game preview: Duke

Date/Time: Friday, April 13; 6:00

TV: ESPNUVA

Record against the Blue Devils: 49-26

Last matchup: Duke 19, UVA 10; 4/22/11; Durham (ACC tournament)

Last game: UVA 15, UNC 10 (4/7); Duke 11, Marist 10 (4/7)

Efficiency stats:

Faceoff %:
UVA: 56.4%
Duke: 57.4%

Clearing %:
UVA: 89.6% (off.), 85.8% (def.)
Duke: 82.1% (off.), 86.7% (def.)

Scoring %:
UVA: 39.7% (off.), 29.4% (def.)
Duke: 37.8% (off.), 30.9% (def.)

O-rating:
UVA: 19.78 (#2)
Duke: 18.39 (#5)

D-rating:
UVA: 12.88 (#13)
Duke: 13.53 (#21)

It's one of those big weekends.  Tomorrow, the Duke game, and the UNC baseball series begins as well.  Saturday, more baseball and the spring football game.  And then there's the Anthony Gill visit (about which Whitey Reid has some excellent info.)  I suspect the Friday scheduling of the lacrosse game is because of the football game, which is too bad because I thought the combination football-lax extravaganza was a big step in the right direction toward the sort of all-out fun-time festival the spring football game should be.  It rained last year, which sort of soured things, but I'd still enjoy seeing all these things treated as part of a larger whole instead of getting in the way of each other.

Tomorrow we'll talk spring football.  Today, Duke.  We got good news this afternoon when it was announced that Ryan Benincasa will be available after sitting out the part of the UNC game that happened after he was hit in the bean.  It could have cost us the game; Benincasa looked as though he'd figured out something on UNC's R.G. Keenan and was winning a lot of faceoffs all the same way.  Having him ready for Duke will be big.

-- UVA on offense

When not playing a man down, Duke has a fairly stout defense, a fact made even more impressive when you consider the streaky play of goalie Dan Wigrizer.  On the whole, Wigrizer isn't a great goaltender, with only a .519 save percentage.  And just when you think you're comfortable with that and you like the idea of Duke having a sieve for a netminder, Wigrizer stands on his head and stops like eight shots in a row.  If you can get off a good shot, you can probably get it past Wigrizer....except when he's in one of his moods, and then he's a wall.

Duke's got some big guys at close-in defense, which is the sort of thing that gave us trouble at times against Hopkins.  Michael Manley is an experienced senior, and the smallest of the bunch, too.  He's not actually small, it's just that sophomores Henry Lobb and Chris Hipps are each 6'4".  But the leader of the defense is LSM C.J. Costabile.  Costabile also takes faceoffs (making him, as a long-stick guy, a rare breed in that department), and has earned a number of honors over his career, including being a finalist for the Lowe's Senior Class Award, which by the way Steele Stanwick is also a finalist for that so go vote for him if you don't want the Dookie to win.

So it's a solid defense they have, and it'd be even better if they were good at man-down defense.  They have to play it a lot - Duke is one of the most heavily penalized teams in the country.  They average five per game, and they're led by reserve defenseman Luke Duprey (by the way, he's 6'5") with 10.  Mostly of the 60-second variety.  Manley is a close second with nine.  And when you get the ball, you just might score; Duke allows a 47% conversion rate on man-up chances.  This translates to two goals a game.

I doubt we'll get a lot of one-on-one chances against Duke's close-in defense, given their size, and it won't be possible to force the ball into the doorstep if it's covered.  Even less than usual, that is.  Lord knows we try, sometimes.  Duke's just too big for that.  But the chances will come like they always have.  They're good, but not fearsome - much like our other two ACC opponents.  When we get man-up chances we must - and probably will - capitalize, and it's worth knowing that a lot of teams have scored on Duke that shouldn't be able to.  Double-digit goals for Marist, Georgetown, Syracuse**, eight goals apiece for Brown and Penn - all teams with below-average O-ratings.  So I expect to keep on finding the back of the net.

**It's really weird to be putting Syracuse in that group, but there they are, right between Delaware and Jacksonville in the O-rating department.

-- UVA on defense

We've got a pretty formidable offensive lineup.  Duke is one of the few teams in the country that can match it.  There's a trio of sophomore attackmen - Jordan Walsh, Christian Walsh, and Josh Dionne - that make a case for the most productive attack in the country, and senior midfielder Robert Rotanz has always been an extremely dangerous player too.  Dionne and Wolf are the guys making the case that five-foot-single-digits is just fine; neither are 5'10" and between them they have 48 goals.  Wolf in particular is dangerous; playing the X, behind the net, he has 24 goals and 20 assists.  Rotanz is an excellent one-on-one dodger, and he leads the team with 26 goals.

Those four are the names you'll hear the most.  Beyond that, it gets thin.  There are capable players, but complementary parts at best; Justin Turri has 11 goals and the third starting middie, Jake Tripucka, has nine, but the thing is this: practically nobody after the top four has a shooting percentage above .300.  Consider this: Rob Emery and Matt White put about the same percentage of their shots on net as do Turri and Tripucka, but the Duke players' shooting percentages are .212 and .205, respectively; Emery and White have a much more normal .352 and .382.

Still: the top four.  And you'd think with all that offensive talent, Duke would have a scary man-up unit, but they're merely 11-for-51, a conversion percentage of .216.  That's..... pretty bad, actually.  Here's a little mental exercise: Duke's opponents have handed them 47 minutes' worth of penalties in 13 games.  Duke themselves have committed 56.5 minutes' worth of penalties.  Let's subtract those from the 780 minutes of game time they've played.  That leaves 676.5 minutes.  (I know that penalties usually end when a goal is scored; just bear with me.)  Divide the 676.5 minutes in half to approximate the time that Duke spends on offense and we get 338.25.

So in our theoretical world, Duke has played 47 minutes a man-up and 338 minutes of even-strength offense.  With 11 man-up goals, that's a goal for every 4:16 of man-up time.  (We'll pretend you spend every second of man-up play on offense, even though you don't, because you should.)  They've scored 138 even-strength goals, or one for every 2:27 of even-strength offense time.  Duke gets worse when you give them an extra man.  With as easy as it is to score on their man-down defense, theoretically, then, the best game plan is to spend the whole game trying to beat them into submission and hoping maybe they retaliate once in a while.

(In case you're wondering, the same tortured mathematical calisthenics when performed on UVA's stats give us a goal for every 1:44 of man-up time and a goal for every 2:22 of even-strength offensive time.)

This is kind of a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, of course - obviously I don't want to actually break their players over our sticks in hopes of earning a parade to the penalty box.  I want to break them legally.  The point here is that Duke probably needs a new special-teams coach.

-- Outlook

It's Senior Night, and it's Duke; you shouldn't need any more reason to want to win by 13.  In the standings there is none; thanks to the way the tiebreakers work, the ACC tourney pairings are already set.  We got UNC, Duke has Maryland.  Duke lost to Maryland in the regular season, but I don't see it happening again, which means there's a decent likelihood we'll match up in another week's time, same teams, same field, just like last year.  That's no reason to look ahead to a rematch that might not even happen, of course, but we lost twice to these guys last year, and we can't flip the script without winning the first one.  I know these Dookie bastards are our kryptonite year in and year out, but we've got Steele Stanwick and Chris Bocklet making opposing fans go "please hurry the eff up and graduate" and a machine of an offense and I'll be damned if I predict this team to lose.

-- Final score: [redacted to appease the fickle lacrosse gods]**

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-- Did I mention Steele Stanwick?  I did, but I must again.  He is mere tenths of a percentage point ahead of Costabile the Dukie, and trailing two guys from Siena(!) and Ohio State.  Siena has three fans and Ohio State is the devil.  Steele Stanwick : lacrosse :: Danny Hultzen : baseball.  VOTE FOR HIM DAMMIT

-- This was too fun to wait til Monday's weekend review: UVA got a shout on the Colbert Report the other day.  We are a school that is Doing It Right, at least in the mind of Colbert's smart-sounding interviewee, who was not kidding even though Colbert usually is.  We're also the only school that Colbert heard on the Doing It Right list and earned a cheer instead of a snarky reply upon mention.  (Colbert's wife is a Hoo.  He is not stupid.)  Click, then, to hear Wahoowa, Stephen Colbert style.

**OK, OK....13-12.  Shhh!

game preview: Maryland

Date/Time: Saturday, 3/31; 12:00

TV: ESPNUVA

Record against the Terps: 42-45

Last matchup: UVA 9, Md. 7; 5/30/11; Baltimore, MD - NCAA championship game

Last game: JHU 11, UVA 10 (3/24); UNC 11, Md. 10 (3/24)

Opposing blogs: none for lacrosse

Efficiency breakdown:

Faceoff %:
UVA: 57.4 %
Md.: 47.7%

Clearing %:
UVA: 90.0% off., 85.3% def.
Md.: 91.8% off., 82.1% def.

Scoring %:
UVA: 39.5% off., 29.1% def.
Md.: 38.1% off., 28.3% def.

O-rating:
UVA: 20.00 (4th of 61)
Md.: 17.88 (7th of 61)

D-rating:
UVA: 13.14 (20th of 61)
Md.: 12.31 (11th of 61)

(Stats explanation: Faceoff and clearing percentage: self-explanatory. Scoring %: percentage of offensive possessions (faceoff wins + successful clears + opp. failed clears) that result in goals. O-rating and D-rating are my own special sauce based on the above numbers. D-I average for each is currently about 14.70.  Ratings ARE adjusted for strength of competition.)
It's time for the ACC season.  Or at least, our part of it.  As tends to happen, everyone else has completed their portion of the ACC schedule except for the part where they play Virginia, and the three other teams have engaged in a triangle of doom that I always hate when I'm trying to do things like bracketology or the Blogpoll.  Maryland beat Duke which beat UNC which beat Maryland.  Therefore, it's up to us to disentangle the mess.

I'd rather not though; I'd rather just beat them all and let them all be 1-2 instead of 1-1.  Last year it was us going 1-2 and we were like a couple seconds away from going 0-3, as the UNC game was an ugly mess that we tried our best to give away.  It was all good, though.  There's such a thing as winning when it counts.

-- UVA on offense

Last year, Maryland was the only team to hold UVA to single-digit goals, and they did it twice.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that most of the players who did so are gone.  Maryland is breaking in an entirely new close-in defense consisting of two sophomores and a freshman.  The bad news again is that they're not bad; Maryland has a very respectable D-rating of 12.30.  Part of that is because Maryland, like Hopkins, has an outstanding goalie who's good enough to narrow any gap in talent between his defense and opposing offenses.  The diminutive Niko Amato, just a sophomore yet, has a .615 save percentage.

Then there's the good news to trump it all: Johns Hopkins has the second-best defense in the country, and UVA scored 10 goals on them.  In fact, despite my bellyaching about lost opportunities, UVA scored on 30% of opportunities, against a defense that's otherwise allowing only a 22% conversion rate.

Maryland has often been stout on defense this year; their best performance is probably limiting Duke to seven goals.  But they've also had their collapses, as young teams are occasionally wont to do.  The UMBC loss was the result of a five-goal run in the fourth quarter by the Retrievers.  Faceoffs and defense broke down simultaneously; UMBC is a 50/50 faceoff team but won 15 of 19 against the Terps.

The way the Maryland defense is set up might cause some untraditional matchups.  The best defender the Terps have is LSM Jesse Bernhardt, a junior captain.  Might Bernhardt end up behind the cage defending Tewaaraton winner Steele Stanwick?  Very possible, I think.  That would shuffle the usual matchups, and also ensure Maryland's young defenders are guarding veteran attackmen like Chris Bocklet.  Hopkins got caught ball-watching once or twice last week, and catching you ball-watching is Stanwick's favorite move.  If even Hopkins is prone to it, Maryland's inexperienced defenders will certainly end up with that problem too.

This is not to disparage Maryland's defense and suggest we should have an easy time scoring; it's a pretty good defense overall.  But Amato is probably the biggest factor.  UVA is multi-dimensional and thrives on the doorstep shot.  As long as UVA is patient and doesn't try to win the game in the first quarter (where Maryland, by the way, is outscoring opponents 25-8) the chances will be there.

-- UVA on defense

The biggest story, I suppose, is that Maryland's second-line midfielder Kevin Cooper will miss the game, his NCAA-mandated punishment for going to town with his fists on a UNC ballcarrier.  I don't think much of it.  Cooper only has three goals and six assists this season, and Maryland's offense has plenty of balance; there will not be a time on Saturday when we say, "man, they really miss Kevin Cooper."

Like UVA, Maryland gets offense from every corner of the starting lineup, and second-line middie Michael Shakespeare is dangerous too.  The Terps are a little less explosive, but also a little slower-paced and deliberate.  There's little divide between "playmakers" and "scorers" - Shakespeare and doorstep attackman Jay Carlson (also not a starter) are the only ones who can be called finishers only.  Leading scorer Joe Cummings isn't lighting the world on fire with his numbers (12 G, 7 A) but he does put 65% of his shots on net.  Overall, it's a veteran, patient unit.

Dare I say it, however - UVA might actually have an advantage on faceoffs, helping to keep the ball on the right side of the field.  FOGO Curtis Holmes won 63% of faceoffs - last year.  This year, he's a shade under .500.  And it's not due to the competition; most of Maryland's opponents are .500ish teams at the X.  So that's maybe a little puzzling, but Ryan Benincasa is winning at a .607 pace, and if he can take advantage of Holmes's sudden mediocrity, it should bode well.

-- Outlook

Never say never with Maryland.  The game is on the road, and it's supposed to rain overnight in Maryland, meaning the field - if the past is any guide - will be a disgusting slop.  And to a certain extent, you always throw out the records with these teams.  That said - UVA is the better team.  Nothing happened last week to convince me UVA can't contend with and beat the best teams in the country, which is as it should be.  I think Maryland's individual scoring numbers, which are fairly low, could lull us as fans into a false sense of security, but I also think as long as patience rules the day, UVA will break down the Terp defense.

-- Final score: UVA 12, Md. 9

week-and-a-half review

If you go to Peru for more than a couple days, and you don't visit Machu Picchu, you're doing it wrong.  It's like going to Egypt and not seeing the Pyramids.  You could do that, but why?

I'm baaaaaaaack!

Time to find out just what I missed.  And as a thank-you for sticking around, I'm peppering this week's posts with some of the better pictures from the trip.  Let's get into what I missed.  You saw it all, of course, while I was out gallivanting around Peru, but you don't know my opinion on it, and my opinion is what this place is for, so let's get started. We'll review both UVA's week - and mine.

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The city of Lima was built by the Spanish on the Rimac River; “rimaq” is the Quechua word for “talking,” and so the river is called the Talking River. “Lima” is simply a corruption of “Rimac,” making Lima a “talking city” if you’re willing to stretch the etymology a little. This is highly appropriate: in modern times, Lima is the City of the Honking Horns. Drivers in Lima, of which there are millions at any given time, beep their horns for any and every reason, with little respite, leading to the placement of signs in some areas that say “Silencio” with a “No Horns” graphic.
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FOOTBALL

-- Attrition. You know it's gonna happen, and last week it happened. Or at least, it was announced. Of the three that will leave (QB Ross Metheny, DE Thompson Brown, and WR Kevin Royal) the one that'll be most missed is Brown, but if things go downhill it'll be Metheny. Lemme explain: Brown got a lot of praise last year as a freshman and looked like a guy who, if everything panned out just right, could eventually live up to the #91 he was wearing. And pass-rushing could be a problem this year; Brown could've helped in that regard.

That said, we've got a lot of DEs, some of whom might just be even able to record a sack once in a while. Suddenly, though, we're thin at quarterback. There's Rocco, Watford, and two true freshmen. Metheny was a great insurance policy. I was telling people any chance I got that I didn't think Metheny would ever transfer, because he always came off as one of the truest-blue Hoos you'd ever find; oops. He'll play at South Alabama the next two years after getting his degree this spring in three. Not too shabby. You gotta tip your hat to that.

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People who go to Machu Picchu or see its pictures often believe it is one of the highest points in Peru. It’s easy to believe. The valley is thousands upon thousands of feet below, and a bus takes you on a long ride up every one of them. Tall, steep, godlike mountains surround the site, towering thousands of feet above you. It feels like the roof of the Inca world. In truth, it isn’t. Crane your neck up to the highest mountain you can see; the city of Cuzco is a couple thousand feet above it yet. The route the Incas used to get from Cuzco (where Machu Picchu actually got most of its food) was a descent.
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Royal was buried on the depth chart and didn't seem likely to emerge; a shame, I thought he had good potential as the kind of possession receiver that could give you the yards you needed plus three. But his UVA career never got off the ground.

That brings us to 85 exactly for next year, a number that we'll probably drop a little further beneath as time goes by this spring and summer. I've added Drequan Hoskey to the scholarship counters, since I've become almost positive he's getting a track scholarship and therefore counts.

-- Position switches. Going hand-in-hand with the attrition are the position changes laid out by Jeff White, as follows:

- SS Lovante' Battle to FB.
- OT Sean Cascarano to OG.
- C Cody Wallace to OG.
- OG Matt Mihalik to C.
- OG Jay Whitmire to OT.
- DE Marco Jones to DT.
- FS Darius Lee to OLB.
- LB Ausar Walcott to DE.

Whitmire and Jones come as no surprise; it's long been thought that their body types make them more natural for those new positions. But speaking of body types, Ausar Walcott was recruited as a bloody safety. Now he's moved all the way to DE, partly because he's grown and partly because of the shift in philosophy from the big NFL bodies Groh wanted to the speedsters favored by London. No longer do I think that "Walcott to DE" is a motivational tactic.

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Algarrobina is the Peruvian velvet hammer. It’s a sweet cocktail. It’s cake in a glass. The finest, sweetest White Russian pales in comparison to a drink of algarrobina. There is also pisco. If wine were booze, it would be pisco. It’s used to make pisco sours, a gray appetizer cocktail and sort of the national drink of Peru. Want to irritate a patriotic Peruvian? Insinuate that pisco sours – or any of the local cuisine, really – were invented in Chile.
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Battle essentially turns out to be the required fullback move. Someone had to do it; Zach Swanson was the only one on the roster. As for the OL shuffling, I think the main answer there is that Cody Wallace was getting beat out at center. Moving Mihalik there suggests that Wallace wasn't ready and Ross Burbank was eventually going to pass him, if he hadn't already. Mihalik will be the starting center in 2012, it appears.

Cascarano is probably the new starter at left guard in place of Austin Pasztor, but he'll sit the spring and give a couple others a chance to impress.

At the beginning of spring practice, which is next week (GET PUMPED) I'll post a revised depth chart that has all this crap on it, nice and updated and ready to go.

-- UNC. The saga concludes. They'll join Ohio State in postseason jail this year. This doesn't much affect UVA, really. My only take for now is that bowl bans really should wait a year, just to complicate recruiting a little bit. Did you see Ohio State suffer in the recruiting department? They did not.

-- Recruiting board update coming later this week. It gets its own separate post. I'm gonna wait because it looks like the first officially official commitment is on its way. (A handy tip for reading the free portion of pay articles: if a question is asked, like "Is Marshall ready to commit?" it's a hint. The answer is always yes.)

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Before going to Machu Picchu, it’s advisable to take a couple of the other Inca site tours that are offered. You end up on top of other high peaks – the Incas were of the opinion that civilization needed to be as close to the celestial gods as possible – and you stare into the deep valleys and at the high peaks and wonder if the majesty and beauty of these places will detract from the sight of Machu Picchu, at the end of the journey. Don’t worry; it doesn’t.
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BASKETBALL

Eh, I pretty much spoke my piece yesterday. Selection Sunday makes me forget about the ACC tournament. All I can say is I wish we weren't going into this Old West gunfight with three rounds in our six-shooter. What a number the basketball gods did on this team.

I will say that a season sweep over Maryland is a sweet and beautiful thing. It's nice to know that when a Maryland coach inevitably says "we don't lose to Virginia" you can chuckle and know it's the other way round. That said, I want to make some noise in the tournament so bad, because I hate that the legacy of the 2012 Virginia Cavaliers might be "lost every game against good competition through no fault of their own."

Even the writers are being twits. Tyler Zeller won ACC POY for wearing a UNC uniform. OK, OK.... Zeller is a legitimate winner. He's about as good as Mike Scott and dominated the two games against UVA, so it's easy to see why the writers chose him, even if we don't like it. (That said, Roy Williams freely admitted the game plan was to get Mike Scott in foul trouble. You start nothing but five-stars, we start nothing but three-stars, and even then you're scared you can't stop Mike Scott without pretending to be fouled? I think we know who Roy Williams thinks the POY is, even if he won't admit it.)

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You can’t drink the water in Peru. The 24-hour Consequences await those who do. You’re forced to carry bottled water around, but it’s not all bad; it offers an excuse to sample some of the many exotic fruit juices that Peru has to offer, like lucuma and tuna. Tuna juice sounds like a really bad idea until you remember that the Spanish word for tuna is “atun.” Tuna’s just another fruit. Tuna juice, when served con leche (with milk), is bright neon green and tastes a little like the banana milkshakes my dad used to make for us growing up.
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Scott did make all-ACC first team in the lock of the century; the only drama was whether he'd be unanimous, which he wasn't because Caulton Tudor and one other writer, probably also from the state of North Carolina, are trolling dillweeds. Tudor came in for a lot of flak from UVA fans for not voting Scott to the first team, but give him this; he had the sack to admit it. Whoever else is just a coward. That said, Tudor is part of the Old Media that thinks New Media - blogs and such - are "not up to journalistic standards" and therefore not worth anyone's time. Next time you see a print writer bagging on us Internet hobbyists, remind yourself: "Caulton Tudor voted Mike Scott to the second team literally because he doesn't wear a North Carolina jersey."

The dance show was going really well and everything was colorful, loud, and very impressive. Then these two came out and redefined the meaning of "take it to another level."

BASEBALL

Last weekend was a really good time to be in Peru with the team going 1-3 against the kind of competition we should be sweeping. That led to a change in the rotation; you now have Whit Mayberry pitching on Fridays, Scott Silverstein on Saturday, and sophomore Artie Lewicki on Sundays. For now. I got a feeling more shuffling is coming down the road. Man, did we get spoiled with last year's rotation.

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Machu Picchu looks small in pictures. It even looks small in person. It’s only when you actually walk the place – and climb it – do you become acutely aware of its size. But then, Machu Picchu isn’t even the actual name of the city. Nobody knows what the Incas called it. Machu Picchu means “old mountain” in Quechua, and since the place was entirely lost to history and posterity, when it was rediscovered, they decided to simply give it the same name as the mountain it was attached to.
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I was going to say that that puts the two best pitchers - Branden Kline and Kyle Crockett - in the bullpen, but man, has Kline had an ugly year. He didn't take to the closer's role very well, totally blowing the Friday game against Virginia Tech. Something is wrong. Either physically that he's not telling the coaches, or he's getting one of those pitchers' mental blocks, because his stuff is too good for the 5.12 ERA and 12 walks he's currently sporting.

Besides, Silverstein looks really good. This is the Scott Silverstein we were hoping for when he was a freshman. And the hitting is doing its thing nicely, too. If and when the pitching settles in and catches up, this'll be a dangerous team once again. The future looks bright with these freshmen - guys like Nate Irving and Derek Fisher have not had much growing pains to go through - and it's possible we won't have to wait til next year for the future to get here. It's hopefully reminiscent of 2009 when the team finished 6th in the ACC, caught fire, and made Omaha.

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Two bratty kids were on our tour bus. They were about seven. The boy was a little older than his sister. They spoke unaccented English to each other and unaccented Spanish to their frazzled and somewhat defeated parents. At a place with intricate carvings that still ran water, one of them exclaimed to the tour guide, “Es como un baño!” It’s a sacred Incan fountain inside what was once a temple. Un baño, indeed. The tour guide looked even more irritated than when the two gringoes on the bus were the only ones that raised their hand in response to the question about whether anyone needed the English translation of the spiel.
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Better get our shit together soon, though, because national TV is coming next weekend; a fully-televised series against Florida State. The bats pulled off some beautiful comebacks against VT this weekend to maintain instate superiority - wonder if we'll get that chance against FSU? Still, if we're to be the Cardiac Cavs again this year, I can get onboard with that.

LACROSSE

Woot.

I did make it back in time to see the Cornell game. And I was impressed with the Cornell defense. They were fast and athletic and really gave our guys trouble in attacking the net. That may be the only team to hold us in the single digits all year. Because I'm really impressed with our offense. Other years, we've been loaded, but it hasn't felt right. This year, we're loaded and it looks and feels great. Sustainable. This team passes the ball very well and you can be doing everything right on defense and oh well we scored anyway. I'm not in favor of a shot clock at all, but if one were instituted this year we'd probably score 25 a game.

You have to also love the play of Rob Fortunato yesterday. "Only" a .529 save percentage, but some of those saves were impressive. Fortunato is .624 on the season and has long since answered any questions about his abilities. He's a guy we can win the title with. .624 isn't likely to last, because the stiff competition is ahead, but still; this is good stuff here, and for at least one more season there are no issues in net.

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One of those things you don’t think about when you cross the equator, but seems obvious the moment you notice it: the moon is upside down.
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I mean, we even seem to have fixed the faceoff issue. Ryan Benincasa killed it against Syracuse, winning 20 of 28, and then struggled against Cornell but whatever because Mick Parks came in and won 9-of-16 against a team that's winning 63% on the season. Parks is a freshman, which is awesome news; dare I even say that the future looks really bright on faceoffs? If so, look out world. Letting UVA be a make-it-take-it team is a thrilling and deadly idea.

While UVA was beating Cuse and the Rumbling Bears (a name for a band if there ever was one) the rest of the ACC was making the conference look really, really bad. UNC lost to Lehigh and a down-year Pennsylvania. Duke got smoked by Loyola. Maryland lost to UMBC. Seriously, you guys? Bracketology comes out next week and it'll be interesting to see if these guys make it. It's a lot of fun that we still have the team that the rest of the world sees at the top - again - and is probably getting sick of it.

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The idea of an “Incan temple” sounds impressive, but in actuality they’re small and utilitarian, nothing like the soaring cathedrals of Christianity. For one thing, the masses weren’t allowed inside, and for another, they’re among the only buildings that actually employed the technique that the Incas are known for, of carving the stones so intricately they didn’t need mortar. That was a royal pain in the butt and couldn’t be done by the average Joe Inca, so they didn’t build massive edifices this way. More's the pity, really.
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It's time now to settle into the every-Saturday-is-lacrosse-day routine, like a mini-football season. Pity those who don't get that kind of chance in the spring and are reduced to making RV trips to the spring game and sit in the upper deck to get their fix. Maybe we can convert a few of the masses to be Virginia lacrosse fans since their schools don't have it.

Two more games - Ohio State and Johns Hopkins - and then the ACC schedule begins. I wonder what the ACC will look like by then? Duke has tests against Harvard, Duke, Georgetown and Syracuse, and UNC must play Hopkins and Maryland and Duke, and Maryland has UNC and Villanova, all before their games with UVA. Tough matchups, and these teams have all had some flaws exposed. It could turn out that our game with Hopkins is the determinant of the #1 seed.

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The next time I fly across country, coast to coast, I will give strong consideration to going via Panama City, even though it means going through international customs. Latin American airlines still serve inflight meals. Even the really cheap airlines. I’d never had an inflight meal. Almost all my airline experiences are post-9/11, when airlines tried like hell to contain exploding costs and did so by cutting all the perks. Not the ones way down south. Copa Airlines has something that puts excitement on the lips of every red-blooded, right-thinking male in the whole world and a lot of the ladies, too: Free Booze.
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weekend review

What'd you do this weekend?  Decent time?  I hear you had a little snow down there.  Like four inches or so in Richmond?  (It's cute how you think that's a "snowstorm" down there, although it's been such a weird winter here in Michigan that four inches is at least half the entire winter's total.)  If you're a Virginia fan and only a Virginia fan, it was a halfway decent weekend all things considered, but this kind of weekend is why I highly recommend ardent double-fanhood.  Actually, now that I go to grad school, it's really more like two and a half.  I had a great frickin' weekend, part of which involved going down and watching my grad school beat up on JMU in hoops.

But I'm not here to brag on Michigan's eight(!!!) four-star recruits that committed this weekend, or the weekend sweep in hockey**, or the big win over Ohio State in basketball.  Actually, yes, I kind of want to brag about the Ohio State thing.  That one is germane to UVA hoops, because the win over Michigan is probably the difference between being parked on the tournament bubble, and not.  Michigan is in great position to get at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title, and, depending on tiebreakers, the top seed in the B1G tournament.  So having very compellingly beaten them earlier this year gives UVA a Big Thing on which to hang our hat.  (Now you see why I say that if Michigan and UVA ever play each other in something, I root for the team that needs the win more.)

Of course, if you're trying to get to the tournament, it helps to beat the teams you're supposed to.  Maryland is a team we're supposed to beat, and 71-44 is the kind of beating you always want to hang on Maryland.  It's proof that our defense is our Linus blanket.  It's always there, comforting and secure.  The offense can be a ticking time bomb, but lo and behold if Malcolm Brogdon AND Sammy Zeglinski hit a few shots, then this is what happens.  Tony Bennett is starting to find ways to make opponents regret allocating their biggest guy to guard Mike Scott, because those guys aren't used to running through screens at the elbow.

Terrapin football has Randy Edsall, who's fantastically easy to lampoon because (among other reasons) he's being a huge twat about the Danny O'Brien transfer.  (In fairness, Edsall's percentage is pretty good, as he didn't decide to publicly be an ass about the other 23 guys who left in one year.)  VT's Seth Greenberg is a funny guy too.  Unfortunately for the humor section, though, it appears at first glance that Maryland has replaced one classy hoops coach with another.  Mark Turgeon couldn't stop talking about how well Virginia played and refused to use the 36-hour turnaround from Thursday as an excuse.  That said, he did produce an amusing bit of honesty in his post-game interview: "If we put Terrell (Stoglin) on the point, we might go 17 possessions where nobody else touches the ball."

Would that be worse, though?  Maryland had all of three assists on Saturday.  They might still only have three assists with ballhog Stoglin running the point, but they might cut down the turnovers; Maryland had fifteen.  A 1-to-5 A/T ratio will lose you every game.  As expected, Jontel Evans totally abused Nick Faust on the defensive end; Faust had five turnovers and no assists.  Evans is seven inches shorter than Faust, but weighs 13 pounds more, and poor Faust looked like a lanky ninth-grader trying to beat a tornado one-on-one.

Maryland fans fully expect a win in the rematch, naturally, but the truth is that the ACC continues to shake out into the four-tier system I identified two weeks ago.  At 10-2 and now a full three games ahead of the pack are Tobacco Road and FSU.  At 7-5 is the bubble trio of UVA, NC State, and Miami; the main thing keeping us actually off the bubble is that Michigan game as well as a few road wins OOC.  The kids with loaded guns are either 5-7 or 4-8, and the only one of those without a win against a higher-caste team is Maryland.  Then there's the win farms at the bottom, all with 10 losses, where the rest of the league goes to puff up the left side of their W-L column.  Sadly, there aren't any games left against the win farms; only two road tilts against the loaded-gun children and two home games against the high seeds.

**Seriously, wouldn't it be neat to have a varsity hockey team?  We'd be terrible, I don't doubt, but I take a perverse delight in rooting for shitty teams because there aren't any expectations and you can just blow off some steam and enjoy the game without worrying about the consequences of losing.  This is the part of my fanhood that's been carefully honed and developed by the Millen Era of the Detroit Lions.

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In the non-revenue world, things went according to plan and then some this weekend.  The ladies wrapped up a fifth straight ACC title in the pool, finishing 233 points ahead of their closest competition.  Four of the 11 teams at the meet didn't score that many points.  Of the 18 swimming events, UVA won 10, and took a 1-2-3 in the 200 backstroke.

And how about a sport that gets hardly any love around here, because I don't really know anything about it?  I refer of course to wrestling, which polished off its regular season at 11-1 in dual meets, the best record in the history of UVA rasslin'.  For the next-best record, you have to go back to 1974.  Wrestling coach Steve Garland is a member of the Craig Littlepage Hired Me coaching fraternity that includes guys like Brian O'Connor, and he directs the latest up-and-coming program in the school's repertoire.  It would be a terrific thing to get really good at wrestling, because wrestling is one of only two sports where Virginia Tech has the better program.**  (Guess who is responsible for the lone blemish?)  Getting to the point where we have forced VT to second-place status in the state (or worse) in every sport is the ultimate goal, and to take the rasslin' title from them would be a great next step. The team won a surprise ACC title two years ago and might just do it again this year, too.

**Football is obviously the other - for now.  There might be more but this is the kind of claim I can make without much fear that I'll be corrected by a Hokie, since in Blacksburg, sports are divided into two categories: football and money leeches.

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The baseball team could've started off a little better.  The weekend in South Carolina finished up 1-1-1 thanks to a rainout, and I hate ties because it's this little -1 that'll hang off the end of the record all year like a little vestigial appendix.  The loss was to Boston College, which took a surprise 3-0 record home.  Even Coastal Carolina had trouble, and that school is sort of the Butler of mid-major baseball, minus any final four appearances.

It really drives home the issues facing the team this year, though.  The winning runs scored by Boston College came from two passed balls by catcher Nate Irving, followed by a Branden Kline mistake that ended up on the wrong side of the fence.  In years past, the bats might have overcome that issue, but the hitting this year is still three-quarters potential.  The bats waited til the CCU game to break out, instead.  I'm going to write off the tie against JMU as a product of playing in rain that would've washed out 90% of baseball games much sooner than it eventually did.  The fielding is what let the team down and gave up a 4-2 lead, but you can't draw any conclusions from that when the ball is sopping wet.

And speaking of things that we expected to look better: 9-8 over Drexel might've caused a few raised eyebrows, too.  I mean, shouldn't we beat them by more than one goal?  Is there something wrong with the offense that caused the output to be limited to nine goals?

Well, no.  This is exactly why I started doing lacrosse efficiency stats.  See, last year, UVA averaged more than 35 offensive possessions per game, the second-most in the country.  And we scored on 35% of those possessions.  Against Drexel we had only 26 OPs.  And that wasn't the fault of lousy faceoff work (won 12 of 21) or bad clearing (13 of 15.)  Nope, it was just a slow-paced game.  60 offensive possessions and 68-70 total is your average lacrosse game; this one had only 49 OPs and 52 total.  It was just a very slow-paced game.

In that light, the offensive production was just fine.  UVA's O-rating for the game was 16.81; last year's total was 16.64.  Drexel's excellent goalie, Mark Manos, saved only five of 14 shots on net.  We got nine goals from seven players, and better yet, seven assists from six players.  And not a single point from Steele Stanwick, either.  Owen Van Arsdale was the offensive star, and two goals came from Rob Emery, too.  Young'uns.  UVA was badly outshot, 41-24, but it hardly mattered; we did a much better job of getting our shots on net, and Rob Fortunato saved 11 of 19 SOG.

Could I fret a little about the defense?  Yeah, I could.  Eight goals is a little too many.  Drexel's O-rating (and our D-rating) was 15.81, rather above the D-I average of about 14.10.  But there are too many positives to come out of this game to get all worried.  Ryan Benincasa was excellent on faceoffs (and freshman Mick Parks held his own), and there was only one penalty called on the Hoos the whole game.  Plus a huge ground-ball advantage for UVA as well.  The world will probably look at the 9-8 final score and a few of them will conclude Virginia is overrated.  Not to worry: a deep dive into the refreshing tempo-free pool should give you all the peace of mind you need.

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Small bullets:

-- The multi-year scholarship rule barely survived an override vote.  This is proof only that the rule for D-I membership needs to be tightened; it's out of hand when a school like Chicago State, which has the bare minimum of required sports and sucks at all of them, has an equivalent vote to the Texases and Ohio States and such of the world, which have nine-figure budgets.  The requirements for D-I membership were established ages ago; it's only a natural consequence of expanding economies and populations that more and more schools would be able to meet them.  And of course, the more FGCUs and Nebraska-Omahas and Presbyterians that make the leap, the more they'll be able to outvote the schools that help keep their budgets afloat.  There are two reasons they don't tighten up the requirements and split up D-I: one, some of the conferences would be torn asunder as half their schools failed to make the grade.  I think we'd all survive, though.  Number two: none of the HBCU's would make the cut, and such a move would have Al Sharpton up in the NCAA's grill faster than you can say "race card."

Oh, and #3: any move toward such a split would instantly be massively downvoted, because we're this close to having the FGCUs and Chicago States in charge of this thing.

Anyway, the multi-year scholarship thing is a great thing.  Schools that complain that multi-year schollies would be used as a recruiting tool are stupid.  That's the point.  They benefit the athlete, which is the point of the whole "college sport" thing.  That's like arguing City Council should award the contract to the highest bidder instead of the lowest, because if they don't, the city will have more money to spend elsewhere, and that would be bad.  It's such logic-defying argument it renders one speechless, which might've been the point.

-- Want to write a guest post?  This is my attempt to make the site not a barren wasteland during my spring break in Peru, and your chance to get your opinion out there.  Read here for details.  A week and a half or so is the deadline.

weekend review

I like to get the bad stuff out of the way early, which means lacrosse goes first today.  Want to know what's so thoroughly frustrating about this team?  Besides the brainfartitude, there are two huge, gaping flaws in the makeup of this team that prevent it from reaching its potential, which is frankly enormous.

Flaw #1: the obvious inability to win a faceoff.  This frustrates me to no end, not least because I'm about to harp on the problems at the faceoff X after a game in which UVA's faceoff men won 15 of 26 for 57%.  That's not half bad.  It's pretty good.  But you know what makes my head explode?  I've been thinking for a while that Ryan Benincasa should take the majority of the faceoffs, Garrett Ince and Brian McDermott should come in only rarely, if ever, and Chris LaPierre should be the second guy for a change of pace every so often  And then Benincasa wins zero of five against Duke and Ince and McDermott combine for 71%.  I've mentioned before that I think the faceoff problems are basically coaching problems because of the inordinate amount of faceoff violations called on our team, and I think the total lack of consistency also points to coaching.

Flaw #2 is that there is but one player on the offensive side of the field - Steele Stanwick - who can make his teammates better.  And he sat out to rest his foot on Saturday.  For my own sanity I'll just assume that Coach Starsia did that because this game didn't matter half of what the next one did and he wanted that ace in the hole he could throw in next week to change the game around....and not because Stanwick's injury got worse somehow.  I hope to hell not.

This is partly why I have that nagging feeling that the end-of-career fade is beginning for Starsia.  For the last decade UVA has had a star attackman that gathers assists nearly as fast as he gathers goals.  Right now that's Stanwick.  In the past it's been Danny Glading, or Ben Rubeor, or Matt Ward, or whatever.  They score and they help their teammates score.  When Stanwick leaves after next season, who'll that be?  Stanwick's talent was immediately evident as a freshman.  You can always tell who the heir apparent is.  Not this time.  It's not Matt White or Rob Emery; the former has disappointed this year and the latter looks like a nice complementary player along the lines of Colin Briggs.  I dunno, maybe I'm overreacting and the reason nobody's really emerged is because of so many upperclassmen in the lineup, but I doubt it; Stanwick and even Chris Bocklet, not to mention the players of the past, played their way in and made themselves indispensible.

But I digress.  Two major flaws in this team and we still only lose to Duke and Syracuse by two goals.  The talent is there to blow the competition out of the water.  But there are some missing elements.  It's like a Corvette with four-cylinder engine.

It doesn't help that we drive it with the parking brake on and the gas cap hanging off.  The silly mistakes are still there.  They weren't as obvious as against UNC, but there they were.  Example: Shamel Bratton jogging down the field after receiving a nice outlet pass following a turnover and setting up the offense.  Fine, except....you're Shamel Bratton and nobody's covering you!  Jog?  Shamel should've been sprinting downfield and ripping a shot at a corner of the net.  If it misses, fine....then go set up the offense.  Instead, Shamel jogged across midfield and the team proceeded to huck the ball around the box for thirty seconds before lobbing a beach ball at Duke's net, which of course was saved.  I'm not questioning Shamel's effort here, I'm questioning the recognition.  The Brattons are the kings of "argh don't do th.....YES!"  Would've been the time for it.

So as a punishment for losing to Duke like we always do, we get to play Duke again on Friday.  Let's hope Steele Stanwick is the difference.  I'm not brimming with optimism here.

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Fortunately, there's a cure for that: the baseball team.  As punishment for beating our lacrosse team on Saturday, the baseball team beat Duke twice on Sunday - first by ripping their hearts out when they thought they had a real chance to steal a win, and then by stomping on it to the tune of 18-4 in the second game.

Friday was easy, of course, at least after the first three innings.  Danny Hultzen served up seven innings of Danny freakin' Hultzen, although the early going was a little rocky while the UVA hitters tried to figure out how to get to Duke's soft-tossing lefty Dillon Haviland.  Eventually they figured that out and before you knew it, it was 10-0, which is how the game ended.  Shutout woo.

Sunday's game 1 was quite the pitchers' duel.  UVA scratched out two runs against Dennis O'Grady and Duke did the same on a two-run double off of closer Kline, in relief of Tyler Wilson and his disgustingly efficient outing.  Wilson took the blame for the runs but it wasn't fair the way he was pitching.  Duke then  brought scheduled third game starter Marcus Stroman in to finish it up.

Not a bad move, by the way.  A few observers criticized the move but I liked it.  For Duke, I mean.  With Duke's miserable pitching staff you don't look for two of three against UVA.  You look to steal one where you can get it, and so they went all-in and brought Stroman in, figuring that because he's a starter and the best pitcher they have, he could work some long innings in what you had to assumed would be an extra-inning game, and outlast UVA's bullpen while Duke worked on manufacturing a run.  Stroman throws 95 and has the control of a kamikaze pilot.  He plunked the first two batters he faced, which appeared to draw a warning from the home-plate ump - "one more of those and you're gone" is my bet, because UVA's third batter walked on four straight pitches that were so far outside they'd have been behind a hitter in the other batter's box.  Bases loaded, none out, and UVA managed to score not even once.  Then they did the same thing in the 10th.  And then because baseball is a screwed-up game, two straight two-out base hits plated the winning run in the 11th.

Having run out of pitchers who can get hitters out, and having forgotten how to field fly balls, Duke fell apart in the third game and UVA won by 14.  I can't decide which pop-up I enjoyed more: the one that landed about five yards behind second base because three Duke fielders collided on their way to it, or the one that landed about five feet in front of home plate because the Duke pitcher lost it in the wind.  In the nine-run third, two of the three outs Duke recorded were sacrifice bunts.  After that inning UVA had just as many hits as Duke and nine more runs.

If you paid attention to the starting rotation, you noticed Will Roberts got his ACC shot on Sunday, and you probably also noticed it didn't go too great.  Roberts settled down some, but all in all gave up eight hits in five innings.  But he walked nobody, which is the kind of thing that makes pitching coaches happy.  For the same reason Cody Winiarski didn't get yanked after a couple tough outings here and there (that being: Brian O'Connor doesn't have a knee-jerk reaction to things) Roberts will almost certainly start next Sunday as well, and Cody will be the weekday guy for now.  Both will be absolutely critical come the postseason.

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Newsy bits:

- Ausar Walcott is back on the football team, about a week after his charges were dropped.  Because I trust London on matters of discipline, it seems to be a good indication that Walcott in fact was less involved than his teammates in the Great Harrisonburg Party Invasion.  But he's now buried at defensive end.  I don't even want to guess at why, but playing time there is in far shorter supply than it is at linebacker.  The defense is still very much a work in progress and keeping track of the shuffles is sufficient to drive a man crazy, so I'm not going to read much past that into the move for now.

- Speaking of legal matters, the George Huguely murder trial will begin next February.  Surprised at the length of time?  Don't be.  It is the way of the court system.

- When Mike Tobey committed to UVA in January, I thought he looked like a player who'd start attracting a lot more attention as time went on.  Remember, he was supposed to reclassify to 2013 and then changed his mind, and I really think Tony Bennett is a big part of the reason why he changed his mind.  Bennett didn't want another two years to go by for people to get a look at what Tobey could do.  This is why.  Besides Tobey, the other interesting name on that list is 2013 recruit Anthony Barber, who UVA is recruiting pretty hard.  Remember that name because he's a possible answer to the point guard question.  I want him at UVA just because his nickname is Big Cat, which is the kind of old-old-school Harlem Globetrotter nickname they don't even make any more.

- Speaking of bright futures in basketball, Joe Lunardi's way too early bracketology for 2012 has UVA sliding into the ill-conceived at-large play-in round.  (Look, I don't care what the NCAA calls those Dayton games: UAB and USC didn't actually make the tourney this year.)  Lunardi's probably about right in what our expectations should be for the season.  The ACC will be much better, especially if Jordan Williams and Reggie Jackson and Harrison Barnes and whoever else stay in college, and our highly-improved team might not beat it's 7-9 mark from this season but 7-9 will look a hell of a lot better.  Especially if having Mike Scott back with all these freshmen turned sophomores and a functional Assane Sene and a redshirted James Johnson and everything else means we don't screw the pooch against the Seattles and Iowa States of the world.

- Lastly, you remember how there used to be highlight videos around these parts?  There haven't been this year because of a change in my living, and therefore TV, status.  But I think I've got that covered now.  The solution to AT&T's fascist unwillingness to let you download your recordings from DVR to computer arrived on a big brown truck today.  It's hopefully only a matter of time before videos are firing again.

weekend review

Unemployment is funemployment. CBS's partnership with the Turnerplex of cable channels to broadcast the Dance couldn't have come at a better time for me. I've always wanted a job that would allow me to watch the first round of the tournament from noon to midnight; failing that, the next best thing is not having a job while waiting for grad school. So if you thought I was a little content-light these four days, blame the best basketball weekend of the year.

We might not have had a dog in the fight, but that doesn't mean there's no hoops news to be had:

- With Sidney Lowe and Paul Hewitt fired from their respective employers, ACC coaching figures to improve next season. One expects NC State won't be stupid enough this time around to hire a guy who went 79-228 in the League just because he's an alum. Naturally, Richmond's Chris Mooney and VCU's Shaka Smart have only not been hired somewhere else yet because they happen to still be technically eligible for the national title. Because it's how things go for UVA, expect both instate coaching hotshots to be ACC rivals about 24 hours after their eventual elimination. Maybe we can get Utah to hire one of them instead.

- How incredibly fitting that Jeff Allen fouled out of his final collegiate game. I will truly miss this guy. Comedic gold, every time. Gimme one more salute, for old times' sake.


There ya go.

- Speaking of comedic gold, I wish just once I could hear Charles Barkley and Bobby Knight call a UVA game. Barkley's not for everyone; there are a lot of people who think he's too much of a marblemouth. Well, he is a marblemouth, but how many analysts do we need telling us very seriously that such-and-such a team needs to defend better or else they might lose? Barkley doesn't act like Mr. Serious Man all the time.

- You're aware that the administration passed on the CBI; here, it sounds like confirmation that they could have had a spot if they'd wanted it. If they didn't go this year, when the freshmen could have used any game experience they got and the seniors had to go out with the memory of Miami in their minds, I'm guessing they never ever will. Dunno about you but in the future I'm going to just assume the CBI is never an option.

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In sports we play good, the lax team beat Ohio State, which makes me feel warm and fuzzy. OSU is something of a threat this year to make the tournament - more so than I had them figured for before the season anyway - so the win should be a strong one when it comes time to seed teams in the tournament. See below for current bracketology, which has the Buckeyes seeded 7th.

Even more encouraging was Ryan Benincasa's 14-for-19 faceoff performance. I think this is evolving into a situation where there still might not be a truly 100% reliable performer at the X (Chris LaPierre looked like he might provide a spark there but then went 1-for-5 against OSU) but there might be a hot hand for the day. I guess we just hope we find that hot hand early in the game. It should be noted that OSU isn't an especially good or bad faceoff team themselves - they're just enh.

There still aren't as many assists as I'd like to see, though. Again just 50%. This isn't a problem against the OSUs of the world, and probably won't be one against Hopkins either, but the ACC schedule will test the offense's ability to score against coherent defenses.

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The standings don't show it, but they will: UVA is now the ACC's baseball team to beat. A 2-1 series win over FSU puts them at 5-1. Miami and Georgia Tech are 6-0 but they've both been feasting on the dregs. It's UVA's turn, with Miserable Maryland coming to town and then a road series against VT. Poly was a hot team last year to make some noise, but everyone who could swing a stick or throw a ball graduated and they're back to where they're thoroughly unlikely to make the ACC tournament.

Of course, play that FSU series again and any number of outcomes could result. Three extra-inning games and three one-run margins. You probably won't see a series that close anywhere in the country for the rest of the year. FSU had better keep playing that well all season because I expect a 1 or a 2 seed in the ACC tournament and they'd better not be on our side of the pool. This should make for a pretty excellent championship rematch. GT is a threat to mess that up, but I think it's been well-established for now who the top teams are. FSU barely even dropped in the rankings, but the consensus now in all five polls is that Florida-Vanderbilt-Virginia is the 1-2-3 combo.

It shouldn't be glossed over that Danny Hultzen is now UVA's all-time strikeouts leader. 12 on Friday (and no walks) gives him 62 for the season and 292 for his career, two more than Seth Greisinger. Danny's got a great chance to top the single-season record of 146 before the regular season even ends.

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Been a long time since I took a whack at the recruiting board, so here goes. Also, don't forget the map.

- Removed ATH Germone Hopper, LB Timothy Cole, and LB Devon Johnson from red, who don't seem too interested. At some point the red section becomes full of names who are there just for the sake of having a red section, but for now even that section has realistic names in it. Actually, Johnson may return at some point, but he's committed to Marshall, and there ain't room for everyone in this town. There's adding to be done and someone's gotta go and it might as well be the guy who's given a verbal elsewhere.

- Added CB Terrell Burt, ATH Der'Woun Greene, WR Desmond Frye, and TE Joshua Parris to green.

- Added DT Roderick Chungong, LB Noor Davis, and LB Kaiwan Lewis to yellow.

- Moved LB Trey Edmunds from yellow to green.

- Moved QB Brendan Nosovitch from green to yellow.

- Moved LB Quanzell Lambert from red to yellow.

- Moved RB I'Tavius Mathers and OL Greg Pyke from yellow to red.

- Moved ATH Devin Fuller (whose recruitment has exploded since I last checked in) from green to red.

Tis the season for a huge recruiting board. I'm semi-arbitrarily drawing the line there; no more additions without corresponding subtractions.

weekend review: championship edition, again

Y'know what, let's just do this the same way we did last week....

SWIMMING

Huzzah, again. The men followed up the ladies to sweep the pool in Chapel Hill and bring home the third ACC championship of the season. And it turned out not to be quite as close as it looked like it might. Didn't even come down to the last relay, but we won that anyway, so, whee. Here are the results, and a summary below:

1st places:
800 free relay
500 free
50 free
200 free relay
200 free
400 medley relay
100 free
400 free relay

1st-place swimmers (individual only):
Matt McLean (500 free)
Scot Robison (50 free, 200 free, 100 free)

NCAA 'A' cuts:
800 free relay (Azar/Smith/Robison/McLean)
200 free (Robison)
400 free relay (Robison/Geissinger/Azar/McLean)

NCAA 'B' cuts:
200 medley relay (Oleson/Casey/Geissinger/Azar)
500 free (McLean, Snawerdt, Smith, Ankosko)
200 IM (Houser, Azar, Casey, Inwood)
50 free (Robison, Geissinger)
200 free relay (Robison/Geissinger/Oleson/Azar)
400 IM (Howser, Ankosko, Hayes, Inwood)
100 fly (Oleson, Geissinger)
200 free (McLean, Azar, Smith, Snawerdt)
100 breast (Casey, Norstedt)
100 back (Oleson, Johnson, Murray, Wren)
400 medley relay (Oleson/Casey/Geissinger/Robison)
1650 free (McLean, Snawerdt, Smith, Ankosko)
200 back (Johnson, Murray, Wren)
100 free (Robison, Geissinger)
200 breast (Azar, Norstedt, Casey)
200 fly (Houser)

ACC records:
200 free (Robison, 1:32.45)
100 free (Robison, 42.42)

Miscellaneous domination notes: Took 1-2-3-5 in the 500 free and 200 free ... won 800 free relay by 6 and a half seconds (that's over half the pool length) ... won every freestyle event but the 1650.

We didn't win many individual events, but we just killed the relays and owned everything that had "freestyle" in it. There are a lot of those events, so it's nice to be deep there. And as you might guess from all those NCAA cut times, we're pretty deep everywhere else too, if not quite elite. Scot Robison was the Most Valuable Swimmer, and as you can see was very, very deserving, but I can't let this go without a shout for John Azar, who gets my nod for Ironman.

Azar anchored the 200 medley relay - for him, that meant a pure-speed, balls-to-the-wall sprint - and then got back in and led off the 800 free relay (so for him, a 200 free) on the same evening. I think he was the only swimmer on any team to swim both events, let alone anchor one and lead off the next. And this former swimmer thought in his swimming days that the 200 free was the worst event in history, as it's not quite a sprint but not exactly a distance race where you can lay off the first few lengths, either. Oh, Azar also swam the 200 breast - a very difficult endurance-ish race that doesn't exist on the high school level. Oh, and the 200 IM, which you start off with 50 yards of the most torturous stroke known to man - the butterfly. Gutsy meet.

So. ACC champs again, woot. Give Bernardino a raise for pulling a comfortable winning lineup out of what looked like it'd be a very close meet. Whatever it takes to make sure that man is UVA's swim coach for the next thirty years.

BASKETBALL

What did you expect without Sylven Landesberg?

Hell, what did you expect with Sylven Landesberg?

BASEBALL

Nice to know the bats are in good working order, yes? I'd like to know what Keith Werman's been eating for breakfast, because he's 10-for-15 on the season.

We can hit, that's been established. The pitching still needs to settle out a bit though. Some of our guys have been their usual lights-out selves, and I'm looking mainly in the direction of Danny Hultzen and Kevin Arico here. All isn't roses, though. I'd say Cody Winiarski still hasn't put the iron grip on the starter's job yet, despite the seven strikeouts on Sunday. URI isn't a chump team, but they're the kind we shouldn't be giving up more than maybe three runs to. Tyler Wilson has had a really rough start, too.

Wilson should be fine. We saw last year what he can do for us in that middle relief role, and it's high-quality workhorse stuff. He'll get settled. Winiarski is still mostly an unknown quantity, though, as are most of the guys who might step up if O'Connor decides to go in a different direction. Will Roberts is probably the most well-known, and that's not saying much, what with only 11 appearances last year. Eventually you'd have to figure Branden Kline will be eased into a starting role too, beginning as a second weekday starter and going from there.

We have one weekend left to sort it out, because after that is Florida State.

LACROSSE

Since I'm talking about lacrosse, that must mean it's time to harp on faceoffs again. The bane of existence for the UVA lax fan. You might remember me mentioning that Stony Brook returned last year's #1 faceoff guy in the nation, so our guys had a big test this week, and.....they did really, really well. Adam Rand was that guy, and we held him to a measly 11-of-24. Ryan Benincasa was a sparkling 12-of-16. This may not mean we will be excellent on faceoffs going forward, but for sure, it means we can be.

Now just tighten up that first-quarter defense. Adam Ghitelman should not have to make seven saves in a period, ever. I think it's clear, even after three games against non-elite competition, we really miss Mike Timms and Matt Kelly. 'Specially Timms.

So. It's Syracuse week, and it's a rare chance to play the game at Klockner and not a neutral or road site. So let's keep the snow off the ground in Charlottesville this week, OK, because having to play that game on the Turf Field would suck. The weather forecast has it getting steadily warmer all week in Charlottesville with Saturday getting up to 52 degrees and Sunday being a balmy 55. No snow. Klockner plz.

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Through circumstances that actually were almost completely under my control, I only put three posts up last week, which is some kind of laziness record for me. Not going to be a lot better about it this week, I'm afraid. Tomorrow, in lieu of posting, I'll be working on the long-promised and not-delivered highlight videos of one of the basketball games I've been sitting on. Probably Miami, because I've been sitting on it longer. This is so as to do my small part to hopefully break the string of bad juju the basketball team has been dealing with. (I think I just set some kind of record for two-letter words in a row.) It's a good time to try, because I've got tickets to the Wednesday game at BC and I'd rather they won that one.

weekend review: championship edition

Big weekend for 'Hoos of all stripes. Lots of blue and orange being represented in assorted venues around the East Coast - none of them actually in Charlottesville, but hey. Records were set, milestones were reached, history was made, championships were won. Yeah, the basketball team got smoked again, but don't let that cloud your perspective. It was a fine weekend to be a Hoo.

Starting with the biggest accomplishment of the week.....

SWIMMING

Huzzah! Like I told you last week, it's ACC championship time. UVA got conference championship #2 on the year - one of only two schools to earn two so far by the way - and did so once again in dominating fashion. The women's swim team added nearly 30 points to their total from last year and finished with 877.5. The results are here; I will summarize for you.

1st place events:
200 medley relay
800 free relay
200 IM
50 free
200 free relay
100 fly
200 free
100 back
400 medley relay
200 back
100 free
200 breast (tie)
200 fly
400 free relay

1st place swimmers (individual only):
Amanda Faulkner (200 IM)
Lauren Perdue (50 free, 200 free, 100 free)
Lauren Smart (100 fly)
Mei Christensen (100 back, 200 back)
Christine Olson (200 breast)
Liz Shaw (200 fly)

NCAA 'A' cuts:
200 medley relay (Christensen/McDonnell/Smart/Davis)
200 free (Perdue)
100 back (Christensen, Smart)
200 back (Christensen)
200 breast (Olson)

NCAA 'B' cuts:
800 free relay (Narum/Flynn/Harris/Perdue)
500 free (Bachrouche, Harris, Narum, Myers)
200 IM (Faulkner, Crippen, Shaw, McDonnell)
50 free (Perdue, Christensen, Flynn, Davis)
200 free relay (Christensen/Flynn/Perdue/Davis)
400 IM (Crippen, Olson, Bachrouche, Faulkner, Myers)
100 fly (Smart, Shaw), 200 free (Flynn, Harris, Narum, Moores)
100 breast (Olson, McDonnell, Freeman)
100 back (Cavalier (note - yes this is her name and that's awesome), Stewart)

400 medley relay (Christensen/McDonnell/Smart/Perdue)
1650 free (Narum, Bachrouche, Myers, Harris)
200 back (Smart, Stewart)
100 free (Perdue, Davis, Flynn, Moores)
200 breast (McDonnell, Faulkner, Freeman)
200 fly (Shaw, Crippen)
400 free relay (Christensen, Flynn, Moores, Perdue)

ACC records:
200 medley relay (1:37.33)
200 free relay (1:29.25 - meet record only)
200 free (1:43.86)
400 medley relay (3:32.97 - meet record only)
200 breast (2:09.94)

Miscellaneous domination notes: 4 of top 5 and 1-2-3 in 200 IM, and only one is a senior ... 4 of top 6 in 400 IM ... first place in all five relays and 9 of 13 individual events ... five records set and the final relay came within 0:00.02 of setting another one

Perhaps more records would have been toppled if we hadn't set so damn many last year. Oh well.

By the way, the difference between A cuts and B cuts isn't quite as gaping as it might sound. They're actually fairly unnecessary; the NCAA has a maximum number of swimmers they'll invite to their championship for each event. To oversimplify it, they invite all the A cuts and then go one-by-one and invite B cuts til they hit the max. Why not just have one cut time? I don't know. I liked it better in high school where if you swam a state cut time, you got to go to the state meet - period. (Not that I was ever in danger of making it.)

Anyway, as you can see, we're pretty well set to make a splash (HA!) at nationals, which will be nice for Director's Cup purposes. We won't win (not all those swimmers above are going to score points), but the girls finished 12th last year and maybe a top ten finish is on the horizon.

By the way, Lauren Perdue's name shows up a lot, as you might notice. That's because she's really, really good. And she's a freshman. There are some phenomenal swimmers up there, like Christensen, but Perdue is unbelievable. How good? Like, maybe Olympic good. You can use this to convert these yards times (used here) to meters (used in the Olympics.) Right now, that time is just off the pace that would have put her in the 200 freestyle semifinals in Beijing. You have to be elite as all hell to get onto the US national team, and she's not quite there yet. Give it a couple years. You just might see her in London.

But all these ACC teams have some incredible swimmers. I mean, we did let the other teams win four of those individual events, after all. The difference here is we have incredible swimmers in every event two, three, four deep. That's where the meet really is won. In no event did UVA place fewer than two swimmers in the A heat (top 8) and in just under than half of the events, UVA was in four of the eight A lanes, piling up the points. The B heats were similarly stacked with Cavaliers. (Sometimes literally. Tell me this young lady wasn't destined for Virginia.)

Bottom line: congrats to the ladies for kicking ass at the ACC's, and on Wednesday, get ready for the men to do it all over again.

BASKETBALL

Ah, now for the crash back to earth. Let me keep this short and sweet: Until the hoops team re-learns how to shoot the ball, we will go nowhere and there won't be any point in analyzing why. Turnovers, defense, rebounding, size, grueling travel, matchups, none of it matters at this point. We're losing because we can't shoot. It's 2009 all over again. Sylven and Mike Scott can't be effective, because the moment the ball goes inside, whether on a drive or pass, four defenders collapse on it because they don't respect the shooters. Bad offense begets bad defense, just like last year, and the result is ugly.

It does tend to debunk two myths about Dave Leitao's coaching style that were taken as gospel last year:

- The team was shooting poorly because they couldn't get into a rhythm thanks to Dave's incessantly inconsistent substitutions and rotations. No, they couldn't shoot because they can't shoot. A few more games of this will give us a very definitive answer to that particular chicken-or-the-egg question.

- The team's confidence was shot because Dave was screaming at them all the time. No, it was shot because they were losing. A lot. Tony doesn't scream, at least not during games, and don't tell me there's a small part of you that sorta wishes he would, just a little.

LACROSSE

Little closer than it should have been, but the lacrosse team earned Dom Starsia his 200th win at UVA. First college coach ever to rack up 200 wins at one D-I school and 100 more at another.

Part of the reason it was so close is that the Drexel goalie did really well for himself. Last year in our game he earned himself CAA rookie of the week honors for his performance, and statistically he was even better this year: 17 saves against 11 goals. A save percentage over .600 is pretty dern good.

On the one hand, it was nice to see more people besides just Steele Stanwick lighting up the scoreboard. We knew he'd be good, but six other Hoos besides him scored a goal, including hotshot freshman Connor English. (English is from, let's see, Manhasset, NY - I just bet that's on Long Island (checking: aaaaaand, yup) - and damn if Connor English doesn't sound exactly like a kid from Long Island who's really damn good at lacrosse. Between him and Steele Stanwick I think we're all set.)

I'm not sure yet where the faceoffs are going to come from, though. I hope we turn out better than the very average showing we had this weekend. Chad Gaudet was a one-year wonder for us, and he was very good, but his replacements (Benincasa and Ince, mostly) need to prove themselves all over again in his place.

Still: #1 ain't bad. (Even if it's a "tepid" #1.)

BASEBALL

Think this says it all, no?

We're similarly gracing the front pages of the baseball coverage on Rivals and ESPN. (Lax made the same ESPN page as well as the NCAA's.) Wahoo indeed. That's what happens when you're #1. Not just "power rankings," either; Baseball America and Rivals are generally accepted as legit actual rankings. UVA is #1. Just say it. It feels good.

The bats did their thing in Greenville, taking two of three on the road to start the season. That's good enough when the opponent is ranked #11. And I'll tell you what, I'm not even worked up over the disastrous 8th inning on Sunday in which ECU scored 7 and threatened to actually win a game in which they had been facing a 13-4 deficit. A lot of that was thanks to O'Connor's decision to start up the Dan Grovatt and Corey Hunt experiments as relief pitchers. We may not see a lot of that going forward, given the results. Nor am I concerned about Saturday, when the bats fell silent. They came back alive on Sunday, hitting .441 for the day, and Kevin Brandt (ECU's Saturday pitcher), I suspect he's going to be making a name for himself before all's said and done this year. Sunday was a hitting party and everyone was invited. All nine starters in the lineup gathered at least one hit, seven of them got at least two, and Keith Werman managed to be hit by a pitch. Werman has been found to actually be smaller than the strike zone itself, so this is pretty remarkable.

Actually, the only thing that worries me is that Cody Winiarski's debut was a little less than stellar, and Neal Davis had to be brought in to get the last out of the fourth. Yes, ECU has some hotshot bats, but so does most of our ACC competition. Consider the third starter spot still up for grabs, with Will Roberts being another candidate.

All in all, a weekend that true blue 'Hoos should bask in. Never mind the basketball team, Bennett knows what he's doing and they'll come around sure enough. Enjoy the dynasties we have going: one that's reloading, one that's ongoing, one being born in front of your eyes.

snow day ramblings

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee I don't have to go to work today. So comin' at you a little early with the weekend's activities, sport by sport. I'll start with the fastest and most emo:

Basketball

We suck. It's really just depressing anymore. Three games left in the season: first, at Clemson, which is going to be a demolition of epic proportions for several reason. Second, the home finale against Maryland. Third, the tournament game against whoever's sixth-seeded, which will be one of Clemson, Maryland, VT, or BC. I'll admit - the last few games have been competitive and it wouldn't have taken much swing back our way to make this a much sunnier section of the blog. But then again, that's what happens to bad teams - they can't make their own luck.

I'm working on some form of season recap which I plan on posting sometime between the Maryland game and the tournament game. Til then I'm going easy on the basketball stuff. I can only take so much emo.

If you like, you can read the Basketblogpoll breakdown here, as well as those of previous weeks. I should have been pimping this earlier because the arguments of yours truly have been featured in past weeks. Good thing? Sometimes. Sometimes its because your ballot is messed all to hell and you're simply being given your shot at asplaining yourself.

Swimming

Dominance, again. Things are in their rightful order with a sweep of both the men's and women's ACC championships. What's most exciting though is that, as with the women, much of the dominating is done by underclassmen. Particularly in the freestyle, where we have three sophomores and a freshman taking home scads of long-distance points. Any swim team that wants to win any championship has to have a deep base of talented freestylers because free is (in the case of the ACC championships) 8 of 18 swim events, leaving 10 events to be spread among the other four disciplines. This team will be champions for a long time to come with this kind of talent spread.

In particular, Matt McLean, who:

- Won three events
- Took home the most valuable swimmer award
- Made history by being the first ACC swimmer to do that two years in a row, and....
- Is a sophomore

I'm already looking forward to the chance at a three-peat.

Lacrosse

Big win. Big win. The furious comeback we almost gave up, that's a little bit worrisome, but the game was on the road and the crowd was huge for a regular-season lacrosse game - it wouldn't have fit in the JPJA - so I'm willing to overlook that despite the second-half trend this season of letting off the gas. I'm especially happy about two things: Big-time scorers (Glading, Billings, and Shamel Bratton) stepping up in a big-time game, and of course, the excellent advantage on the faceoffs. I'm now officially excited about that. If Gaudet and Ryan Benincasa can keep up the pace they've got going now, it'll pay huge dividends when the games are for all the marbles. VMI is next, and the only real danger here is overlooking a bad team that got sandwiched between two pretty good ones.

Football

Recruiting, obviously. The board is updated with the following:

- Added QB Andrew Hendrix, whom we have offered, to the yellow section. He is a teammate of DE/LB Marcus Rush, a player also in the yellow section but if I had, like, bluish-yellow and reddish-yellow, he'd definitely be closer to blue.

- Added LB Kevin Pierre-Louis to the red section. I meant to do this last week, as he decommitted from Boston College, and completely forgot. I don't think our chances are exactly spectacular though, and he might well end up right back at BC.

- Moved WR E.J. Scott from yellow to blue now that he has his offer. He's looking good for us.

Some notes from the pros regarding our graduates....

- Chris Canty is getting paid, and as a bonus, now you can root for him without having to pull for the Cowboys.

- The Texas traded Sage Rosenfels to the Vikings and replaced him with the Lions' Dan Orlovsky. Meaning? They traded away a guy who was once considered a threat to Matt Schaub's starting job and filled the hole with a guy who did this. Consider Schaub's job more solid than it was a week ago.