Occasionally, an argument you hear in favor of "scheduling for success" is that a losing team needs to "learn how to win." That is, if you find yourself in a dogfight, it's better that said dogfight be against a little puppy instead of an ugly junkyard dog, to increase the odds of winning. Then, when you fight the junkyard dog you'll have winning experience and you'll know what it takes to win. "Walk before you run" is another way of putting it.
If that game was a lesson in how to win, it should get the teacher fired. It's like if your driver's ed teacher just put on an hour's worth of clips of Ronin and The Bourne Identity and then tossed you the keys.
Frankly, I'd rather the team learned nothing at all from beating William & Mary than any "how to win" lesson. If that game drove home "how to win," they'll go 1-11 this year, because the lesson is: You can get outmuscled, outsmarted, outcoached, and badly outdisciplined, and still win as long as the opponent lets you break open a whole bunch of big plays.
Two weeks ago, post-UCLA, I wrote about how nothing had changed, and we just keep going back to that. Mike London has succeeded in stamping an identity onto the team just as well as Tony Bennett has. Those identities are 180 degrees from each other on the discipline spectrum, but there it is all the same. You can count on Tony's teams to come up with a big stop when they need one, and you can count on one of London's seniors to take an incredibly stupid penalty at a crucial moment. (Kwontie Moore, step on forward.**)
Worse yet is that for an entire half and a good portion of the second, UVA was dominated in the trenches. By William & Mary. Dominated. The Tribe ran all over them. They double-teamed David Dean and nobody else could shed a block. The UVA offensive line and that wonderful power rushing game which was never going to happen, was putrid. Lemme state this once more for effect: William & Mary dominated UVA in the trenches.
That's how you almost lose to them. UVA was rescued by its athletes, which is basically London's recruiting gameplan. Unfortunately, the other ACC teams have good athletes too.
**Mike Moore was hit with the penalty, and he's kind of culpable, but the reason it looked like he ran over the quarterback on that roughing-the-passer call was because Kwontie Moore gave him a totally unnecessary shove, into Mike's path. Totally asinine.
-- First bullet point has to be this: Why in the blazing blue fuck can't this coaching staff figure out how to substitute???? How basic is this? How did any of them get an actual coaching job not being able to do this? Why is the whole lower deck screaming at them to put an 11th man on the field? Normal teams have to burn a timeout, I dunno, maybe once every other game or so, over a little substitution confusion. Even most lousy staffs can handle this. This staff burns all three timeouts of the half with that problem. Un-flippin'-believable. If the complete unpreparedness for onside kicks and total lack of discipline by seniors didn't clue you in on the attention to detail paid by this staff, the chronic inability to execute a fundamental aspect of football should help you figure it out. "Uncompromised Excellence" has devolved into "Uncompromised Incompetence."
-- I'd feel a lot more confidence in the offense if they put together more drives like the first drive of the day. Big plays are neato, but if you can consistently march methodically down the field like that, you're in business. They sputtered a bit at first, but then the ball just kept on going, right through the red zone as if their usual red zone issues didn't exist. I liked it a lot better than Taquan Mizzell's screen-pass touchdown, which was nice but not repeatable. W&M blitzed a screen pass and Mizzell is faster than anyone they got, that's all.
-- How bad was the running game? Mizzell busted a big play which was rather well-blocked. But you always take out the biggest play - if you still average 3.5-4 yards after that, you're doing well. Take that out, and take out Jordan Ellis's touchdown run which was incredibly poorly blocked and 100% Ellis's efforts (Ellis ran 39 yards on that play, 38 of which were after contact), and also take out anything Matt Johns did because those are sacks and scrambles. Here's what you get: 33 yards on 21 carries. Power running game!
-- Have to like seeing the passing game opened up lately. I don't have any confidence in the running game, but this team will pull off a couple surprises - hell, they could still go bowling, despite everything - if they put the game in the hands of Matt Johns. Incredibly boneheaded interception aside, Johns is quietly playing like one of the top QBs in the conference. Only Miami's Brad Kaaya has more passing yards. Good thing Johns is doing so well, because Greyson Lambert is absolutely tearing it up for UGA. Johns is on pace to set the UVA single-season record for passing yards, and the way he's going I'd be more surprised if he missed it than if he made it.
Showing posts with label agh we suck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agh we suck. Show all posts
Monday, September 21, 2015
Friday, December 13, 2013
what went right
In a 2-10 season, very little. But we're going to try and put on a smiley face and see if there weren't a few nuggets of goodness here and there. It's kind of a fake smiley face, mind you.
Also, as good as Brent Urban was this year, we're going to limit it to things that can be applied to next year. That way there's no false hope. Nope, nothing but real optimism in this post.
Kevin Parks
Parks recorded the first 1,000-yard season by a UVA back since Alvin Pearman in 2004. This is a pretty nice individual achievement. I'm going to break my optimism rule, though, by pointing out that it was largely due to not having to extensively share carries. Several seasons since then, there would've been a 1,000-yard rusher if the carries had not been split, and that 2004 season almost had two such accomplishments, with Wali Lundy falling 100-and-some short. Even the much-maligned Michael Johnson looked awfully good that year. UVA had a powerful rushing attack in 2004.
Still. The more-overarching point to this is that Steve Fairchild deserves a pretty good deal of credit for this. Parks is a solid back with good vision and balance and he hits a hole pretty quick. And, obviously, highly durable. But he's also thoroughly unexplosive; he had just one run all season over 50 yards, and in seven of twelve games, didn't pass 20 on any one run. This means he can't pad out his stats by being bottled up all game and then bursting through for one huge run to make the whole day look good. In order for Parks to rack up yards, he has to do it on a lot of different plays, and he needs good blocking to do it.
And this was an offensive line that lost most of its physical battles. So how to get an unexplosive back running behind an unproductive line to the 1,000-yard marker? Schemes. Fairchild's playbook deserves much of the credit for the accomplishment. It's why when the whole fanbase is giving him an F-minus, I give Fairchild a C. I had as much hate and discontent as anyone over things like short-side sweeps on 4th-and-2, but we have to apply Sherlock Holmes's maxim here. When you've eliminated all else, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth. Parks didn't get to 1,000 yard by racing away from defenders and he didn't get there because the offensive line blew open holes for him. What remains is Fairchild, however, unpopular a conclusion that may be.
Anthony Harris
Actually this sort of breaks another rule, the one about being able to apply this stuff to next year, because seasons like Harris's regress to the mean most of the time. Still, you just can't knock the nation's interceptions leader. The problem with a safety, unfortunately, is that a good one cannot make a bad defense good, but a bad one can make a good defense bad.
So the defense as a whole didn't really follow suit. But a guy with instincts like Harris's, but with 12 extra games under his belt, ought to be a force on the field next year.
Eric Smith
Smith was a true freshman on the offensive line, which at times went about how you'd expect. Georgia Tech was a particular case, in which Smith had to go up against Jeremiah Attaochu all day and spent the whole day eating Attaochu's cleats. Sometimes he was just freshman-y.
Sometimes, though, he was fantastic. Clemson's Vic Beasley finished the season with 12 sacks, but never recorded one against Smith and UVA. Smith had a good game against VT as well, and over the course of the season, the good outweighed the bad. UVA has a good one in Smith, who could be the left tackle for the next three years.
Linebackers
I asserted early in the season, here and on TheSabre too, that I thought Daquan Romero should be the top candidate to lead the team in tackles. I ended up being off by two; Henry Coley nudged him out 91-89. Both Coley and Romero showed impressive instincts this year; Romero was particularly excellent at sniffing out and blowing up screen plays.
Combined with Harris, these two will give UVA more quarterbacks on defense next year than it knows what to do with. Their ranginess gave Jon Tenuta confidence enough to use his third linebacker spot on Max Valles, who couldn't do much more than pass rush.
Eli Harold
Not only did he pile up eight sacks, he averaged 10 yards on them.
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There are a few honorable mention names that don't really qualify as full bright spots. David Dean piled up very nice numbers for a DT but generally needed Brent Urban next to him. Without Urban, teams tended to smother Dean. Hopefully next year as he becomes an upperclassman he'll be the guy opening up a lane for his neighbor. Daniel Hamm had that one really nice game; pity he got relegated to the back of the bench anyway. Khalek Shepherd, when healthy, was a nice change of pace back. Urban, of course, was outstanding, and his loss probably cost UVA a win somewhere along the line.
Everything else that happened pretty much earns a D at best. And if there's a grade lower than F-minus-minus-minus, I'll hand it out to the quarterbacks and receivers. Can you get a Z-minus? At least, though, a few players kept us interested. Bravo to that. I have every confidence this team can show the progress it needs to double its win total next year.
Also, as good as Brent Urban was this year, we're going to limit it to things that can be applied to next year. That way there's no false hope. Nope, nothing but real optimism in this post.
Kevin Parks
Parks recorded the first 1,000-yard season by a UVA back since Alvin Pearman in 2004. This is a pretty nice individual achievement. I'm going to break my optimism rule, though, by pointing out that it was largely due to not having to extensively share carries. Several seasons since then, there would've been a 1,000-yard rusher if the carries had not been split, and that 2004 season almost had two such accomplishments, with Wali Lundy falling 100-and-some short. Even the much-maligned Michael Johnson looked awfully good that year. UVA had a powerful rushing attack in 2004.
Still. The more-overarching point to this is that Steve Fairchild deserves a pretty good deal of credit for this. Parks is a solid back with good vision and balance and he hits a hole pretty quick. And, obviously, highly durable. But he's also thoroughly unexplosive; he had just one run all season over 50 yards, and in seven of twelve games, didn't pass 20 on any one run. This means he can't pad out his stats by being bottled up all game and then bursting through for one huge run to make the whole day look good. In order for Parks to rack up yards, he has to do it on a lot of different plays, and he needs good blocking to do it.
And this was an offensive line that lost most of its physical battles. So how to get an unexplosive back running behind an unproductive line to the 1,000-yard marker? Schemes. Fairchild's playbook deserves much of the credit for the accomplishment. It's why when the whole fanbase is giving him an F-minus, I give Fairchild a C. I had as much hate and discontent as anyone over things like short-side sweeps on 4th-and-2, but we have to apply Sherlock Holmes's maxim here. When you've eliminated all else, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth. Parks didn't get to 1,000 yard by racing away from defenders and he didn't get there because the offensive line blew open holes for him. What remains is Fairchild, however, unpopular a conclusion that may be.
Anthony Harris
Actually this sort of breaks another rule, the one about being able to apply this stuff to next year, because seasons like Harris's regress to the mean most of the time. Still, you just can't knock the nation's interceptions leader. The problem with a safety, unfortunately, is that a good one cannot make a bad defense good, but a bad one can make a good defense bad.
So the defense as a whole didn't really follow suit. But a guy with instincts like Harris's, but with 12 extra games under his belt, ought to be a force on the field next year.
Eric Smith
Smith was a true freshman on the offensive line, which at times went about how you'd expect. Georgia Tech was a particular case, in which Smith had to go up against Jeremiah Attaochu all day and spent the whole day eating Attaochu's cleats. Sometimes he was just freshman-y.
Sometimes, though, he was fantastic. Clemson's Vic Beasley finished the season with 12 sacks, but never recorded one against Smith and UVA. Smith had a good game against VT as well, and over the course of the season, the good outweighed the bad. UVA has a good one in Smith, who could be the left tackle for the next three years.
Linebackers
I asserted early in the season, here and on TheSabre too, that I thought Daquan Romero should be the top candidate to lead the team in tackles. I ended up being off by two; Henry Coley nudged him out 91-89. Both Coley and Romero showed impressive instincts this year; Romero was particularly excellent at sniffing out and blowing up screen plays.
Combined with Harris, these two will give UVA more quarterbacks on defense next year than it knows what to do with. Their ranginess gave Jon Tenuta confidence enough to use his third linebacker spot on Max Valles, who couldn't do much more than pass rush.
Eli Harold
Not only did he pile up eight sacks, he averaged 10 yards on them.
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There are a few honorable mention names that don't really qualify as full bright spots. David Dean piled up very nice numbers for a DT but generally needed Brent Urban next to him. Without Urban, teams tended to smother Dean. Hopefully next year as he becomes an upperclassman he'll be the guy opening up a lane for his neighbor. Daniel Hamm had that one really nice game; pity he got relegated to the back of the bench anyway. Khalek Shepherd, when healthy, was a nice change of pace back. Urban, of course, was outstanding, and his loss probably cost UVA a win somewhere along the line.
Everything else that happened pretty much earns a D at best. And if there's a grade lower than F-minus-minus-minus, I'll hand it out to the quarterbacks and receivers. Can you get a Z-minus? At least, though, a few players kept us interested. Bravo to that. I have every confidence this team can show the progress it needs to double its win total next year.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
game preview: Virginia Tech
Date/Time: Saturday, November 30; 3:30
TV: ESPNUVA
Line: VT by 13
Record against the Hokies: 37-52-5
Last meeting: VT 17, UVA 14; 11/24/12, Blacksburg
Last weekend: Miami 45, UVA 26; VT bye
Injury report: (too early)
How bad is it? In this day and age where players can find bulletin board material in every corner of a sports page, the Hokie players decided to come right out and provide all UVA could handle. Brutal honesty pervades the article, the only lies coming before the word "but" in every Hokie quote.** And why shouldn't they? They wouldn't say it if they were even the tiniest bit afraid they would lose. I'd call it overconfidence, but there's nothing "over" about it.
-- UVA run offense vs. VT run defense
Top backs:
Kevin Parks: 210 carries, 926 yards, 4.4 ypc, 11 TDs
Khalek Shepherd: 51 carries, 304 yards, 6.0 ypc, 1 TD
UVA offense:
160.91 yards/game, 3.83 yards/attempt
91st of 125 (national), 10th of 14 (ACC)
VT defense:
103.27 yards/game, 2.94 yards/attempt
4th of 125 (national), 1st of 14 (ACC)
Remember how I've been saying that really good defensive tackles will murder our offensive line, every time? And how that comes true pretty much always? Teams with one good DT, like Aaron Donald of Pitt, have had very little trouble imposing their will.
Tech so happens to have two really good DTs. You don't usually find DTs so high on the tackles list; Luther Maddy and Derrick Hopkins are 4th and 6th, respectively. Third tackle Nigel Williams has 13 tackles, 7 of which are for loss. VT also rotates three defensive ends with impunity, and brings two top-quality linebackers in Jack Tyler and Tariq Edwards. It's a really aggressive defense that knows what the hell its doing.
The upshot is that the run game is going to go completely and utterly nowhere. Kevin Parks needs 74 yards to reach 1,000 for the season, and I'd be surprised to see him get half that. I'd be surprised to see the whole team reach that number. End of story.
-- UVA pass offense vs. VT pass defense
Quarterback:
David Watford: 231/404, 57.2%; 2,080 yards, 8 TDs, 15 INTs; 5.15 yards/attempt
Top receivers:
Jake McGee: 39 rec., 330 yards, 2 TDs
Darius Jennings: 36 rec., 319 yards, 3 TDs
UVA offense:
215.1 yards/game, 5.1 yards/attempt
125th of 125 (national), 14th of 14 (ACC)
VT defense:
164.9 yards/game, 6.2 yards/attempt
15th of 125 (national), 2nd of 14 (ACC)
London promises that both Watford and Greyson Lambert will get to play this week. I can't tell whether that means he's decided at long last to go back to the QB rotation or whether he means he already figures the game will be out of hand enough to get away with it. I suspect it'll be more like giving Watford a much quicker hook, which it's about time for. I know I said I wanted the QB merry-go-round to end - we all did - but that didn't mean I wanted the coaches to start digging once they hit rock bottom under center.
Neither quarterback is going to be successful. VT has a whole bunch of guys who can get to the pocket and a pretty good secondary. Brandon Facyson turned out to be a damn good cornerback when forced to step in for Antone Exum in the starting lineup. Kendall Fuller is as advertised, too. No reason to expect our receivers to be open. Jake McGee can probably find a way to make some plays, but at this point the only WR I have much confidence in is Keeon Johnson; his size might provide some opportunity, although to counter that, Facyson is a pretty big cornerback himself.
Watford threw three picks against Miami; frankly I'd be terribly surprised to see our QBs combine for any fewer than that. And I'd be surprised if they didn't have mouthfuls of turf every other play; just pencil in a minimum of four sacks for the VT defense. Moving the ball will be close to impossible this week. We make it terribly hard on ourselves; now we're facing a defense uniquely able to make it even harder.
-- VT run offense vs. UVA run defense
Top backs:
Trey Edmunds: 155 carries, 582 yards, 3.8 ypc, 10 TDs
J.C. Coleman: 61 carries, 205 yards, 3.4 ypc, 0 TDs
VT offense:
117.09 yards/game, 3.12 yards/attempt
115th of 125 (national), 12th of 14
UVA defense:
174.73 yards/game, 4.49 yards/attempt
84th of 125 (national), 13th of 14 (ACC)
Hey, cool - something we do better than Tech. Their usual inability to put a run game together to help out Logan Thomas is a big part of the reason for their late-season ACC slide. Boston College and Maryland - decent but not exactly paragons of brilliant defense - held them to 55 and 54 yards on the ground, respectively. This, naturally, has forced Thomas to win games with his arm - a dicey proposition.
Thomas and Trey Edmunds carry the running game, with J.C. Coleman providing a change of pace. Tech's O-line problems are coming home to roost, though; it's just not a very good one, and they haven't been able to open a lot of running room. If there's one matchup in this whole wretched game where UVA has an advantage, it's Brent Urban vs. Whoever Blocks Him. And with some pretty good linebackers still running around, I like our chances to at least not fall completely flat on our face here.
Then again, you don't get to 2-9 without failing to live up to a few expectations along the way. VT has been pretty impotent on the ground at times, but they've also had some successes, and against teams much better than ours. The Miami game is one. While I'd expect some stretches of reasonable success and maybe even a forced punt or two, don't go expecting this portion of the game to be four quarters of defensive dominance.
-- VT pass offense vs. UVA pass defense
Quarterback:
Logan Thomas: 211/362, 58.3%; 2,632 yards, 15 TDs, 12 INTs; 7.27 yards/attempt
Top receivers:
Willie Byrn: 46 rec., 598 yards, 2 TDs
Demetri Knowles: 39 rec., 518 yards, 3 TDs
VT offense:
241.5 yards/game, 7.3 yards/attempt
64th of 125 (national), 10th of 14 (ACC)
UVA defense:
232.5 yards/game, 7.2 yards/attempt
74th of 125 (national), 12th of 14 (ACC)
I really think this will have very little to do with our defense, with one variable to be discussed in a bit. The point is, Logan Thomas's performances vary astoundingly from one game to the next. He was great against Miami, UNC, and GT. He was pathetic against Marshall, Duke, and Alabama. Thomas has trended somewhat upwards as the season goes on, but still.
The variable, of course, is that he'll get to throw against a defense missing the national interceptions leader for a half. By the time Anthony Harris gets back, the game is likely to be out of hand, so it's a big deal. Harris and Demetrious Nicholson are more than arguably the two most talented players in the secondary, so Thomas's degree of difficulty is significantly lessened.
Fortunately, his weapons are not tremendously frightening. VT's receivers are good but not great, with Willie Byrn coming largely out of nowhere to be the team's receptions leader. Thomas also leans on redshirt freshman Joshua Stanford, who could develop into a very productive player later in his career, and Demetri Knowles rounds out his top three targets. D.J. Coles is a big and tall possession and red-zone target as well.
Using three- and four-wide sets is something I'd expect to see out of Tech; it'll severely test our depleted secondary and spread the field for their running game besides. There have been isolated successes at times in defending the pass, but the strategy by and large will be to hope for one of Thomas's bad games.
-- Favorability ratings
UVA run offense: 1
UVA pass offense: 0
UVA run defense: 5
UVA pass defense: 3.5
Average: 2.375
-- Outlook
Yeah, right. Look, VT is a flawed team, but only on offense. There are certain ways to imagine the shocker of all time, here, but when's the last time this 2013 UVA team ever successfully executed whatever followed the phrase "if we can just...."?? Whatever good the defense does will be undone and then some by paralyzing offensive ineptitude, which will include giving up touchdowns directly as well as the gift of short fields as well. Do yourself a favor: Find a Saturday matinee movie.
-- Prediction summary
-- The entire UVA running game fails to gain 75 yards, sacks not included.
-- The UVA quarterbacks combine for at least three INTs.
-- And get sacked at least four times.
-- VT's defense scores at least one touchdown.
-- Logan Thomas's single-game passer rating is better than his season average of 126.4.
Final score: VT 31, UVA 3
-- Rest of the ACC
Miami @ Pittsburgh - Fri. 3:30 - Miami tries to keep its outside shot at a Coastal title alive. Since they need us to win for that to happen, they'd probably be psychologically better off losing so they don't spend the next 24 hours with false hopes.
Florida State @ Florida - 12:00 - The penultimate hurdle for FSU's BCS CG hopes.
Duke @ North Carolina - 12:00 - If Duke wins, they become the ultimate hurdle.
Wake Forest @ Vanderbilt - 12:21 - 12:20 was just too early to expect fans to show up.
Maryland @ NC State - 12:30 - You can root for NC State because their opponent is Maryland, or you can root for Maryland so we'll have company in ACC Winless Land.
Georgia Tech vs. Georgia - 3:30 - This is the most evenly matched this game has been in years.
Boston College @ Syracuse - 3:30 - Cuse tries to give the ACC its 11th bowl-eligible team.
Clemson @ South Carolina - 7:00 - A win could put Clemson solidly into the BCS as an at-large team - the obstacle being the number of scrub-conference autobids that are likely.
**Seriously, these guys are some morons. Logan Thomas: "I don't think anyone thinks they're better than anyone else. I think they think they're better than us. But really we're better than them." Jack Tyler: "I don't wish ill on anyone. I wish ill on UVA." Little Shaney gets in on the dumb-hypocrite action in another article, too. Skool is grate!
Monday, November 25, 2013
bad attitude weekend review
Is it wrong that after the Miami game I wished the spread had been 18.5 instead of 20, so that idiots who were stupid enough to bet on UVA lost their money because we couldn't execute a simple extra point?
As if we didn't already have oh about a thousand data points proving what an undisciplined, fecklessly coached team Mike London has foisted upon our school, extra points turned into a penalty-fest this week. UVA scored three touchdowns and fucked up the extra point on every single one of them - two false starts and a block. And I don't blame special teams coach Larry Lewis for any of them, although one of the false starts was illegal procedure on the snapper. So maybe that one. The first false start was Ross Burbank, and it was Eric Tetlow blown backwards for the block; Burbank is a goddam veteran and should know better.
Then again, six false starts on the day mean there's plenty of that blame to go around. Here we are, 11 games into the season, and that darn elusive snap count is still an unsolved puzzle. 11 games into the season and the quarterback still slings uncatchable frozen ropes to a target two feet above his receiver's head, and has the decision-making power of a welding robot besides. If you believe what you read on message boards, and the writer of this particular nugget has much more credibility than the average blabbermouth, the "read-option" we've been running is called in advance from the sidelines. As in, the hand-or-keep decision. What has looked like stunningly poor decision-making from Watford is actually Watford executing what he's been told in advance - and he apparently has neither the gumption nor authority to override that when the given decision is so obviously a bad one. Whatever goes on at football practice these days, I wouldn't call it "coaching." I believe the preferred nomenclature is "ruining perfectly good football players."
The real shame here is that some really nice individual efforts are being lost in the pit of despair. Anthony Harris's eight picks are an amazing number, even if one of them should've just been batted down. Kevin Parks needs 74 yards to reach 1,000 for the season, and even if he doesn't get there he's already had the best season by a UVA running back since that last 1,000 yard season (Alvin Pearman in 2004.) If he doesn't go 11 yards backwards this week, that is - entirely possible since VT's D-line is a wrecking crew and our O-line is incapable of blocking them.
The season will be at its merciful end in less than a week, in the same sense in which the clock ran out on the Oregon game, and when the team physically walks off the field (after having mentally walked off it two hours ago) to a tiny smattering of boos from the masochists that stayed through that whole mess, we can finally slam the coffin lid shut. I'll then fire off a sarcastic letter to Craig Littlepage and receive a response along the lines of "we feel your pain and rest assured we blah blah fix it blah blah have higher goals for the program blah blah." I'd say we could then bury this pathetic season, but that's not quite true - the rotting stench of its corpse will haunt the program for a few years. Or at least over the summer; I can't picture going into the 2014 season with any optimism as long as Mike London is still making decisions. All there is to look forward to is about a year and two weeks from now when eight more losses have entered themselves in the ledger and some ex-MAC wunderkind is promising to make it all better.
P.S. - Let me just answer a question from a couple weeks ago, regarding which members of this coaching staff I'd retain for some continuity: NONE OF THEM. Not even UVA legend Anthony Poindexter, who's such a good safety coach that fourth-year safety Rijo Walker tried to crash the backfield while a Miami receiver ran straight past him to the end zone - on 1st-and-25. Larry Lewis has markedly improved the special teams, but that wasn't hard given the deplorable job Poindexter did with that unit. Vincent Brown has probably done a better-than-average job, and the linebackers look good under Tenuta. But why retain any of the stench of this season? I'm sure there's a coach or two somewhere that can convince a high-schooler to play here besides Poindexter and Chip West, and then actually teach them to play football too.
This goes for everyone from the head coach on down through the assistants, the S&C crew (which is partially responsible for the fact that our interior O-line gets blown up every other play), and the GAs too.
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I made some predictions about this game; let's see if my prognostication skills have recovered from the beating they took the past couple weeks.
-- David Watford has between 29 and 43 completions, giving him his second-most in a game this year. I reserve the right to prorate this out in case of early Greyson Lambert showing. No need to prorate. Watford would've had to attempt 72 passes in order to reach the minimum that I expected.
-- Lambert attempts 10+ passes. He threw 19, and only needed a fraction of them to surpass Watford's miserable yardage output.
-- Dallas Crawford rushes for over 100 yards in Duke Johnson's absence. Crawford ran for only 55, but this seems like as good a time as any to point out that we managed to lose despite running 91 offensive plays to Miami's 52. Brent Urban's return made a difference, but that is also what happens when your offense serves up defensive touchdowns like Halloween candy.
-- Ant Harris gets another interception. Truth.
-- Stephen Morris tops 300 passing yards. No, but he came close-ish with 214, which isn't that close but it is considering he only had 13 completions.
-- Miami scores at least one touchdown of 65 yards or greater, through the air. I'm counting the 62-yarder, because I can.
I go to 22-for-55 on the season, which is exactly 40%. Also 7-4 overall but only 5-5-1 ATS since by some miracle, UVA covered. I'd like it made known that I predicted Miami's score exactly, though.
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Remarkably, there are still high school players who want to join this clownshow, and some of them played football this weekend too. Let's catch up on those of our recruits still working their way through the high school playoffs:
Upland 30, Santiago 29: Jeffery Farrar intercepted a pass deep in Santiago territory that set up a touchdown and a 16-3 lead that Upland needed all of in the quarterfinal win.
Dacula 28, Peachtree Ridge 21: Jordan Ellis ran for 132 yards but was held off the scoreboard in Peachtree Ridge's season-ending loss.**
Forest Park 27, Varina 18: Donovan Dowling had a few big catches, but Varina's season ends a little earlier than they're accustomed to.
Central Catholic 49, St. Petersburg Catholic 16 (Caanan Brown)
Oscar Smith 41, Grassfield 7 (Andrew Brown)
Woodgrove 49, Eastern View 7 (J.J. Jackson)
The results this week leave four teams alive, mostly in their respective semifinals. Upland and Woodgrove (the latter in a quarterfinal) will have uphill battles; CCC and Oscar Smith are behemoths that will be expected to continue. And in junior news, Juan Thornhill's Altavista also remains alive.
**I looked this up, and, disappointingly, this team is pronounced "da-CUE-la", not like Dracula minus the R. Ur doin it wrong, Dacula.
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On a programming note, this is Thanksgiving weekend. Which means of course that I'm not writing anything on Thursday for you turkeys. I'm pushing the VT game preview all the way up to tomorrow, so that I can wait for the results of the Tuesday basketball game to write a preview for Friday's one. It's our big preseason tournament (such as it is) so it's worth a preview. Not gonna get one for Sunday's game, though. Wednesday's preview and then see you Monday.
As if we didn't already have oh about a thousand data points proving what an undisciplined, fecklessly coached team Mike London has foisted upon our school, extra points turned into a penalty-fest this week. UVA scored three touchdowns and fucked up the extra point on every single one of them - two false starts and a block. And I don't blame special teams coach Larry Lewis for any of them, although one of the false starts was illegal procedure on the snapper. So maybe that one. The first false start was Ross Burbank, and it was Eric Tetlow blown backwards for the block; Burbank is a goddam veteran and should know better.
Then again, six false starts on the day mean there's plenty of that blame to go around. Here we are, 11 games into the season, and that darn elusive snap count is still an unsolved puzzle. 11 games into the season and the quarterback still slings uncatchable frozen ropes to a target two feet above his receiver's head, and has the decision-making power of a welding robot besides. If you believe what you read on message boards, and the writer of this particular nugget has much more credibility than the average blabbermouth, the "read-option" we've been running is called in advance from the sidelines. As in, the hand-or-keep decision. What has looked like stunningly poor decision-making from Watford is actually Watford executing what he's been told in advance - and he apparently has neither the gumption nor authority to override that when the given decision is so obviously a bad one. Whatever goes on at football practice these days, I wouldn't call it "coaching." I believe the preferred nomenclature is "ruining perfectly good football players."
The real shame here is that some really nice individual efforts are being lost in the pit of despair. Anthony Harris's eight picks are an amazing number, even if one of them should've just been batted down. Kevin Parks needs 74 yards to reach 1,000 for the season, and even if he doesn't get there he's already had the best season by a UVA running back since that last 1,000 yard season (Alvin Pearman in 2004.) If he doesn't go 11 yards backwards this week, that is - entirely possible since VT's D-line is a wrecking crew and our O-line is incapable of blocking them.
The season will be at its merciful end in less than a week, in the same sense in which the clock ran out on the Oregon game, and when the team physically walks off the field (after having mentally walked off it two hours ago) to a tiny smattering of boos from the masochists that stayed through that whole mess, we can finally slam the coffin lid shut. I'll then fire off a sarcastic letter to Craig Littlepage and receive a response along the lines of "we feel your pain and rest assured we blah blah fix it blah blah have higher goals for the program blah blah." I'd say we could then bury this pathetic season, but that's not quite true - the rotting stench of its corpse will haunt the program for a few years. Or at least over the summer; I can't picture going into the 2014 season with any optimism as long as Mike London is still making decisions. All there is to look forward to is about a year and two weeks from now when eight more losses have entered themselves in the ledger and some ex-MAC wunderkind is promising to make it all better.
P.S. - Let me just answer a question from a couple weeks ago, regarding which members of this coaching staff I'd retain for some continuity: NONE OF THEM. Not even UVA legend Anthony Poindexter, who's such a good safety coach that fourth-year safety Rijo Walker tried to crash the backfield while a Miami receiver ran straight past him to the end zone - on 1st-and-25. Larry Lewis has markedly improved the special teams, but that wasn't hard given the deplorable job Poindexter did with that unit. Vincent Brown has probably done a better-than-average job, and the linebackers look good under Tenuta. But why retain any of the stench of this season? I'm sure there's a coach or two somewhere that can convince a high-schooler to play here besides Poindexter and Chip West, and then actually teach them to play football too.
This goes for everyone from the head coach on down through the assistants, the S&C crew (which is partially responsible for the fact that our interior O-line gets blown up every other play), and the GAs too.
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I made some predictions about this game; let's see if my prognostication skills have recovered from the beating they took the past couple weeks.
-- David Watford has between 29 and 43 completions, giving him his second-most in a game this year. I reserve the right to prorate this out in case of early Greyson Lambert showing. No need to prorate. Watford would've had to attempt 72 passes in order to reach the minimum that I expected.
-- Lambert attempts 10+ passes. He threw 19, and only needed a fraction of them to surpass Watford's miserable yardage output.
-- Dallas Crawford rushes for over 100 yards in Duke Johnson's absence. Crawford ran for only 55, but this seems like as good a time as any to point out that we managed to lose despite running 91 offensive plays to Miami's 52. Brent Urban's return made a difference, but that is also what happens when your offense serves up defensive touchdowns like Halloween candy.
-- Ant Harris gets another interception. Truth.
-- Stephen Morris tops 300 passing yards. No, but he came close-ish with 214, which isn't that close but it is considering he only had 13 completions.
-- Miami scores at least one touchdown of 65 yards or greater, through the air. I'm counting the 62-yarder, because I can.
I go to 22-for-55 on the season, which is exactly 40%. Also 7-4 overall but only 5-5-1 ATS since by some miracle, UVA covered. I'd like it made known that I predicted Miami's score exactly, though.
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Remarkably, there are still high school players who want to join this clownshow, and some of them played football this weekend too. Let's catch up on those of our recruits still working their way through the high school playoffs:
Upland 30, Santiago 29: Jeffery Farrar intercepted a pass deep in Santiago territory that set up a touchdown and a 16-3 lead that Upland needed all of in the quarterfinal win.
Dacula 28, Peachtree Ridge 21: Jordan Ellis ran for 132 yards but was held off the scoreboard in Peachtree Ridge's season-ending loss.**
Forest Park 27, Varina 18: Donovan Dowling had a few big catches, but Varina's season ends a little earlier than they're accustomed to.
Central Catholic 49, St. Petersburg Catholic 16 (Caanan Brown)
Oscar Smith 41, Grassfield 7 (Andrew Brown)
Woodgrove 49, Eastern View 7 (J.J. Jackson)
The results this week leave four teams alive, mostly in their respective semifinals. Upland and Woodgrove (the latter in a quarterfinal) will have uphill battles; CCC and Oscar Smith are behemoths that will be expected to continue. And in junior news, Juan Thornhill's Altavista also remains alive.
**I looked this up, and, disappointingly, this team is pronounced "da-CUE-la", not like Dracula minus the R. Ur doin it wrong, Dacula.
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On a programming note, this is Thanksgiving weekend. Which means of course that I'm not writing anything on Thursday for you turkeys. I'm pushing the VT game preview all the way up to tomorrow, so that I can wait for the results of the Tuesday basketball game to write a preview for Friday's one. It's our big preseason tournament (such as it is) so it's worth a preview. Not gonna get one for Sunday's game, though. Wednesday's preview and then see you Monday.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
the virginia lions
You know how the saying goes. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me like four or five times in a row into thinking improvement is just around the corner, and I am a Lions fan. If you've ever wondered what it's like to be a fan of the Honolulu blue and silver, this is pretty much how it goes. You just have to let the wishful side of you do all the thinking. Just invent reasons why your football team isn't as bad as everyone thinks it is and then show up on the weekend, or the beginning of the season, with an optimistic smile on your face all set for its violent removal by another wasted day of watching them bumblefuck their way around the field.
At some point you'll show up on Sundays (Saturdays, whatever) with the understanding that instead of expecting anything fruitful, you'll just have yourself a nice cathartic couple of hours complaining about everything. It's a new kind of fun, albeit somewhat more acceptable when the players are professionals.
No matter. The only thing I'm disappointed in myself about is not realizing it sooner. It's not like I haven't had like twenty years of practice - the signs should've been much more obvious. Undisciplined shit doesn't just fix itself next week, especially when the coaches don't care about it. The quarterback doesn't suddenly know the offense that he couldn't figure out last week. During the game I tweeted that a great test of accountability would be whether or not Kyle McCartin played at all after picking up an extremely costly personal foul on our first kickoff. Guess who played the very next kickoff? Mike London claimed he should have been benched and it was his (London's) fault that McCartin went out there. It's too late for that.
This isn't about Kyle McCartin, although that's not to exempt a senior from blame for taking a freshman penalty. I don't care if it was an oversight on London's part and he meant to bench McCartin. He didn't. Meaning he had other things on his mind than fixing the team's most glaring and costly issue. And apparently so did the guy to whom London has delegated special teams responsibility. This is why I said we can't afford another week of Anthony Poindexter on special teams duty. His unit just directly cost his team three points and he didn't give enough of a fuck to hold accountable the guy responsible. It shouldn't have to be London's call to sit someone down. Ultimately I think that is London shielding Dex from blame, which is at least more admirable than wringing your assistant out to dry.
So I see no reason why we should ever expect anything but more of the same. You just got visual confirmation that it's all talk, all bluster and no action. Week after week it's the same mistakes. No lane responsibility. No discipline. The list of special teams disasters includes at least two penalties, two muffed punts, one 60-yard punt return given up, and one instance of taking the ball out of the end zone again only to trip over the 10-yard line. The casualty: yet another check mark in the loss column, directly attributable to special teams. And every week Poindexter is coaching the unit will be another week in which the best you can hope for out of the special teams will be that the margin of loss is so big that their undisciplined bullshit didn't matter.
Further reactions in brief:
-- It feels really good to see my faith in Chris Brathwaite paying off. Nine tackles, two for loss, is a phenomenal game out of a defensive tackle. Just a monster game.
-- Actually the defense in general is exempt from the rage machine this week. Four PBUs for Drequan Hoskey, and 10 for the defense overall, plus Brathwaite's day, and 14 tackles out of Steve Greer; I don't have anything bad to say about the defense. Obvious caveats about the level of competition apply, but the D played well. It's a safe bet Wake would never have seen the end zone if they hadn't been set up on our own 16 yard line by you-know-what.
-- Does anyone still believe in the stupidity that is the godawful mistaken belief that whether or not Phillip Sims actually completes his downfield bombs, just the fact that he chucks them will loosen up defenses enough for us to run on them? For one thing, Wake clearly had no respect for the passing game because they were shooting linebackers and safeties through the gaps all day long and stuffing the run game. For another, Sims's play-fakes suck, so it's not like there's any good reason to respect the pass regardless. It is bad for the offense when the quarterback arm-punts. I feel like I should not have to say that, but then I feel like there are people who still need it said to them.
-- Something that doesn't usually make a blip on any radars but something that I liked: Jeremiah Mathis catches a pass from Sims about 12, 13 yards downfield, and immediately lunges forward. Almost as immediately he's tackled, but the result of the play is 16 yards. Watching receivers juke and shuffle immediately after a catch to try and get past a tackler is infuriating because it works maybe once in twenty times. I watched Perry Jones (maybe it was Parks but I think it was Jones) catch a ball over the middle and immediately stop, with the idea that he was going to juke his defender out of his shorts. Naturally he got tackled from behind. Duh, there are other defenders back there and they're chasing you. Run away from them, which is forward for more yardage.
-- Yes, we got horse-screwed on that fourth-down spot.
-- How do you know your year is going badly? When the loudest cheer of the second half is for not carrying the ball out of the end zone. That ought to sting the coaches a little. On second thought, I bet the first time NC State kicks the ball over the goal line, our returner brings it out. Things are not being taught.
On to the predictions:
-- Five yards a carry for Kevin Parks. Uh, or half that. Either way.
-- Parks both catches the most passes, and has the most carries, of any UVA back. I should've stuck with most carries, as he had 10 to Jones's 7, but Jones caught five passes.
-- Tim Smith, in his welcome-back party, does not catch many passes (three at most) but one is a big one. I'm giving myself this one even though he caught four, which is one more than three. A 56-yarder on one of Sims's best throws of the day certainly counts. (I continue to beat the drum that there's no such thing as a big YAC play without a very nice throw, and Sims hit him perfectly.)
-- Tanner Price completes fewer than 50% of his passes. Price (or his receivers) was as bad as I expected, going 7-for-19. How do you lose when your opposing quarterback goes 7-for-19? Oh, right.
-- Brandon Terry, not Terence Davis, is Wake's leading receiver. Terry caught just one pass, but it was for 41 yards and nobody else on Wake, except for one player (Lovell Jackson) caught more than one. Do I give myself this one? Yes - the point was that Davis was not a threat to the Hoos, but Terry was, and his big 41-yard catch was the one right after McCartin's PF penalty that set up Wake's first field goal. People were way down on our safeties for that, but Terry is six-foot-bloody-five, and that play was unlikely to be stopped.
3-for-5 is not bad; it puts me at 16-for-39 for the season, which is 41%. But my now-deadoptimism stupidity has me at 4-4 on the game prediction season and 0-6-2 ATS. I promise you I will never again pick the Hoos to win another game this season. You can hold me to that. They haven't played so as to deserve it.
Note: I've decided to shake things up a tad; for the rest of the season, except for the bye next week, I'll have my game reactions up on Sunday, and then Monday will be more of an everything-else day, including Blogpoll ballots and Senior Seasons. It used to be more that way anyway, and kind of evolved out of it, and I think it works better this way.
At some point you'll show up on Sundays (Saturdays, whatever) with the understanding that instead of expecting anything fruitful, you'll just have yourself a nice cathartic couple of hours complaining about everything. It's a new kind of fun, albeit somewhat more acceptable when the players are professionals.
No matter. The only thing I'm disappointed in myself about is not realizing it sooner. It's not like I haven't had like twenty years of practice - the signs should've been much more obvious. Undisciplined shit doesn't just fix itself next week, especially when the coaches don't care about it. The quarterback doesn't suddenly know the offense that he couldn't figure out last week. During the game I tweeted that a great test of accountability would be whether or not Kyle McCartin played at all after picking up an extremely costly personal foul on our first kickoff. Guess who played the very next kickoff? Mike London claimed he should have been benched and it was his (London's) fault that McCartin went out there. It's too late for that.
This isn't about Kyle McCartin, although that's not to exempt a senior from blame for taking a freshman penalty. I don't care if it was an oversight on London's part and he meant to bench McCartin. He didn't. Meaning he had other things on his mind than fixing the team's most glaring and costly issue. And apparently so did the guy to whom London has delegated special teams responsibility. This is why I said we can't afford another week of Anthony Poindexter on special teams duty. His unit just directly cost his team three points and he didn't give enough of a fuck to hold accountable the guy responsible. It shouldn't have to be London's call to sit someone down. Ultimately I think that is London shielding Dex from blame, which is at least more admirable than wringing your assistant out to dry.
So I see no reason why we should ever expect anything but more of the same. You just got visual confirmation that it's all talk, all bluster and no action. Week after week it's the same mistakes. No lane responsibility. No discipline. The list of special teams disasters includes at least two penalties, two muffed punts, one 60-yard punt return given up, and one instance of taking the ball out of the end zone again only to trip over the 10-yard line. The casualty: yet another check mark in the loss column, directly attributable to special teams. And every week Poindexter is coaching the unit will be another week in which the best you can hope for out of the special teams will be that the margin of loss is so big that their undisciplined bullshit didn't matter.
Further reactions in brief:
-- It feels really good to see my faith in Chris Brathwaite paying off. Nine tackles, two for loss, is a phenomenal game out of a defensive tackle. Just a monster game.
-- Actually the defense in general is exempt from the rage machine this week. Four PBUs for Drequan Hoskey, and 10 for the defense overall, plus Brathwaite's day, and 14 tackles out of Steve Greer; I don't have anything bad to say about the defense. Obvious caveats about the level of competition apply, but the D played well. It's a safe bet Wake would never have seen the end zone if they hadn't been set up on our own 16 yard line by you-know-what.
-- Does anyone still believe in the stupidity that is the godawful mistaken belief that whether or not Phillip Sims actually completes his downfield bombs, just the fact that he chucks them will loosen up defenses enough for us to run on them? For one thing, Wake clearly had no respect for the passing game because they were shooting linebackers and safeties through the gaps all day long and stuffing the run game. For another, Sims's play-fakes suck, so it's not like there's any good reason to respect the pass regardless. It is bad for the offense when the quarterback arm-punts. I feel like I should not have to say that, but then I feel like there are people who still need it said to them.
-- Something that doesn't usually make a blip on any radars but something that I liked: Jeremiah Mathis catches a pass from Sims about 12, 13 yards downfield, and immediately lunges forward. Almost as immediately he's tackled, but the result of the play is 16 yards. Watching receivers juke and shuffle immediately after a catch to try and get past a tackler is infuriating because it works maybe once in twenty times. I watched Perry Jones (maybe it was Parks but I think it was Jones) catch a ball over the middle and immediately stop, with the idea that he was going to juke his defender out of his shorts. Naturally he got tackled from behind. Duh, there are other defenders back there and they're chasing you. Run away from them, which is forward for more yardage.
-- Yes, we got horse-screwed on that fourth-down spot.
-- How do you know your year is going badly? When the loudest cheer of the second half is for not carrying the ball out of the end zone. That ought to sting the coaches a little. On second thought, I bet the first time NC State kicks the ball over the goal line, our returner brings it out. Things are not being taught.
On to the predictions:
-- Five yards a carry for Kevin Parks. Uh, or half that. Either way.
-- Parks both catches the most passes, and has the most carries, of any UVA back. I should've stuck with most carries, as he had 10 to Jones's 7, but Jones caught five passes.
-- Tim Smith, in his welcome-back party, does not catch many passes (three at most) but one is a big one. I'm giving myself this one even though he caught four, which is one more than three. A 56-yarder on one of Sims's best throws of the day certainly counts. (I continue to beat the drum that there's no such thing as a big YAC play without a very nice throw, and Sims hit him perfectly.)
-- Tanner Price completes fewer than 50% of his passes. Price (or his receivers) was as bad as I expected, going 7-for-19. How do you lose when your opposing quarterback goes 7-for-19? Oh, right.
-- Brandon Terry, not Terence Davis, is Wake's leading receiver. Terry caught just one pass, but it was for 41 yards and nobody else on Wake, except for one player (Lovell Jackson) caught more than one. Do I give myself this one? Yes - the point was that Davis was not a threat to the Hoos, but Terry was, and his big 41-yard catch was the one right after McCartin's PF penalty that set up Wake's first field goal. People were way down on our safeties for that, but Terry is six-foot-bloody-five, and that play was unlikely to be stopped.
3-for-5 is not bad; it puts me at 16-for-39 for the season, which is 41%. But my now-dead
Note: I've decided to shake things up a tad; for the rest of the season, except for the bye next week, I'll have my game reactions up on Sunday, and then Monday will be more of an everything-else day, including Blogpoll ballots and Senior Seasons. It used to be more that way anyway, and kind of evolved out of it, and I think it works better this way.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
weekend review
GGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
This week I am a walking, talking, and especially, writing, illustration of the duality of man. I love to preach sanity, patience, and measured responses. It's how I am. This weekend that part of me is in a raging deathmatch with the irrational raving lunatic that lives inside of every college football fan. (Sometimes not very deep inside.) I'm fighting back the urge to say the things that we all think after games like that, such as:
- UNACCEPTABLE
- what the hell do these guys even care?!?!
- FIRE EVERYONE
- never been so embarrassed in my life
- SHIT DAMN FUCK DAMN FUCK FUCK FUCK SHIT
- FUCK
The heck with it, man. Bad language is highly excusable when you've lost four of five to Duke. That's a sorry situation right there. The worst part is, the only viable comeback left us is "wait til baseball season." There's no getting around it: expectations for the season have dropped all the way from "I wonder who our bowl opponent will be!" to "well maybe if we can beat Maryland this season won't be a total loss." (Seriously, let's not lose to Maryland.)
It's hard to imagine any other outcome of a game, though. Some unpleasant truths are starting to sink in, like, the offensive line will never convert a 4th and 1, the defensive line will never get pressure on a quarterback unless he takes too long with the ball, the entire secondary is a walking blown assignment, and the receivers all have hands of glass. For ITA this week I wrote that it's now plainly obvious what the problem wasn't.
How bad was it? It spurred the creation of a Fire Mike London twitspace account. Yes, this is insane. Yes, it's absurd. Yes, it's way too early. Yes, the guy comes off like a massive dick. No, it's not surprising in the least. Al Groh cannot be blamed for this in any way. (Some people are trying, but they're dead-ass wrong.) Even Groh's lowest-ranked recruiting classes - 2008 and the lame-duck year of 2010 - were ranked above Duke's. Groh might not have left us with the world's most well-stocked cupboard (what fired coach ever does?) but what he left us should have been enough to beat Duke, FFS. David Cutcliffe coached circles around London and his staff yesterday, and it's legitimate to at least ask why player development has led us to the point where we're losing by four touchdowns to Duke.
Further reactions in brief:
-- I'm not sure which is more maddening: an endless stream of three-yard checkdowns on third and nine, or an endless stream of Hail Mary attempts and potential arm punts on third and two. Phillip Sims is clearly conditioned to go deep as his default fallback option. This drives me crazy when he could just take three more steps and cross the sticks. Let's hope we can rewire that sooner rather than later. Going deep is a fun thing - when appropriate.
-- Using Perry Jones as the short-yardage hammer is like bringing a Yugo to a demolition derby. Stop it.
-- I suppose it's hard to be mad when the offensive line opens up enough holes for our backs to average 5.7 yards, but they still can't get one when it's really needed, and when fullbacks (looking at Billy Skrobacz, here) run straight past the guy in the backfield that their job is to block, it doesn't help.
-- Sims did not have a completely terrible day, but it was a few steps shy of mediocre, and "it's his first collegiate start" doesn't work as an excuse when it was also Anthony Boone's.
-- The safeties were an absolute disaster. Like a tornado hit a train wreck and spawned a volcano. Anthony Harris bit so hard on the play-fake that led to Duke's touchdown, he left teeth marks on the field.
-- CATCH THE DAMN BALL
-- AND STOP BRINGING IT OUT OF THE END ZONE. Khalek Shepherd averaged an absolutely miserable 13.3 yards per return. When your average return pins us inside the 15, TAKE A DAMN KNEE.
Argh argh argh. Sofa king bad. Let's see about the predictions:
-- Sims throws at least one pick, probably early. Giving myself two for the price of one here. Well, OK, two for two. Sims's first pick came on the second drive of the game, and was the result of exactly what I said in the preview: "he's a lot more likely than Rocco to try and make the first read work even if it looks kinda covered." It was more than kinda covered.
-- Sims averages 14 yards a completion. Dammit, he got 12.7 and came pretty close. Might have gotten there with a few less drops.
-- Jela Duncan gets a plurality (if not a majority) of Duke's carries. Bingo: Duncan got ten, three more than any other Dookie. He didn't have the most yards, but that wasn't what I said. Even though Juwan Thompson had quite a few more yards than Duncan, Duncan clearly looked like the best running back, earning a lot of his yards post-contact.
-- Whoever quarterbacks Duke completes 2/3 of his passes. Watching the game, I really thought I was going to get this one. But 18-for-31 is only 58%.
So, yay for 3-for-5, giving me 11 of 30 all year. Boo for making the wrong picks and dropping my records to 4-2 straight up and 0-4-2 ATS. Picking us to fail to cover would probably be a much more lucrative outcome.
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Let's hear it for the GP South Blue Devils, who kicked a game-winning field goal with under 40 seconds to play to earn their third straight win over the hated Norsemen of GP North - the first time in the history of the rivalry that South has won three straight. That moves South to 6-1 on the season and clinches a state playoff berth. Let's also get to the stuff you care about:
Good Counsel 13, DeMatha 10: Kirk Garner had an interception and stopped DeMatha on a fake field goal attempt to seal the win in the annual rivalry matchup of DC-area powerhouses. OLGC is 5-1.
Damascus 56, Walter Johnson 27: One of these days teams will stop kicking to Zach Bradshaw. He returned yet another kick for a TD in Damascus's rout. Damascus is 6-0.
South Iredell 22, Draughn 0: Great news as LaChaston Smith is back on the field, recovered (mostly) from his broken leg. South Iredell has outscored its opponents 171-17 this year, and is 7-1.
Bayside 62, Kellam 42: Smoke needed a big day and got one, with two rushing touchdowns and one receiving. He also scored three last week in a Monday night makeup game against Landstown. Mizzell now has 13 rushing touchdowns and 17 total, including two receiving and two returns. Bayside is 5-2.
Ocean Lakes 42, Green Run 0: Corwin Cutler had 287 yards passing and two touchdowns.... but also threw his first two picks of the season. You know what, cut him. Ocean Lakes is 7-0.
Fork Union 27, St. Christopher's 14: The only reason any of our recruits' teams lost this week is because one of them had to. Malcolm Cook starred; he had seven tackles, forced a fumble, and returned a pickoff 100 yards for one of Fork Union's scores. FUMA is 6-1; St. Chris is 3-3.
Salisbury 41, Cushing 27 (Sadiq Olanrewaju) - Salisbury is 3-0.
Gilman 49, Archbishop Spalding 2 (Micah Kiser) - Gilman is 4-2.
Potomac 18, Woodbridge 6 (Donta Wilkins) - Potomac is 3-3.
Monsignor Donovan 28, Point Pleasant 14 (Brad Henson) - Donovan is 3-1.
A.L. Brown 49, Mt. Pleasant 14 (Keeon Johnson) - Brown is 7-1.
Houston Westside 38, Houston Westbury 26 (Hipolito Corporan) - Westside is 4-2.
Oscar Smith 48, Hickory 10 (Zack Jones) - Oscar Smith is 4-2.
Varina 46, Armstrong 6 (Tim Harris) - Varina is 4-1.
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Wrap-up tidbits:
-- Not a good day at all for former UVA football coaches. The roof on the future George Welsh Practicin' Building caught fire.... and so did Al Groh. The latter is a bummer. I had been really hoping it would work out there and that Groh would find some success, except for when we played GT, and, in typical bullshit fashion, it was exactly the other way round.
-- I've told you what I think of the ACC going back to the eight-game format** but what about the baseball and basketball announcements that came with it?
If I remember right, and I might not, the ACC had previously announced that the basketball schedule would feature only one protected rivalry. Now it has two (or it stayed at two, I dunno) and naturally, ours are Maryland and VT, which is correct. (Maryland's other rival is Pitt. Haha it's not Duke like you think it is.)
However, the truly underrated decision from that big scheduling announcement concerned the conference tournament. They didn't show the bracket, but it's easy to figure what it looks like based on what they did say:
That's excellent. The best thing the Big East had going for it was a bracket that looked exactly like that for their conference tournament, except with a 9-16 game since they had, you know, 16 teams. I love that we absorb the Big East and then gank their bracket too. When we add a 16th, we can just add that extra game. That's a way more interesting bracket than just the basic 16-team elimination bracket, and adds appropriate rewards for high seeds. If we must ever see a 16-team football playoff, that's the bracket I want.
The baseball tournament, on the other hand, I can't fathom too well. (Maybe I could if it weren't currently an hour where normal people are asleep.) 10 teams, double-elimination from Tuesday through Friday, leaving four teams alive for a Saturday semifinal and Sunday championship....I don't get it. When the NCAA does double-elimination it leaves one team alive, but you can't split 10 four ways. Coaches aren't gonna like it, either. The main appeal of the previous format was that it only meant four games, which wasn't a major tax on a pitching staff. This one is like, what, six or seven games, if you want to win? Better bring a deep bullpen.
**This, by the way, leaves us - and the rest of the ACC - scrambling to find a fourth nonconference opponent next year. We already dropped UTSA and they're not coming back - they needed the opening too, so they could fit into their new CUSA schedule. In all likelihood it means a second I-AA team, which sucks. A better choice: call up Idaho or New Mexico State, which have been left out in the cold independent wasteland following the dissolution of WAC football. At least then if we beat them (yes, if - no guarantees allowed following a loss to Duke) it'll count toward bowl eligibility, whereas a second I-AA team would not.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Monday, November 28, 2011
weekend review
This is going to be kind of a short review and also late because I've been spending all day focusing on the positive. Thinking happy, positive thoughts. It's days like Saturday where I'm thankful to have two teams in my rooting satchel. It sucks we lost - really, it sucks that we lost 38-0, I would've been able to just let a 21-14 loss wash right over me - but fortunately it cannot dampen Michigan's win over Ohio State. That's the bonus - you'd think going 1-1 on Saturday would even things out, but a win over a rival is untouchably delicious. Nothing can ever ruin that.
Of course, the flipside is that nothing can make up for a 38-point loss to a rival, either, right? Wrong - we are 8-4 and going bowling. As I was hoping to be 6-6 at this point, I can't let myself be too disappointed. I think the bowl possibilities are narrowed down to two: the Department Store Bowl in Charlotte and the Music City Bowl in Nashville, with either Cincinnati or Vanderbilt, respectively, as opponents. In other words, we're not even stuck in some non-destination hole playing some glorified D-II Sun Belt squad, and there are beatable opponents waiting. Win this upcoming bowl game to go to 9-4 and I can call it, at worst, the second-best season of UVA football since I arrived on Grounds as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first-year. How can I complain? Besides the obvious, I mean.
Speaking of the obvious, let's take one last necessary look back on Saturday and then file it forever. Because we have to tally up the predictions, that's why. Otherwise, the only analysis you need is HOOS PLAY BAD. No need to anguish over things like the decision to forgo a field goal - wooo, it would've been 38-3 and besides that VT would've gotten the ball back in better field position than they did so maybe they'd've scored on that drive and then it would've been 45-3. Hoos play bad. Turn ball over. Not run block. Analyzing that game - so easy a caveman can do it. Let's analyze predictions instead:
- Either Jones or Parks tops 100 yards rushing.
You heard me: Not run block.
- Mike Rocco completes between 50 and 60 percent of his passes.
16 of 27 does in fact qualify. Unfortunately, he didn't do the other thing I said he needed to do, which is take care of the ball. Rocco actually moved the ball very well as long as he was on his own side of the field. When the Hokies had less ground to defend, they did it very well.
- So does Logan Thomas.
Thomas was 13/21, which is more than 60%, so I get nothing here. It's the only right call, as UVA failed in general to shut down Thomas through the air. The two things I most feared came to pass, and you see the result.
- David Wilson runs for 120+ yards.
Make that three things. Wilson got his yards alright, 153 of them.
- Perry Jones catches at least five. He is Superman.
Jones caught zero. Hello kryptonite.
- Whichever QB throws fewer interceptions, wins.
You know how this one went.
Three for six gives me 36-of-88 in the regular season, which is a shade under 41%. Considering how specific I make these predictions, I think that's not half bad. 6-6 in the score department, though, which literally is half bad, and 6-5-1 ATS. I have a chance to get over .500 on picks, and I suspect I'll do so if the Hoos win their bowl.
Losing means I didn't get to cast a vote for UVA in the Blogpoll after all. Maybe next year - or maybe in the final poll after the bowl. Anyway, this is the ballot. They're coming later these days because they take longer to do every week.
There's a lot of change because there were a lot of rivalry-game routs, and these rivalry games don't often match up a powerhouse against a patsy, so there was a lot of opportunity to make things happen.
I don't want to be ranking Southern Miss, by the way, but they are 10-2 (and UVA is kind of a marquee win) and the alternative is either Georgia Tech or dipping into the Big East turdbowl. So there you have it. And if it's any consolation, Saturday was clearly Virginia Tech's best win of the season - usually I just slot that one in the middle somewhere. (That's not consolation? Well, I tried.)
********************************************
This marks this year's final installment of Senior Seasons - a few teams are still playing, so I'll toss the results out there if I remember, but only in news bullets. But have no fear - I expect the 2013 recruiting class to be absolutely outstanding, so next year this ought to be a fun section.
Piscataway 34, Franklin 19: Kye Morgan ran for 158 yards and a touchdown, which pushed him over 1,000 yards in just ten games, but Franklin lost their annual rivalry game and finished 6-4.
Buford 42, Elbert County 13 (C.J. Moore)
St. Joseph 32, Hammonton 3 (Max Valles)
St. Joseph Prep 30, Malvern Prep 14 (Michael Mooney)
Hermitage 10, L.C. Bird 0 (Andre Miles-Redmond)
Only three schools will play next week: St. Joseph and Max Valles, Buford and C.J. Moore, and Hermitage with Andre Miles-Redmond. St. Joseph won its rivalry game against crosstown public school Hammonton, and next week will play for New Jersey's Non-Public I championship. Buford and Hermitage are in the state semifinals, Georgia's AA division and Virginia's Level 6. Hermitage's opponent is Centreville, and the winner plays the winner of Oscar Smith and Battlefield at Scott Stadium.
All three have excellent chances; St. Joseph has outscored opponents 423 to 19 this year. Hermitage should be favored against Centreville and then would likely have a battle of the titans against Oscar Smith. Buford has been crushing everyone and is going for its fifth straight title; it would take an upset for them to lose.
********************************************
-- I forgot to mention the demise of the soccer teams in their NCAA tournaments. The men, deprived of their best scorer, didn't get past the first round, losing at Klockner to Delaware, 1-0. The ladies carried a shutout streak into the quarterfinals (including a 4-0 win over VT) but lost to FSU in the quarters. Women's sports being what they are (which is to say, way fewer upsets) all four teams in the semis are 1 seeds; UVA was a 2 seed.
-- Someone tell me again why it's the ACC that always gets the bad football rap. We have nine bowl-eligible teams; the Pac-12 would have seven if one of them wasn't a dirty cheater. Seven Pac-12 teams have a losing record in-conference, and five overall, or they will once UCLA gets rocked in the Pac-12 championship. Only five ACC teams have losing conference records, and only three have losing records overall. And if you tell me that's because the ACC plays one fewer conference game and builds its record up on the nonconference schedule, I'll ask you why the SEC gets a pass on theirs.
At worst, the ACC has been the fourth-best conference this year behind the SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12 - and the Big 12 is being held together by duct tape and toothpicks. The Pac-12 has already fired three of its coaches (all in the putrid Pac-12 South) with more potentially on the way.
-- Speaking of fired coaches, it appears that the ACC will get through this offseason without a single coaching change. That hasn't happened since the 2005-2006 offseason. Although it's not for lack of trying on the part of the fanbases. Marylanders are already chomping at the bit, of course, to get rid of Randy Edsall. Can't imagine why. And Bostonites want Frank Spaziani gone, but he's not going anywhere. (Via BC Interruption.)
-- After the talk of being "Oregon of the East" during last year's uniform unveilings (and getting out-Oregonned so hard by Maryland - and come to think of it, VT as well, but much more quietly) that died down fast this year. UVA skipped two combinations entirely (white over blue and orange over orange, the latter of which THANK GOD) and only used two combinations more than once (orange over blue three times and white over white four times.) All that hype over fancy new unis and we roll with white on white as much as possible.
Everything else was used just once. I could go the rest of my life and be happy never seeing blue/blue in any uniform style ever, but the white jersey with orange pants is too sharp to ignore. And it's a little disappointing to see so little of the classic blue and whites. There's still the bowl game, though.
-- UVA got very solid representation on the all-ACC teams released today. I don't think I can complain about any snubs; I guess I would have liked to see Perry Jones (honorable mention) get more consideration than Andre Ellington (2nd team) simply because Jones is a much greater receiving threat than Ellington, but I think overall it's pretty decent. And ohbytheway, nobody had more players on the first team than UVA did. Only Florida State tied us, with three. Here's the breakdown as far as UVA is concerned:
1st team: Austin Pasztor, Matt Conrath, Chase Minnifield
2nd team: Oday Aboushi, Steve Greer
HM: Perry Jones, Rodney McLeod, Anthony Mihota
-- Big basketball game tomorrow. Big one. It's kind of a bittersweet moment in history for me; it'll be the first time I've ever cheered against Michigan in anything. (I've always said that if this ever happened, I'd choose sides based on who needs the win more; that is clearly Virginia. It'll make up for my answer to Gobbler Country about picking a U-M win over a UVA one on Saturday.) On the plus side, you can expect a pretty well-informed game preview.
Of course, the flipside is that nothing can make up for a 38-point loss to a rival, either, right? Wrong - we are 8-4 and going bowling. As I was hoping to be 6-6 at this point, I can't let myself be too disappointed. I think the bowl possibilities are narrowed down to two: the Department Store Bowl in Charlotte and the Music City Bowl in Nashville, with either Cincinnati or Vanderbilt, respectively, as opponents. In other words, we're not even stuck in some non-destination hole playing some glorified D-II Sun Belt squad, and there are beatable opponents waiting. Win this upcoming bowl game to go to 9-4 and I can call it, at worst, the second-best season of UVA football since I arrived on Grounds as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first-year. How can I complain? Besides the obvious, I mean.
Speaking of the obvious, let's take one last necessary look back on Saturday and then file it forever. Because we have to tally up the predictions, that's why. Otherwise, the only analysis you need is HOOS PLAY BAD. No need to anguish over things like the decision to forgo a field goal - wooo, it would've been 38-3 and besides that VT would've gotten the ball back in better field position than they did so maybe they'd've scored on that drive and then it would've been 45-3. Hoos play bad. Turn ball over. Not run block. Analyzing that game - so easy a caveman can do it. Let's analyze predictions instead:
- Either Jones or Parks tops 100 yards rushing.
You heard me: Not run block.
- Mike Rocco completes between 50 and 60 percent of his passes.
16 of 27 does in fact qualify. Unfortunately, he didn't do the other thing I said he needed to do, which is take care of the ball. Rocco actually moved the ball very well as long as he was on his own side of the field. When the Hokies had less ground to defend, they did it very well.
- So does Logan Thomas.
Thomas was 13/21, which is more than 60%, so I get nothing here. It's the only right call, as UVA failed in general to shut down Thomas through the air. The two things I most feared came to pass, and you see the result.
- David Wilson runs for 120+ yards.
Make that three things. Wilson got his yards alright, 153 of them.
- Perry Jones catches at least five. He is Superman.
Jones caught zero. Hello kryptonite.
- Whichever QB throws fewer interceptions, wins.
You know how this one went.
Three for six gives me 36-of-88 in the regular season, which is a shade under 41%. Considering how specific I make these predictions, I think that's not half bad. 6-6 in the score department, though, which literally is half bad, and 6-5-1 ATS. I have a chance to get over .500 on picks, and I suspect I'll do so if the Hoos win their bowl.
Losing means I didn't get to cast a vote for UVA in the Blogpoll after all. Maybe next year - or maybe in the final poll after the bowl. Anyway, this is the ballot. They're coming later these days because they take longer to do every week.
From Old Virginia Ballot - Week 14
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | LSU Tigers | -- |
| 2 | Alabama Crimson Tide | -- |
| 3 | Oklahoma Sooners |  2 |
| 4 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys |  -1 |
| 5 | Michigan Wolverines | -1 |
| 6 | Boise St. Broncos | -- |
| 7 | Stanford Cardinal | 2 |
| 8 | Oregon Ducks | -1 |
| 9 | Wisconsin Badgers | 5 |
| 10 | Virginia Tech Hokies | 3 |
| 11 | USC Trojans | -3 |
| 12 | South Carolina Gamecocks | 8 |
| 13 | Nebraska Cornhuskers | 5 |
| 14 | Georgia Bulldogs | 3 |
| 15 | Michigan St. Spartans | 7 |
| 16 | Houston Cougars | -4 |
| 17 | TCU Horned Frogs | -7 |
| 18 | Arkansas Razorbacks | -7 |
| 19 | Kansas St. Wildcats | -- |
| 20 | Baylor Bears | 4 |
| 21 | Clemson Tigers | -6 |
| 22 | Penn St. Nittany Lions | -6 |
| 23 | Florida St. Seminoles | -- |
| 24 | Southern Miss. Golden Eagles | -1 |
| 25 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | -4 |
| Dropouts: Rutgers Scarlet Knights | ||
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »
There's a lot of change because there were a lot of rivalry-game routs, and these rivalry games don't often match up a powerhouse against a patsy, so there was a lot of opportunity to make things happen.
I don't want to be ranking Southern Miss, by the way, but they are 10-2 (and UVA is kind of a marquee win) and the alternative is either Georgia Tech or dipping into the Big East turdbowl. So there you have it. And if it's any consolation, Saturday was clearly Virginia Tech's best win of the season - usually I just slot that one in the middle somewhere. (That's not consolation? Well, I tried.)
********************************************
This marks this year's final installment of Senior Seasons - a few teams are still playing, so I'll toss the results out there if I remember, but only in news bullets. But have no fear - I expect the 2013 recruiting class to be absolutely outstanding, so next year this ought to be a fun section.
Piscataway 34, Franklin 19: Kye Morgan ran for 158 yards and a touchdown, which pushed him over 1,000 yards in just ten games, but Franklin lost their annual rivalry game and finished 6-4.
Buford 42, Elbert County 13 (C.J. Moore)
St. Joseph 32, Hammonton 3 (Max Valles)
St. Joseph Prep 30, Malvern Prep 14 (Michael Mooney)
Hermitage 10, L.C. Bird 0 (Andre Miles-Redmond)
Only three schools will play next week: St. Joseph and Max Valles, Buford and C.J. Moore, and Hermitage with Andre Miles-Redmond. St. Joseph won its rivalry game against crosstown public school Hammonton, and next week will play for New Jersey's Non-Public I championship. Buford and Hermitage are in the state semifinals, Georgia's AA division and Virginia's Level 6. Hermitage's opponent is Centreville, and the winner plays the winner of Oscar Smith and Battlefield at Scott Stadium.
All three have excellent chances; St. Joseph has outscored opponents 423 to 19 this year. Hermitage should be favored against Centreville and then would likely have a battle of the titans against Oscar Smith. Buford has been crushing everyone and is going for its fifth straight title; it would take an upset for them to lose.
********************************************
-- I forgot to mention the demise of the soccer teams in their NCAA tournaments. The men, deprived of their best scorer, didn't get past the first round, losing at Klockner to Delaware, 1-0. The ladies carried a shutout streak into the quarterfinals (including a 4-0 win over VT) but lost to FSU in the quarters. Women's sports being what they are (which is to say, way fewer upsets) all four teams in the semis are 1 seeds; UVA was a 2 seed.
-- Someone tell me again why it's the ACC that always gets the bad football rap. We have nine bowl-eligible teams; the Pac-12 would have seven if one of them wasn't a dirty cheater. Seven Pac-12 teams have a losing record in-conference, and five overall, or they will once UCLA gets rocked in the Pac-12 championship. Only five ACC teams have losing conference records, and only three have losing records overall. And if you tell me that's because the ACC plays one fewer conference game and builds its record up on the nonconference schedule, I'll ask you why the SEC gets a pass on theirs.
At worst, the ACC has been the fourth-best conference this year behind the SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12 - and the Big 12 is being held together by duct tape and toothpicks. The Pac-12 has already fired three of its coaches (all in the putrid Pac-12 South) with more potentially on the way.
-- Speaking of fired coaches, it appears that the ACC will get through this offseason without a single coaching change. That hasn't happened since the 2005-2006 offseason. Although it's not for lack of trying on the part of the fanbases. Marylanders are already chomping at the bit, of course, to get rid of Randy Edsall. Can't imagine why. And Bostonites want Frank Spaziani gone, but he's not going anywhere. (Via BC Interruption.)
-- After the talk of being "Oregon of the East" during last year's uniform unveilings (and getting out-Oregonned so hard by Maryland - and come to think of it, VT as well, but much more quietly) that died down fast this year. UVA skipped two combinations entirely (white over blue and orange over orange, the latter of which THANK GOD) and only used two combinations more than once (orange over blue three times and white over white four times.) All that hype over fancy new unis and we roll with white on white as much as possible.
Everything else was used just once. I could go the rest of my life and be happy never seeing blue/blue in any uniform style ever, but the white jersey with orange pants is too sharp to ignore. And it's a little disappointing to see so little of the classic blue and whites. There's still the bowl game, though.
-- UVA got very solid representation on the all-ACC teams released today. I don't think I can complain about any snubs; I guess I would have liked to see Perry Jones (honorable mention) get more consideration than Andre Ellington (2nd team) simply because Jones is a much greater receiving threat than Ellington, but I think overall it's pretty decent. And ohbytheway, nobody had more players on the first team than UVA did. Only Florida State tied us, with three. Here's the breakdown as far as UVA is concerned:
1st team: Austin Pasztor, Matt Conrath, Chase Minnifield
2nd team: Oday Aboushi, Steve Greer
HM: Perry Jones, Rodney McLeod, Anthony Mihota
-- Big basketball game tomorrow. Big one. It's kind of a bittersweet moment in history for me; it'll be the first time I've ever cheered against Michigan in anything. (I've always said that if this ever happened, I'd choose sides based on who needs the win more; that is clearly Virginia. It'll make up for my answer to Gobbler Country about picking a U-M win over a UVA one on Saturday.) On the plus side, you can expect a pretty well-informed game preview.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
(in)efficiency
Basketball has its own sets of excellent tempo-free stats, and baseball is a statistician's paradise, with sabermetrics - essentially the study of alternative states - becoming an industry unto itself. Football too. Lacrosse is essentially a possession-based game like basketball, so it should be a doable thing to create some efficiency stats that take tempo out of the equation. Like basketball, there are teams that like to run and gun and teams that prefer to sit on the ball, and that affects the per-game stats that announcers always refer to and that never tell the whole story.
I've only ever seen one effort to do this, that by the Syracuse blog Orange:44, and it's pretty simple. There are three basic ways to gain possession: win a faceoff, get the ball from the opposing offense, or get the ball from the opposing defense. There's a stat for each: faceoff wins, attempted clears, and opponents' failed clears. So O44 simply divides goals by total possessions to come up with a measure of offensive efficiency.
That's not bad, but really, your offense in lacrosse and your ability to clear are two different things, and that stat includes both. Usually they involve two different groups of players. I wanted to see how the UVA offense has been operating this year, so as is my custom at times, I played around with the stats. Really I just adjusted the way possessions are calculated. Instead of:
Faceoff wins + attempted clears + opponents' failed clears
we now have:
Faceoff wins + successful clears + opponents' failed clears
That will tell you how many possessions actually got the ball into the offensive zone so you could go to work on scoring. It gets rid of possessions that never got over midfield or otherwise failed to get the offense involved. Clearing percentage is already a stat so removing failed clears from the equation should give us a better look at how the offense is performing.
Doing this also lets us separate the offense's turnovers from ones involving, say, goalie braindeadedness. A failed clear is a turnover, so just subtract the failed clears from the rest of the turnovers to get the turnovers that the offense is responsible for. We'll divide goals by possessions and turnovers by possessions to find how good the offense is at scoring and at hanging onto the ball. (By the way, the NCAA explicitly states that a missed shot is not a turnover, even if the shot is backed up by the opponent. Things like that, and saves and whatnot that are held by the goalie, fall into an "other" category that isn't being tracked here.)
In the hazy future, we'll look at where UVA ranks nationally at this stuff, but for now, it'll have to do to compare UVA to a few of the teams on the schedule. Offensive efficiency looks OK enough:
UVA
Possessions: 478
Goals: 166 (34.73%)
Turnovers: 172 (35.98%)
Maryland
Possessions: 418
Goals: 147 (35.17%)
Turnovers: 168 (40.19%)
Duke
Possessions: 539
Goals: 208 (38.59%)
Turnovers: 214 (39.70%)
UNC
Possessions: 443
Goals: 153 (34.54%)
Turnovers: 142 (32.05%)
Hopkins
Possessions: 395
Goals: 136 (34.43%)
Turnovers: 155 (39.24)
Cuse
Possessions: 445
Goals: 137 (30.79%)
Turnovers: 157 (35.28%)
Cornell
Possessions: 398
Goals: 160 (40.20%)
Turnovers: 150 (37.69%)
As you can see, UVA compares pretty well. My bitching about turnovers is probably unfounded; on the other hand, it looks as though my bitching about beachball shots that always find their way to the goalie's stick is meaningful, since UVA has a smaller percentage than most of possessions that result in either a turnover or a goal.
But you can do this for defense, too, and I'm not even gonna lie: it's a fucking mess.
UVA
Possessions: 419
Goals: 135 (32.22%)
Turnovers: 148 (35.32%)
Maryland
Possessions: 315
Goals: 92 (29.21%)
Turnovers: 164 (52.06%)
Duke
Possessions: 484
Goals: 148 (30.58%)
Turnovers: 194 (40.08%)
UNC
Possessions: 369
Goals: 120 (32.52%)
Turnovers: 155 (42.01%)
Hopkins
Possessions: 319
Goals: 80 (25.08%)
Turnovers: 122 (38.24)
Cuse
Possessions: 372
Goals: 94 (25.27%)
Turnovers: 180 (48.39%)
Cornell
Possessions: 376
Goals: 102 (27.13%)
Turnovers: 181 (48.14%)
UVA is:
1) among the worst teams of this bunch at having more possessions than the opposition in the first place,
2) among the worst teams of this bunch at preventing the other team from scoring,
3) unequivocally the worst team of this bunch at getting turnovers.
Almost as many of UVA's defensive possessions result in goals as they do turnovers - by contrast, teams like Cornell, Maryland, and Syracuse are almost twice as likely to recover the ball as allow a goal. This isn't a trend limited to just this elite slice of teams. I didn't have time to do all 61 teams so I could give you a national ranking, but I've done a fair amount and UVA is so bad at getting turnovers on defense it's not funny. We are miles behind the other great, good, and even mediocre teams in this department.
You could've guessed this just by watching us flail around on defense in any given game this year, but now you've got numbers to back it up. I truly hope this is because of youth and inexperience, but there are seniors and juniors on this defense and this really should be going better than it is.
I've only ever seen one effort to do this, that by the Syracuse blog Orange:44, and it's pretty simple. There are three basic ways to gain possession: win a faceoff, get the ball from the opposing offense, or get the ball from the opposing defense. There's a stat for each: faceoff wins, attempted clears, and opponents' failed clears. So O44 simply divides goals by total possessions to come up with a measure of offensive efficiency.
That's not bad, but really, your offense in lacrosse and your ability to clear are two different things, and that stat includes both. Usually they involve two different groups of players. I wanted to see how the UVA offense has been operating this year, so as is my custom at times, I played around with the stats. Really I just adjusted the way possessions are calculated. Instead of:
Faceoff wins + attempted clears + opponents' failed clears
we now have:
Faceoff wins + successful clears + opponents' failed clears
That will tell you how many possessions actually got the ball into the offensive zone so you could go to work on scoring. It gets rid of possessions that never got over midfield or otherwise failed to get the offense involved. Clearing percentage is already a stat so removing failed clears from the equation should give us a better look at how the offense is performing.
Doing this also lets us separate the offense's turnovers from ones involving, say, goalie braindeadedness. A failed clear is a turnover, so just subtract the failed clears from the rest of the turnovers to get the turnovers that the offense is responsible for. We'll divide goals by possessions and turnovers by possessions to find how good the offense is at scoring and at hanging onto the ball. (By the way, the NCAA explicitly states that a missed shot is not a turnover, even if the shot is backed up by the opponent. Things like that, and saves and whatnot that are held by the goalie, fall into an "other" category that isn't being tracked here.)
In the hazy future, we'll look at where UVA ranks nationally at this stuff, but for now, it'll have to do to compare UVA to a few of the teams on the schedule. Offensive efficiency looks OK enough:
UVA
Possessions: 478
Goals: 166 (34.73%)
Turnovers: 172 (35.98%)
Maryland
Possessions: 418
Goals: 147 (35.17%)
Turnovers: 168 (40.19%)
Duke
Possessions: 539
Goals: 208 (38.59%)
Turnovers: 214 (39.70%)
UNC
Possessions: 443
Goals: 153 (34.54%)
Turnovers: 142 (32.05%)
Hopkins
Possessions: 395
Goals: 136 (34.43%)
Turnovers: 155 (39.24)
Cuse
Possessions: 445
Goals: 137 (30.79%)
Turnovers: 157 (35.28%)
Cornell
Possessions: 398
Goals: 160 (40.20%)
Turnovers: 150 (37.69%)
As you can see, UVA compares pretty well. My bitching about turnovers is probably unfounded; on the other hand, it looks as though my bitching about beachball shots that always find their way to the goalie's stick is meaningful, since UVA has a smaller percentage than most of possessions that result in either a turnover or a goal.
But you can do this for defense, too, and I'm not even gonna lie: it's a fucking mess.
UVA
Possessions: 419
Goals: 135 (32.22%)
Turnovers: 148 (35.32%)
Maryland
Possessions: 315
Goals: 92 (29.21%)
Turnovers: 164 (52.06%)
Duke
Possessions: 484
Goals: 148 (30.58%)
Turnovers: 194 (40.08%)
UNC
Possessions: 369
Goals: 120 (32.52%)
Turnovers: 155 (42.01%)
Hopkins
Possessions: 319
Goals: 80 (25.08%)
Turnovers: 122 (38.24)
Cuse
Possessions: 372
Goals: 94 (25.27%)
Turnovers: 180 (48.39%)
Cornell
Possessions: 376
Goals: 102 (27.13%)
Turnovers: 181 (48.14%)
UVA is:
1) among the worst teams of this bunch at having more possessions than the opposition in the first place,
2) among the worst teams of this bunch at preventing the other team from scoring,
3) unequivocally the worst team of this bunch at getting turnovers.
Almost as many of UVA's defensive possessions result in goals as they do turnovers - by contrast, teams like Cornell, Maryland, and Syracuse are almost twice as likely to recover the ball as allow a goal. This isn't a trend limited to just this elite slice of teams. I didn't have time to do all 61 teams so I could give you a national ranking, but I've done a fair amount and UVA is so bad at getting turnovers on defense it's not funny. We are miles behind the other great, good, and even mediocre teams in this department.
You could've guessed this just by watching us flail around on defense in any given game this year, but now you've got numbers to back it up. I truly hope this is because of youth and inexperience, but there are seniors and juniors on this defense and this really should be going better than it is.
Monday, April 25, 2011
weekend review of curses and cursebreaking
I know exactly when I crossed over from being a casual, score-checking follower of lacrosse and into full-blown fanhood. It was somewhere in the second quarter of the semifinal game in 2006 against Syracuse, because that's when I found out they actually put the sport on television. Being able to actually watch the games does wonders.
The nice thing about UVA lacrosse is that it's been an embarrassment-free ride. Until Friday. 19-10 is the kind of score we're supposed to be laying on Mount St. Mary's, and yes Duke was running up the score because that's how they roll but certain teams aren't allowed to ever complain about having the score run up on them because they should never be in that position in the first place. UVA is one of those teams.
The charges are as follows: 2nd degree failure to give a fuck about important ground balls. Multiple counts of felonious turnovers caused by hotdog passes which were obviously doomed from the beginning. Failure to clear. Pylonic defense. The charge of felonious faceoff suckage is dropped - surprisingly UVA was 17 of 31, which is surprisingly competent. The problem is that it seems like every faceoff we win is won back to the defensive end of the field and then we have to work on clearing it out, which used to be our #1 strength and has turned into an adventure and a half. And every faceoff we lose is also lost to our defensive end and then its transition goal time. Six Duke goals came within sixty seconds of a faceoff on Friday and four of them came within fifteen seconds of one.
The guy I feel bad for is Adam Ghitelman, because he looks like ass out there and it's not his fault. Transition goals are nearly impossible for a goalie to do anything about, and the man-to-man defense is a complete lost cause. Last year the starting defenders were Ken Clausen, Ryan Nizolek, and Matt Lovejoy, and none of those three are on the field any more now that Lovejoy (always the shakiest of the three anyway) is laid up for the season. We're getting hoist with our own petard now; Duke just put on an athletic one-on-one clinic and served notice that any team who wants to test its own middies and attackmen one-on-one against our defenders should feel free to do so.
So that was probably the season. Ostensibly, the Penn game next week looms large as a real chance to get something done and salvage some kind of tournament seeding - perhaps as a host team - but I don't think it's even that big any more. I'd say with a win we have maybe a 50/50 chance at hosting a game. A loss makes it dead certain we won't. Neither will we get knocked out of the tournament altogether, but do you really like the idea of trying to play a game in the thin air in Denver? I don't. The plus side is that the tournament is a win-win proposition: either we rally and make a nice long run toward recaptured glory, or the misery ends quick and we can focus on baseball.
*************************************************
Speaking of baseball, baseball is nice. I like baseball because in baseball we've only had to deal with four losses in 44 games. NC State would be the first team to hand Danny Hultzen a loss this season because beating UVA has become NC State's only baseball tradition, but Tyler Wilson turned in a gem in the second game of Saturday's doubleheader and the bats came alive on Sunday enough to win the first rubber game we've seen all season.
Other than a little extra chatter on the field (I get the feeling NC State's aware of their usual death grip on UVA baseball) and the complete inability of the Wolfies to defend a stolen base attempt on Sunday, it was kind of a ho-hum series. So let's bulletize the big-picture stuff.
- No, seriously, the way the Pack dealt with UVA baserunners was hideous. Their pitchers - left-handed pitchers at that - repeatedly ignored the guy on first and his huge leads and gave up huge jumps to the baserunner. And catcher Pratt Maynard couldn't hit the broad side of an aircraft carrier with his throws to second. Except for one, which was a great throw but had no receiving end because the infielders forgot to cover the base. NC State's coach pulled his starting pitcher in the middle of a second-inning at-bat because he ignored Chris Taylor on first (who would take three of UVA's six stolen bases) and at the same time hucked a pitch four feet wide of the plate and six feet in the air.
- You know about Robo-Danny's demolition of the school records, especially where strikeouts are concerned (he long ago passed the old career mark set by Seth Greisinger and is 42 away from the single-season record) but he's not the only one rewriting the books. Steven Proscia's next RBI will give him sole possession of the UVA record in that category.
- UVA needs to go just 4-8 in its last 12 games to finish with a top-8 RPI. Naturally they are the RPI top-ranked team, and only Florida also has the luxury of finishing top-8 with a losing record. By this time next week it's possibly UVA has guaranteed itself a top-8 finish.
- Vote for Tyler Wilson! Vote, damn you. You can do it once a day. He's losing ground. Do not let that happen.
*************************************************
In the other stuff department:
- Two ACC championships over the weekend: rowing and men's tennis. We get a lot of those. There probably isn't a more dominant team at UVA than men's tennis. This is the year it should hopefully turn into a national title. UVA now has four ACC championships on the season, second only to Maryland with five. Only baseball and softball yet to be decided, neither of which Maryland will win. GT is the odds-on softball favorite; we'll see about baseball, which is often subject to the whims of fate.
- Mike London has his second commitment on board. Remember last week when I said something to the effect of commitments coming at this time of year will be surprises? Yeah. Demeitre Brim needed only a few days to decide where he wanted to go to school. It could bear watching because Brim has never been to UVA, had little contact with the coaches prior to his offer, and has just one besides the UVA one. Half the time that's a kid making a snap decision and regretting it later and half the time it's damn near the strongest kind of commitment you can make. Board update tomorrow, which has plenty of good stuff and bad stuff.
- The ACC coaching carousel is done spinning for the year unless someone is caught shoving dead hookers in a trunk, with George Mason's Jim Larranaga going to Miami. Larranaga's a fine coach and all, and this move makes sense for him since Miami is probably stuffing his pockets with good American money, but it might not make much sense for Miami. How much shelf life does Larranaga have at 61? He's an upgrade over Frank Haith, and if Miami gets as many seasons out of Larranaga as they did with Haith (seven) they'll have done well. But that might be the upper limit of what he can give them.
The nice thing about UVA lacrosse is that it's been an embarrassment-free ride. Until Friday. 19-10 is the kind of score we're supposed to be laying on Mount St. Mary's, and yes Duke was running up the score because that's how they roll but certain teams aren't allowed to ever complain about having the score run up on them because they should never be in that position in the first place. UVA is one of those teams.
The charges are as follows: 2nd degree failure to give a fuck about important ground balls. Multiple counts of felonious turnovers caused by hotdog passes which were obviously doomed from the beginning. Failure to clear. Pylonic defense. The charge of felonious faceoff suckage is dropped - surprisingly UVA was 17 of 31, which is surprisingly competent. The problem is that it seems like every faceoff we win is won back to the defensive end of the field and then we have to work on clearing it out, which used to be our #1 strength and has turned into an adventure and a half. And every faceoff we lose is also lost to our defensive end and then its transition goal time. Six Duke goals came within sixty seconds of a faceoff on Friday and four of them came within fifteen seconds of one.
The guy I feel bad for is Adam Ghitelman, because he looks like ass out there and it's not his fault. Transition goals are nearly impossible for a goalie to do anything about, and the man-to-man defense is a complete lost cause. Last year the starting defenders were Ken Clausen, Ryan Nizolek, and Matt Lovejoy, and none of those three are on the field any more now that Lovejoy (always the shakiest of the three anyway) is laid up for the season. We're getting hoist with our own petard now; Duke just put on an athletic one-on-one clinic and served notice that any team who wants to test its own middies and attackmen one-on-one against our defenders should feel free to do so.
So that was probably the season. Ostensibly, the Penn game next week looms large as a real chance to get something done and salvage some kind of tournament seeding - perhaps as a host team - but I don't think it's even that big any more. I'd say with a win we have maybe a 50/50 chance at hosting a game. A loss makes it dead certain we won't. Neither will we get knocked out of the tournament altogether, but do you really like the idea of trying to play a game in the thin air in Denver? I don't. The plus side is that the tournament is a win-win proposition: either we rally and make a nice long run toward recaptured glory, or the misery ends quick and we can focus on baseball.
*************************************************
Speaking of baseball, baseball is nice. I like baseball because in baseball we've only had to deal with four losses in 44 games. NC State would be the first team to hand Danny Hultzen a loss this season because beating UVA has become NC State's only baseball tradition, but Tyler Wilson turned in a gem in the second game of Saturday's doubleheader and the bats came alive on Sunday enough to win the first rubber game we've seen all season.
Other than a little extra chatter on the field (I get the feeling NC State's aware of their usual death grip on UVA baseball) and the complete inability of the Wolfies to defend a stolen base attempt on Sunday, it was kind of a ho-hum series. So let's bulletize the big-picture stuff.
- No, seriously, the way the Pack dealt with UVA baserunners was hideous. Their pitchers - left-handed pitchers at that - repeatedly ignored the guy on first and his huge leads and gave up huge jumps to the baserunner. And catcher Pratt Maynard couldn't hit the broad side of an aircraft carrier with his throws to second. Except for one, which was a great throw but had no receiving end because the infielders forgot to cover the base. NC State's coach pulled his starting pitcher in the middle of a second-inning at-bat because he ignored Chris Taylor on first (who would take three of UVA's six stolen bases) and at the same time hucked a pitch four feet wide of the plate and six feet in the air.
- You know about Robo-Danny's demolition of the school records, especially where strikeouts are concerned (he long ago passed the old career mark set by Seth Greisinger and is 42 away from the single-season record) but he's not the only one rewriting the books. Steven Proscia's next RBI will give him sole possession of the UVA record in that category.
- UVA needs to go just 4-8 in its last 12 games to finish with a top-8 RPI. Naturally they are the RPI top-ranked team, and only Florida also has the luxury of finishing top-8 with a losing record. By this time next week it's possibly UVA has guaranteed itself a top-8 finish.
- Vote for Tyler Wilson! Vote, damn you. You can do it once a day. He's losing ground. Do not let that happen.
*************************************************
In the other stuff department:
- Two ACC championships over the weekend: rowing and men's tennis. We get a lot of those. There probably isn't a more dominant team at UVA than men's tennis. This is the year it should hopefully turn into a national title. UVA now has four ACC championships on the season, second only to Maryland with five. Only baseball and softball yet to be decided, neither of which Maryland will win. GT is the odds-on softball favorite; we'll see about baseball, which is often subject to the whims of fate.
- Mike London has his second commitment on board. Remember last week when I said something to the effect of commitments coming at this time of year will be surprises? Yeah. Demeitre Brim needed only a few days to decide where he wanted to go to school. It could bear watching because Brim has never been to UVA, had little contact with the coaches prior to his offer, and has just one besides the UVA one. Half the time that's a kid making a snap decision and regretting it later and half the time it's damn near the strongest kind of commitment you can make. Board update tomorrow, which has plenty of good stuff and bad stuff.
- The ACC coaching carousel is done spinning for the year unless someone is caught shoving dead hookers in a trunk, with George Mason's Jim Larranaga going to Miami. Larranaga's a fine coach and all, and this move makes sense for him since Miami is probably stuffing his pockets with good American money, but it might not make much sense for Miami. How much shelf life does Larranaga have at 61? He's an upgrade over Frank Haith, and if Miami gets as many seasons out of Larranaga as they did with Haith (seven) they'll have done well. But that might be the upper limit of what he can give them.
Monday, January 31, 2011
smh
Wanna know how you know we just switched from "middle of basketball season" to "almost baseball season"? When you lose to the most miserable team in all of BCS-level basketball.
As I said before the game, the conditions were the opposite of ideal. Wake had a ton of time to prepare, and they ran quite a few plays that showed they knew our tendencies and how to take advantage. We had less than 48 hours, and had to travel. They were fired up for their best chance at an ACC win. And none of that would've been an issue if we had a good enough team to meet the goal of making the postseason and finishing .500 for the season. A pox on the pieces of Mike Scott's ankle that aren't in their proper places. I hope next year makes this year worth it.
The problem, as ever when you're talking about lousy basketball, is defense. And I wish I could pinpoint an issue because half the time it looks like the defense is playing pretty well. Assane Sene is turning into a real presence in the middle, for example. But the results don't lie, and the cold hard stats are regressing without any indication of where the bottom is. The sad part is all the wasted effort. Too much went right for that to have been a loss: Sene's monster career day, generally very good shooting, excellent scoring distribution. Just a lack of defense at the wrong times, and too many fouls. The latter is bad defense's cousin, and they go hand-in-hand.
I guess what it means for the rest of the season is that we're now Wake Forest, in the sense that we'll be trying to snatch whatever chance for a win that we can find. Fortunately there aren't any more 2-day gaps between games, but we do get another break of a week - right before the trip to Tallahassee argh. So we'll see, I guess. I should have seen all this coming, so it bothers me. And really I did see it coming, so it bothers me that it bothers me. So many freshmen, so few veterans, so little consistency - didn't we expect that would be the case? Find a decent rhythm offensively and disintegrate on the defensive end. It might well be that the opponent won't matter at all for the next six weeks (except for the matchup nightmares like Maryland), because this team will either put it all together and win, or not, and lose. I might just go with that line the rest of the way, because the idea that we can beat most of these ACC teams on a really good night is comforting, being that we expect a much greater proportion of really good nights as the team gets older. Just like I said earlier, though, I hate that we have to wait til next season to find out how good next season's gonna be.
As I said before the game, the conditions were the opposite of ideal. Wake had a ton of time to prepare, and they ran quite a few plays that showed they knew our tendencies and how to take advantage. We had less than 48 hours, and had to travel. They were fired up for their best chance at an ACC win. And none of that would've been an issue if we had a good enough team to meet the goal of making the postseason and finishing .500 for the season. A pox on the pieces of Mike Scott's ankle that aren't in their proper places. I hope next year makes this year worth it.
The problem, as ever when you're talking about lousy basketball, is defense. And I wish I could pinpoint an issue because half the time it looks like the defense is playing pretty well. Assane Sene is turning into a real presence in the middle, for example. But the results don't lie, and the cold hard stats are regressing without any indication of where the bottom is. The sad part is all the wasted effort. Too much went right for that to have been a loss: Sene's monster career day, generally very good shooting, excellent scoring distribution. Just a lack of defense at the wrong times, and too many fouls. The latter is bad defense's cousin, and they go hand-in-hand.
I guess what it means for the rest of the season is that we're now Wake Forest, in the sense that we'll be trying to snatch whatever chance for a win that we can find. Fortunately there aren't any more 2-day gaps between games, but we do get another break of a week - right before the trip to Tallahassee argh. So we'll see, I guess. I should have seen all this coming, so it bothers me. And really I did see it coming, so it bothers me that it bothers me. So many freshmen, so few veterans, so little consistency - didn't we expect that would be the case? Find a decent rhythm offensively and disintegrate on the defensive end. It might well be that the opponent won't matter at all for the next six weeks (except for the matchup nightmares like Maryland), because this team will either put it all together and win, or not, and lose. I might just go with that line the rest of the way, because the idea that we can beat most of these ACC teams on a really good night is comforting, being that we expect a much greater proportion of really good nights as the team gets older. Just like I said earlier, though, I hate that we have to wait til next season to find out how good next season's gonna be.
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