Dom Starsia's formula for success has never really been a secret. Recruit the most athletic players he can find, emphasize hard work and effort, and give them copious freedom to operate. When it works, it's dynamic and entertaining.
Alas for Starsia's less-talented squads, "play smart" isn't a top priority.
This has been eminently on display the past couple weeks. UVA had three times as many turnovers as goals against UNC, and over twice as many against Duke. When we got a peek into the timeout huddle during the Duke game, I thought Dom might suggest, just once, that a handy trick for winning the game might be to observe the fundamentals of passing and catching. He didn't. He did exhort his team to have an extended possession, which might have been a roundabout way of doing so. They must've decided 30 seconds was extended enough, because about that much game time later Duke was merrily clearing the ball and finding a nice easy path to the goal.
Observing the fundamentals of passing and catching has been awfully damn elusive of late. Simply put, this is some horsecrap sloppy-ass lacrosse they're playing. I'd like to blame it on youth, but there was Owen Van Arsdale lazily reaching toward a lazy pass, and missing. There was Tyler German with a laser focus on reaching the corner of the box to complete a clear and no plan at all upon arriving, coughing up the ball as a result. There was Ryan Tucker dodging his way straight into a double-team and freezing, paralyzed with indecision at the gall of the defenders to be defending.
Of course this team went 0-4 in the ACC; it's unrealistic to expect any wins when the offense, supposedly the highly efficient hallmark of this team, keeps shooting itself in the head. I could deal with it if opposing defenses were taking the ball, or their goalie was putting up a stone wall, but what's really frustrating to watch is when two former weaknesses stop being weaknesses, and the strength of the team suddenly turns into brainless mush.
This team will still make the tournament and will probably host a game. For all its irritating foibles, it's still one of the top eight teams in the country. That's pretty amazing after losing to the whole ACC in ugly fashion, but it's taken really good teams to expose UVA's flaws enough to beat them. I mean, at least we're not Hopkins, which just needed two overtimes to beat 3-8 Penn State. The angst here is rooted in not being much of a national title contender. At least if we're gonna be angsty about lacrosse, it's the right kind of emo.
Notes and stuff:
-- Matt Barrett, man. UVA just wasted two of the best performances by a UVA goalie in I don't even know how long. Very often in lacrosse, good goalie play is indistinguishable from bad goalie play until after the fact. It's not like hockey where a bad goal sticks out like a sore thumb; you just sort of start coming to the realization that your goalie has let in too many shots. If that realization doesn't happen, you've been getting good goalie play. That's what Adam Ghitelman was like. That's not what Matt Barrett has been like; he's made stops goalies have no business making. My personal favorite was having his pass intercepted from a foot and a half away - very bad - then making the save from the same distance - even better.
-- Remember how Matt White kept playing midfield when he should've been playing attack and everyone was all "WHY??" It's almost like having Greg Coholan at attack is balancing that out. The only difference is everyone knows why Coholan is playing attack. (No Pannell.) Frankly, though, it's a shame the depth at attack is such that it's preferable to cannibalize the midfield.
-- Stupidball, by the way, has not been limited to these last two games. UVA won the Hopkins game despite taking multiple pages out of the Mike London Textbook of Personnel Management. This included but was not limited to a player entirely forgetting that he was supposed to be on the field and wasting most of an EMO as a result. I bring this old news up to illustrate what a season-long struggle this has been. And the announcers, by the way, made a habit of pointing out a number of bad substitutions on UVA's part against Duke.
-- At least UVA gets a moral victory by not pulling off the Duke game's worst moment. No, that was Duke's befuddling clear attempt in the second quarter, forgetting entirely about the 30-second clock. It was a hell of a lot of fun to watch Duke piddle the whole time limit away for absolutely no reason, spoiled only by the announcers completely ignoring it and carrying on their talk-show conversation about something totally unrelated. You want to know why people don't watch lacrosse as much as you'd like? It's because when little-used rules come into play, the announcers are too busy blathering to explain the odd situation on the field.
-- I said it as part of bracketology yesterday, but it bears repeating: Beat Georgetown and a tourney home game is a lock.
Showing posts with label barrett. Show all posts
Showing posts with label barrett. Show all posts
Monday, April 13, 2015
Monday, March 30, 2015
lacrosse at midseason
It's not strictly midseason when you've got 10 games down and three to go in the regular season, but really, in the lacrosse season, only when it's half over does it really begin. It's a good time to take stock of things.
Shame it was, that the best game of the season also happened to come the same weekend as the abrupt ending of the basketball season, which demanded attention. The Hopkins game deserved a bunch of attention too; it was the second OT win over Hopkins in a row, and I say it was UVA's most entertaining win since Bucknell. UVA-Hop rarely disappoints.
Hopkins is having a crappy season; they're at critical risk of missing the tournament for the second time in three years. That doesn't make them not fun to beat and it doesn't make them not dangerous. The effort put forth in winning - despite a major disadvantage in possessions thanks to the usual faceoff deficiencies - was impressive. Hopkins was held below their usual efficiency as I calculate efficiency, marking a solid game by the defense. And let's not kid ourselves here, an excellent game by Matt Barrett, who is starting to look like the four-year starter we need him to be. 13 saves and 15 goals don't tell the story.
Interestingly, I think the game provided ammo to both sides in the debate between people who think lacrosse needs to be faster, faster, faster, and the side that says lacrosse is basically fine and slowing down is often a perfectly legitimate strategy. (Far as I can tell, the latter contingent consists of me.) This was a high-possession game, and the see-saw goal-scoring is a huge part of what made it entertaining. Not to mention it helps strengthen rivalries; any Virginia fan who didn't get really damn sick of the Hopkins clap-along every time they scored, is deaf.
On the flip side, Hopkins came under quite a bit of criticism for not stalling at the game's end. With two-plus minutes on the clock, a two-goal lead, a two-man advantage, and the ball, Hopkins looked like a damn safe bet to win. The refs wouldn't have put a shot clock on until after the penalty was over and Hopkins could easily have burned half the time remaining just by playing four corners. Instead they slung the ball aimlessly at the net, which set off a sequence of events that gave UVA a goal shortly after. Then they generally failed to anticipate that Dom Starsia would pull the trigger on the most obvious move in the book - pull the goalie in order to double the ball - and got burned again. By the same token, UVA benefitted tremendously from stall tactics - again the obvious move of sacrificing 15-ish seconds of man-up time in order not to risk a faceoff to start OT. People who want a shot clock in lacrosse ought to remember that it really puts a team who's earned a lead at a big disadvantage. Maybe that's a feature and not a bug, I suppose.
Anyway, very nice game. What's it say about the rest of the season?
The same thing the Cornell game said, I think: This is a team with a split personality, which doesn't change from game to game or even quarter to quarter - it can switch from Jekyll to Hyde minute by minute, possession by possession. It can utterly stink for an entire half, it can make amateurish mental mistakes, and then it can do magic tricks to astound the mind. The result is a team that is close to a lock to not only make the tournament, but even host a tournament game, when frankly I'd've been hard-pressed to expect that before the season. It's also a team at severe risk of going 0-4 in the ACC and being left out of the ACC tournament for the second straight year. Between UNC and Duke, the easier game is clearly Duke, at least on paper; in the realm of the sport supernatural, Duke remains an insurmountable obstacle.
UVA will probably lose to both, then beat Georgetown and Penn and roll into the NCAA tournament seeded somewhere 5-8, where the most likely outcome is a win and then a loss. Since making the Final Four with some regularity is the expectation around here, and UVA is at risk of sending a graduating class on their way without ever going, you'd be forgiven for considering that a failure. On many levels it is. But this is still the second take on rebuilding since the national title in 2011. And I think the words I wrote to cap off the season preview still ring true: "But if this is a rebuilding year, it looks like a much better one than the 2013 disaster, and this rebuild has a much better chance of clicking." It hasn't been the ideal we-don't-rebuild-we-reload process over the past few years. But this version of the process is building up a lot of valuable experience and still remaining relevant on the landscape, unlike, say, 2013, or our Baltimorean rivals. I can't complain.
Shame it was, that the best game of the season also happened to come the same weekend as the abrupt ending of the basketball season, which demanded attention. The Hopkins game deserved a bunch of attention too; it was the second OT win over Hopkins in a row, and I say it was UVA's most entertaining win since Bucknell. UVA-Hop rarely disappoints.
Hopkins is having a crappy season; they're at critical risk of missing the tournament for the second time in three years. That doesn't make them not fun to beat and it doesn't make them not dangerous. The effort put forth in winning - despite a major disadvantage in possessions thanks to the usual faceoff deficiencies - was impressive. Hopkins was held below their usual efficiency as I calculate efficiency, marking a solid game by the defense. And let's not kid ourselves here, an excellent game by Matt Barrett, who is starting to look like the four-year starter we need him to be. 13 saves and 15 goals don't tell the story.
Interestingly, I think the game provided ammo to both sides in the debate between people who think lacrosse needs to be faster, faster, faster, and the side that says lacrosse is basically fine and slowing down is often a perfectly legitimate strategy. (Far as I can tell, the latter contingent consists of me.) This was a high-possession game, and the see-saw goal-scoring is a huge part of what made it entertaining. Not to mention it helps strengthen rivalries; any Virginia fan who didn't get really damn sick of the Hopkins clap-along every time they scored, is deaf.
On the flip side, Hopkins came under quite a bit of criticism for not stalling at the game's end. With two-plus minutes on the clock, a two-goal lead, a two-man advantage, and the ball, Hopkins looked like a damn safe bet to win. The refs wouldn't have put a shot clock on until after the penalty was over and Hopkins could easily have burned half the time remaining just by playing four corners. Instead they slung the ball aimlessly at the net, which set off a sequence of events that gave UVA a goal shortly after. Then they generally failed to anticipate that Dom Starsia would pull the trigger on the most obvious move in the book - pull the goalie in order to double the ball - and got burned again. By the same token, UVA benefitted tremendously from stall tactics - again the obvious move of sacrificing 15-ish seconds of man-up time in order not to risk a faceoff to start OT. People who want a shot clock in lacrosse ought to remember that it really puts a team who's earned a lead at a big disadvantage. Maybe that's a feature and not a bug, I suppose.
Anyway, very nice game. What's it say about the rest of the season?
The same thing the Cornell game said, I think: This is a team with a split personality, which doesn't change from game to game or even quarter to quarter - it can switch from Jekyll to Hyde minute by minute, possession by possession. It can utterly stink for an entire half, it can make amateurish mental mistakes, and then it can do magic tricks to astound the mind. The result is a team that is close to a lock to not only make the tournament, but even host a tournament game, when frankly I'd've been hard-pressed to expect that before the season. It's also a team at severe risk of going 0-4 in the ACC and being left out of the ACC tournament for the second straight year. Between UNC and Duke, the easier game is clearly Duke, at least on paper; in the realm of the sport supernatural, Duke remains an insurmountable obstacle.
UVA will probably lose to both, then beat Georgetown and Penn and roll into the NCAA tournament seeded somewhere 5-8, where the most likely outcome is a win and then a loss. Since making the Final Four with some regularity is the expectation around here, and UVA is at risk of sending a graduating class on their way without ever going, you'd be forgiven for considering that a failure. On many levels it is. But this is still the second take on rebuilding since the national title in 2011. And I think the words I wrote to cap off the season preview still ring true: "But if this is a rebuilding year, it looks like a much better one than the 2013 disaster, and this rebuild has a much better chance of clicking." It hasn't been the ideal we-don't-rebuild-we-reload process over the past few years. But this version of the process is building up a lot of valuable experience and still remaining relevant on the landscape, unlike, say, 2013, or our Baltimorean rivals. I can't complain.
Monday, May 12, 2014
weekend review
Welp. That's that; another lacrosse season is in the books too early, after a mostly uninspiring performance on Sunday. It looked so promising to start, with the Hoos giving up faceoff wins but then quickly making Hopkins look like a disjointed JV squad. And then....
I mean, just... look, I've always considered that rationality is one of my writing strengths, and I know there was like 45+ minutes worth of reasons why we lost, but I just keep on going back to the bad clear that led to Hop's first goal, essentially an empty-netter. UVA has a reputation as an outstanding clearing team and totally failed to live up to that this year; in some cases they've just completely lost sight of the 30-second time limit, and that's what killed them here.
Matt Barrett was the visible scapegoat because it was his pass that was intercepted, but, feeling compelled to go back to the Tivo for a closer look, I found out exactly how much time he had to clear the ball when he threw that pass: four seconds. Even if he had channeled Adam Ghitelman and run it there himself, he'd never have made it. 26 seconds had elapsed already thanks mainly to sheer unadulterated laziness, and the real culprit on that clear is Scott McWilliams. McWilliams floated around the field for nine seconds before tossing the ball (backwards) to Tanner Scales. Scales returned the ball a few seconds later.... and "half-assed" would be far too generous a term for McWilliams's attempt at catching it. That's why Barrett had the ball in the first place; he had to retrieve it as it rolled the wrong way.
If some people are saying there's a senior leadership problem on the team, well, that's why. And this is by no means to pin the loss on McWilliams, whose play these four years has been unequivocally an asset. You don't lose by six without everyone pitching in. But there's still the irrational fan in me that wonders how that game might've gone if the Hoos hadn't offered a sportsmanlike hand back to the already punch-drunk Jays.
As a season, it certainly wasn't a total loss. You expect Virginia lacrosse to accomplish certain things, and beating Syracuse, Hopkins, and UNC (1 outta 2 in the latter instances, anyway) do qualify. However, after a stretch of four consecutive Final Fours, and missing only two from 2002 to 2011, the natives are rightfully getting restless now that we've missed three in a row. Folks are talking succession plans. If Dom Starsia weren't the winningest D-I coach ever, the words being used might be a little more forceful.
As it is, UVA stands in about the same delicate spot that Florida State football did in about 2008 or so. (And that Penn State managed to botch pretty spectacularly.) FSU succeeded in dislodging Bobby Bowden after the boosters got antsy and it became clear that 1) they weren't going to get much farther with him and 2) he had no plans to leave. They had a couple factors helping that process: the academics scandal greased his skids out of town, and they didn't have his son on staff. FSU is how you want the replacing-a-legend process to go; Penn State is not. And Tennessee exists as the antithesis of Penn State - the fans managed to get Phil Fulmer replaced and the Vols promptly entered the crapper, from which they have yet to emerge.
I doubt there's any talk of succession in the UVA offices, but it's something that should be quietly going through the heads of the decision makers - not because immediate action is needed, but they still have to be working on a contingency plan. And that plan can't just be Joe Starsia. This is too much of a signature program to allow to go stale. If we're playing for a national title next year - hey, cancel the war. If we miss out on the quarters again, let alone Memorial Day, well.... it certainly won't stop people wondering how Mike Pressler or Charley Toomey might look on the Klockner sidelines. Me, I'm nowhere near officially adding my voice to the (still quite small) chorus calling for a change. I don't want to be Penn State but I definitely don't want to be Tennessee.** Just considering it something to keep an eye on.
**A statement made, with that particular emphasis, with consideration only for the on-field aspect of PSU's football succession.
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-- Lots of other UVA teams are still running around scooping up Director's Cup points, though:
* Men's and women's tennis are both in the round of 16, about to face Notre Dame and Baylor, respectively.
* Ladies' golf was top-8 at their regional, earning one of 24 spots at the national championship tournament in Tulsa.
* Women's lax faces 3-seeded UNC in the quarterfinals after knocking off Princeton.
This is to say nothing of crew, which still has an ACC title to earn before heading to nationals.
-- Maryland transfer Seth Allen was really digging on UVA, until he took a trip to Blacksburg and found playing time in abundance. That Buzz Williams is apparently a hell of a recruiter. Say what you will but he's definitely injected some talent into a moribund program. Enough to be a real factor in the ACC race? No, not yet, but they seem to be working hard at leaving the laughingstock label behind.
Williams probably made the case to Allen that UVA wanted him but VT needed him, which is pretty much exactly how things stood. Allen would've been a luxury, albeit one that would've helped smooth out the roster makeup. There are plenty of worthy backcourt options already on the roster, though. Any addition this offseason who would hit the roster this fall is icing on the icing.
-- The ACC is having its annualjunketeering trip serious meeting week on Fancy Tropical Resort Island, Florida, during which they usually produce something worth talking about. This year it's the fact that they'll stick with an eight-game football schedule and follow the SEC's lead in requiring every team to play at least one OOC Power Five conference team, starting in 2017. That should make the "schedule for success" crowd happy, by which I mean not happy.** Cue the calls for an annual rivalry game with Indiana from now til forever.
The eight-game schedule vote was surprisingly close, with an 8-6 tally as the margin in favor of staying at eight games instead of nine. This is acceptable if they also abolish divisions, as will reportedly be discussed. (It's also reasonable in light of having Notre Dame sorta-kinda on the schedule all the time.)
It's this last point which should be making all the waves. The fact that the ACC is even bothering to discuss this is a giant flag, pointing in the direction of the August autonomy conference. (At which the NCAA is widely expected to hand over various powers to the ACC, SEC, B1G, Big 12, and Pac-12 that they didn't have before.) John Swofford publically lobbied for more flexibility in scheduling; that is, not having to have two divisions in order to play a CCG. If the ACC is discussing the abolition of divisions, it's likely they have the advance go-ahead from the NCAA to do so and will get it formally in August. For this reason, they may not necessarily announce anything coming out of Amelia Island, but there's hope yet.
I've already put forth my preferred scheduling model for a 14-team, 8-game league: three protected games and five rotating ones. You would play teams A, B, C, D, and E in year one and F, G, H, I, and J in year two. The pitfall, which UVA would have to lobby heavily to avoid, would be the temptation to make all the NC teams each others' protected games - we have to have UNC every year.
**I can't remember whether I've ever expressly made my feelings known on these pages about the "schedule for success" theory, which I despise as both wimpy and totally unworkable, but I'm sure it's worth a full post somewhere along the line.
I mean, just... look, I've always considered that rationality is one of my writing strengths, and I know there was like 45+ minutes worth of reasons why we lost, but I just keep on going back to the bad clear that led to Hop's first goal, essentially an empty-netter. UVA has a reputation as an outstanding clearing team and totally failed to live up to that this year; in some cases they've just completely lost sight of the 30-second time limit, and that's what killed them here.
Matt Barrett was the visible scapegoat because it was his pass that was intercepted, but, feeling compelled to go back to the Tivo for a closer look, I found out exactly how much time he had to clear the ball when he threw that pass: four seconds. Even if he had channeled Adam Ghitelman and run it there himself, he'd never have made it. 26 seconds had elapsed already thanks mainly to sheer unadulterated laziness, and the real culprit on that clear is Scott McWilliams. McWilliams floated around the field for nine seconds before tossing the ball (backwards) to Tanner Scales. Scales returned the ball a few seconds later.... and "half-assed" would be far too generous a term for McWilliams's attempt at catching it. That's why Barrett had the ball in the first place; he had to retrieve it as it rolled the wrong way.
If some people are saying there's a senior leadership problem on the team, well, that's why. And this is by no means to pin the loss on McWilliams, whose play these four years has been unequivocally an asset. You don't lose by six without everyone pitching in. But there's still the irrational fan in me that wonders how that game might've gone if the Hoos hadn't offered a sportsmanlike hand back to the already punch-drunk Jays.
As a season, it certainly wasn't a total loss. You expect Virginia lacrosse to accomplish certain things, and beating Syracuse, Hopkins, and UNC (1 outta 2 in the latter instances, anyway) do qualify. However, after a stretch of four consecutive Final Fours, and missing only two from 2002 to 2011, the natives are rightfully getting restless now that we've missed three in a row. Folks are talking succession plans. If Dom Starsia weren't the winningest D-I coach ever, the words being used might be a little more forceful.
As it is, UVA stands in about the same delicate spot that Florida State football did in about 2008 or so. (And that Penn State managed to botch pretty spectacularly.) FSU succeeded in dislodging Bobby Bowden after the boosters got antsy and it became clear that 1) they weren't going to get much farther with him and 2) he had no plans to leave. They had a couple factors helping that process: the academics scandal greased his skids out of town, and they didn't have his son on staff. FSU is how you want the replacing-a-legend process to go; Penn State is not. And Tennessee exists as the antithesis of Penn State - the fans managed to get Phil Fulmer replaced and the Vols promptly entered the crapper, from which they have yet to emerge.
I doubt there's any talk of succession in the UVA offices, but it's something that should be quietly going through the heads of the decision makers - not because immediate action is needed, but they still have to be working on a contingency plan. And that plan can't just be Joe Starsia. This is too much of a signature program to allow to go stale. If we're playing for a national title next year - hey, cancel the war. If we miss out on the quarters again, let alone Memorial Day, well.... it certainly won't stop people wondering how Mike Pressler or Charley Toomey might look on the Klockner sidelines. Me, I'm nowhere near officially adding my voice to the (still quite small) chorus calling for a change. I don't want to be Penn State but I definitely don't want to be Tennessee.** Just considering it something to keep an eye on.
**A statement made, with that particular emphasis, with consideration only for the on-field aspect of PSU's football succession.
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-- Lots of other UVA teams are still running around scooping up Director's Cup points, though:
* Men's and women's tennis are both in the round of 16, about to face Notre Dame and Baylor, respectively.
* Ladies' golf was top-8 at their regional, earning one of 24 spots at the national championship tournament in Tulsa.
* Women's lax faces 3-seeded UNC in the quarterfinals after knocking off Princeton.
This is to say nothing of crew, which still has an ACC title to earn before heading to nationals.
-- Maryland transfer Seth Allen was really digging on UVA, until he took a trip to Blacksburg and found playing time in abundance. That Buzz Williams is apparently a hell of a recruiter. Say what you will but he's definitely injected some talent into a moribund program. Enough to be a real factor in the ACC race? No, not yet, but they seem to be working hard at leaving the laughingstock label behind.
Williams probably made the case to Allen that UVA wanted him but VT needed him, which is pretty much exactly how things stood. Allen would've been a luxury, albeit one that would've helped smooth out the roster makeup. There are plenty of worthy backcourt options already on the roster, though. Any addition this offseason who would hit the roster this fall is icing on the icing.
-- The ACC is having its annual
The eight-game schedule vote was surprisingly close, with an 8-6 tally as the margin in favor of staying at eight games instead of nine. This is acceptable if they also abolish divisions, as will reportedly be discussed. (It's also reasonable in light of having Notre Dame sorta-kinda on the schedule all the time.)
It's this last point which should be making all the waves. The fact that the ACC is even bothering to discuss this is a giant flag, pointing in the direction of the August autonomy conference. (At which the NCAA is widely expected to hand over various powers to the ACC, SEC, B1G, Big 12, and Pac-12 that they didn't have before.) John Swofford publically lobbied for more flexibility in scheduling; that is, not having to have two divisions in order to play a CCG. If the ACC is discussing the abolition of divisions, it's likely they have the advance go-ahead from the NCAA to do so and will get it formally in August. For this reason, they may not necessarily announce anything coming out of Amelia Island, but there's hope yet.
I've already put forth my preferred scheduling model for a 14-team, 8-game league: three protected games and five rotating ones. You would play teams A, B, C, D, and E in year one and F, G, H, I, and J in year two. The pitfall, which UVA would have to lobby heavily to avoid, would be the temptation to make all the NC teams each others' protected games - we have to have UNC every year.
**I can't remember whether I've ever expressly made my feelings known on these pages about the "schedule for success" theory, which I despise as both wimpy and totally unworkable, but I'm sure it's worth a full post somewhere along the line.
Monday, April 28, 2014
weekend review
It wasn't a perfect weekend. A perfect weekend would've involved a tidy clean sweep of Florida State, and the lacrosse team's win would've earned a trophy instead of a small shred of bragging rights.
I'll take it, though. I will always take it. Especially when two more ACC trophies are added to the case; the tennis teams brought home the hardware this weekend. I was honestly surprised to learn the women's tennis team had never won an ACC title before. I'd have guessed they had a few by now, if you'd asked. On the plus side, getting a first-time ACC title means there are only four teams at UVA that have never won an ACC title: volleyball, field hockey, and mens' and womens' golf.
That brings our title count to four (men's basketball, women's swimming & diving, and the two tennis team) this season, with a fully-expected rowing title yet to come and obvious contention for a baseball title still in the works. We won't catch Florida State this year, as they have seven championships, but c'mon - three of them are basically the same damn team (women's cross country and indoor and outdoor track.) No fair that we don't ever get to count indoor tennis.
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And hey, at least we scored bragging rights over the Noles in baseball this weekend. Nick Howard is the star of the weekend as far as I'm concerned. Seven batters faced, seven strikeouts. That's just rude. Howard turned some perfectly good hitters totally upside-down; the Noles didn't even look remotely good against him. One of the better at-bats was turned in by Jameis Winston on Friday. When Jameis Winston looks like the best hitter of the inning, the other guys did something really wrong. And Winston got this distinction by being one of the few to actually foul off a pitch. Then he watched dumbfounded as a waist-high, straight-line fastball zipped merrily across the middle of the plate for strike three. The other guys brought their Swiss cheese bats to the plate.
At this point it's hard to make a case for anyone else but Howard as the top closer in the country. 15 saves - our bats have been just good enough to give him lots of chances and just bad enough to give him lots of chances. But the really nasty stuff: 43 Ks against 6 BBs. And he's been getting better as the season goes on. Nate Kirby is doing a ridiculous job, too, and Brandon Waddell - who started the season by giving up 6 runs in 4 1/3 - has worked his ERA all the way down to 2.90.
The weekend finally convinced Collegiate Baseball to stop being the last holdout among the five polls/rankings, and give UVA the #1 nod. Five rankings, five #1's for UVA. #1 in the country - and currently sitting in the ACC's 3rd seed for the tournament. No further proof is required for the fact that having divisions for baseball is monumentally stupid.
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I turned the lacrosse game off in disgust during the second quarter, only to be overcome by curiosity, and turned it back on at some point midway through the third. That second period was perfectly emblematic of why this team has struggled. The first half, really. Matt Barrett couldn't stop a beanbag. Mick Parks gave up yet another faceoff win so clean that UNC's R.G. Keenan had but to run straight ahead til he arrived at the doorstep. And on one UNC goal - their second of the game, I think - a UVA defender watched the eventual scorer catch the pass, and then peeled off for parts unknown while the ballcarrier (Pat Foster, if memory serves) strode easy as you please into the vacated spot and potted the easiest goal of his life.
This is to say nothing of the pitiful clearing game. Awful decisions and half-assed passes turned the clearing game into a sloppy mess. One failed clear was an inexcusable 30-second violation - probably brought about by doing too much of a 180 from recklessness to an overabundance of caution. Fortunately, the Heels were even worse, particularly in the very crucial fourth quarter where they cleared two of six attempts.
The fourth also happened to be Barrett's time. He saved only 45% all day, but 100% when it mattered. Consistency is not Barrett's middle name, but there's a chance yet that we can be going into the 2018 season going "whatever will we do without that guy?"
I really think this team has a higher ceiling than it's shown this year. And effort is not the problem. This team has out-ground-balled everyone this year; in fact, they lead the nation in ground balls per game. Joseph Lisicky gets a lot of well-deserved attention for sucking up ground balls but it's not just grinding long-stick guys; that was UVA's leading scorer Mark Cockerton diving into the scrum for a loose ball, in front of an empty UNC net, and coming out with the crucial two-goal lead.
No, this team's problem is between the ears; they keep shooting themselves in the foot with mental breakdowns in all facets of the game. They shoot more with no backup behind the net than any team I've seen - and the X man will hang out blissfully by the side of the net when the shooter is winding up, instead of getting a head start on the backup. Several times a game I'll wish I could get inside the head of a defender and find out why he didn't consider the guy with the ball worth defending. And even when they were playing well against UNC, the passing was rather less than crisp. Either end of a pass might be the one to screw up the next one - maybe it goes sailing over someone's head, maybe it just gets ignored by the recipient. Eight seconds to go in a game where you have the ball and a two-goal lead, and you manage a giveaway. Silly.
This team would be a legit as hell title contender if they could just deal with some of this low-hanging fruit. They could very well find themselves in the Final Four - the draw I gave them in this week's bracketology happens to be an awfully favorable one, about as good as they could ever hope for, and set up beautifully for a potential trip to Baltimore. But they can't beat four good teams in a row with their brains working the way they do now.
(Speaking of bracketology: I've finished a project of mine that perfectly calculates every team's RPI and all the RPI-related factors that go into bracketology too. All I have to input is wins and losses. Put in the results of one game and it calculates every change to every RPI in the whole system. What does this mean? Faster bracketology; I don't have to wait for the Internet to update itself before I can start. Now that it's conference tournament week I plan on pushing out an update on Thursday and then every day unti Selection Sunday.
Even better: I should be able to adapt the thing for basketball and baseball and do my own bracketology for those sports, too. Baseball won't be ready in time for this year's tourney, but next year, wait and see.)
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I guess we have to spoil things by finishing up with football. It's attrition season, and you expect to wring your hands occasionally when someone with untapped potential transfers out or washes out, what have you, but you don't really ever expect your top passing-game weapon to say see ya later.
Jake McGee's transfer comes as a surprise to us in the outside world, but word floats around the tubes that he and Tom O'Brien got along like Tom and Jerry from day one, and that just maybe that move to "TE/WR" was mostly about having McGee get his coaching from Marques Hagans instead of TOB. That is rumor, but it passes my smell test.
There's no way to put a positive spin on any aspect of it. Demeitre Brim also announced his transfer this past week, to Central Florida, and that was easily explainable by the fact that he's a Sam backer and nothing even remotely like the kind of Sam backer that Jon Tenuta is using. Is it a shame we couldn't finagle his considerable athletic potential into usefulness on the field? Sure. But it's also a cost of doing business.
McGee, on the other hand - they're selling his jersey FFS. He's plastered all over all kinds of advertising and literature. That the coaches allowed that to happen despite knowing he might leave is at a minimum a lousy grasp of PR; that McGee made it plain that he thinks Tight End U can't do a good job of preparing him for the NFL, that is just about as bad a piece of pub as we could've asked for.
The passing game is now short a terrific mid-range and red-zone option, and McGee's receiving skill set will not be easily replaced. Perhaps more importantly, Mike London's regime just took a major blow to the solar plexus of its image.
I'll take it, though. I will always take it. Especially when two more ACC trophies are added to the case; the tennis teams brought home the hardware this weekend. I was honestly surprised to learn the women's tennis team had never won an ACC title before. I'd have guessed they had a few by now, if you'd asked. On the plus side, getting a first-time ACC title means there are only four teams at UVA that have never won an ACC title: volleyball, field hockey, and mens' and womens' golf.
That brings our title count to four (men's basketball, women's swimming & diving, and the two tennis team) this season, with a fully-expected rowing title yet to come and obvious contention for a baseball title still in the works. We won't catch Florida State this year, as they have seven championships, but c'mon - three of them are basically the same damn team (women's cross country and indoor and outdoor track.) No fair that we don't ever get to count indoor tennis.
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And hey, at least we scored bragging rights over the Noles in baseball this weekend. Nick Howard is the star of the weekend as far as I'm concerned. Seven batters faced, seven strikeouts. That's just rude. Howard turned some perfectly good hitters totally upside-down; the Noles didn't even look remotely good against him. One of the better at-bats was turned in by Jameis Winston on Friday. When Jameis Winston looks like the best hitter of the inning, the other guys did something really wrong. And Winston got this distinction by being one of the few to actually foul off a pitch. Then he watched dumbfounded as a waist-high, straight-line fastball zipped merrily across the middle of the plate for strike three. The other guys brought their Swiss cheese bats to the plate.
At this point it's hard to make a case for anyone else but Howard as the top closer in the country. 15 saves - our bats have been just good enough to give him lots of chances and just bad enough to give him lots of chances. But the really nasty stuff: 43 Ks against 6 BBs. And he's been getting better as the season goes on. Nate Kirby is doing a ridiculous job, too, and Brandon Waddell - who started the season by giving up 6 runs in 4 1/3 - has worked his ERA all the way down to 2.90.
The weekend finally convinced Collegiate Baseball to stop being the last holdout among the five polls/rankings, and give UVA the #1 nod. Five rankings, five #1's for UVA. #1 in the country - and currently sitting in the ACC's 3rd seed for the tournament. No further proof is required for the fact that having divisions for baseball is monumentally stupid.
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I turned the lacrosse game off in disgust during the second quarter, only to be overcome by curiosity, and turned it back on at some point midway through the third. That second period was perfectly emblematic of why this team has struggled. The first half, really. Matt Barrett couldn't stop a beanbag. Mick Parks gave up yet another faceoff win so clean that UNC's R.G. Keenan had but to run straight ahead til he arrived at the doorstep. And on one UNC goal - their second of the game, I think - a UVA defender watched the eventual scorer catch the pass, and then peeled off for parts unknown while the ballcarrier (Pat Foster, if memory serves) strode easy as you please into the vacated spot and potted the easiest goal of his life.
This is to say nothing of the pitiful clearing game. Awful decisions and half-assed passes turned the clearing game into a sloppy mess. One failed clear was an inexcusable 30-second violation - probably brought about by doing too much of a 180 from recklessness to an overabundance of caution. Fortunately, the Heels were even worse, particularly in the very crucial fourth quarter where they cleared two of six attempts.
The fourth also happened to be Barrett's time. He saved only 45% all day, but 100% when it mattered. Consistency is not Barrett's middle name, but there's a chance yet that we can be going into the 2018 season going "whatever will we do without that guy?"
I really think this team has a higher ceiling than it's shown this year. And effort is not the problem. This team has out-ground-balled everyone this year; in fact, they lead the nation in ground balls per game. Joseph Lisicky gets a lot of well-deserved attention for sucking up ground balls but it's not just grinding long-stick guys; that was UVA's leading scorer Mark Cockerton diving into the scrum for a loose ball, in front of an empty UNC net, and coming out with the crucial two-goal lead.
No, this team's problem is between the ears; they keep shooting themselves in the foot with mental breakdowns in all facets of the game. They shoot more with no backup behind the net than any team I've seen - and the X man will hang out blissfully by the side of the net when the shooter is winding up, instead of getting a head start on the backup. Several times a game I'll wish I could get inside the head of a defender and find out why he didn't consider the guy with the ball worth defending. And even when they were playing well against UNC, the passing was rather less than crisp. Either end of a pass might be the one to screw up the next one - maybe it goes sailing over someone's head, maybe it just gets ignored by the recipient. Eight seconds to go in a game where you have the ball and a two-goal lead, and you manage a giveaway. Silly.
This team would be a legit as hell title contender if they could just deal with some of this low-hanging fruit. They could very well find themselves in the Final Four - the draw I gave them in this week's bracketology happens to be an awfully favorable one, about as good as they could ever hope for, and set up beautifully for a potential trip to Baltimore. But they can't beat four good teams in a row with their brains working the way they do now.
(Speaking of bracketology: I've finished a project of mine that perfectly calculates every team's RPI and all the RPI-related factors that go into bracketology too. All I have to input is wins and losses. Put in the results of one game and it calculates every change to every RPI in the whole system. What does this mean? Faster bracketology; I don't have to wait for the Internet to update itself before I can start. Now that it's conference tournament week I plan on pushing out an update on Thursday and then every day unti Selection Sunday.
Even better: I should be able to adapt the thing for basketball and baseball and do my own bracketology for those sports, too. Baseball won't be ready in time for this year's tourney, but next year, wait and see.)
****************************************************
I guess we have to spoil things by finishing up with football. It's attrition season, and you expect to wring your hands occasionally when someone with untapped potential transfers out or washes out, what have you, but you don't really ever expect your top passing-game weapon to say see ya later.
Jake McGee's transfer comes as a surprise to us in the outside world, but word floats around the tubes that he and Tom O'Brien got along like Tom and Jerry from day one, and that just maybe that move to "TE/WR" was mostly about having McGee get his coaching from Marques Hagans instead of TOB. That is rumor, but it passes my smell test.
There's no way to put a positive spin on any aspect of it. Demeitre Brim also announced his transfer this past week, to Central Florida, and that was easily explainable by the fact that he's a Sam backer and nothing even remotely like the kind of Sam backer that Jon Tenuta is using. Is it a shame we couldn't finagle his considerable athletic potential into usefulness on the field? Sure. But it's also a cost of doing business.
McGee, on the other hand - they're selling his jersey FFS. He's plastered all over all kinds of advertising and literature. That the coaches allowed that to happen despite knowing he might leave is at a minimum a lousy grasp of PR; that McGee made it plain that he thinks Tight End U can't do a good job of preparing him for the NFL, that is just about as bad a piece of pub as we could've asked for.
The passing game is now short a terrific mid-range and red-zone option, and McGee's receiving skill set will not be easily replaced. Perhaps more importantly, Mike London's regime just took a major blow to the solar plexus of its image.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
weekend review
For some reason, I can't quite put my finger on it, I'm not ready to stop talking basketball just yet. I think it rhymes with "flampionships." At the very least it's only fair if I do a postmortem kinda deal on the season, and I think I'll take and review every player the same as they were previewed in the beginning. It should also be interesting to take a look at the ACC once the draft deadline passes later this month.
For now, it's officially the spring season and only the spring season, and spring sports are springing. Lacrosse is trying to, anyway. The 9-6 loss this weekend would not be terribly upsetting if you pretend it wasn't Maryland. Maryland's defense is one of the best in the country, and Niko Amato is a top-flight goalie, so, you'd like to do better when the national title is an every-year goal, but the way things are set up this year it's not a huge surprise what happened. Actually, it wasn't even Maryland's defense that did UVA in; it was their ability to hold onto possession for really long stretches, and UVA's inability to win a faceoff once Maryland figured out the gimmick.
Some bulletized points in brief(ish):
-- I'd just been thinking we hadn't really seen the full Shocker effect this year when LaPierre absolutely leveled a dude while carrying the ball, which went totally unappreciated by the crowd because they might not have been rooting for us. They don't call him the Human Clear for nothing.
-- Despite taking the loss, Matt Barrett played another reasonably solid game. That makes two in a row. Progress. He saved 11 of 20, which is a .550 save percentage, and at least once I remember thinking, "he doesn't make that save a month ago." For the season, he stands at .470. That's still bad, but remember Adam Ghitelman's freshman year saw him land at .497. No, that's not good either, but still.
-- I know I wasn't the only one cheesed off by the announcers blatantly shilling for a shot clock, except doing it in the most passive-aggressive manner possible. What really bugged me was this: UVA spent too long for their tastes passing the ball around, and they practically begged the refs to put the timer on. The refs didn't, UVA shot, Amato saved, and Maryland cleared - and the first thing Eamon Mc-Inane-y said was, "I didn't like that shot. It was too rushed." Now you know why there isn't a shot clock in lacrosse, Eamon.
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-- One thing I promise to start doing this week is giving a damn about baseball. Not that I haven't before, but for it being one of my favorite UVA sports, I've written damn near nothing about it. Well, there will be a series preview of Pittsburgh this week. And this past week, they swept up VT as is only fitting. I was about to say customary, but that really hasn't been the way things have gone lately. Despite the huge gap between our two programs, we'd only swept VT twice since 2008.
Joe McCarthy was the ACC player of the week, too; the third such honor for the third different Wahoo this year. Nick Howard won it the week before and Derek Fisher took one home before breaking his hand.
-- Here is an excellent rundown of the various UVA players populating the minor leagues. I used to do this myself at times but why duplicate the effort? And of course, don't forget the five Hoos wearing major league uniforms as of Opening Day: Ryan Zimmerman (Nats), Sean Doolittle (A's), Mark Reynolds (Brewers), Javier Lopez (Giants), and Brandon Guyer (Rays).
-- I was hoping that DeLoss Dodds's retirement at Texas would significantly decrease the douche quotient of the UT administration, but no such luck. Glad to know shipping the players off to Mexico City or Dubai to "grow the Texas brand" is a priority, more so than playing Texas A&M. I want to defend the NCAA in certain things they do but it is really friggin' hard to do when you claim that your purpose is educational, not business, but you won't play a hundred-year-old rivalry because it doesn't make "business sense." And you assholes wonder why the players are trying to unionize.
-- Marquette lost their coach to the ACC, so they went to the ACC for his replacement, luring Steve Wojcie-whatsit away from Duke. You know, Wojo. Let me be neither the first nor the last to make the joke about oh no who will do Coach K's sideline interviews for him now.
-- Boston College is not exactly aiming high in their own coaching search. The two names mentioned in that article coach the Atlantic Sun runner-up (FGCU) and MAC 5th seed (Ohio.) Yeah, both those schools won conference championships lately - and the coaches who did so are now at USC and Illinois. Would it be too much to ask of an ACC school to think a little bigger than a guy whose only foray out of MAC coaching peaked in one CBI bid in four years at TCU? I like Boston College, honestly I do, I've never known anything but good people out of Chestnut Hill, but if the Big Ten cares so much about media markets, maybe we can swap them for Penn State. Step it up, Eagles.
For now, it's officially the spring season and only the spring season, and spring sports are springing. Lacrosse is trying to, anyway. The 9-6 loss this weekend would not be terribly upsetting if you pretend it wasn't Maryland. Maryland's defense is one of the best in the country, and Niko Amato is a top-flight goalie, so, you'd like to do better when the national title is an every-year goal, but the way things are set up this year it's not a huge surprise what happened. Actually, it wasn't even Maryland's defense that did UVA in; it was their ability to hold onto possession for really long stretches, and UVA's inability to win a faceoff once Maryland figured out the gimmick.
Some bulletized points in brief(ish):
-- I'd just been thinking we hadn't really seen the full Shocker effect this year when LaPierre absolutely leveled a dude while carrying the ball, which went totally unappreciated by the crowd because they might not have been rooting for us. They don't call him the Human Clear for nothing.
-- Despite taking the loss, Matt Barrett played another reasonably solid game. That makes two in a row. Progress. He saved 11 of 20, which is a .550 save percentage, and at least once I remember thinking, "he doesn't make that save a month ago." For the season, he stands at .470. That's still bad, but remember Adam Ghitelman's freshman year saw him land at .497. No, that's not good either, but still.
-- I know I wasn't the only one cheesed off by the announcers blatantly shilling for a shot clock, except doing it in the most passive-aggressive manner possible. What really bugged me was this: UVA spent too long for their tastes passing the ball around, and they practically begged the refs to put the timer on. The refs didn't, UVA shot, Amato saved, and Maryland cleared - and the first thing Eamon Mc-Inane-y said was, "I didn't like that shot. It was too rushed." Now you know why there isn't a shot clock in lacrosse, Eamon.
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-- One thing I promise to start doing this week is giving a damn about baseball. Not that I haven't before, but for it being one of my favorite UVA sports, I've written damn near nothing about it. Well, there will be a series preview of Pittsburgh this week. And this past week, they swept up VT as is only fitting. I was about to say customary, but that really hasn't been the way things have gone lately. Despite the huge gap between our two programs, we'd only swept VT twice since 2008.
Joe McCarthy was the ACC player of the week, too; the third such honor for the third different Wahoo this year. Nick Howard won it the week before and Derek Fisher took one home before breaking his hand.
-- Here is an excellent rundown of the various UVA players populating the minor leagues. I used to do this myself at times but why duplicate the effort? And of course, don't forget the five Hoos wearing major league uniforms as of Opening Day: Ryan Zimmerman (Nats), Sean Doolittle (A's), Mark Reynolds (Brewers), Javier Lopez (Giants), and Brandon Guyer (Rays).
-- I was hoping that DeLoss Dodds's retirement at Texas would significantly decrease the douche quotient of the UT administration, but no such luck. Glad to know shipping the players off to Mexico City or Dubai to "grow the Texas brand" is a priority, more so than playing Texas A&M. I want to defend the NCAA in certain things they do but it is really friggin' hard to do when you claim that your purpose is educational, not business, but you won't play a hundred-year-old rivalry because it doesn't make "business sense." And you assholes wonder why the players are trying to unionize.
-- Marquette lost their coach to the ACC, so they went to the ACC for his replacement, luring Steve Wojcie-whatsit away from Duke. You know, Wojo. Let me be neither the first nor the last to make the joke about oh no who will do Coach K's sideline interviews for him now.
-- Boston College is not exactly aiming high in their own coaching search. The two names mentioned in that article coach the Atlantic Sun runner-up (FGCU) and MAC 5th seed (Ohio.) Yeah, both those schools won conference championships lately - and the coaches who did so are now at USC and Illinois. Would it be too much to ask of an ACC school to think a little bigger than a guy whose only foray out of MAC coaching peaked in one CBI bid in four years at TCU? I like Boston College, honestly I do, I've never known anything but good people out of Chestnut Hill, but if the Big Ten cares so much about media markets, maybe we can swap them for Penn State. Step it up, Eagles.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
weekend review
This is an odd spring season. Neither of our marquee programs passes the eye test and yet they're both very highly-ranked as usual. Baseball is closer; the team is pulling out of a slow start and for the most part continues to pitch very, very well. The hitting is behind, but after a solid weekend on the road at Miami, catching up.
Game 1 was ugly on that hitting front, with only five hits in 29 at bats. The Hoos figured it out later, though, bizarrely needing extra innings to put Miami away despite outhitting them 16 to 3 on Sunday. Monday - it was one of those ESPNU Monday night weeks - was a little more conventional, with a 5-3 win that would've been a lot more comfortable but for some sparkling defensive plays by the Canes. This was my first actual live exposure to the baseball team this year, by the way, chalked up largely to really wanting to watch some basketball.
Lacrosse continues to make me shake my head. How this team is 8-2 is a mystery. It's a very slim percentage of Hopkins fans, let alone lacrosse fans in general, who think Hopkins is a legit title contender, and I count myself with the majority - and we barely snuck past them. We got absolutely blasted by Notre Dame. But 8-2. With a win over the current #1 team in the country. I dunno lol.
To be fair, the Hopkins game, like the Miami game, need not have been that close. Hopkins was the beneficiary of two utterly atrocious first-half penalties, one on James Pannell for an illegal body check and the second on Tanner Scales for playing too good of defense. The Pannell one was an understandable call on a certain level - but essentially a call for being too mean and rough. Scales technically got flagged for a cross-check, but please. Hopkins got three goals out of the deal, turning a 4-1 UVA lead into a tie game. All it was missing was TV Teddy Valentine doing his That's A Charge! Dance and full-blown ref takeover would've been achieved.
We also need to point out that Matt Barrett played probably his first really good game in a UVA uniform, making 16 saves including at least a couple that I figure he's let by in the past. I think Duke and Maryland will be nigh-impossible games to pull off, but give us a game like that against Carolina and things might go pretty well. UVA doesn't pass the eye test at all this year, but then, the way things are shaping up, not many teams do.
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-- You remember that Barclay's Center stuff from last week; it's coming true woo-hoo. (I guess.) Pertinent details:
* The ACC tournament will be in Brooklyn in 2017 and 2018. This settles the tourney locale for the next four years; 2015 is Greensboro, 2016 is DC. The A-10 goes back to the Barclay's in 2019 for three years, so the ACC is holding firm on their decision to rotate. If I were a betting man, and I am at times, I'd say 2019 we'll be back in Greensboro.
* There will be "annual nonconference doubleheaders" (it doesn't say for how long) between the ACC and A-10 starting the season after next, all at the Barclay's. I would definitely be down for playing a UMass or a Dayton or a St. Louis.
-- In NBA decision news, so far, NC State's T.J. Warren is leaving, and UNC's Marcus Paige is staying. We're not done with that particular silly season yet, of course. Other decisions to watch: Clemson's K.J. McDaniels, Duke's Jabari Parker, UNC's McAdoo, Syracuse's Tyler Ennis, maybe also Jerami Grant. C.J. Fair is a senior, as is Pitt's Lamar Patterson.
-- VT's coaching search didn't last long, and they pulled a coup in landing Buzz Williams from Marquette. Tech hasn't had a coach with a stick of hair on his head since Ricky Stokes was fired in 2003.** This is because if you're going to pay the basketball coach almost Frank Beamer money (Williams is getting paid more than triple what James Johnson got) then you have to keep Beamer happy in other ways, and they do that by letting him have the most luxurious crop of distinguished silver hair in the whole department. Bud Foster's no-nonsense buzz cut is actually a stipulation in Frank's contract.
Anyway, forking out for Williams is an impressive level of commitment, which was going to have to be step one in pulling that program out of the turd bowl. Step two will be recruiting good players to a non-urban area that isn't even close to anything resembling an urban area to play in facilities that were aging and obsolete before their coach was even born. Williams will have some cachet, though, and it's no longer a laughable idea that VT could make the tournament in the next few years. At the very least they're not likely to continue bringing up the rear of the ACC.
**Fun fact: do a Google image search for Bobby Hussey, Stokes's predecessor at VT, and on the second row you get.... This is because he played in a Nike tournament called the Bobby Hussey Memorial Day Classic.
Game 1 was ugly on that hitting front, with only five hits in 29 at bats. The Hoos figured it out later, though, bizarrely needing extra innings to put Miami away despite outhitting them 16 to 3 on Sunday. Monday - it was one of those ESPNU Monday night weeks - was a little more conventional, with a 5-3 win that would've been a lot more comfortable but for some sparkling defensive plays by the Canes. This was my first actual live exposure to the baseball team this year, by the way, chalked up largely to really wanting to watch some basketball.
Lacrosse continues to make me shake my head. How this team is 8-2 is a mystery. It's a very slim percentage of Hopkins fans, let alone lacrosse fans in general, who think Hopkins is a legit title contender, and I count myself with the majority - and we barely snuck past them. We got absolutely blasted by Notre Dame. But 8-2. With a win over the current #1 team in the country. I dunno lol.
To be fair, the Hopkins game, like the Miami game, need not have been that close. Hopkins was the beneficiary of two utterly atrocious first-half penalties, one on James Pannell for an illegal body check and the second on Tanner Scales for playing too good of defense. The Pannell one was an understandable call on a certain level - but essentially a call for being too mean and rough. Scales technically got flagged for a cross-check, but please. Hopkins got three goals out of the deal, turning a 4-1 UVA lead into a tie game. All it was missing was TV Teddy Valentine doing his That's A Charge! Dance and full-blown ref takeover would've been achieved.
We also need to point out that Matt Barrett played probably his first really good game in a UVA uniform, making 16 saves including at least a couple that I figure he's let by in the past. I think Duke and Maryland will be nigh-impossible games to pull off, but give us a game like that against Carolina and things might go pretty well. UVA doesn't pass the eye test at all this year, but then, the way things are shaping up, not many teams do.
*******************************************
-- You remember that Barclay's Center stuff from last week; it's coming true woo-hoo. (I guess.) Pertinent details:
* The ACC tournament will be in Brooklyn in 2017 and 2018. This settles the tourney locale for the next four years; 2015 is Greensboro, 2016 is DC. The A-10 goes back to the Barclay's in 2019 for three years, so the ACC is holding firm on their decision to rotate. If I were a betting man, and I am at times, I'd say 2019 we'll be back in Greensboro.
* There will be "annual nonconference doubleheaders" (it doesn't say for how long) between the ACC and A-10 starting the season after next, all at the Barclay's. I would definitely be down for playing a UMass or a Dayton or a St. Louis.
-- In NBA decision news, so far, NC State's T.J. Warren is leaving, and UNC's Marcus Paige is staying. We're not done with that particular silly season yet, of course. Other decisions to watch: Clemson's K.J. McDaniels, Duke's Jabari Parker, UNC's McAdoo, Syracuse's Tyler Ennis, maybe also Jerami Grant. C.J. Fair is a senior, as is Pitt's Lamar Patterson.
-- VT's coaching search didn't last long, and they pulled a coup in landing Buzz Williams from Marquette. Tech hasn't had a coach with a stick of hair on his head since Ricky Stokes was fired in 2003.** This is because if you're going to pay the basketball coach almost Frank Beamer money (Williams is getting paid more than triple what James Johnson got) then you have to keep Beamer happy in other ways, and they do that by letting him have the most luxurious crop of distinguished silver hair in the whole department. Bud Foster's no-nonsense buzz cut is actually a stipulation in Frank's contract.
Anyway, forking out for Williams is an impressive level of commitment, which was going to have to be step one in pulling that program out of the turd bowl. Step two will be recruiting good players to a non-urban area that isn't even close to anything resembling an urban area to play in facilities that were aging and obsolete before their coach was even born. Williams will have some cachet, though, and it's no longer a laughable idea that VT could make the tournament in the next few years. At the very least they're not likely to continue bringing up the rear of the ACC.
**Fun fact: do a Google image search for Bobby Hussey, Stokes's predecessor at VT, and on the second row you get.... This is because he played in a Nike tournament called the Bobby Hussey Memorial Day Classic.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
orange, out
By and large, I'd say we UVA fans are a pretty fatalistic bunch. Whether more so than other fans, I couldn't say, but I'm sure Michigan fans don't have a Rule 2b, so there's that anyway. But pretty damn fatalistic, some of us very seriously and earnestly so. To varying degrees, UVA fans are convinced the refs have it out for us, the conference has it out for us, and the very fates have it out for us.
The events of Saturday can only make this fatalism worse - the difference, of course, is that for once, the fates have a benevolent side. Most of the action can be chalked up to big-time coaching from Tony Bennett, big-time shooting from the shooters, and big-time rebounding by the rebounders. Thomas Rogers - the senior we all forgot - hit a three-pointer, though, and right then it went from sanity to storybook.
The first thing I thought, after thirty seconds of gleeful laughter at the sight of the UVA bench going more totally apeshit than they had all season, was this: My lacrosse prediction is so screwed. It doesn't take a lot of prolixity to write the story now, not anymore. Senior Day, championship, scholarship, pandemonium.....it's so tailor-made for the fairy tales, just throw some conjunctions and stuff in between and you're all set. Rogers's shot didn't even hit rim. With the gods smiling on Charlottesville so, could there be any doubt how the lacrosse game would go? Syracuse, on both fields of play, played just well enough to let the Hollywood scriptwriters get their moment of tension in the movie that's surely coming out any day now.
Why, the day even moved Tony Bennett to sideline emotions. The man has two emotions on the sideline: stoic, and blind seething fury at jag-off refs. The latter is expressed with an eye-roll. The roof was already blown off the place and sailing toward the ionosphere and Tony sat in his crouch, watching the defense for any sign of a missed help or hedge, as if that was going to let Syracuse make up 19 points in as many seconds. Later his eyes glistened. Shortly after the horn. We all saw it - living proof that it means something to the guy to really and truly be able to follow through on the promise that brought his seniors to Charlottesville in the first place, one of them from three time zones hence.
As this very same stoic coach will remind his team fifty times a day between now and Saturday, there's still work to be done. The great part about this team and this coach is there's never a doubt the message will sink in. The other great part about this team and this coach is that we just had enough magic to last the next 30 years, and probably won't have to wait that long for the next batch.
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Further stuff.....
-- Along the same lines as the above, let me tell you this. Steve Yzerman - hockey fans know the name. Absolutely revered up here in Detroit. The man could drive a tank through a nunnery while firing live puppies out of the cannon and half of us would blame the nuns and the other half, the puppies. Living legend. He is to Detroit what, say, John Elway is to Denver, Larry Bird is to Boston, and so on. So it's with a small amount of pride that I say I was there the only time he was ever booed in Detroit, and furthermore took part lustily.
It was at his number retirement ceremony. Stevie Y got up there when it was his turn to speak, and because he's Stevie Y and shits more class and humility than anyone you care to name, talked about how it really wasn't his night, it was all thanks to his teammates. Right, Stevie. 692 goals, 1,063 assists, one each of the Conn Smythe, Selke, and Masterton trophies (this latter is for the player who "best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to ice hockey"), 6th on the NHL's all-time scoring list, three Stanley Cups, and it had nothing to do with you. Whatever. Also, boooo.
This is how I felt listening to Tony say he "didn't deserve this" or whatever he told the sideline reporter lady. Listen, Tony. You da man. I know you're a God-fearing man, but if you don't deserve this, who does?
-- Tony's attacking of the zone was masterful. Syracuse started with heavy on-ball pressure and denial of wing-to-wing passes. Relatively heavy for a zone, at any rate. UVA was looking, however, to go inside, and did as much as possible. So much so that players were passing up fairly open looks at the three, and forcing it inside to what looked like a worse look. All else being equal, would you rather have an open Brogdon three-point attempt or the ball in Akil's hands, ten feet from the rim and right on the baseline, guarded by shot-blocker extraordinaire Rakeem Christmas?
I'll take the Brogdon three any day, but that wasn't the game plan; the obvious strategy was to force-feed the post and look for anything they could get from the free-throw line in. Jim Boeheim then made exactly the half-time adjustment Tony wanted: he tightened up his zone to deny the post, at which time the launch pad was open for business. UVA took five threes the entire first half; they needed just five minutes of the second half to take that many and finished with 11 in the latter 20 minutes. Generally you figure, when you play a zone defense you try and loosen it up with a barrage of threes so you can do the work you want to inside; UVA went the opposite and saw it work to perfection.
-- Occasionally something is made of the "unbalanced schedule" that UVA has. The schedule has been unbalanced since 2005, of course, and nobody decided to taint anyone else's championship with such accusations. In 2007, when UVA went 11-5 and shared the title with UNC, nobody seemed to mind that UVA played 10-6 Maryland and VT twice and UNC only once, but anyway that's beside the point. The point really is this. Pick any team you like among the contenders - Cuse, Duke, UNC, Pitt. Find all the instances of any of those teams playing each other twice. Let them replace one loss with a win against a scrub team. For example, Duke and Syracuse - we'll let them each take credit for the win against each other and wash away the loss. Still, none of them can catch UVA. Duke isn't 12-4 because of too many games against Cuse and UNC. They're 12-4 because they failed to take care of business against Clemson and Notre Dame.
-- Storybook Saturday was so compelling that it trashed preconceived notions of what the storyline would be.
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Let's talk lax. I said "show me" before the game. I consider myself shown. UVA won by dominating the stat sheet and letting the goals come. More than 3 out of 4 faceoffs, and almost 5 out of every 7 ground balls, went UVA's way. If the ball's on the ground, and you have a 5-in-7 chance of getting to it, you're going to get your way more often than not.
This is not the sort of thing that will happen every game, but we've now also managed to establish that UVA has a damn offense. You got two guys on pace for 50-goal seasons without even counting the tournaments. They're gonna need it, as they're getting no help from the defense and goalie in particular,
-- 32 is the new 6. James Pannell has 22 goals and is a damn sophomore. But what got Steele Stanwick comparisons running through my head was a goal he scored in (I think) the second quarter. While the announcers were all fired-up about his "question-mark dodge" which reminded them of his brother Rob, I was more interested in the shot itself, sort of a twisting jump shot that snuck into an impossible corner of the net. Stanwick announced his presence as a freshman with exactly that sort of otherwordly accuracy.
-- It's very, very difficult to assess a goalie's play on any individual shot, in real time. It's real easy to look at 5 saves and 12 goals and not be real happy with the result, but I got at least one chance to find a spot where Matt Barrett ought to have made a save. On one Hakeem Lecky shot, the ball would've flown straight into the pocket of Barrett's stick had he just stood there like a statue (not that I advocate this as a strategy.) Instead he flinched, moving his stick away from the shot, and by the time he recovered it was obviously too late. Maybe he's overthinking these shots; regardless of the cause, I think we're deep enough into the season to declare this a Problem.
-- Cornell is next. Whatever they're ranked when they enter the game, it'll be too high. They've played three really bad teams so far and struggled to put away all of them. There's a very good chance UVA will be 7-0 and match their win total from last season halfway through this one. With VMI yet to appear at Klockner, getting that Cornell win would clinch, at a minimum, "team that everyone hates for getting into the tournament with a lousy record" status.
-- Keeping in mind that you actually have to work to make the ACC tournament this year, that was a very big win. Theoretically two conference wins should do the trick. With this offense, it shouldn't be at all impossible to find one more in four more conference games.
The events of Saturday can only make this fatalism worse - the difference, of course, is that for once, the fates have a benevolent side. Most of the action can be chalked up to big-time coaching from Tony Bennett, big-time shooting from the shooters, and big-time rebounding by the rebounders. Thomas Rogers - the senior we all forgot - hit a three-pointer, though, and right then it went from sanity to storybook.
The first thing I thought, after thirty seconds of gleeful laughter at the sight of the UVA bench going more totally apeshit than they had all season, was this: My lacrosse prediction is so screwed. It doesn't take a lot of prolixity to write the story now, not anymore. Senior Day, championship, scholarship, pandemonium.....it's so tailor-made for the fairy tales, just throw some conjunctions and stuff in between and you're all set. Rogers's shot didn't even hit rim. With the gods smiling on Charlottesville so, could there be any doubt how the lacrosse game would go? Syracuse, on both fields of play, played just well enough to let the Hollywood scriptwriters get their moment of tension in the movie that's surely coming out any day now.
Why, the day even moved Tony Bennett to sideline emotions. The man has two emotions on the sideline: stoic, and blind seething fury at jag-off refs. The latter is expressed with an eye-roll. The roof was already blown off the place and sailing toward the ionosphere and Tony sat in his crouch, watching the defense for any sign of a missed help or hedge, as if that was going to let Syracuse make up 19 points in as many seconds. Later his eyes glistened. Shortly after the horn. We all saw it - living proof that it means something to the guy to really and truly be able to follow through on the promise that brought his seniors to Charlottesville in the first place, one of them from three time zones hence.
As this very same stoic coach will remind his team fifty times a day between now and Saturday, there's still work to be done. The great part about this team and this coach is there's never a doubt the message will sink in. The other great part about this team and this coach is that we just had enough magic to last the next 30 years, and probably won't have to wait that long for the next batch.
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Further stuff.....
-- Along the same lines as the above, let me tell you this. Steve Yzerman - hockey fans know the name. Absolutely revered up here in Detroit. The man could drive a tank through a nunnery while firing live puppies out of the cannon and half of us would blame the nuns and the other half, the puppies. Living legend. He is to Detroit what, say, John Elway is to Denver, Larry Bird is to Boston, and so on. So it's with a small amount of pride that I say I was there the only time he was ever booed in Detroit, and furthermore took part lustily.
It was at his number retirement ceremony. Stevie Y got up there when it was his turn to speak, and because he's Stevie Y and shits more class and humility than anyone you care to name, talked about how it really wasn't his night, it was all thanks to his teammates. Right, Stevie. 692 goals, 1,063 assists, one each of the Conn Smythe, Selke, and Masterton trophies (this latter is for the player who "best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to ice hockey"), 6th on the NHL's all-time scoring list, three Stanley Cups, and it had nothing to do with you. Whatever. Also, boooo.
This is how I felt listening to Tony say he "didn't deserve this" or whatever he told the sideline reporter lady. Listen, Tony. You da man. I know you're a God-fearing man, but if you don't deserve this, who does?
-- Tony's attacking of the zone was masterful. Syracuse started with heavy on-ball pressure and denial of wing-to-wing passes. Relatively heavy for a zone, at any rate. UVA was looking, however, to go inside, and did as much as possible. So much so that players were passing up fairly open looks at the three, and forcing it inside to what looked like a worse look. All else being equal, would you rather have an open Brogdon three-point attempt or the ball in Akil's hands, ten feet from the rim and right on the baseline, guarded by shot-blocker extraordinaire Rakeem Christmas?
I'll take the Brogdon three any day, but that wasn't the game plan; the obvious strategy was to force-feed the post and look for anything they could get from the free-throw line in. Jim Boeheim then made exactly the half-time adjustment Tony wanted: he tightened up his zone to deny the post, at which time the launch pad was open for business. UVA took five threes the entire first half; they needed just five minutes of the second half to take that many and finished with 11 in the latter 20 minutes. Generally you figure, when you play a zone defense you try and loosen it up with a barrage of threes so you can do the work you want to inside; UVA went the opposite and saw it work to perfection.
-- Occasionally something is made of the "unbalanced schedule" that UVA has. The schedule has been unbalanced since 2005, of course, and nobody decided to taint anyone else's championship with such accusations. In 2007, when UVA went 11-5 and shared the title with UNC, nobody seemed to mind that UVA played 10-6 Maryland and VT twice and UNC only once, but anyway that's beside the point. The point really is this. Pick any team you like among the contenders - Cuse, Duke, UNC, Pitt. Find all the instances of any of those teams playing each other twice. Let them replace one loss with a win against a scrub team. For example, Duke and Syracuse - we'll let them each take credit for the win against each other and wash away the loss. Still, none of them can catch UVA. Duke isn't 12-4 because of too many games against Cuse and UNC. They're 12-4 because they failed to take care of business against Clemson and Notre Dame.
-- Storybook Saturday was so compelling that it trashed preconceived notions of what the storyline would be.
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Let's talk lax. I said "show me" before the game. I consider myself shown. UVA won by dominating the stat sheet and letting the goals come. More than 3 out of 4 faceoffs, and almost 5 out of every 7 ground balls, went UVA's way. If the ball's on the ground, and you have a 5-in-7 chance of getting to it, you're going to get your way more often than not.
This is not the sort of thing that will happen every game, but we've now also managed to establish that UVA has a damn offense. You got two guys on pace for 50-goal seasons without even counting the tournaments. They're gonna need it, as they're getting no help from the defense and goalie in particular,
-- 32 is the new 6. James Pannell has 22 goals and is a damn sophomore. But what got Steele Stanwick comparisons running through my head was a goal he scored in (I think) the second quarter. While the announcers were all fired-up about his "question-mark dodge" which reminded them of his brother Rob, I was more interested in the shot itself, sort of a twisting jump shot that snuck into an impossible corner of the net. Stanwick announced his presence as a freshman with exactly that sort of otherwordly accuracy.
-- It's very, very difficult to assess a goalie's play on any individual shot, in real time. It's real easy to look at 5 saves and 12 goals and not be real happy with the result, but I got at least one chance to find a spot where Matt Barrett ought to have made a save. On one Hakeem Lecky shot, the ball would've flown straight into the pocket of Barrett's stick had he just stood there like a statue (not that I advocate this as a strategy.) Instead he flinched, moving his stick away from the shot, and by the time he recovered it was obviously too late. Maybe he's overthinking these shots; regardless of the cause, I think we're deep enough into the season to declare this a Problem.
-- Cornell is next. Whatever they're ranked when they enter the game, it'll be too high. They've played three really bad teams so far and struggled to put away all of them. There's a very good chance UVA will be 7-0 and match their win total from last season halfway through this one. With VMI yet to appear at Klockner, getting that Cornell win would clinch, at a minimum, "team that everyone hates for getting into the tournament with a lousy record" status.
-- Keeping in mind that you actually have to work to make the ACC tournament this year, that was a very big win. Theoretically two conference wins should do the trick. With this offense, it shouldn't be at all impossible to find one more in four more conference games.
Friday, February 28, 2014
game preview: Syracuse
Date/Time: Saturday, March 1; 4:00
TV: ESPN
Record against the Orange: 1-3
Last meeting: SU 73, UVA 70; 11/28/08, Syracuse
Last game: UVA 65, Mia. 40 (2/26); SU 57, Md. 55 (2/24)
KenPom:
Tempo:
UVA: 61.6 (#344)
SU: 61.0 (#345)
Offense:
UVA: 112.4 (#41)
SU: 114.4 (#22)
Defense:
UVA: 88.9 (#3)
SU: 92.5 (#9)
Pythag:
UVA: .9366 (#4)
SU: .9206 (#10)
Projected lineups:
Virginia:
PG: London Perrantes (4.8 ppg, 2.2 rpg, 3.7 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (12.4 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 2.4 apg)
SF: Joe Harris (11.5 ppg, 2.9 rpg, 2.4 apg)
PF: Akil Mitchell (7.0 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 1.4 apg)
C: Mike Tobey (6.7 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 0.4 apg)
Syracuse:
PG: Tyler Ennis (12.0 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 5.6 apg)
SG: Trevor Cooney (12.8 ppg, 2.0 rpg, 1.3 apg)
SF: C.J. Fair (16.5 ppg, 6.1 rpg, 1.3 apg)
PF: Jerami Grant (12.3 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 1.4 apg)
PF: Rakeem Christmas (5.8 ppg, 4.8 rpg, 0.7 apg)
Finally. The moment you've all been waiting for. Fortunately, the basketball team we root for is better at staying in the moment than the fans are, or this game might have fizzled before it even began. No disappointment here, however. It's the biggest game of the weekend across the whole college hoops landscape. Tickets are going on the secondary market for more than the price of buying that seat for the whole season. Dickie V is in town. Big, big time college basketball is coming to the JPJA.
It's also Senior Night for Joe Harris and Akil Mitchell. Only two of Tony Bennett's heralded six-man class remain with the team. Two of its least-hyped members, too. These guys came in at the bottom and rode to the top - or more accurately, brought the team there themselves. "Buying in" is such a hackneyed phrase, but if you want to know what it actually looks like, you can't do better than to trace the careers of these two.
Add it all up and it's the most can't-miss event that ever took place on the JPJA floor. No wonder it costs a cool G to get in.
-- UVA on offense
The 2-3 zone is all anyone talks about when talking Syracuse defense. They're one of the very few teams whose KenPom defensive fingerprint is "mostly zone." Other teams deploy the 2-3 to try and take back control of the pace and the game on the defensive end; Syracuse uses it as their base defense.
Because of that, you can bet they don't play it the same every time down the court. There will be different looks - Cuse will change the level of pressure on the ballhandler, their spacing, the amount of ball denial to certain places on the court. They'll change help assignments on screens. They'll throw out a lot of different looks, much the same way a spread offense team in football will line up in the same formation every play on the same drive and then change the playcall.
UVA's answer will generally come from the experience they've got in playing against 2-3 zones in the recent past, some of which have required large adjustments. They've used four-guard lineups, multiple different players in the high post, and various approaches to force the zone to space out more than it wants to. Moreover, I suspect the second half will be higher-scoring than the first, for the simple reason that's when the teams shoot at the end where their bench is. I expect Tony to be pretty heavily involved; the coaches will help London Perrantes and all the ballhandlers out as much as possible by being more involved than usual in trying to pick the best approach for the defensive approach they're seeing. Probably the first 10-15 seconds or so of the possession will be used to feel out the defensive call.
I don't have to tell you that three-point shooting is huge. It doesn't matter who gets hot, but someone has to. Perrantes's explosion against Miami had to cause a little bit of an oh-shit moment in the Syracuse coaches' meetings; it was clear that the Canes had been told to deny Harris and Brogdon and take their chances with Perrantes bombing away, and it cost them. It wouldn't surprise me if Jim Boeheim had been planning a similar tactic. That alone might've loosened up the zone just a little.
Personnel-wise, Syracuse has two thoroughly deadly shot-blockers in Rakeem Christmas and Baye Moussa Keita - the fortunate provenance here is that they don't ever play together. The defense is designed to let one or the other patrol the middle and have them swat any stray layup attemps that might've gotten past the very long, lanky, and athletic wings and forwards. C.J. Fair, Jerami Grant, and the very little-used Tyler Roberson all measure in around 6'8", 210, and play a lot of denial in the zone, discouraging both entry passes and drives to the rim. Michael Gbinije is built much the same, and two and sometimes three of these players are in at all times.
Because of these guys, don't be fooled; the 2-3 is the most conservative of all defenses, except in the hands of Syracuse; they're as good at getting steals as any team in the country. If I didn't know London Perrantes better, I'd say we were in real trouble with a freshman point guard. He'll still have to play with care and realize the defenders between him and the pass recipient are bouncier and more athletic than what he's used to. Despite the heralded abilities of Syracuse's scorers, it's their defense that worries me the most.
-- UVA on defense
First thing to understand: Cuse is not a very deep team. Right or wrong, primary scoring is limited to four players. I say "right or wrong" because a couple of those guys not on that list are in fact pretty dangerous and maybe should be more involved. Michael Gbinije is a .400+ three-point shooter, and Rakeem Christmas only scores like six points a game but is in fact the team's second-most efficient offensive player, just a hair behind Trevor Cooney.
Yes, Cooney, not Tyler Ennis or C.J. Fair. Fair is - wait for the surprise here - actually somewhat of a volume scorer. UVA will defend him much the same way they defended Lamar Patterson, as Fair is a very similar player. Like Patterson, his efficiency drops off a cliff if he can't get to the rim, which is exactly what Tony's defense will try to make happen. Even though he's Cuse's leading scorer, he needs to shoot almost 29% of Cuse's shots while he's on the court to make it happen.
It's Cooney's three-point shooting that's probably the most dangerous thing here. Even more so against a pack-line defense that prefers that you shoot over top. Cooney launches threes at an astounding clip and will probably shoot his 200th attempt on the season in this game. He lands them at a 40% pace, too.
At point, Tyler Ennis is all he's cracked up to be. His ratio of a 32.5% assist rate to a 14.2% TO rate is among the very best in the country. The scoring facets of his game demand respect, too. And if Cuse misses a shot, they will crash the boards extremely hard to try and gather up another chance; UVA's stellar defensive rebounders will get a strong test from Grant, Christmas, and Keita.
All this said, offense has been SU's Achilles heel lately. They actually have not shot the ball well; this is a team that will do absolutely everything right on offense and then clank the shot, which is why pace (Syracuse's is as slow as ours) is only part of the explanation as to why they haven't gotten any higher than 60 points since February 3.
UVA will have one other advantage, which I think is miniscule but worth mentioning: while the Hoos have faced a number of different 2-3 zone looks in the past month, Syracuse has not seen the pack-line except on film. And then finally, there's the fatigue question; lots of folks are wondering if Syracuse is hitting a wall, a fair query given that four players play over 30 minutes a game, where UVA has only one such player (Brogdon) and he still lags behind all of Syracuse's big four in average minutes. In terms of numbers, UVA isn't actually a great deal deeper than Cuse given that Darion Atkins and Evan Nolte are only half members of the rotation, but there's a hell of a lot more substitution.
Still, these are by no means game-breaking advantages. They just tilt the field a tiny bit our way. There are lots of ways Syracuse can tilt it back. Lots of talent. UVA should be able to defend this team, but that is the least given of all things.
-- Outlook
Could Syracuse win this game? Easily. They're the #4 team in the land for a reason; they reeled off a 25-game win streak for a reason; they scored 91 points in 68 possessions against Duke for a reason. Talent abounds, and going through a rough patch doesn't mean you'll stay in a rough patch.
However, that's quite the rough patch. The Syracuse offense is struggling hardcore. Failing to score a point a possession against Boston College, which is not even a top 300 defense in the country, at home, should be a five-alarm bell. C.J. Fair ballhogged and shot 7-for-23 while being guarded by such defensive luminaries as Eddie Odio. While the complaint that UVA has benefitted from an unbalanced schedule is a fair one (I can hardly complain about this since I pointed out at the very beginning that we had the easiest schedule in the league by far) it's also true that Syracuse has not faced a defense like ours.
Objectively speaking, then, how can one pick the Cuse? UVA is at home and playing elite defense, rolls more bodies on the floor, with the further intangible boost of trying to send the seniors off in style. Syracuse is on the road, playing poor offense by the standards of an aspirational #1 seed, and looking for all the world like they're doing a slow dive into a brick wall. No, I wouldn't be awfully surprised to see Cuse win - but if they do, it'll be close. A lot of trends would have to suddenly reverse themselves for the Orange to walk out of the JPJA with a win, though. I haven't picked against UVA in a long time. I read these same tea leaves when UNC came to town, and was not disappointed. Now is not the time to buck the trends.
Final score: UVA 55, SU 48
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Bonus! It's a very Cusey weekend, and I would hate to omit lacrosse from the festivities. UVA is 5-0, which is very nice and a better start than they had last year. But we're also 0-0 against all the teams which we measure ourselves against. One of them is coming to town this weekend. Time constraints don't permit me to write a full-blown preview, but some bullet points and a prediction would be handy.
-- Syracuse was the #1 team in the country, but relinquished that distinction after being blown out at home by Maryland last week, 16-8. The Cuse is now #8 with a 2-1 record; UVA is ranked #4, which is kind of scary high for a team that doesn't look like they've got it all figured out right now.
-- The Orange attack is a two-headed monster of Kevin Rice (2 goals, 11 assists) and Dylan Donahue (12 goals, 2 assists.) You can see how this combo works out. Midfielder Henry Schoonmaker also has a nice shot, and Randy Staats has been a good all-around guy with 7 goals and 5 assists. Pretty much most of the names you hear when Syracuse has the ball will be unfamiliar.
-- Both teams need a lot more out of their goalies than they've been getting; Matt Barrett is at a .480 save percentage and Cuse's Dominic Lamolinara isn't much better at .488.
-- Faceoffs are a problem, as with always. Mick Parks and Jeff Kratky are combining to go .434. A surprise bright spot is on the roster in the form of defenseman Nate Menninger, a D-III transfer who got his first action against Rutgers and went 9-for-15. His 18 total faceoffs are an itty-bitty sample size, though, and last season at Hamilton College his win percentage was only .468. Syracuse still has excellent face-off guy Chris Daddio, who is at .557 right now, so a long day at the X seems likely.
-- Expect a high-scoring affair here. Both teams' defenses have disappointed. UVA had a really nice start for two quarters against Loyola and then fell off like a rock. Syracuse had to squeak by Albany, 17-16, and gave up another 16 goals to Maryland.
Being 5-0 is nice, but UVA has yet to put together a full four quarters. You can get away with that against Rutgers and Richmond. Syracuse might struggle to stay out of the ACC basement this year but they're still a notch above anyone UVA's seen this year. I'm in show-me mode right now, so....
Final score: SU 16, UVA 13
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Double bonus! ACC sims are updated, with one small wrinkle. Go see.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
points of view
I fully intended to write anything at all yesterday, but then what happened is I spent the evening on chat support trying to get my phone to work again. I'm the absolute last person you'll see wigging out over being unconnected, but I do have this crazy fetish about getting the services I pay for, so it's nice that I can once again get text messages.
On the plus side, it gave me the chance to add the Maryland game to the stuff I was planning on, and things actually fall into place pretty nicely now. Inside my head are two competing viewpoints on two different sports, so let's see if we can't resolve some of this cognitive dissonance. Speaking in advance, before I even type this out, I am liking this idea so much that I might make it a weekly thing, if I can think of enough conflicting viewpoints on enough topics.
I said two sports, so let's start with lacrosse.
Point: ARRRRGHGHHGHGHGHGH.
We're basically screwed, right? Even though the team is 2-0, it's certainly not a happy 2-0 when it's just seconds from being 0-2. Choking away an eight-point lead against Loyola in just one quarter of action, and giving up 12 goals to upstart Richmond, these things do not support the preseason hypothesis that the defense would be a major strength. This is two games in a row we've seen the opponent go on huge scoring streaks; Loyola potted nine straight and Richmond seven straight, the latter to turn a 6-2 UVA lead into a 9-6 deficit.
Need I add any more anyway, when you win by one lousy goal over a team playing its first varsity game ever? Can you imagine the utter humiliation if the Spiders had won that game? It would be the lacrosse team's Chaminade. And we've seen this story as recently as last year; letting Mount St. Mary's and Vermont hang around for way longer than necessary foreshadowed the losing that took place later.
Obviously, this team has some major work to do. Two games in and it's obvious. Matt Barrett has debuted with a .342 save percentage, faceoffs are just a nose above .500, and opponents have gotten too many easy goals. Just wait til Duke gets a load of this; they're gonna be merciless.
Counterpoint: Actually, things are looking up.
Let's face it, Loyola is no shit team - there are still players there with a ring - and for three quarters there, plus overtime, UVA was absolutely serving notice. I had that team as the 10th-best offense in the country last year and the defense held them 100% scoreless for two straight quarters. That absolutely counts for something.
And remember, I had Loyola pegged as Ohio State's replacement on the schedule - they're roughly at the same level of quality - and we lost to Ohio State last year. So, replace a loss with a win, and we're already ahead of schedule.
The offense is finding its groove, too. The other ACC teams that played all demolished their opponents, none of them playing a team even remotely close to Loyola's quality and scoring either 16 or 19 goals depending on which ACC team we're talking about, and it was still James Pannell getting player of the week honors from the conference. For one, that's a totally new contributor from last year; Pannell definitely got a head start on living up to the tremendous praise he got from Dom.
UVA's midfield game, at least in the goal-scoring department, looks sharp, too. Greg Coholan and Tyler German made their mark, and overall five different midfielders have scored. And then finally, the defense has actually been all over the turnover map, and you have to give a nod to Joseph Lisicky, who leads the team in caused turnovers and ground balls** despite not even starting. Looks like a terrific find.
**Except for Mick Parks, which isn't fair since Parks is the faceoff dude.
Verdict: Punt.
In the end, neither side of the debate can be ignored. There's no reason to beat Richmond by any less than 10 goals, unless it somehow turns out Richmond is a surprise powerhouse. Motivation level may have come into play in that game, and that's still no excuse.
Besides, for every bad point I made there's a silver lining, and vice versa, too; for example, yay Pannell, but he did play two full games while the other teams' stars probably played three quarters at most. This team is full of new names and new combinations, and still gelling; it's too early to draw any conclusions beyond eliminating the most extreme expectations in either direction.
We've seen domination in both directions, and a team that's capable of dominating and being dominated usually moves in the dominating direction. Lacrosse is a very short, small-sample-size season, though, so it all depends on how much time they need. With Drexel on deck, there's another very good chance to get some more data points on this team; til then, and maybe for a couple more weeks, we'll have to sit with slightly bated breath.
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Point: The basketball team is slowly running out of steam.
It was probably inevitable, but 20-point blowouts have given way to a fair amount of drama during basketball games. Boston College - the same Eagles that are 6-17 and only ever beat Virginia Tech in conference play - took advantage of sloppy defense and forced Tony Bennett to leave his regulars in, when he was probably contemplating when to let the walk-ons get some time. And we were losing both the GT and Maryland games at halftime.
Really, it's the natural consequence of math, as well as simply being later in the season and having already expended a bunch of energy. UVA is regressing to the mean, that's all - it's no surprise that teams, having oodles of tape on UVA's systems and tendencies, have figured out a way or two to deal with them. Remember, this team was picked fourth in the conference, not first, so anything above sliding into the last double-bye spot in the tournament is overachieving.
Counterpoint: Pish-posh and fiddle-faddle.
In case you haven't noticed, most of those blowouts came against suckhole teams in the bottom of the standings with no hope of making the NCAA tournament (the lone exception being UNC, which was in a major rough patch at the time) - and by the way, BC and GT count as blowouts. I warned you that BC was capable of keeping it close with a run or two, and the fact that they hit a couple timely threes doesn't change that we were blowing them out of the water for 36 minutes.
GT's a similar deal. UVA went on a 22-1 run to finish the game and held the Jackets almost completely scoreless for 12 minutes. If that had happened at the beginning rather than the end, we'd all be talking about what a complete domination it was and how we gave ourselves the luxury of just coasting the rest of the game.
So when we finally play a halfway-semi-decent team like Maryland, and that team goes on a hot jump-shooting streak to start the game, there's no reason to panic. Everyone goes cold eventually, and if a team beats us because they shot 12-18 from three or something, you just tip your hat. Til then, this team is still playing its calling-card awesome defense, and that's going to make even Syracuse sweat.
Verdict: Quit whining.
That is, if there's anyone out there doing so. This one goes squarely to the counterpoint; if you'd said in November that in February I'd be complaining about no longer winning games by 20 points, I'm sure we'd all be a little bit happy about that. Fun fact: even with a full one-third of the ACC season left, UVA can finish no worse than the 9th seed, and if Wake Forest loses tonight to NC State, you can make it the 8th seed. In other words, we've literally already secured a single bye in the ACC tourney.
One more week of this winning stuff and you can write us into the Dance, too; I don't think we've quite reached the point where we could lose everything the rest of the way and still get invited, but we're on the cusp at worst.
Besides, is it really so bad to have to scrap for one every so often?
On the plus side, it gave me the chance to add the Maryland game to the stuff I was planning on, and things actually fall into place pretty nicely now. Inside my head are two competing viewpoints on two different sports, so let's see if we can't resolve some of this cognitive dissonance. Speaking in advance, before I even type this out, I am liking this idea so much that I might make it a weekly thing, if I can think of enough conflicting viewpoints on enough topics.
I said two sports, so let's start with lacrosse.
Point: ARRRRGHGHHGHGHGHGH.
We're basically screwed, right? Even though the team is 2-0, it's certainly not a happy 2-0 when it's just seconds from being 0-2. Choking away an eight-point lead against Loyola in just one quarter of action, and giving up 12 goals to upstart Richmond, these things do not support the preseason hypothesis that the defense would be a major strength. This is two games in a row we've seen the opponent go on huge scoring streaks; Loyola potted nine straight and Richmond seven straight, the latter to turn a 6-2 UVA lead into a 9-6 deficit.
Need I add any more anyway, when you win by one lousy goal over a team playing its first varsity game ever? Can you imagine the utter humiliation if the Spiders had won that game? It would be the lacrosse team's Chaminade. And we've seen this story as recently as last year; letting Mount St. Mary's and Vermont hang around for way longer than necessary foreshadowed the losing that took place later.
Obviously, this team has some major work to do. Two games in and it's obvious. Matt Barrett has debuted with a .342 save percentage, faceoffs are just a nose above .500, and opponents have gotten too many easy goals. Just wait til Duke gets a load of this; they're gonna be merciless.
Counterpoint: Actually, things are looking up.
Let's face it, Loyola is no shit team - there are still players there with a ring - and for three quarters there, plus overtime, UVA was absolutely serving notice. I had that team as the 10th-best offense in the country last year and the defense held them 100% scoreless for two straight quarters. That absolutely counts for something.
And remember, I had Loyola pegged as Ohio State's replacement on the schedule - they're roughly at the same level of quality - and we lost to Ohio State last year. So, replace a loss with a win, and we're already ahead of schedule.
The offense is finding its groove, too. The other ACC teams that played all demolished their opponents, none of them playing a team even remotely close to Loyola's quality and scoring either 16 or 19 goals depending on which ACC team we're talking about, and it was still James Pannell getting player of the week honors from the conference. For one, that's a totally new contributor from last year; Pannell definitely got a head start on living up to the tremendous praise he got from Dom.
UVA's midfield game, at least in the goal-scoring department, looks sharp, too. Greg Coholan and Tyler German made their mark, and overall five different midfielders have scored. And then finally, the defense has actually been all over the turnover map, and you have to give a nod to Joseph Lisicky, who leads the team in caused turnovers and ground balls** despite not even starting. Looks like a terrific find.
**Except for Mick Parks, which isn't fair since Parks is the faceoff dude.
Verdict: Punt.
In the end, neither side of the debate can be ignored. There's no reason to beat Richmond by any less than 10 goals, unless it somehow turns out Richmond is a surprise powerhouse. Motivation level may have come into play in that game, and that's still no excuse.
Besides, for every bad point I made there's a silver lining, and vice versa, too; for example, yay Pannell, but he did play two full games while the other teams' stars probably played three quarters at most. This team is full of new names and new combinations, and still gelling; it's too early to draw any conclusions beyond eliminating the most extreme expectations in either direction.
We've seen domination in both directions, and a team that's capable of dominating and being dominated usually moves in the dominating direction. Lacrosse is a very short, small-sample-size season, though, so it all depends on how much time they need. With Drexel on deck, there's another very good chance to get some more data points on this team; til then, and maybe for a couple more weeks, we'll have to sit with slightly bated breath.
******************************************************
Point: The basketball team is slowly running out of steam.
It was probably inevitable, but 20-point blowouts have given way to a fair amount of drama during basketball games. Boston College - the same Eagles that are 6-17 and only ever beat Virginia Tech in conference play - took advantage of sloppy defense and forced Tony Bennett to leave his regulars in, when he was probably contemplating when to let the walk-ons get some time. And we were losing both the GT and Maryland games at halftime.
Really, it's the natural consequence of math, as well as simply being later in the season and having already expended a bunch of energy. UVA is regressing to the mean, that's all - it's no surprise that teams, having oodles of tape on UVA's systems and tendencies, have figured out a way or two to deal with them. Remember, this team was picked fourth in the conference, not first, so anything above sliding into the last double-bye spot in the tournament is overachieving.
Counterpoint: Pish-posh and fiddle-faddle.
In case you haven't noticed, most of those blowouts came against suckhole teams in the bottom of the standings with no hope of making the NCAA tournament (the lone exception being UNC, which was in a major rough patch at the time) - and by the way, BC and GT count as blowouts. I warned you that BC was capable of keeping it close with a run or two, and the fact that they hit a couple timely threes doesn't change that we were blowing them out of the water for 36 minutes.
GT's a similar deal. UVA went on a 22-1 run to finish the game and held the Jackets almost completely scoreless for 12 minutes. If that had happened at the beginning rather than the end, we'd all be talking about what a complete domination it was and how we gave ourselves the luxury of just coasting the rest of the game.
So when we finally play a halfway-semi-decent team like Maryland, and that team goes on a hot jump-shooting streak to start the game, there's no reason to panic. Everyone goes cold eventually, and if a team beats us because they shot 12-18 from three or something, you just tip your hat. Til then, this team is still playing its calling-card awesome defense, and that's going to make even Syracuse sweat.
Verdict: Quit whining.
That is, if there's anyone out there doing so. This one goes squarely to the counterpoint; if you'd said in November that in February I'd be complaining about no longer winning games by 20 points, I'm sure we'd all be a little bit happy about that. Fun fact: even with a full one-third of the ACC season left, UVA can finish no worse than the 9th seed, and if Wake Forest loses tonight to NC State, you can make it the 8th seed. In other words, we've literally already secured a single bye in the ACC tourney.
One more week of this winning stuff and you can write us into the Dance, too; I don't think we've quite reached the point where we could lose everything the rest of the way and still get invited, but we're on the cusp at worst.
Besides, is it really so bad to have to scrap for one every so often?
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