
Golf
Lacrosse
Rowing

Sports they play that we don't

Men:

None

Women:

Gymnastics

Pitt has a much more balanced profile of offerings than Cuse does, but like Cuse, they skip a number of sports that UVA is good at.  Lax and men's tennis come to mind, and crew and field hockey on the women's side.  Gymnastics is the only Pitt sport not offered at UVA.

Common sports

(The number after each year shows how many Director's Cup points were earned by that sport in that year.)

Baseball:

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 78)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 64)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 83)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 25)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 64)

Totals: 0 (UVA 314)

Pittsburgh has never found itself at the bottom of the Big East standings; in fact, they usually end up somewhere between the middle and the top.  But they haven't earned any national tournament berths because when they do have a good record, it's built on an inferior OOC schedule.  They were 42-17 this year - their best record in this time frame - but had the 202nd-best strength of schedule.  They've been competitive in the Big East - whether that translates to the ACC will be very much in question, because they really haven't played a team as good as those at the top of the ACC in the last five years.  They'll at least be better than BC, though.

Men's basketball:

2008-2009: 73 (UVA 0)
2009-2010: 50 (UVA 0)
2010-2011: 50 (UVA 0)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 25)
2012-2013: 25 (UVA 0)

Totals: 198 (UVA 25)

One of the school's calling cards, but less successful of late than in the past and slowly earning the reputation of a tournament underachiever.  They earned 1 seeds in 2009 and 2011, but that didn't get them past the Elite Eight, and then only in 2009.  Still, they're a tough team under Jamie Dixon and they consider it a major disappointment if they miss the tournament.

Women's basketball:

2008-2009: 64 (UVA 50)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 25)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 0)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 0)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 0)

Totals: 64 (UVA 75)

Had a good run in the mid-2000s, but a three-year string of losing seasons led to a coaching change this past offseason.  Like UVA, rebuilding and looking uphill in a tough conference, and probably have farther to go than we do.

Men's cross country:

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 48)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 45)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 40)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 0)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 61.5)

Totals: 0 (UVA 194.5)

Women's cross country:

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 22)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 45)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 32)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 34)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 0)

Totals: 0 (UVA 131)

Both cross-country teams run in the bottom levels of the Big East, and will continue to do so in the ACC.

Football:

2008-2009: 25 (UVA 0)
2009-2010: 60 (UVA 0)
2010-2011: 45 (UVA 0)
2011-2012: 25 (UVA 25)
2012-2013: 25 (UVA 0)

Totals: 180 (UVA 25)

Between Pitt and Syracuse, the Panthers are the team more likely to find some early success in the ACC.  They have a five-year bowl streak going, although the last three are trips to the Compass Bowl in Birmingham, Alabama.  As with Syracuse, it might be harder in the ACC to find six wins than it was in the Big East, but the Panthers are moving to what right now is the easier side of the conference.

Men's soccer:

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 50)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 100)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 25)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 25)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 50)

Totals: 0 (UVA 250)

Pitt might very easily be the very bottom of the barrel in ACC soccer.  In the recent five years they won seven Big East games, three against Seton Hall.  That makes something like 30-some losses (I didn't bother to look out for ties.)

Women's soccer:

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 64)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 64)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 64)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 73)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 64)

Totals: 0 (UVA 329)

The women are slightly more competitive, but the story's still the same.  The ACC is a monster conference in women's soccer, and the Pitt ladies will probably get steamrolled for a while.

Softball:

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 0)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 25)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 0)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 0)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 0)

Totals: 0 (UVA 25)

Similarly to UVA, sort of generically bad, but with lower high points (as in, we once made the NCAA tournament and they didn't.)  They usually have a losing record in Big East play and probably will in the ACC, too.

Men's swimming and diving:

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 69)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 67.5)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 70.5)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 60)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 47)

Totals: 0 (UVA 314)

Women's swimming and diving:

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 64.5)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 69)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 63)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 57)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 56)

Totals: 0 (UVA 309.5)

Pitt used to really dominate Big East swimming, but that was ten or more years ago; they typically roll in about 3rd or 4th in the 11-team Big East meet these days.  They've been a regular dual-meet opponent of ours as well, and UVA has always won without dominating.  I suspect if I looked a little deeper into the lineups I might find that UVA hasn't been throwing the A-team out there; an experienced swim coach like Bernardino knows what kind of minimum lineup he can set in order to shuffle things around a little and still win.  At any rate, if UVA is knocked off its lofty pedestal in ACC swimming, it probably won't be Pitt that does it.  Neither will they free-fall to the bottom of the rankings.

Women's tennis:

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 50)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 50)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 64)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 64)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 64)

Totals: 0 (UVA 292)

Nothing very notable about this team, and unlikely to give UVA a difficult time or to make many waves in ACC competition.

Men's track and field (outdoor):

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 24.5)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 49.5)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 46)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 15)
2012-2013: 5 (UVA 0)

Totals: 5 (UVA 135)

Women's track and field (outdoor):

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 36.5)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 0)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 44)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 0)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 0)

Totals: 0 (UVA 80.5)

Occasionally send a participant to the national championship meet.  Bout all that can be said.

Women's volleyball:

2008-2009: 0 (UVA 0)
2009-2010: 0 (UVA 0)
2010-2011: 0 (UVA 0)
2011-2012: 0 (UVA 0)
2012-2013: 0 (UVA 0)

Totals: 0 (UVA 0)

Will enter the league ahead of UVA in the pecking order, but then, most teams would.  Their lack of entries into the NCAA tournament probably won't be rectified by joining the ACC, but they won't embarrass themselves either.

Wrestling:

2008-2009: 36 (UVA 40)
2009-2010: 48 (UVA 60)
2010-2011: 40 (UVA 50.5)
2011-2012: 60 (UVA 45.5)
2012-2013: 59 (UVA 53)

Totals: 243 (UVA 249)

Pitt's wrestling team is good and getting better, with some top-15 finishes at the national championships.  They're close to where Virginia Tech finishes, and Tech is the usual ACC champion, with UVA coming in 2nd in recent years.  Pitt will come into the ACC and instantly be the most likely team to dethrone the Hokies; wrestling will easily be their most likely path to an ACC championship.

Pitt's campus is smack in the middle of a large northern city, with minimal if any room for outward growth.  That has about exactly the effect you'd expect on their athletics.  With the exception of football - for which they borrow the Steelers' stadium - and five points in track this spring, not one of their outdoor sports has earned a Director's Cup point in however many years.  Everything they do well is indoors, and they typically earn all the points they're going to earn during the winter season, after scraping a few from football.  They have potential to be a major force in ACC wrestling and will definitely add to the ACC profile in hoops, and they'll do alright in football, too.  I don't see them having an upper-echelon baseball team (and they have one of those obnoxious even-the-dirt-is-turf fields) but they ought to provide some competition for the likes of Duke, Tech, and Maryland for the bottom seeds in the ACC tourney.  Most of the rest of their programs, though, won't be competitive at least until the ACC money starts to take effect.

FOV Cavalier of the Year #3/#4

From Old Virginia celebrates its birthday in a unique way: by recognizing one of Virginia's student-athletes as the Cavalier of the Year. What are the criteria for the award? You decide; that's the beauty. I nominate the 12 athletes that I think have been the most outstanding during the latest season of UVA athletics, and provide a short summary of their accomplishments. You choose the winner in a poll that goes up after all 12 have had their moment in the spotlight. The full list of nominees is here.

Over the next few weeks, two athletes at a time will be profiled, and you'll hear about what they've accomplished while representing Mr. Jefferson's University this year. The athletes are presented in a totally random order so as to hopefully not imply any endorsement one way or another. Athletes from all fields are considered; the point is to emphasize that UVA is about excellence across the entire department and doesn't shortchange its so-called non-revenue sports simply because they don't make headlines. The previous winners are Danny Hultzen (2009, 2011), Diego Restrepo (2010), and Mike Scott and Morgan Brian (2012); today's athlete's are Scott McWilliams and Casey Bocklet.

Scott McWilliams - Men's lacrosse - Defense

Team accomplishments:

-- None, really

Personal accomplishments:

-- USILA 2nd-team all-American
-- All-ACC selection
-- Fourth in the country in caused turnovers per game

It was a really rare bad year for UVA lacrosse.  A losing record and no NCAA tournament.  From an individual performance perspective, not a total loss, however; Mark Cockerton reached the 40-goal plateau and Tanner Scales was the ACC Freshman of the Year.  For the first time since Ken Clausen was a senior, though (and Clausen, too, was a COY nominee) a defenseman was the team's best player.

McWilliams was the only ACC defenseman picked to the all-ACC team, for starters, and his 36 caused turnovers were beaten by only four other players in the country (one of whom played 21 games to McWilliams's 15.)  Good enough to get him onto the all-American team, too.  McWilliams is a versatile player, as the coaches have found it possible to move him back and forth between defense and LSM as needed.  Clausen's accolades were higher, it's true....but then, Clausen was a senior for all that, and McWilliams's star is rising while only a junior.  You have to be a pretty good defenseman to be the best player on any UVA team, and we might've complained about the lack of offensive firepower at times, but there was a 40-goal scorer, too.  Scott McWilliams, though, after this year's performance, looks like the heart and soul of next year's team.

Casey Bocklet - Women's lacrosse - Attack

Team accomplishments:

-- Reached ACC semifinals
-- Reached NCAA quarterfinals

Personal accomplishments:

-- IWLCA 3rd-team all-American
-- IWLCA 2nd-team all-South
-- ACC all-tournament team
-- Tewaaraton Trophy watch list
-- Team scoring leader

Yes, Chris's sister, and not a moment too soon, actually.  Casey Bocklet is, as best I can tell, the first FOV-COY nominee to have transferred into the school; she spent her freshman season at Northwestern before moving to Charlottesville to follow in her brother's footsteps.  A good thing she did, too.  The team put her scoring punch to good use, upsetting six-seeded Georgetown in the NCAAs before losing in the quarterfinals (which is more impressive than saying the men's team made it there, because there's an extra round.)  She became almost instantly the team's best player, and as only a sophomore at that.

Much like Joe Harris, profiled earlier, Casey Bocklet wasn't, in the preseason, considered a top threat to UVA's foes; it was her on-field play rather than any preseason attention that got her added to the Tewaaraton watch list.  She played her best when it mattered, too, getting named to the ACC tournament team and scoring seven goals in three games in the NCAA tournament.  Admittedly, when you line up the list of top scorers, Bocklet isn't all that high up - until you pare away all the upperclassmen.  It put's "3rd-team all-American" in an even better light; Casey Bocklet is clearly one of the elite players of her class.  You're forgiven if you're thinking of accusing me of making today's nominees more about the future than the present, but nobody offers hope for the future for no reason.

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There is no weekend review per se this week because only a couple notable things happened.  One was the super regional, which sucked.  But then, before the season we were wondering if maybe we could play well enough to host a regional, so perspective is a beautiful thing.  The announcers kept going on about UVA's fielding miscues, and yes OK, but if you ask me the reason things went downhill is simply because the pitchers all ended up being too hittable all at once.  And it's not like there were that many errors.  Fielders can't make mistakes if the ball isn't being hit.  And Wes Rea hit a ball that I think you can probably find on Klockner's field if you go looking for it.  Anyway, that makes it offically the offseason, so there you go.

Secondly, the ACC released its football schedule rotation, which also sucked.  If you're a football player being recruited to an ACC school, you now know which schools you will never play.  If you're a new season ticket holder and you hold onto that ticket for ten seasons, you will never see us play NC State.  Notre Dame isn't even in the conference and we'll play them more often than any of the Atlantic teams not named Louisville.  We're no longer in the Atlantic Coast Conference.  We're in the Coastal Conference, and our conference has agreed to a loose scheduling arrangement and a championship exhibition against the Atlantic Conference.  Essentially, we're back to the pre-1993 days, when we had seven conference games in an eight-team conference, only now, we've replaced Wake Forest, NC State, Clemson, and Maryland with Pitt, VT, Miami, and Louisville.  That's our new conference.

If we could get ND on board for real and pull someone else onboard for 16 teams, we could actually reduce the madness a little - but that would require good, creative scheduling decisions, and that in turn would be the first time that ever happened.

recruiting board update

Straight to that, and then a couple more interesting conference realignment links.  I like conference realignment links much better now that the theme is "ding dong the witch is dead."

-- Moved DT Chris Nelson from orange to maroon.  I think we can all agree that Nelson's decommitment is best for all involved, and not much of a surprise.  Other schools surely have been reminding Nelson how hard UVA is working on Andrew Brown and Derrick Nnadi... and then Nelson goes to the spring game and sees it with his own eyes.  Still gets listed in the world's ugliest colors, though.

-- Moved ATH Travon McMillian from green to red.  McMillian seems to be mainly looking at schools where he can play quarterback, and is probably not far from calling Blacksburg his future home.

-- Moved WR Cameron Phillips from yellow to blue.  UVA in a top three + he's from DeMatha = blue.

-- Moved DE J.J. Jackson from blue to orange.  Jackson is a linebacker-DE tweener, and we sure could use some of that DE action in this class.

-- Removed DB C.J. Reavis (VT) from yellow.

-- Removed QB William Crest (WVU) from red.

-- Added ATH Jeffery Farrar to yellow.

-- Added TE Devin Pike to green.

Now for that conference realignment stuff.  First is a recap, of sorts, of the madcap adventures that the whole sordid mess took us through.  "College sports' dumbest gold rush," they call it, and all I want to know is, why limit it to college sports?  Can you think of any such three-year saga that left everyone this much dumber?  The scary thing is, if you consider the beginning of the realignment era to be December 2009, when the Big Ten said "WE'RE EXPANDING!" most of this blog's existence overlaps with realignment's glory days.  Except in the past tense, the only time I want to talk about realignment again is if it makes Johns Hopkins an ACC associate member.  And that's lacrosse anyway, where realignment is actually kind of fun.  (I guess you could also count me rooting for my grad school - Detroit - to find a way up and out of the Horizon, like to the A-10 or something, but that's a little bit outside the realm of this blog.)

Next we have - from a Nebraska source - a realignment report card.  To spoil the surprise, it's the ACC that comes out at the head of the class.  Strange, isn't it?  After all, the ACC had reams of people lined up to deliver its eulogy.  Not really, though.

Consider the realignment carousel, minus all the rumors that turned out false.  No FSU and Clemson to the Big 12, no UVA, UNC, and GT to the Big Ten, no VT and NC State to the SEC.  No doom scenarios, because none of it ever happened.  Just the facts, ma'am.  Also, leave out for a second our UVA bias (we lost a rivalry game) and look at it from the perspective of any other ACC school, or even an outsider (hence the Nebraska take.)

Here's what the ACC did:

-- Destroyed one of its two biggest rival conferences in hoops and re-asserted its superiority there.
-- Snagged the one school that everybody wanted, including "Machiavelli Jim" Delany.
-- Traded an underperforming school drowning in red ink for one that just won the hoops national title and the Sugar Bowl to boot.

Of all the schools even mentioned in realignment rumors, let alone the ones that actually moved, the ACC got the top prize.  Better than Texas.  (At the risk of inflating the heads of an already full-of-itself fanbase, it's true.  Texas brings baggage.)  The Big Ten has wanted Notre Dame forever and DeLoss Dodds was working his ass off to try and hook up the Irish with his Longhorns.  Rutgers is a poor-ass substitute.

Meanwhile the Pac-12's additions are enormous duds.  The SEC got into Texas, so they got what they wanted basically, and they can't complain about how this went down.  The Big Ten got Nebraska, which is a great fit, and two schools that are looking at a lot of mediocrity for the next decade.  The Big 12 got half-eaten, and the Big East exploded, with fascinating results (unless you're a UConn or Cincy fan - the latter must be looking around and wondering how did they get back into the same conference they were in 10 years ago.)  Does the high grade mean the ACC came out the strongest conference of the whole gang?  Nope.  But it does mean the conference brass did a fantastic job navigating these waters.  Swoff might be a punching bag at times, but this is a job well done.

boring is the new exciting

"ACC Announces Grant of Media Rights" admittedly doesn't sound like the world's most exciting news release.  It's got all the pizzazz of calling the new college football playoff the "College Football Playoff."**  It sounds like one of those things that you just glaze over upon processing it and then wander off to play some Farmville or something.

If the self-proclaimed experts are right, it's the most exciting and positively thrilling thing to happen in the ACC since the carousel first started turning.

It's basically being treated as a big wall around the conference that prevents anyone from leaving, now and forever, or at least until 2027 when the grant (and not at all coincidentally, the deal with ESPN) expires.  The basic idea is that every school's media rights now belong to the ACC - and don't go with it if it goes to a new conference.  So it's not so much a wall as it is a poison pill; if a school goes to the Big Ten, it's worthless to the Big Ten because neither the school nor the Big Ten have access to the media rights.

Of course, if it's so damn foolproof, you wonder why they didn't come up with this years ago, like, maybe when they were voting on a jillion-dollar exit fee.  Other conferences already have such a thing, why not us?  Well, we do now, at least.  It probably took a while to hash out; my guess would be that some of the bright people who run this show started getting this bright idea shortly after Maryland decided to bounce.

I'll tell you what else it does: last week I passed along some rumblings of a future ACC Network that could be announced soonish.  This seems like the perfect precursor.  I wouldn't call it confirmation of such, per se, but it's walking like a duck and quacking like a duck.

Even if not, it goes a long way in solving the prisoners' dilemma that the ACC presidents have been facing.  If President A felt like he could believe President B when President B put on his serious face and verbally affirmed his commitment to the conference, Wallace Loh put a permanent end to that kind of collegial trust.  So every president knows they'll all get the best deal by staying put, but they don't want to be the nice guy while someone else rats and takes the spoils.  How do you divine the intentions of the other guy?  Well, you put forth an agreement like this.

It's not perfect, of course.  I mean, it doesn't actually prevent anyone from leaving if they really felt like it was in their interest and another conference really wanted that school.  There are those who've so fully convinced themselves that the ACC is gonna fall apart any day now that they're not willing to believe the mounting pile of evidence that it's not.  You can tell who they are by who says something about how lawyers can take apart anything they like.  Which is true, more or less, as is the point that such an agreement has never been tested in the courts and there's a first time for everything.  Still, this is a contract, and contracts are pretty darn enforceable.

What I'm hoping is that it doesn't effect video services like Cavaliers Live.  I like Cavaliers Live.  I want to watch a whole bunch of baseball and lacrosse dammit.  So I hope completely signing over our media rights to the conference doesn't take that away; even so, if I had to trade Cavaliers Live for an ACC that never lost another member, I'd take that and call myself ahead on the deal.

This Brave New ACC, by the way, with four new members, is still rounding into form, particularly with last week's Notre Dame Schedule announcement.  About five weeks ago, I wrote, " Let's place our bets on 2015 being the first year of UVA's involvement in the Notre Dame series."  And lo it came to pass, and better yet it's a home game.  Good thing too because now we have Boise State, UCLA, and Notre Dame on the nonconference sked for that year.  Let's hope we're awesome by then.

Finally, this isn't precisely Brave New ACC stuff, but it is some sweet sweet basketball schedule action, in the form of being told who we'll play and where next year.  Specifically, our two-game opponents are VT and Maryland, which is obvious, and FSU and ND, which is new.  I wonder if the roughly four-hour trip from my house to South Bend is worth it for a basketball game.

**Please tell me no actual consultants were paid in the creation of that name.  It looks to me like this is basically their attempt to say, "SEE LOOK ITS A PLAYOFF NOW STOP BUGGING US."

the acc next year

Apologies for the slight AWOL period.  I got hit with a wave of homework and a cold that could go either way at this point.  I think we'll know more tomorrow.  I will tell you what, man, there is absolutely no worse cold symptom than a sore throat.  I hate it.  If you have a fever with your cold it's a great thing.  It's your body going, OK you bastards, let's crank up the heat in here and see how you like it.  But a sore throat ruins everything.  I suck down Halls cough drops like the fat kid at the donut buffet.  That stuff is a ridiculously underrated modern miracle.  Candy with medicinal value.  It's like if Reese's Pieces were a hangover cure. 

Enough of my bitching.  I thought we'd take a look at the state of the ACC next year now that it's going to have one more semi-surprise member.  And let's be clear one more time: Adding Notre Dame is a great thing for the ACC, all things considered.  Adding them sooner is a bonus.  I'll stipulate to the following:

-- That things were much better in the good old days when we could count on playing basketball against everyone twice and conference realignment wasn't a thing

-- That South Bend, Indiana is nowhere near the Atlantic Coast

-- That the Domers can be awfully snooty

-- That not being all-the-way football members is a compromise of principles on the ACC's part.  (But five football games a year ain't to be sneezed at either.)

I don't care; the ACC is doing what it has to here, and it's a clear boost to the ACC's value.  What I want to do for now, though, is to take a look at what the ACC might look like next year.  I'd like it if the ACC were to come out with some comprehensive announcement, even if it takes til May, that lays it all out sport by sport.  But I doubt they will, which gives me a little window to try my hand yet again at the art of procrastination.  I mean prognostication.

Football

I know, Notre Dame isn't technically a football member.  Neither will the five-games-a-year deal begin this fall; it's too late for that and is in the interest of nobody involved to try and make that happen.  So wait til 2014.  The question then becomes: Is UVA one of the teams that will get Notre Dame on its schedule then, or do we wait?  Let's remember that with 14 football-playing teams, it's roughly once every three years that we'll see Notre Dame, assuming they rotate it evenly.  UVA's OOC agenda for 2014 includes home games against UCLA, Kent State, and Richmond, and a trip to BYU.  I would guess unless UVA is willing to buy out Kent State or Richmond, Notre Dame ain't happening that year.  Openings remain in both 2015 and 2016.

Interestingly, UVA has a 2017 game scheduled against William & Mary, and not only that, the date is set.  2017 is full.  The official site just recently added the 2016-2017 UConn series, even though I don't remember ever seeing an official announcement.  (It's been on my future schedules page, though.)  But the 2015 date with the Tribe is TBA.  Perhaps because UVA has been told to be flexible?  Shall we take these tea leaves to mean that the ACC has told UVA to go ahead and schedule stuff for 2014 and 2017 and keep 2015 open?  I think we shall.  Let's place our bets on 2015 being the first year of UVA's involvement in the Notre Dame series.

Basketball

OK, now we can talk about what the ACC will look like next year.  Which is to say, a 15-team league playing 18 games apiece.  That means you can play four teams twice and everyone else once.  Two of your four home-and-home teams are your permanent schedule buddies.  ND gets BC and GT.  (A nod to the Rudy game?  An enticement to help retain GT's loyalty over persistent Big Ten speculation?  Possibilities abound.)  Ours don't change - we're one of four teams who keep the same schedule buddies from this year to next.  The others are NC State, Clemson, and FSU.  Since ours are VT and Maryland, obviously that arrangement is temporary.  I am highly in favor, by the way, of the 18-game road schedule for Maryland that was proposed on Twitter.  The chances of this remain low, but one can dream.

The basketball tourney is likely to be an interesting matter.  The ACC long ago made sure to have it known that the tournament would continue to include everyone.  But what's the bracket gonna look like?  They haven't said anything except for this announcement from last October, when Notre Dame first became a thing: "The Tournament will begin with three games on Wednesday, followed by four games on Thursday and Friday, two semifinals on Saturday and the championship game on Sunday. The top four seeds will continue to receive byes into Friday's quarterfinal round."

What that basically is, is the old Big East format, minus one game.  Picture the current 12-team bracket.  There are four first-round games.  Now attach one game to each one of those, so that the bottom 8 teams have to play for the right to play the 5-8 seeds.  9-16, 10-15, 11-14, and 12-13.  The top four seeds, then, have a double-round bye, and the next four have a single-round bye.  It's a fun tourney style, really.  That's what I'd bet on for the ACC, except without the 9-16 game.  Four games a day until the semifinals (ok, three the first day), so it's very TV-friendly (and venue-friendly), and you get to start on Wednesday for five full days of tourney action.

As for next season's ACC/B1G Challenge (which is even what the ACC official release is calling it - I must say, I didn't like the new Big Ten logo but it was awfully nice of them to finally give us a three-character abbreviation) it will leave out Clemson, VT, and Wake, for being outside the conference's RPI top 12.

Baseball

Adding Notre Dame solved a potential very big scheduling problem: namely, what to do with an odd number of teams since Syracuse doesn't have one.  Notre Dame simply makes the ACC a 14-team baseball league.  And interestingly, the ACC has managed to poach three of the Big East's four best baseball teams.  Pittsburgh isn't completely horrible, Notre Dame's decent for a northern team, and of course Louisville has had a legit tourney team for a while now.  (St. John's used to be good, too, and was assigned to the Charlottesville regional a few times, but has started this year 3-11.)

I digress.  What will the ACC look like next year?  Louisville won't be part of the equation yet, so even with the Big East's higher-level squads, the conference is a bit watered-down.  This would be a great chance to dispense with the idea of divisions, which are stupid and useless for baseball, but they're not that smart.  So with Syracuse in football's Atlantic Division, it's not hard to imagine that Notre Dame will simply take their place in baseball.

As for the tournament, that's been decided too: "Beginning with the 2014 season, the ACC Baseball Championship will feature 10 teams in a six-day event. A double-elimination format will be used Tuesday through Friday followed by two single-elimination games on Saturday and the Championship Game on Sunday."  The "two single-elimination games on Saturday" scream "semifinals" pulled from the winners of two separate pods of five.  How they plan to do that, I can't figure.  It will tax the shit out of a pitching staff, though.

From a competition standpoint, ND will probably slide into the middle of the Atlantic, below FSU, Clemson, and NC State but somewhat above Maryland and a decent ways above Wake and BC.  They'll drop in the pecking order when Louisville replaces the Terps.  Pitt may have less success than they're used to, because the Coastal is tougher.  UVA, UNC, GT, and Miami should all be better than the Panthers; VT may even surprise and finish above them too.

Lacrosse

This will be so much fun that it'll be a shame to lose Maryland.  The ACC will have six teams, all of which play outstanding lacrosse, and for one year it'll be an autobid conference.  You can guess the tourney format with your eyes closed, of course: 1 and 2 get byes while the rest play.  I don't picture the ACC leaving anyone out.  The point is to have ourselves a big ol' RPI-fest and inflate the shit out of that statistic.

This is the one sport where UVA's schedule will be affected more than any other.  Adding Syracuse wasn't going to change anything except for maybe the timing of the game.  (UVA tends to prefer to play all its ACC games last, and Syracuse has, for a recent little while, been the first marquee OOC opponent.)  Adding Notre Dame will force someone off the schedule.  The likely candidate is Ohio State, whom we started playing in 2011.  I guess I could see it being Cornell, but then again I really can't.  And as mentioned, the timing of the games will probably shuffle a little.

If you'll let me step outside the next-year theme, by the way, even by losing Maryland the ACC has a chance to keep the autobid in 2015 and beyond: by bringing in Johns Hopkins, which has decided to "formally" explore conference affiliation.  They will, of course, get to pick and choose their conference and join on their terms, as they'll have several suitors.  I've been mildly pushing for the ACC to invite Hopkins as an associate member for a little while now; I think it's time to basically make "add Hopkins" an official platform plank of this blog, right next to "ban corporate names on bowl games."  If the decision were about lacrosse only, the ACC would basically be Hopkins's only natural choice; add research dollars and academia into the equation, though, and the Big Ten and their CIC research arm become awfully inviting.

weekend review and rooting guide

Obviously there's no sugarcoating the fact that Sunday's regular season finale against Maryland was ugly with a capital "ugly."  No surprise there.  What might surprise you is if I said it wasn't just the first half.  The whole damn game was ugly.  The truth is that I don't think the second half was any prettier than the first.

The main difference is that Maryland started playing a lot worse.  Or more truthfully, that they played more like Maryland is used to playing.  The clock struck halftime and Nick Faust turned into a pumpkin.  Justin Anderson's putback slam was a potential spark according to the announcers, and that might've been a turning point of sorts, but then, I don't think there was a particular turning point.  KenPom's win probability chart for the game shows a steadyish slope in Maryland's favor for pretty much the whole first half; the second half probabilities swerve wildly back and forth and every single play is designated "high leverage."  And eventually it's swerved its way to the good guys.  That's a pretty accurate portrayal of how it felt to watch.  Both teams just played ugly basketball for 20 minutes and UVA played less ugly than Maryland and it was all good in the end.

That speaks to the talent difference.  Joe Harris had a totally pathetic shooting night (4-for-18) but the complementary players picked him up (Akil Mitchell and Mike Tobey in particular.)  Our complements are better than their complements, and their star (Alex Len, I suppose, but it's hard to say Maryland really has had a lead dog this season) played even worse than Harris, because Harris really gets basketball and Len has a way to go.

(Case in point: the final play of regulation, in which Len not only allowed Mike Tobey to set up shop right next to the hoop, but then foolishly - and halfheartedly - went for the steal and found himself in no position to do anything at all.... especially defend the bucket.  Tie game achieved.)

That gives UVA an ACC tournament bye for the second year in a row.  Since ACC expansion to 12 teams, this is the 3rd bye that UVA has managed, and each and every time, NC State has been the team that played through to UVA's bracket.  And won, I might add.  I'm not so sure I wasn't pulling for NC State to beat Florida State on Saturday so that we might flip the script on them.  There's probably something to be said for the momentum gained from beating the crappiest team in the conference and the rhythm from playing while your future opponent sits.

I'd've liked to have the excellent chance as well to add a neutral-site win to UVA's RPI resume.  Certainly, winning on Friday would do wonders for UVA's tourney chances; I would go so far as to say that it would lock down a bid.  More than for NCAA reasons, though, I just want that quarterfinal win for its own sake.  I've yet to even see one as a UVA fan.

(By the way, David Teel has the obvious perspective on what Tony Bennett has achieved this year.  Essentially this was a season where UVA was supposed to finish 7th, instead finished 4th, and did it with Malcolm Brogdon on ice, Jontel Evans out nine games with a broken foot, Darion Atkins ineffective for most of the ACC season with shin splints, and Mike Tobey parked for a couple weeks with mono.  We had the usual boatload of health problems and hardly noticed.)

Oh, and congratulations are in order for Harris and Mitchell for making the ACC's 1st and 3rd teams respectively, and Jontel Evans for making the all-defense team.  The latter is a little bit of a reputation pick, kind of the way Pudge Rodriguez kept winning Gold Gloves even as a mid-30-year-old catcher, but it's not like Evans is undeserving either.  And the selections for Harris and Mitchell are spot on and exactly what they deserved.  No, I don't think I'd have put Mitchell on the 2nd team.  3rd is just right; the competition is pretty good this year.

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As a bubble team, even with one foot in the tournament field, it's probably worth a look at what the rest of the bubble is up to this week.  Here's a rooting guide for the conference tournaments you want to look at:

Atlantic 10: Temple did itself a big favor by beating VCU.  Bad for us.  They have the A-10's 3rd seed and draw the winner of UMass-George Washington on Friday.  Those teams are solid NIT material and aren't in the NCAA conversation, so you'll be pulling for whichever one to soften up Temple's resume a little.  La Salle is in a dicier spot: as the 4 seed, they drew the winner of Butler-Dayton, so, they drew Butler.  Excellent as long as Butler takes care of business.  Butler's tourney resume is ironclad, with a whole assortment of wins over really good nonconference teams (Indiana, UNC, Gonzaga) so they can't play their way out no matter what.  But they can take care of La Salle for us.

Big 12: UVA is literally Lunardi's last at-large in.  Baylor is the first out.  They have the Big 12's 6 seed and drew Oklahoma State in the first round.  You are a big Cowboys fan; a Baylor win might leapfrog them past us even if we do beat NC State.  Iowa State is sort of kind of bubbly, so it wouldn't hurt if they lost to Oklahoma, either.  But the biggie is Baylor.  Also keep in mind that Baylor was one of the teams that Adidas outfitted with their Zubaz getup, so there's that too.

Big Ten: Iowa is kind of a fringe bubble team hanging on at the bottom.  If they go on a rampage - and the Big Ten has been anything-goes this year in a good way - they could start to look interesting to the committee.  After their opening-round game against Northwestern, they would face Michigan State.  I'm not rooting for Sparty in any event, but you might want to.

C-USA: This conference kind of sucks, which is good news.  Southern Miss is the only bubble team, and really at this point they're less of a bubble risk than a potential bid thief.  They're the #2 seed in the C-USA tourney, and nothing they do there short of beating Memphis would impress the committee enough to extend a bid.  And if they beat Memphis they're an autobid anyway.

Mountain West: A surprisingly tough conference this year.  Boise State has a golden opportunity, playing in the 4/5 game against San Diego State.  SDSU is both a very likely tourney team and kind of vulnerable in this game.  Boise is who Lunardi has us playing in the NCAA play-in right now, putting them at basically the same level as us.  You definitely want San Diego State to pull this one out and soften up Boise's resume a touch.

Pac-12: Practically not worth mentioning, but Arizona State is in the same position as Iowa where if they go on a rampage they could attract some of the committee's attention.

SEC: Also known as Bubbleville.  The SEC has one sure thing (Florida) and a whole host of teams that'll watch the selection show with a few nerves.  No fewer than four bubble teams populate the SEC tourney.  As 2 and 3 seeds, respectively, Kentucky and Ole Miss are on a semifinals collision course.  As 4 and 5 seeds, Alabama and Tennessee have the same fate, only in the quarterfinals.  As with CUSA, the committee will not be impressed by anything these teams do prior to those games, with one exception: Missouri is a solidly-in team with a low seed (6) and in position to upend Mississippi before that Kentucky game ever happens.  Your idea result (barring an upset like Arkansas over Kentucky) is for Missouri to blow through that side of the bracket and eliminate both UK and the Rebels.  Barring that, at least one team will take out the other; you probably want it to be Kentucky that beats Ole Miss since Ole Miss is lurking from below while Kentucky is slightly above.  That said, if you want to root for Kentucky to earn a nice NIT #1 seed, I won't blame you one bit.  As for Alabama/Tennessee, it's another clear eliminator, but with a rooting interest: you actually kind of want the Vols to look like a tournament team, just to make that December win look a little shinier.  Plus, since we've already played Tennessee, the committee may look to avoid that rematch, which in turn may entice them to give UVA a slightly more favorable position in the S-curve.

In sum, your rooting guide looks like this:

UMass-GWash over Temple
Butler over La Salle
Oklahoma State over Baylor
Oklahoma over Iowa State
Northwestern or Michigan State over Iowa
anyone to knock off Southern Miss
San Diego State over Boise State
Stanford or UCLA over Arizona State
Missouri over Ole Miss and Kentucky
Kentucky over Ole Miss if comes to that
Tennessee over Alabama

Left unsaid is that obviously we want to beat NC State (which could make all of this moot) and to root for the favorites in the smaller conference tourneys; teams such as Akron, Louisiana Tech, and Bucknell.  (None are especially likely to steal a bid, but you don't want to take chances.)

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Since this basically just became a basketball post, I'll save baseball and lacrosse for tomorrow.  But there was one development last week that bears mention: the announcement that the Catholic 7 split from the old Big East to become the new Big East is official.  What's so big about that?  Because now Notre Dame has to figure out what to do, and quickly.  I'd say the chances are pretty good - or very good - that they'll be in the ACC as soon as this summer.  The Catholic 7 basically smoked the Big East at the negotiating table - they even got to keep their tournament units (the method used to decide how the money from the NCAA tourney gets split up) and basically only had to leave behind the departure fees the conference has been collecting.  Which is admittedly a pretty copious figure.  Cincy, USF, and UConn will get a nice windfall.  But if it's true that the old Big East only wants $2.5 million from Notre Dame in order to leave this summer as well, then that's as good as done.  Notre Dame can find that money in their couch cushions.

EDIT: right, and as I'm typing that, this happens.  So yes.  Say hi to the Irish, just in time for St. Paddy's Day.

little shuffle, big shuffle

I picked a good day, yesterday, to leave my Twitter feed running.  I don't do that usually, but occasionally do, and stuff kept coming across it and I just couldn't help myself.  We'll just consider this morning's Louisville news an extension of a very busy Tuesday, and go from there.

The smaller news was the beginning of the coaching staff shuffle.  Running backs coach Mike Faragalli's departure, it's fair to call that unexpected.  RB coach is a pretty benign position.  It's hard to have a lot of effect, positive or negative, on a team's fortunes.  You usually put a recruiter there.  Michigan's got this guy who's been there 21 years and survived three separate coaching changes.  Mike London portrayed the move as stemming from disappointment in the running game, and if Faragalli was the guy who turned Perry Jones into a dancer when he used to be a lot more decisive, then I can see that.  Otherwise I think most of us blamed the O-line for the lack of a run game; that and the occasional bizarre attempt to use Jones as a short-yardage hammer.

After that, I don't know exactly where we go.  Marques Hagans probably stays on as Faragalli's replacement, but in what capacity I don't know.  He and Shawn Moore will take on some combination of the skill positions, except for quarterback which I would guess is likely to stay with Bill Lazor.  I'd like to see Hagans take the receivers off of Lazor's plate so he can focus more on OC duties.

There's still the matter of the O-line, and nothing has been forthcoming from the official camp, but you'd have a hard time finding anyone who thinks Scott Wachenheim's job is secure.  I once again register this blog's endorsement of Jim Bollman.

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Now, the news you were waiting for.  In more circles than you might guess, people are wondering if the ACC didn't just accidentally become a stronger conference by trading Maryland for Louisville.  Certainly it depends on how you look at it.  Maryland is a much better school, academical-wise.  If you think TV markets are all that matters, we lost out there too, but then again, perhaps not; UVA and VT still provide a presence in the DC market, after all.  Louisville has a better football and basketball program than Maryland (and baseball, too, for what that matters), with the caveat that much of their football success will be up in the air if and when Charlie Strong leaves.  (That said, Randy Edsall is still employed at Maryland.)  Can the marginally better attractiveness of Louisville's athletic programs outweigh the reduced TV presence in a very large market?

At least there's this: The more I think about it, the more I prefer Louisville to the other finalist, UConn.  To start with, Louisville isn't coastal, no, but it is southern, the latter of which is just as important to the ACC's traditional identity as the former.  It's also more important to the schools that have a lot of weight these days, namely Florida State and Clemson.  And let's face it.  I don't know if the rumor is true that FSU, Clemson, and maybe others, insisted on Louisville while the Tobacco Road schools (at least initially) wanted Connecticut.  But I've read it in enough different and reasonably credible places that I buy it.  And it would have been stupidity of epic proportions to continue to northernize the league when the schools you depend on for the league's strength are telling you not to do that.

So I like it about as well as I can muster liking anything in the stupid world of realignment.  It does require a little bit of rationalization, of course.  I'm under no illusions about what the ACC is doing here, which is to say, dropping a long-held standard, which must have pained a few presidents.  Namely, academics.  One of the most unfair things I've heard about Louisville is, "But it's a commuter school!"  Nonsense; it's not like it's a community college.  It does have a commuter aspect to it, and nevertheless has an endowment 98% the size of Maryland's despite being 15,000 students smaller.  But yes, it instantly becomes the "worst" academic school in the ACC, and probably not of the quality the ACC would have chosen without its backs against the wall.  (However, it's also one of the oldest.  Third-oldest, in fact; only Pitt and UNC are older.)

We're pretty much beyond caring about that, though.  The ACC can't afford to.  It's still in a position of strength, but must maintain a careful balancing act.  The next thing the FSUs of the conference might look for is divisional realignment.  They didn't want UConn because they didn't want a whole bunch of traveling north, and the football quality wasn't up to snuff.  Now they've got the football and they'll probably want less travel.  I'm OK with that.  UVA should nudge the conference in the direction of realignment as well, otherwise they'll just slot Louisville into Maryland's slot and that'll be our new permanent buddy.  Not that I don't want to play Louisville, but I do want to play the traditional ACC teams as often as possible.  (And if there's a magical way to do that without being in FSU's division, that'd be sweet too.  And a pony.  Don't forget the pony.)

Admittedly, now, we are seeing a Big Eastifying of the ACC.  Admittedly also, the Big Ten is a money-making dynamo, as is the SEC, and the ACC will not approach that for the foreseeable future.  This has a lot of people thinking we should be "proactive" and court Big Ten membership right now, supposedly before the bus leaves or the ship sinks or whatever.  Enough rumors flew around this past week that both UVA and UNC had to put out statements categorically denying any kind of interaction with the B1G.

However, our place is the ACC.  People assume we should chase the money, too, but we have zero need to do that.  UVA sits, financially, near the top of the ACC.  We have a head start on our competition that way.  In the B1G, with their schools that are three times as big as ours, colossal stadiums, enormous donor bases, we would be up against a lot of schools that can generate a lot of cash much better than we can.  We'd be near the bottom of the ladder.

UVA's best course of action is to work their asses off to preserve the ACC.  With one extra step: our president, whether that's Teresa Sullivan now or someone else in five or however many years, should be right in the hip pocket of UNC's chancellor, and vice versa.  We need to attach ourselves at the hip to UNC.  Why?  Because UNC and UVA are two of the nation's elite public schools, and closer collaboration with them is something no university president would turn down.  The idea that the B1G bus will leave without UVA if we're not next onboard is silly.  It's based on the idea that 16 teams is a magic number, above which no conference will ever dare tread.

Ask yourself this: What is the magical gravitational pull toward 16 teams?  What force in the universe decrees that a conference must get to 16 teams and stay there?  This is entirely a creation of message board imagination; it's a nice round number, people like nice round numbers, and so they imagine themselves a world where that happens.  Somehow they imagine for themselves perfect harmony, cohesion, and symmetry in a world (that of NCAA realignment) that couldn't be more chaotic and entropic if it tried.  Just as there is no magic force pushing conferences to get to 16 teams, there is no magic force that demands they stay there if they do get there.  We live in a world where there are 68 teams in the March Madness tourney, not 64.  The MAC seems to exist, somehow, with 13 teams.  The B1G had 11 for almost twenty years.  The ACC, if left alone, will sit on 15 for quite some time.

Now ask yourself this: Suppose the ACC fell apart in the way that everyone is foreboding for it.  FSU and Clemson go to the Big 12, NC State and VT go to the SEC.  UVA is left apparently adrift in a sinking conference; in that event, I'd probably have a lot of trouble clinging to the idea that the ACC is still the best place for our school.  Reluctantly, B1G membership appears to be the necessary lifeboat.  But wait; the "bus has left the station," because the B1G added two more schools in the interim.  Now suppose UVA, tied at the hip, as you'll recall, with UNC, knocks on the B1G's door.  Do you honestly believe that ACC presidents would say no to the chance to add two elite flagship schools, with a presence in large and growing TV markets, just because they already have 16 teams?

A silly thought.  UVA can afford to wait.  Or, if not "wait" exactly, it can afford to put its chips in with the success of the ACC.  There are too many good schools and good programs in the ACC for it to fail entirely, and UVA is too good a school for university presidents to snub, particularly if UNC is a companion school in whatever potential future changes there are.

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-- So we won at bastyball today.  Yay for that!  More reaction later, but the very quick cliffnotes are that the poise the team played with, on the road in a tough place to win, was extremely impressive, and of course, you have to like the effect it could have on our tournament hopes.  In fact I'll tell you what right now: go 9-9 in the conference, and we're in.  Also, I will have highlights tomorrow.

-- Just as I talk about coaching shuffles, here comes more news down the pipeline: Bill Lazor interviewing for the head coaching job at Georgia State.  GSU will make the jump to the Sun Belt Conference in the not-too-distant future, so it's not a head-scratching move.  If Lazor leaves, Jim Bollman has extensive OC experience.  JUST SAYIN

-- News that Malcolm Brogdon will redshirt the season is not exactly exciting, but it does offer some welcome closure to that situation.  Losing Brogdon for the year takes away a potential future scoring option, but it settles the rotation some and cements Teven Jones (who looked very veteran-y tonight against Wisconsin) as the backup point guard (or starter until Bub is ready for all the minutes.)  The rotation looks as though it's set on nine, with Taylor Barnette the odd man out for now.

-- This article about the gross mismanagement of Maryland's finances is a must-read.  NC State fans might want to be worried about having Debbie Yow for an AD, and one must wonder that, even if the Big Ten offers a clean slate, how many of the issues Maryland had - and has - will be fixed so that they don't run themselves right back into debt.  And how many might be exacerbated.

irish eyes

Fifty million bucks.  Did you see what the ACC did today?  It succeeded in raising its exit fee to fifty million bucks.  Actually that's not even the amazing part, that's just the number that's getting reported.  What's being missed is this: the new exit fee is actually "three times the annual operation budget" (and I'm assuming they mean the conference's operation budget) which currently means an exit fee of $50 million.  What they actually did was set an automatically escalating exit fee that never has to be voted on again.  In five years that fee might be more like $60 million.  In ten years it might be $75 million.  Sneeeeeaky.  No way the budget is going down. 

Hell, if in five years it looks again like there are rumblings of a team leaving the league, all we have to do is everyone chip in and throw a ridiculously lavish basketball tournament, complete with solid gold hoops and backboards, private commuter jet service for the refs, and personal valets for every fan in attendance.  "Oh look, we seem to have spent $120 million this season.  Still working on coming up with money for that exit fee?"

So that's conference stability for you.  That's the important thing that happened today.  The interesting thing that happened today involves a smallish parochial school in northern Indiana.  Ah, you've heard, have you?  Notre Dame is joining the ACC.

I just had to pause for a minute there and reread that sentence 100,000 times.  It's weirder than friggin' Gangnam Style.  It's certainly untraditional, in two very big ways: there's nothing Atlantic or coastal about Indiana, and the conference just gave up one of its biggest calling cards: the notion of being in all the way or GTFO.  But if you still think tradition and geography take any precedence any more, I have taught you nothing.  It's a shame, yes.  But this is the Television Age of college sports.

In that light, then, there's nothing the ACC could have done better than to absorb Notre Dame.  Nobody else is both available and good enough.  I sympathize with the idea that not having them for football (at least, not completely) also sucks, at least from a fairness or tradition standpoint, but this move was essentially made with the idea that the perfect is the enemy of the good.  I'd bet my last dollar that Swofford and the conference presidents are gambling that Notre Dame will eventually be a football member, too.  Being proactive and getting what you can right now is better than sitting around hoping they eventually come around to the idea of joining a football conference.  And I think TV money and the postseason situation will suggest to Notre Dame that football membership is better than independence.  Again: it's the Television Age.

(Besides, this could be more nefarious than you think.  Water down Notre Dame's value to NBC by filling up their schedule with crappy ACC teams and then offer bigger ESPN bux to join for real?  Sneeeeeaky.)

What this means for the sports we cover here:

LACROSSE

Autobid!  When the dust settles, the ACC will have six teams in it, which means an autobid to the NCAA tournament.  Not that we'd need it.  The whole ACC goes anyway.  That might change, however, in a six-team ACC - it's likely the bottom of the conference will have too many losses to make the NCAAs unless the NCAAs drastically expand, like to 24.  We won't have to put up too long with a fifth wheel and some kind of Frankenstein tournament; six is perfectly natural.  But the main thing for UVA is: try to finish at least in the top four.  Mere membership in the ACC isn't going to be enough.

As for the Big East, they now lose two of seven members to the ACC, but will survive as an autobid league since Marquette starts play next spring.  As long as they don't have further attrition, which is not at all a safe bet.

BASEBALL

Like Pitt, Notre Dame baseball is mediocre and not at all likely to do well in the ACC.  At least it evens out the divisions; I wasn't looking forward to a 13-team conference.  We might have to put up with that weirdness for a bit, but not permanently, thank God.  Until, of course, Notre Dame joins as a football member, necessitating a 16th team, which probably becomes the 15th baseball-playing team.

BASKETBALL

The nice thing about this deal is that, unlike the original ACC expansion in 2005, it strengthens the hoops brand.  Notre Dame is a worthy foe.  It'll probably get even better now that they can use the ACC name in recruiting.

FOOTBALL

OK, the big thing.  Here's the dirty little secret about not having Notre Dame as a football member: they don't get any football money.  In other words, this five-game-a-year deal adds Notre Dame value to the conference's ESPN contract, but we don't have to share that money with Notre Dame.  ND will get a one-fifteenth share of everything else, but football is a separate pot of money and they get none of it.  They get NBC money when the ACC team plays in South Bend, and we keep the scratch when they visit their new coastal buddies.  Granted, it doesn't add the full value of the Notre Dame brand, but it's still, like, free money basically.

Oh, but Notre Dame is still a member of the conference.  So they're subject to that $50 million-plus exit fee thingy-doo, should they decide they want to join a football conference other than ours.  Sneeeeaky.

From Notre Dame's perspective, truthfully, very little has changed.  They're getting from us a very similar deal to what they had in the Big East.  Full member in everything but football and hockey, bowl access, and so on.  The difference is we're going to make them play our teams.  They'll have access to the same bowl hierarchy we do, except for the Orange Bowl.  They can't be picked ahead of an ACC team that they have two fewer wins than, but that's essentially the same rule we have between other ACC teams.  The Peach Bowl, for example, can't take an 8-4 team if a 10-2 team is available, but they can take a 9-3 team.  So Notre Dame fits basically the same way.

As for this five games a year thing, well, I'm glad I'm not the one trying to come up with the convoluted rotation.  But it sounds like, if this deal lasts forever, we'd play Notre Dame once every three years or so.  Hell, that's less time than we spend in between Clemson games.

Some intriguing matchups are going to come about here.  Notre Dame maintains some semblance of an on-again-off-again rivalry with Pitt and BC.  ND-Miami is a replay of the old Catholics-vs.-convicts game.  ND-GT is the Rudy game.  They have some solid bowl-game history with Florida State.

Now.  I'll stipulate to the idea that I wish geography made a lick of difference, and that I wish we could just push reset on every single bit of conference realignment and go back to a nine or even eight-team ACC.  But that's not the world we live in today.  And in today's college football world, the ACC just won.  All that talk about the Big 12 using the ACC to get back to 12 teams?  Dead.  It's going to get neither Notre Dame nor Florida State.  There's no doubt the ACC faced some existential questions in the past couple years.  They responded by expanding, by closing ranks around any potential wobbly members, by gaining a seat at the new BCS table with an Orange Bowl deal, and now, by acquiring one of the most powerful brands in college athletics.

But, you might say.  Notre Dame is powerful because of their football, and we don't have their football.  Oh yes we do.  By including Notre Dame in our bowl hierarchy, we improve our negotiating power with the bowls.  By including Notre Dame on our football schedules, we add Notre Dame's cachet to our TV deal.  By adding Notre Dame as a member for non-football sports, we give them an easy, soft landing place when they ultimately decide to give up their football independence.

But wait again, you say.  The Big East tried this and look what happened to the Big East.  Nonsense - the Big East added Notre Dame in the same fashion in 1995.  The gap between 1995 and 2012 might as well be the gap between 1955 and 1995.  Not a valid comparison any more.  The Big East had issues because it had half the conference not playing football; Notre Dame simply took advantage of that.  And see now if the Big East's Catholic schools don't decide Big East membership is no longer worth it, now that they're no longer associated with the country's flagship Catholic schools.

Besides, the Big East didn't fall apart completely of its own accord.  The ACC ate it with some fava beans and a nice chianti. There is no organization out there with megalomaniacal designs on the ACC the way the ACC was leering greedily at the Big East. 

And another thing: to believe that Notre Dame will be able to cling to football independence for much longer is old-school thinking.  Old-school thinking is dead, unfortunately.  If Texas A&M can give up its series with Texas, Notre Dame can give up its games with Stanford that it professes to cherish, if the incentive is right.  And I think the incentives will be right.  The BCS was a very centralized decision-making entity, and as a result, Notre Dame was able to get a seat at the table.  The new format will be decentralized.  The ACC made its own deal with the Orange Bowl.  The SEC and Big 12 made their own quasi-Rose Bowlish deal.  There's no decision-making entity anymore, except the one that chooses four teams to play for the national title.  Everyone else is fending for themselves.  And Notre Dame is increasingly unable to fend for itself and still maintain the prestige they expect for themselves.  The time is coming when they'll have to make a choice.  Either independence or prestige, but not both.  They'll choose prestige.  TV money will give them a nudge in that direction too.

And at such time, the ACC will welcome Notre Dame as a full member, invite UConn or Rutgers as a matter of course, and settle in as a 16-team conference.  If you doubt me, you're doubting John Swofford.  And a lot of people have a lot of things to say about John Swofford, but this is a guy who engineered a hostile takeover of the Big East.  He basically wrecked that conference.  Behind an unassuming demeanor is one Machiavellian SOB.  Sooner or later, and most likely sooner, Notre Dame will be a football-playing member of the ACC, and the conference's transformation will be complete.  Bet against that at your own peril.

weekend review, sort of

A few topics of discussion before I hit up my summer sabbatical.....

-- Syracuse.  Will officially be an ACC member on July 1 next year.  It's really weird that they and Pitt didn't, like, coordinate their efforts and carpool over; Pitt still has this lawsuit going on and Cuse managed to just negotiate their way out.  Still, here's betting it'll be announced within a month or two that Pitt has also reached an "amicable" agreement for departure and ACC membership on July 1.  And the Biggish Eastish will once again announce they've never been more excited about the future of the conference despite the fact we basically just burned their house down.

Seriously, it's actually pretty impressive that the ACC managed to, piece by piece, force an effective merger of the two conferences under the ACC banner.  It's like if an airline basically merged with another by buying all its planes and hiring all its workers and the pillaged airline replaced all the planes with Spruce Goose replicas and then declared how excited they were about their future.  Right.

Anyway, with this news, there are lots of interesting things left to be worked out by the ACC.  They've made (publicly) exactly two of those decisions: how to split the divisions, and how to set up the basketball schedule.  They haven't announced how the nine-game football schedule will rotate.  They also need to figure out things like:

- how to set up the lacrosse tournament.  Likely: seeds 4 and 5 play in.

- how to set up the baseball schedule.  An odd number of teams will make it interesting, as Syracuse has no baseball team.  And are they going to keep these stupid divisions?

- what the logo will look like.  OK, that's probably not that hard, they'll just add two more stars on the map.  What I'm actually interested in is what they'll do if they can convince Notre Dame to join.  It wouldn't fit on the map and is probably somewhere on the L in Atlantic.

- how to set up the basketball tournament.  The easy way is to take away the byes for all but the 1 and 2 seeds.  It doesn't preclude them from getting creative.

So it should be an interesting year; the last in a 12-team ACC.

-- Hokies.  Good Lord.  A lot of this stuff I'm about to reference got deleted from Hokie message boards because some of them got to realizing what nincompoops they looked like on all this.  It started, more or less, with some Hokies getting it into their heads that a certain football camp in Tidewater was "steering" its players to UVA over Tech.  There being nothing really wrong with that even if true, and VT having certainly been the beneficiary of "steering" in the past, nefarious claims of street agents and a shadowy "Godfather" were tacked on so as to make this thing worthy of the NCAA hammer.  Calls to investigate went out.  Wouldn't you believe it, someone did.  The looney-bird Hokies were not happy with the results, but they started to sound like the conspiracy-addled moonbats who think the Apollo missions took place on a soundstage.  "You didn't ask the hard questions!"  "I did.  The answer was no."  "Then you didn't ask them hard enough!"

And then we get to the part that makes you do a spit-take once you actually pay attention to the words.  Hokie logic says:

"Andy..Most of the players that participate with them guys all transfer to other schools once they get with them.[ed. meaning high schools; that is, players supposedly go to this camp and are encouraged to switch high schools] This is worst then the Penn State Scandal. A cover up!"

Stunning lack of perspective has been achieved.

With Hokie fans attacking the credibility of the coaches in the 757 area, it's already coming to pass that the players are taking notice.  Again from that article's comment section, the money quote:

Im a athlete for sports academy and yall sound rediculous these coachs have coached us since kids.. Wolfpack all dat we are a family from all schools all they want is to see us benefit somewhere safe and we can call home.. Never has coach lele or lex or dave ever asked any of us for anything but our time and effort.. They spend their time and money to. See us benefit some of us cant afford to go to. Vtech or uva every week but we as a brotherhood look out for eachother as brothers.. We are all over the 757 all of the best athletes.. All we want is to be football players why do our coachs get blamed for helping us called cheaters.. Its not vtech time any more the program at uva is changing no reason why vtech is mad they shud be uva is honest.. With there players uva is grimey they took away nthony cooper and kyle dockins and others offers and blasted them on the internet saying they never got it.. Call it what u want but its us that decide not to go to vt not out coachs vt is not for us

Cutting through the typos and text-message-style writing common to high schoolers** you get a few insights.  As in, it's not just UVA fans cracking jokes about Tech pulling their offer when it looks like a kid is going to UVA instead.  The players are seeing that stuff.  "VT is not for us" should have been a wake-up call to any Hokie reading it; instead, yet another maroon-sporting numbnuts thought it would be a bright idea to respond to that post with more trash talk.  Hilarious.

**The really important passage from the player's post is probably also the most confusing; it should read like this: "UVA is honest with their players.  VT is grimy, they took away Anthony Cooper's and Kyle Dockins's and others' offers and blasted them on the Internet saying they never got it."

-- Some interesting offseason basketball stuff, from the people who call themselves experts.  ESPN offered a best-case-worst-case analysis of the ACC, and what they say should be, believe it or not, heartening.  Because for UVA, there isn't much difference between best and worst.  Best: "back in the NCAA tournament."  Worst: "on the bubble in the first two weeks of March."  So, like, with a chance to make the tournament anyway.  And Jay Bias (uh, Bilas) has UVA 5th in the ACC in the offseason power rankings, for what that's worth.  I think it's worth something, as UVA tends to be either underrated or ignored by ESPN.  "Underrated" is one thing, but "ignored" tends to have a bad effect on recruiting.  Not being either brings attention, which means publicity, which tends to have a way of building on itself.

-- Reminder that today is the last post until next Monday.  It's too friggin' hot to post, anyway.  If I wanted my thermometer to nudge past 100 I'd move to the desert.  I'm never moving to the desert.