For weeks now I've been making all sorts of promises about writing a lacrosse season review, so here's the time to make good on that. We'll see if we can't unearth the secrets behind a losing, NCAA-tournament-less lacrosse season, the first in nearly ten years.
OFFENSE
-- Stick skills. This was about the second or third thing that jumped out at me, but in retrospect, probably the actual most important. When I can, I watch Michigan games too - the Michigan team that's gone 2-26 in its first two years of existence - and the thing that always strikes me hardest in the contrast between Michigan and UVA (and the teams of a caliber that UVA's accustomed to playing) is their stick skills. Michigan's just aren't that good; they're often throwing balls off-target or failing to catch the good ones. It's amazing how much harder it is to play lacrosse when passes are that much less automatic.
This year the contrast was a lot less, and Michigan's didn't get better (much). Simply put, the offense turned the ball over far too much, without any help from the defense. Consider the stats: UVA had 62 fewer turnovers than its opposition, but 55 more caused turnovers - which if you juggle the numbers the right way, means UVA had almost as many unforced turnovers as their opponents. That would be fine if every opponent were a Cornell or a UNC, but there are cupcakes on the schedule too. If UVA played its top opponents even in the unforced turnover department, the cupcakes should create the margin. There was no margin - which means far too many unforced turnovers against teams equipped to take advantage.
Two games stick out: both OSU and UNC (the first game) committed just 1 unforced turnover apiece. Even in games where the opponent had more than we did, we never looked quite that good. And even against VMI we had 8. This was part of the reason the offense sputtered.
-- Lack of midfield athleticism. This was reason number two. It was a rare sight this year to see anyone beat his defender off the dribble, as it were. Shamel Bratton used to do this all the time. In retrospect, guys like Colin Briggs and Brian Carroll could do it too. Ryan Tucker and Rob Emery disappointed in this regard. It limited goal-scoring chances mostly to playmaking from the X or fast breaks; generally, a midfielder was only ever able to create when he could catch his defender running at him.
Owen Van Arsdale tends to be sort of a duly appointed scapegoat for the athleticism thing, and it's true he's not the world's most athletic guy, but he's only one of several. And OVA had the second-most assists on the team after Nick O'Reilly, so it might be said that Dom knows what he's doing by having OVA out there. Offense came from the attack feeding the mids, but rarely the other way round, and the lack of balance hurt.
-- Poor shooting decisions. I got awfully frustrated at times when an opposing goalie would prove he could consistently stop a particular type of shot and we just kept on lobbing the same ones in there. Games that stand out in my memory in this regard: Drexel, Vermont, Ohio State, Bellarmine. Others, too, I'm sure, but that's what comes to mind. Typically it was stick-side high - goalies like it when they don't have to move their stick much, and high-to-high stick side is going to get saved eight times out of ten - but in the case of Bellarmine, our attackers often found themselves on the doorstep and tried to toss it lazily into the net as if there wasn't anything in between, and the Bellarmine goalie kept saving them. Duh. It bugged me because our radio guys were gushing about the guy's skills (in fairness, he had a damn .662 save percentage this year, which is nasty good) but I wanted to go YES I KNOW IT'S EASY TO LOOK LIKE AN ALL-STAR WHEN THE SHOTS ARE THREE MILES AN HOUR.
I don't know whether the following is a symptom or a cause of the poor season, but UVA's opponents had both a better shooting percentage and SOG percentage than we did. If you guessed that 2004 was the last time that happened, give yourself a Fig Newton. Those numbers ended up at .264 and .565, respectively, both of which are the lowest since, yes, 2004, except for the .565, which is the lowest in God only knows how long.
Part of this admittedly may be attributed to the new stall rules, which have encouraged teams to avoid stalling, but I noticed our opponents got more accurate, not less, between last year and this.
DEFENSE
-- Goaltending. I mean, it's hard to leave this out when the stats look so bad. Dan Marino gave way to Rhody Heller midyear; Marino had a .455 save percentage on the season, Heller .482. Both are awful numbers. Marino's injury troubles in the fall might've carried over in his play to the spring. Austin Geisler, who transferred to High Point and played there this spring, had a .512 save percentage for the Panthers; given the somewhat (not hugely, but somewhat) easier schedule they play, it's hard to tell whether he would've made a difference, but it would've been cool to find out. You can bet the competition will be reopened in the fall, with incoming freshman Matt Barrett being given as good a shot as any.
The silver lining: Adam Ghitelman had a .497 percentage his freshman year, so Heller - though a redshirt freshman rather than a true one - isn't that far behind that number.
-- End of quarters. Oh gawd. Talk about frustrating. UVA played 15 games - therefore 60 quarters - and in 15 of those quarters, the opponent scored with fewer than 20 seconds left. So on average of once a game, UVA allowed an end-of-quarter goal.
Then, if we make the safe assumption that it's a coin flip as to whether the good guys or the bad guys have the ball at the end of the quarter, that means were 30 quarters when we were defending, which in turn means the defense allowed a goal half the time. More than half, if we take into account that nine games were basically out of reach one way or the other by the 30-second mark of the fourth (thus, nine of 60 quarters don't count since killing clock was the concern rather than feverishly trying to score.)
Not to mention that six of these end-of-quarter goals came after UVA had already scored a goal with less than a minute to go.
The Ohio State game was especially egregious. In the first three quarters, OSU scored with one second left, twelve seconds left, and three seconds left. This, one week after Cornell had scored the game-winner with 13 seconds to go in the fourth - 26 seconds after UVA had tied it up. Lesson: not learned. And Drexel forced overtime (in which UVA fortunately won) with a ten-seconds-left goal in regulation after an eight-seconds-left one before halftime.
Goaltending is partly to blame. In theory, you ought to be playing it pretty safe at the end of a quarter, so any shots are long ones and should be stoppable. That happened sometimes. In reality, the defense did an awful job of playing patient and tended to break down as the attackers got frenetic in trying to score.
********************************************
You'll notice two things that aren't on this list: faceoffs and injuries. I'm not sure that .527 is a real accurate assessment of how actually good our faceoff men were, but them's the stats, and I don't think that's where the season's problems really were. Also, not having Chris LaPierre wasn't the issue. Shocker might've helped in the midfield-athleticism department, but he's awfully unpolished on offense and probably wouldn't be a major playmaker except to maybe set up some of his own stuff.
Anyway, LaPierre's main strength is as an X-factor when two teams are equal. He can tilt the balance in your direction, but he's probably not going to solve your problems if you're facing a talent deficit. Neither can we say that not having top freshman Will McNamara would've helped, because we just don't know. Ask again next year.
Obviously, not everything was a disaster. I think Nick O'Reilly could have 50-some assists if he could rely more on his midfielders to be open for shots. Mark Cockerton isn't notably big, but he plays strong. Very strong. Wasn't uncommon to see him bull his way around a defender to score the goal. And Tanner Scales won the ACC Freshman of the Year award; Scales looked really good on defense and combined with Scott McWilliams to be a turnover-causing terror on the back end. It's a fitting award, since he inherited Steele Stanwick's #6 - who was the last UVA player to win the award. The last UVA non-offensive player to win was goalie Tillman Johnson. Having no way of remembering what number Johnson wore, I looked it up, hoping against hope it was 6. It was, but upside-down. Close enough.
So I think there's every reason to believe UVA gets back to the tournament next year; most of these problems aren't chronic. I'd like to think, for example, that the end-of-quarter issues are the sort of thing that will regress to the mean next year. This is just one of those things, and at least we have company from Baltimore in the "blue bloods missing the tournament" category.
Showing posts with label bratton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bratton. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
seriously the best weekend review ever
That was awesome and nobody can tell me different. The best way to respond to an ACC championship by the baseball team is to one-up that sucker the next day and win a national title. I doubted it could happen even up to the day before the Denver game. You doubted it could happen. Don't lie, you did. 19 goals to Duke will do that to you.
There's so much to be said about the fifth national title in UVA lacrosse history that it's hard to know which should come first. How about we start with Dom Starsia, since his is the evaluation I seem to have screwed up the most? Contrary to the idea that his career is tailing off, Coach Starsia pulled off what might well be his best season of coaching ever. He changed up his whole philosophy. This year he couldn't out-athlete the competition like he likes to do, so he shuffled players around, implemented a zone defense, and he and his crew of assistants got together and figured out how to change the offense from a one-man-at-a-time show to a working machine. This season I've harped on the unsustainability of having more than half your goals be unassisted; Inside Lacrosse points out that in the four tournament games, 74% of UVA's goals had an assist attached to them. This is more fun to watch by far, more successful, and ultimately the result of a focus by the coaching staff to make a concerted change in the way the offense attacks the net. You could brush that off and claim it was forced upon them by the removal of the Brattons from the equation, but you and I both know that not every coach is savvy enough to know he needs to radically switch gears and talented enough to make it work.
And on top of it, Starsia, as evidenced by his interviews and the things the mike caught him saying to his team ("now go shake their hands, they deserve it") is as classy an individual as any that we have coaching here.
So there's one kind of leadership for you. Then you have the players, especially captain Bray Malphrus, that got their teammates together and demanded accountability. Malphrus is one of the team's captains, along with John Haldy, Adam Ghitelman, and Steele Stanwick. Would this team be here without the leadership they brought? I'd venture to say no. The season would've ended early, probably in the first round, the team would have an unheard of six losses, and the only narrative would be about how the whole thing fell apart after last year's drama. The laid-back Haldy is the perfect foil for the fiery and hyper-competitive Malphrus, and the combination was precisely the medicine this team needed after last year's troubles and another heartbreaking loss to nemesis Duke. Malphrus plans to kick terrorist ass in the military after graduation and I'd say he'll do very, very well in the military environs. Next year's team will have little trouble filling in the gaps on the field left when these seniors depart (and that's meant as a compliment to the rest of the team, not a knock on the seniors) but they'll need to make a very concerted effort to fill the leadership gaps.
If there's one on-field hole to fill next year, it'll be in net. It seems like Ghitelman's been in there forever, and he took some real lumps early on from disapproving fans. But he leaves UVA as the NCAA's third-winningest goalie of all time with 50 victories. In a way I'm especially happy to see Ghitelman get this trophy because it'd be a shame to be that good for four years and come away empty-handed in the trophy department.
Other things I think:
- Steele Stanwick was held almost completely off the scoresheet, but with 20 points in the previous three games, he's made the Tewaaraton voting awfully interesting. There's a school of thought that says no Final Four = no Tewaaraton for you, and Stanwick was the only candidate on the field in Baltimore. That he got there by wildly outplaying the previous prohibitive favorite, Cornell's Rob Pannell, makes it even tougher to vote against him. The trophy will be awarded Thursday. If Stanwick doesn't win it won't be a travesty of justice, but if he does it won't be a shock any more.
- Crystal ball time: In February you learn that UVA will make it to the championship game in Baltimore. (That would've saved a lot of gnashing of teeth in April.) In that game:
- I didn't hear any major horror stories from people in the overwhelmingly pro-Terp crowd in Baltimore. John Tillman seems like a stand-up guy and the Maryland team doesn't seem to act too bad. Admittedly the Terps probably had at least as good a reason for neutral fans to root for them as we did, maybe better. And it was cool to have an all-ACC final. Still, it never hurts to have the occasional reminder that Maryland fans can be the shittiest dickbags this earth has ever seen.
- I'll have a whole separate post on 2012 lax in the not-far-off future. National championships have a way of brightening the future.
*********************************************
It wasn't too bad a redemption story for the baseball team, either, erasing all memory of that final-week sweep by Carolina by winning the ACC title. And not the cheap way, either: a 4-0 weekend. Because of tiebreakers, the Hoos had locked up a spot in the title game against FSU before the Saturday rematch against Carolina, so, as predicted, Danny Hultzen was held back til Sunday and Cody Winiarski pitched against UNC. And won anyway.
Then UVA picked up a 7-2 victory against FSU in a very decidedly non-UVA fashion: by smacking home runs. All seven runs came that way. This caused the FSU Rivals site to go all George Washington on us, mixed in with a little just-a-couple-plays-away Pete Hughes action: their description of the game was, "Three bad pitches." Seminole starter Hunter Scantling echoed the "two bad pitches" line, except what he actually said was "one bad pitch" instead, which I guess means that when John Barr was hit by a pitch to put him on base ahead of Proscia's jack, that was a good pitch.
Proscia was the tournament MVP, by the way, on account of hitting that home run that would turn out to be a game-winner, and going 7-for-16 on the weekend. Kenny Swab and Chris Taylor also made the all-tournament team, and Tyler Wilson was left off for reasons I can only assume involve it not being fair that UVA would have so many players on the team. UNC's Patrick Johnson made it instead, for doing the exact same thing Wilson did (mow down Wake Forest) except without the part where Wilson also burned through Florida State in relief. In the championship game. So that makes sense.
So the Hoos get the autobid to the NCAA tournament, I guess, but the #1 seed label means they probably didn't need it. (Y'know....probably.) They'll see some familiar faces in the Charlottesville regional: East Carolina, an OOC opponent the last two years; St. John's, which comes to Davenport for regional play for the second year in a row; and Navy, which actually isn't all that familiar but wutever. You might think that our old buddy Tim Weiser finally did us a solid by giving us the #1 seed, but you'd be wrong: assuming UVA makes it out of its own regional, Weiser handed the Hoos Pac-10 champ UCLA and their rotation of doom (with potential #1 pick Gerrit Cole) as a likely opponent. THANKS DOOD
The baseball win gives UVA five ACC champeenships for the year, which ties us with Maryland for the season's most with five. Our five: men's tennis, rowing, baseball, and men's and women's swimming and diving. This is as good a time as any to brag about Virginia's ACC dominance. In the years since ACC expansion (so, starting with the 2004-2005 season), here's the rundown of schools and their ACC championships:
- In each of the last seven years, only one of them saw another ACC school pick up more championships than Virginia.
- That year was 2006-2007, when UVA had three. That's the lowest total in any of the seven seasons, but every other school has had at least one year of just two or fewer.
- UVA has otherwise picked up at least five in each season.
- UVA's six ACC championships in 2008-2009 and 2007-2008 would be the highest single-season total for any school in the expansion age - nobody else has ever had more than five - but....
- UVA broke that record in 2009-2010 with seven ACC titles.
*********************************************
Busy week coming up, what with overdue recruiting board updates, and I also can't wait for the customary introduction to our latest basketball recruit, Justin Anderson. Justin Anderson is the five-star we stole from Maryland, and I'll probably never get tired of using that phrase and may eventually just abbreviate it TFSWSFM because that is just so damn catchy.
But it's even more important that you know this: June 8 is the official Blog Birthday, marking three years of service to the Wahoo community. That's a week from tomorrow. Around these parts we celebrate birthdays by giving out presents, not receiving them, and that means the 3rd annual Cavalier of the Year Award. In the near future, I'll unveil the 12 nominees that I think are most deserving of recognition as the top Virginia athlete of the year. Over the course of a couple weeks, I'll profile each and tell you why they're on the list, and then you the fans will have the privilege of voting on the winner. There's no awards ceremony, trophy presentation, or scholarship donation in the name of the winner (yet - the 20th annual award will be a black-tie affair, you just wait and see.) For now, just a goofy Photoshop. But the voting is fun.
There's so much to be said about the fifth national title in UVA lacrosse history that it's hard to know which should come first. How about we start with Dom Starsia, since his is the evaluation I seem to have screwed up the most? Contrary to the idea that his career is tailing off, Coach Starsia pulled off what might well be his best season of coaching ever. He changed up his whole philosophy. This year he couldn't out-athlete the competition like he likes to do, so he shuffled players around, implemented a zone defense, and he and his crew of assistants got together and figured out how to change the offense from a one-man-at-a-time show to a working machine. This season I've harped on the unsustainability of having more than half your goals be unassisted; Inside Lacrosse points out that in the four tournament games, 74% of UVA's goals had an assist attached to them. This is more fun to watch by far, more successful, and ultimately the result of a focus by the coaching staff to make a concerted change in the way the offense attacks the net. You could brush that off and claim it was forced upon them by the removal of the Brattons from the equation, but you and I both know that not every coach is savvy enough to know he needs to radically switch gears and talented enough to make it work.
And on top of it, Starsia, as evidenced by his interviews and the things the mike caught him saying to his team ("now go shake their hands, they deserve it") is as classy an individual as any that we have coaching here.
So there's one kind of leadership for you. Then you have the players, especially captain Bray Malphrus, that got their teammates together and demanded accountability. Malphrus is one of the team's captains, along with John Haldy, Adam Ghitelman, and Steele Stanwick. Would this team be here without the leadership they brought? I'd venture to say no. The season would've ended early, probably in the first round, the team would have an unheard of six losses, and the only narrative would be about how the whole thing fell apart after last year's drama. The laid-back Haldy is the perfect foil for the fiery and hyper-competitive Malphrus, and the combination was precisely the medicine this team needed after last year's troubles and another heartbreaking loss to nemesis Duke. Malphrus plans to kick terrorist ass in the military after graduation and I'd say he'll do very, very well in the military environs. Next year's team will have little trouble filling in the gaps on the field left when these seniors depart (and that's meant as a compliment to the rest of the team, not a knock on the seniors) but they'll need to make a very concerted effort to fill the leadership gaps.
If there's one on-field hole to fill next year, it'll be in net. It seems like Ghitelman's been in there forever, and he took some real lumps early on from disapproving fans. But he leaves UVA as the NCAA's third-winningest goalie of all time with 50 victories. In a way I'm especially happy to see Ghitelman get this trophy because it'd be a shame to be that good for four years and come away empty-handed in the trophy department.
Other things I think:
- Steele Stanwick was held almost completely off the scoresheet, but with 20 points in the previous three games, he's made the Tewaaraton voting awfully interesting. There's a school of thought that says no Final Four = no Tewaaraton for you, and Stanwick was the only candidate on the field in Baltimore. That he got there by wildly outplaying the previous prohibitive favorite, Cornell's Rob Pannell, makes it even tougher to vote against him. The trophy will be awarded Thursday. If Stanwick doesn't win it won't be a travesty of justice, but if he does it won't be a shock any more.
- Crystal ball time: In February you learn that UVA will make it to the championship game in Baltimore. (That would've saved a lot of gnashing of teeth in April.) In that game:
- You'll see zero goals from Rhamel Bratton, Shamel Bratton, Steele Stanwick, or Chris Bocklet, and the only goal scorers at all will be Colin Briggs, Matt White, and Nick O'Reilly,
- UVA will lose the faceoff battle 12-7,
- UVA will also lose the groundballs battle and be outshot,
- Top defender Matt Lovejoy will be out from shoulder surgery,
- UVA will be shut out in the first quarter
- I didn't hear any major horror stories from people in the overwhelmingly pro-Terp crowd in Baltimore. John Tillman seems like a stand-up guy and the Maryland team doesn't seem to act too bad. Admittedly the Terps probably had at least as good a reason for neutral fans to root for them as we did, maybe better. And it was cool to have an all-ACC final. Still, it never hurts to have the occasional reminder that Maryland fans can be the shittiest dickbags this earth has ever seen.
- I'll have a whole separate post on 2012 lax in the not-far-off future. National championships have a way of brightening the future.
*********************************************
It wasn't too bad a redemption story for the baseball team, either, erasing all memory of that final-week sweep by Carolina by winning the ACC title. And not the cheap way, either: a 4-0 weekend. Because of tiebreakers, the Hoos had locked up a spot in the title game against FSU before the Saturday rematch against Carolina, so, as predicted, Danny Hultzen was held back til Sunday and Cody Winiarski pitched against UNC. And won anyway.
Then UVA picked up a 7-2 victory against FSU in a very decidedly non-UVA fashion: by smacking home runs. All seven runs came that way. This caused the FSU Rivals site to go all George Washington on us, mixed in with a little just-a-couple-plays-away Pete Hughes action: their description of the game was, "Three bad pitches." Seminole starter Hunter Scantling echoed the "two bad pitches" line, except what he actually said was "one bad pitch" instead, which I guess means that when John Barr was hit by a pitch to put him on base ahead of Proscia's jack, that was a good pitch.
Proscia was the tournament MVP, by the way, on account of hitting that home run that would turn out to be a game-winner, and going 7-for-16 on the weekend. Kenny Swab and Chris Taylor also made the all-tournament team, and Tyler Wilson was left off for reasons I can only assume involve it not being fair that UVA would have so many players on the team. UNC's Patrick Johnson made it instead, for doing the exact same thing Wilson did (mow down Wake Forest) except without the part where Wilson also burned through Florida State in relief. In the championship game. So that makes sense.
So the Hoos get the autobid to the NCAA tournament, I guess, but the #1 seed label means they probably didn't need it. (Y'know....probably.) They'll see some familiar faces in the Charlottesville regional: East Carolina, an OOC opponent the last two years; St. John's, which comes to Davenport for regional play for the second year in a row; and Navy, which actually isn't all that familiar but wutever. You might think that our old buddy Tim Weiser finally did us a solid by giving us the #1 seed, but you'd be wrong: assuming UVA makes it out of its own regional, Weiser handed the Hoos Pac-10 champ UCLA and their rotation of doom (with potential #1 pick Gerrit Cole) as a likely opponent. THANKS DOOD
The baseball win gives UVA five ACC champeenships for the year, which ties us with Maryland for the season's most with five. Our five: men's tennis, rowing, baseball, and men's and women's swimming and diving. This is as good a time as any to brag about Virginia's ACC dominance. In the years since ACC expansion (so, starting with the 2004-2005 season), here's the rundown of schools and their ACC championships:
- Virginia - 37
- FSU - 26
- Duke - 25
- UNC - 21
- Maryland - 16
- Ga. Tech - 14
- Va. Tech - 11
- Clemson - 8
- NC State - 6
- Miami - 5
- Wake Forest - 5
- Boston College - 1
- 6 each: Men's swimming & diving; men's tennis; rowing
- 4: Women's swimming & diving
- 3 each: Men's cross country; women's lacrosse
- 2 each: Baseball; men's lacrosse; men's soccer
- 1 each: Men's outdoor track & field; women's soccer; wrestling
- In each of the last seven years, only one of them saw another ACC school pick up more championships than Virginia.
- That year was 2006-2007, when UVA had three. That's the lowest total in any of the seven seasons, but every other school has had at least one year of just two or fewer.
- UVA has otherwise picked up at least five in each season.
- UVA's six ACC championships in 2008-2009 and 2007-2008 would be the highest single-season total for any school in the expansion age - nobody else has ever had more than five - but....
- UVA broke that record in 2009-2010 with seven ACC titles.
*********************************************
Busy week coming up, what with overdue recruiting board updates, and I also can't wait for the customary introduction to our latest basketball recruit, Justin Anderson. Justin Anderson is the five-star we stole from Maryland, and I'll probably never get tired of using that phrase and may eventually just abbreviate it TFSWSFM because that is just so damn catchy.
But it's even more important that you know this: June 8 is the official Blog Birthday, marking three years of service to the Wahoo community. That's a week from tomorrow. Around these parts we celebrate birthdays by giving out presents, not receiving them, and that means the 3rd annual Cavalier of the Year Award. In the near future, I'll unveil the 12 nominees that I think are most deserving of recognition as the top Virginia athlete of the year. Over the course of a couple weeks, I'll profile each and tell you why they're on the list, and then you the fans will have the privilege of voting on the winner. There's no awards ceremony, trophy presentation, or scholarship donation in the name of the winner (yet - the 20th annual award will be a black-tie affair, you just wait and see.) For now, just a goofy Photoshop. But the voting is fun.
Friday, May 20, 2011
game preview: Cornell
TV: ESPN2
History against the Big Red: 7-3
Last matchup: UVA 11, Cornell 9; 3/12/11; Baltimore, MD
Last game: UVA 13, Bucknell 12 (5/15); Cornell 12, Hartford 5 (5/14)
Last time these two teams matched up, about two months ago, here's what I wrote about Cornell:
If anything, they're a little down this year with a loss to Army and uninspiring wins over Hobart and Canisius and a decent one over terrible Binghamton. ... Cornell's goalie, A.J. Fiore, is in his second year of starting in net and hasn't started off well. And their starting defense is ever so young - all sophomores, two of them also in their second year of starting and one in his first. UVA's wily veterans on offense should be able to find plenty of ways to put the ball in the net. As long as Pannell is shut down - more than doable, as our defense has been relatively stout - this game should be a good national-TV bounceback from last week.At the time it was perfectly true, but it sure looks silly now. UVA did indeed win the game - it wasn't easy, but we got the win. That's the last time this season Cornell has landed in the loss column, a schedule that includes the Ivy League regular season and tournament, and a win over Syracuse to boot.
It's probably a good thing they did that, since UVA's fortunes went south real quickly not long after this game. Beating the eventual #2 seed in the tournament helped assure a home-field game. But about the only true word about Cornell in that paragraph is the unflattering assessment of goalie A.J. Fiore, whose .516 save percentage is a tad pedestrian. (Never fear. We'll improve that by taking shots three feet from the net, which, as with our basketball team, we never seem to score on.) It doesn't matter, though, because Cornell's defense is outstanding; opponents only score on 25% of their cleared possessions, good for third in the country, and they're 10th in the nation in caused turnovers per game.
In light of the continued absence of the Brattons and the terrible UVA defense, Dom Starsia is adopting the underdog strategy this week and working on slowing the game down. You've seen them doing so in the past, too; several times against Bucknell the announcers clearly expected UVA to take a quick shot at the goal in transition and were surprised when they didn't, and set up in a half-field offense instead. This is a good thing; I also spent most of that game exhorting them from afar to do just that and I'll probably do so again on Saturday.
Obviously, Cornell is the Rob Pannell show; with 86 points he's the runaway favorite for lacrosse's Heisman, the Tewaaraton Trophy. In the past UVA would've handed Pannell off to Ken Clausen or whoever was the top defender on the team and told him to be on Pannell like his shadow and that would've happened all game long. If we do that this game it'll be a complete disaster, so that strategy's out. Pannell is their Steele Stanwick - he can run the show from anywhere, and he'll score if you let him and if you don't let him he'll pass to someone who will. His version of Chris Bocklet - the finisher - is Steve Mock, who's got 36 goals and three assists. I'm glad I'm not the guy who has to figure out the defense; it'll probably be a roughly 50/50 split of man and zone again.
I hope when the coaches say they'll be slowing the game down, they mean really slowing it down, because I think that's what it'll take. Yes, that's an acknowledgement of majorly underdog status. I wouldn't be as worried, but the defense, you know. When the offense has the ball they need to be extra-patient. They'll probably earn a stall warning or three if they're doing it right. The key to scoring will be a lot of tossing the ball around and waiting for an opportunity to throw a lightning bolt of the kind that Stanwick and Bocklet hooked up for several times against Bucknell. The other thing they'll need to do is dominate on faceoffs. I know that's not something you normally associate with UVA lax, but it's possible. Cornell's top faceoff guy is sub-50% on the season, and our three face-er off-er FOGO types have shown the propensity to beat subpar opponents. Success has come in streaks, but the coaches need to ride the hot hand, whoever that is, and it might just result in more possessions instead of make-it take-it lacrosse for Cornell.
I won't bore you with What's At Stake, since it's pretty clear, but I'd have to say this: it feels a little fortunate, the way this season has gone (not to mention how the Bucknell game went) to be sitting one win from another Final Four trip. Let's hope for a little luck and a little lightning in a bottle tomorrow.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
recruiting board update
Time again to drop an update, and I'd better get to it so we can get Kwontie Moore up where he belongs. Moore is the first true prize of the class, one of the top five and maybe top three recruits in the state. Locking up Moore is a terrific first step to another top-20 class for Mike London. Getting commitments from Eli Harold, Anthony Cooper, and Michael Moore would just about write that in pen, if not stone.
The board and the map:
- Moved LB Kwontie Moore from blue to orange. First time I've moved someone up there vice adding them in - that's a good thing, we should do more of that. Moore makes two Norfolk Christian players to UVA. One is off to VT - more in a sec - so that leaves Courtnye Wynn as the only uncommitted NCS player. Wynn is probably a future Hoo as well.
- Removed WR Mario Nixon from green. Nixon is the VT kid. My guess: Nixon more or less always preferred VT but sort of wanted to play with his NCS friends too. So when two of them committed to UVA and Nixon realized he still wanted to go to VT regardless, he made it official.
- Removed TE Joshua Parris and LB Noor Davis from yellow. Parris committed to USF, Davis to Stanford, which damn are they getting a big defensive class or what. We may take a TE in this class but the coaches don't seem to be recruiting them very hard, so we very well might not. I said we'd take one in the early look, but that was before Jeremiah Mathis was announced as a full-timer there, so there's less need. And there are other conversion candidates, too, should the need arise. As for Davis, he's a helluva talent and would've been a really great addition but the competition was fierce and linebacker is no longer a pressing need.
- Moved ATH Joel Caleb from yellow to red. This is basically a feel like last year's #1 recruit in Virginia, only in reverse: he seems destined to go out of state, but if he doesn't it'll be Tech.
- Moved OL Greg Pyke and LB Ken Ekanem from red to yellow.
- Added DT Pat Gamble to yellow. Kind of against my better judgment because he's been GT, GT, GT all the way but whateva.
******************************************
I got so excited about the UVA-Michigan tilt in the ACC/BT Challenge that I forgot about all the rest of the stuff I meant to yak about.
- Still no Rhamel Bratton this weekend. OK, that sucks, we really need his athleticism against Cornell. More annoying is that Dom Starsia would make this announcement on Tuesday. Cornell just went THANKS DOOD! Why can't Starsia be like every coach everywhere and keep his status a state secret until five minutes before faceoff? Cornell's game-planning just got that much easier.
- VT hoops took a little bit of a hit with swingman Manny Atkins's announcement that he'll be transferring. On the one hand, he's transferring for what a lot of people would consider the wrong reasons, though he's at least honest about it where some guys would just say "I'm looking for a better fit." On the other hand, what it comes down to is that you can probably consider Atkins a casualty of Seth Greenberg's absurdly short rotation. Atkins was one of those guys who was at the back end of the (extremely minimal) rotation who would come in if one of the starters had to be pulled off on a stretcher or when Jeff Allen got into foul trouble. If Allen didn't have a propensity to swipe at opponents' elbows as they blew past him, Atkins's minutes would've been halved. If he played on any other team they'd have been almost double.
Atkins had the team's best O-rating of anyone, even including Malcolm Delaney, so even though he may or may not have ended up in the starting lineup, VT probably will not learn what they're missing until he resurfaces the way Derrick Byars did at Vanderbilt. That O-rating gave him a better PORPAG than some starters on other teams - Wake's C.J. Harris, for example - despite Atkins playing just 32% of VT's minutes. Losing him gives VT a depth hit and forces them to rely more on their incoming freshmen.
The board and the map:
- Moved LB Kwontie Moore from blue to orange. First time I've moved someone up there vice adding them in - that's a good thing, we should do more of that. Moore makes two Norfolk Christian players to UVA. One is off to VT - more in a sec - so that leaves Courtnye Wynn as the only uncommitted NCS player. Wynn is probably a future Hoo as well.
- Removed WR Mario Nixon from green. Nixon is the VT kid. My guess: Nixon more or less always preferred VT but sort of wanted to play with his NCS friends too. So when two of them committed to UVA and Nixon realized he still wanted to go to VT regardless, he made it official.
- Removed TE Joshua Parris and LB Noor Davis from yellow. Parris committed to USF, Davis to Stanford, which damn are they getting a big defensive class or what. We may take a TE in this class but the coaches don't seem to be recruiting them very hard, so we very well might not. I said we'd take one in the early look, but that was before Jeremiah Mathis was announced as a full-timer there, so there's less need. And there are other conversion candidates, too, should the need arise. As for Davis, he's a helluva talent and would've been a really great addition but the competition was fierce and linebacker is no longer a pressing need.
- Moved ATH Joel Caleb from yellow to red. This is basically a feel like last year's #1 recruit in Virginia, only in reverse: he seems destined to go out of state, but if he doesn't it'll be Tech.
- Moved OL Greg Pyke and LB Ken Ekanem from red to yellow.
- Added DT Pat Gamble to yellow. Kind of against my better judgment because he's been GT, GT, GT all the way but whateva.
******************************************
I got so excited about the UVA-Michigan tilt in the ACC/BT Challenge that I forgot about all the rest of the stuff I meant to yak about.
- Still no Rhamel Bratton this weekend. OK, that sucks, we really need his athleticism against Cornell. More annoying is that Dom Starsia would make this announcement on Tuesday. Cornell just went THANKS DOOD! Why can't Starsia be like every coach everywhere and keep his status a state secret until five minutes before faceoff? Cornell's game-planning just got that much easier.
- VT hoops took a little bit of a hit with swingman Manny Atkins's announcement that he'll be transferring. On the one hand, he's transferring for what a lot of people would consider the wrong reasons, though he's at least honest about it where some guys would just say "I'm looking for a better fit." On the other hand, what it comes down to is that you can probably consider Atkins a casualty of Seth Greenberg's absurdly short rotation. Atkins was one of those guys who was at the back end of the (extremely minimal) rotation who would come in if one of the starters had to be pulled off on a stretcher or when Jeff Allen got into foul trouble. If Allen didn't have a propensity to swipe at opponents' elbows as they blew past him, Atkins's minutes would've been halved. If he played on any other team they'd have been almost double.
Atkins had the team's best O-rating of anyone, even including Malcolm Delaney, so even though he may or may not have ended up in the starting lineup, VT probably will not learn what they're missing until he resurfaces the way Derrick Byars did at Vanderbilt. That O-rating gave him a better PORPAG than some starters on other teams - Wake's C.J. Harris, for example - despite Atkins playing just 32% of VT's minutes. Losing him gives VT a depth hit and forces them to rely more on their incoming freshmen.
Monday, May 16, 2011
comeback to the future
Good enough to bump normal weekend review programming to tomorrow. That's how good the lax game against Bucknell was yesterday.
There've been bigger comebacks in the history of sport, sure enough, and it's not going to qualify as one of history's favorite games when a superpower in a down year scrapes out a win against a small-fry, high-school-sized school having its best year ever in lacrosse. Admittedly I even felt a little bad about it, since you know Bucknell fans will remember that one a lot longer than we will. But not bad, like, "I wish we hadn't done that," bad like, "I wish we had done that to Maryland."
Still, it qualifies as one of my favorite games. Whenever you reach the point where you are convinced you're going to lose, and you don't lose, that's "epic comeback" level. It's a fuzzier feeling about the game than it would've been had UVA blown a big lead and then rescued the win in OT. It shouldn't be, but it is. Being down 10-6 is a pretty bleak situation, but that's what you have superstars for, and Steele Stanwick and Chris Bocklet got busy, put the offense on their shoulders, and got to work. When they were done working UVA had only its second lead of the game, and if you're going to lead just twice in a game, overtime is a fairly good choice for one of those.
So UVA survives a dangerous first-round matchup that many said they couldn't and looked like they wouldn't, and now gets to jump on board the "nobody believes in us" motivation train. It's a hackneyed motivator that college kids are real suckers for, often to the point of obnoxiousness, but dammit it works. Cornell is the next opponent as we run the gauntlet of the 'nells to try and get to the championship, and the fortunes of both our teams have been awfully divergent since last we met. (Thank God Cornell turned out to be any good because without them rising to near the top of the heap, maybe we don't host that first-round game.) Cornell will be righteously motivated by losing to UVA in March, and they have the best player in the country, but the combination of our talent with an underdog us-vs.-the-world attitude could be a deadly combo. Other than Maryland we're the lowest remaining seed in the field (upset bids went nowhere all weekend), but if I were Cornell, there're several higher-seeded teams I'd rather be staring at this weekend.
***********************************************
- That said, there's a laundry list of things that need to get better next weekend. Things that aren't game-killers against Bucknell but will get you destroyed against Cornell and other top-level teams. Defensive pressure was lame most of the day, even at distances 12 yards and shorter. Short-stick defense was especially poor.
- Speaking of short-stick defense, any questions as to whether reinstating Rhamel Bratton might have a negative effect on chemistry ought to disappear now. They were legit after the Penn game; now it's clear that even if "chemistry" takes a hit with him out there (and I suspect it will not) it doesn't outweigh the necessity of having him on defense. There was only one SSDM I was happy with yesterday (more on that in a bit) and having Rhamel's athleticism and defensive smarts will probably be critical against Cornell. If Rhamel's gotten his stuff together and is ready for reinstatement then I want to see him at SSDM for most of the game, and put in on offense sometimes to mix up the looks we throw at Cornell. And please don't announce it until 11:59 AM on Saturday.
- The aforementioned good-playin' SSDM is Blake Riley, who's been doing a great job of making his presence felt in the past few games. It was Riley's aggressiveness that led to the Bucknell turnover in OT: taking advantage of his man slipping to the turf, checking him, and scooping the resulting ground ball. Riley also led the team in GBs for the game. The rest of the short-stick defense was unwatchable.
- No, seriously: Steele friggin' Stanwick. I hope he's not actually healthy yet because eight points is ridiculous and eight points on a bad wheel is unbelievable. Matt White scored the game-winner because Bucknell's defenders were deathly afraid of Stanwick having the ball, and his feeds to Bocklet were precise and too pretty for the naked eye. They required replay to appreciate.
- Much is being made of the referee's decision to award UVA the ball after a Bucknell player heaved it in the direction of the empty net on their late clearing attempt when UVA deployed the 10-man ride and sent Adam Ghitelman out of the net. Was it a pass? A shot? A Bucknell player was closer to the end line but was he actually closer to the ball? Watching it live I assumed it was a shot and that the referee's angle led him to wrongly believe UVA was closer to it as it went out. I reflected for all of half a second on the injustices of refereeing and another half-second on those times we get scrooged instead. And then I stopped worrying about it. Upon replay it's actually really hard to tell who's closer to the ball, but the Bucknell guy was positioned such that if he was closer, than the ball was so far away from the net that it couldn't plausibly have been a shot in the first place. It sort of demonstrates an inherent problem with the rule about shots going out of bounds, but on final reflection I decided it was a 51-49 kind of call that the referee got right but couldn't have been greatly faulted for getting wrong. And the larger issue, if I were a Bucknell fan, is that it shouldn't have been in the ref's hands at all because putting the ball in the air like that was a really bad idea.
- In fact, it's really hard not to acknowledge the role that Bucknell's awful, awful decision-making played in this comeback. Much like UVA against UNC, they should've been sitting on their lead and not shooting with two and three minutes to play. It came back to bite them. And most of their shots were at defended nets.
- Even so, the very gambly style - 10-man ride, double teams with two and a half, three minutes to go - was a lot of fun to watch. Largely because it worked, but hey.
- Bring on Cornell.
- That last bullet will probably bring on the jinx instead, but whatever.
There've been bigger comebacks in the history of sport, sure enough, and it's not going to qualify as one of history's favorite games when a superpower in a down year scrapes out a win against a small-fry, high-school-sized school having its best year ever in lacrosse. Admittedly I even felt a little bad about it, since you know Bucknell fans will remember that one a lot longer than we will. But not bad, like, "I wish we hadn't done that," bad like, "I wish we had done that to Maryland."
Still, it qualifies as one of my favorite games. Whenever you reach the point where you are convinced you're going to lose, and you don't lose, that's "epic comeback" level. It's a fuzzier feeling about the game than it would've been had UVA blown a big lead and then rescued the win in OT. It shouldn't be, but it is. Being down 10-6 is a pretty bleak situation, but that's what you have superstars for, and Steele Stanwick and Chris Bocklet got busy, put the offense on their shoulders, and got to work. When they were done working UVA had only its second lead of the game, and if you're going to lead just twice in a game, overtime is a fairly good choice for one of those.
So UVA survives a dangerous first-round matchup that many said they couldn't and looked like they wouldn't, and now gets to jump on board the "nobody believes in us" motivation train. It's a hackneyed motivator that college kids are real suckers for, often to the point of obnoxiousness, but dammit it works. Cornell is the next opponent as we run the gauntlet of the 'nells to try and get to the championship, and the fortunes of both our teams have been awfully divergent since last we met. (Thank God Cornell turned out to be any good because without them rising to near the top of the heap, maybe we don't host that first-round game.) Cornell will be righteously motivated by losing to UVA in March, and they have the best player in the country, but the combination of our talent with an underdog us-vs.-the-world attitude could be a deadly combo. Other than Maryland we're the lowest remaining seed in the field (upset bids went nowhere all weekend), but if I were Cornell, there're several higher-seeded teams I'd rather be staring at this weekend.
***********************************************
- That said, there's a laundry list of things that need to get better next weekend. Things that aren't game-killers against Bucknell but will get you destroyed against Cornell and other top-level teams. Defensive pressure was lame most of the day, even at distances 12 yards and shorter. Short-stick defense was especially poor.
- Speaking of short-stick defense, any questions as to whether reinstating Rhamel Bratton might have a negative effect on chemistry ought to disappear now. They were legit after the Penn game; now it's clear that even if "chemistry" takes a hit with him out there (and I suspect it will not) it doesn't outweigh the necessity of having him on defense. There was only one SSDM I was happy with yesterday (more on that in a bit) and having Rhamel's athleticism and defensive smarts will probably be critical against Cornell. If Rhamel's gotten his stuff together and is ready for reinstatement then I want to see him at SSDM for most of the game, and put in on offense sometimes to mix up the looks we throw at Cornell. And please don't announce it until 11:59 AM on Saturday.
- The aforementioned good-playin' SSDM is Blake Riley, who's been doing a great job of making his presence felt in the past few games. It was Riley's aggressiveness that led to the Bucknell turnover in OT: taking advantage of his man slipping to the turf, checking him, and scooping the resulting ground ball. Riley also led the team in GBs for the game. The rest of the short-stick defense was unwatchable.
- No, seriously: Steele friggin' Stanwick. I hope he's not actually healthy yet because eight points is ridiculous and eight points on a bad wheel is unbelievable. Matt White scored the game-winner because Bucknell's defenders were deathly afraid of Stanwick having the ball, and his feeds to Bocklet were precise and too pretty for the naked eye. They required replay to appreciate.
- Much is being made of the referee's decision to award UVA the ball after a Bucknell player heaved it in the direction of the empty net on their late clearing attempt when UVA deployed the 10-man ride and sent Adam Ghitelman out of the net. Was it a pass? A shot? A Bucknell player was closer to the end line but was he actually closer to the ball? Watching it live I assumed it was a shot and that the referee's angle led him to wrongly believe UVA was closer to it as it went out. I reflected for all of half a second on the injustices of refereeing and another half-second on those times we get scrooged instead. And then I stopped worrying about it. Upon replay it's actually really hard to tell who's closer to the ball, but the Bucknell guy was positioned such that if he was closer, than the ball was so far away from the net that it couldn't plausibly have been a shot in the first place. It sort of demonstrates an inherent problem with the rule about shots going out of bounds, but on final reflection I decided it was a 51-49 kind of call that the referee got right but couldn't have been greatly faulted for getting wrong. And the larger issue, if I were a Bucknell fan, is that it shouldn't have been in the ref's hands at all because putting the ball in the air like that was a really bad idea.
- In fact, it's really hard not to acknowledge the role that Bucknell's awful, awful decision-making played in this comeback. Much like UVA against UNC, they should've been sitting on their lead and not shooting with two and three minutes to play. It came back to bite them. And most of their shots were at defended nets.
- Even so, the very gambly style - 10-man ride, double teams with two and a half, three minutes to go - was a lot of fun to watch. Largely because it worked, but hey.
- Bring on Cornell.
- That last bullet will probably bring on the jinx instead, but whatever.
Friday, May 13, 2011
game preview: Bucknell
TV: ESPNUVA
History against the Bison: 2-0
Last matchup: UVA 27, Bucknell 5; 4/25/98; Charlottesville
Last game: UVA 11, Penn 2 (4/30); Bucknell 10, Colgate 3 (5/1)
Finally the second season. Tournament time is a fresh start, though it's certainly nice to be entering the tourney coming off of a big feelgood victory instead of a loss or an ugly win. Despite that, the Hoos are a popular upset pick. It hasn't been the greatest of seasons and Bucknell's captured the attention of a lot of pundits and people who think they're pundits by having an outstanding season. Their best ever, in fact. This will be their second tournament game in their history, having last attended 10 years ago.
The huge concern for the Hoos, as always, is defense. Even a two-goal effort in the last game, against Penn, isn't going to quell that concern. UVA continues to be the second-worst team in the country - again, among company like VMI, Presbyterian, Mercer, and St. Joseph's - at getting turnovers on the defensive end. I mean, just pitiful. The national average is about 44% - that is, 44% of post-clear defensive possessions end in turnovers - and for UVA it's just 36.1%. Not only that but Bucknell does a good job of holding on to the ball. So Adam Ghitelman will need to stand tall. Bucknell's offense operates with middling efficiency but they do get good, well-rounded scoring, led by Ryan Klipstein with 30 goals.
Where Bucknell truly shines is on defense. Post-clear, they allow goals on just 25.1% of possessions - that makes them third-best in the coutnry - and they've allowed double-digit goals in only two games this year, both times allowing 11. Caveats about quality of opposition apply since we're talking about the Patriot League, but only to a point. Their four best wins are Villanova, Penn State, and two over Colgate. They're also good at getting turnovers, but that department matches strength against strength - UVA is also outstanding at not losing the ball to turnovers and since we'll be playing sans the Bratton brothers, that's bound to be a place where our performance will be even stronger.
Overall, this is an opponent with a solid, solid game and no major weaknesses. That's what you earn when you drop to the 7 seed. They're good between the pipes - goaltender Kyle Feeney has a .561 save percentage - and good at both ends of the field, especially defense. The fact that their opponents don't score much, and 70% of their opponents' goals have been assisted, suggests that their biggest strength is one-on-one defense on the ball, so it's probably in our best interest to continue the kind of offensive approach we had against Penn. Much (MUCH) better ball movement and motion without the ball, and crisper passing. The way we've played most of the season would probably play right into Bucknell's hands.
On the other hand, if there's one hallmark of UVA lacrosse we should be going back to, it's out-athleting the opposition in the middle of the field. Bucknell's faceoffs, ride, and clearing ability are OK, not great. The best way to win this game will be to unleash Chris LaPierre and some of our better athletes in the middle and try for some goals in unsettled situations - or at the very least, earn more possessions. Both teams can win this one, but UVA's chances will be best if they can get a few lightning strikes.
As a side note, Dom Starsia will be going for the all-time win record on Sunday; he has a chance to tie the record of Jack Emmer who probably-not-coincidentally will be calling the game. A run to the Final Four will give Starsia the record outright.
Monday, May 9, 2011
weekend review of bad news for our northern neighbors
Remarkably, I have nothing to complain about vis a vis the results of last night's lacrosse selection show. But Quint Kessenich (it was probably Quint but if it wasn't I'm content to blame him anyway) gave me a heart attack anyway when he teased us with the fact that two ACC teams would be meeting for the third time this season. I know it would've been insane to match us up with Duke, but then again it was also pretty insane to send our ACC champion baseball team to Irvine, California for a matchup with Stephen Strasburg. Tournament committees are prone to attacks of ludicrosity.
No, the only nutz thing that happened was matching up Maryland and UNC, which I think is a bit of a screwjob on Maryland but it's not like I'm unhappy seeing our three ACC rivals in Syracuse's side of the bracket. (Besides, Maryland's schedule was lamesauce.) Our own matchup with Bucknell is perfectly fair. 7th is the lowest UVA's been seeded since not making the tourney in 2004 (by far the lowest) but we did that to ourselves.
The bracket didn't produce much else that jumps out as being really weird, except for maybe ignoring the seemingly-natural Hopkins-Delaware matchup that pretty much every bracketologist ever had predicted. Speaking of which: I said I was looking forward to comparing my bracket to those of the professionals. LaxPower and Inside Lacrosse each did their own, of course. Who's the champion bracketologist? I compared each prediction bracket with the final result and gave each of them one point per team per difference in final seeding. For example, Delaware is "seeded" 12th (by virtue of playing the 5th seed, Duke) and each of the three prediction brackets had them 14th (playing the 3rd seed) so each of them get two points.** Fewer points is better, obviously.
Result: LaxPower's was the most accurate bracket with 17 points; mine second with 18, and IL least accurate with 21. (And I'd've been two points fewer and scored the title if I'd put Siena and Hartford in the right spot.) All three of us got all 16 teams correct; that was the easy part. Both IL and LP underrated Bucknell and badly overrated Hofstra; I had both just about nailed and further I was the only one of the three to award Denver a seed and a home game; the others had them traveling to the 8 seed. (Denver is the 6th seed, hosting Villanova.) On the other hand, I had UNC massively underrated and LaxPower was the only one to nail the top five seeds. I hit the top four and IL had the top three.
So either lax bracketology is easy enough for anyone to try their hand at and the pros don't do any better a job than the average schmo or I'm just that damn good and ought to be getting paid for this. It's almost definitely the former but I'm happy to pretend to believe the latter.
**I know the NCAA is generally believed to not seed the bottom eight and assign games based on travel, but if you think about it, not seeding the bottom eight at all would make seeding the top eight totally pointless. What good is it being the 1 seed if you're handed the 9th best team because they're close by? The committee ranks the bottom eight too and then fudges a bit for travel as needed. I think it's pretty clear they do consider Maryland the 9th-best team, Bucknell the 10th, and so on.
**************************************************
The news and stuff:
- It's a bad week for Maryland. Besides losing to Colgate and probably costing themselves a host game, they also lose a basketball coach. Just when the ACC coaching wheel of fortune had stopped turning, Gary Williams decided to step up and give that mother another turn. Part of me is sorry to see this. My utter dislike of nearly everything Terrapin does not extend one iota to Gary Williams, who I've always thought of as one of the most respectable coaches in the biz. Terrific coach and a clean program. Jordan Williams kept his butt parked in the NBA draft, so Maryland gets a double whammy, with more possibly on the way depending on how the recruits, both 2011 and 2012, react to the new hire. Always a concern.
Where will the Terps go for a new coach? The CAA well is about dried up now, with Larranaga off to Miami and Shaka Smart having signed an extension. They struck out on Arizona's Sean Miller, who leveraged his way into an extension in the desert. Right now unless your letterhead says UNC or Duke, Big East coaches like Jay Wright, Mike Brey, and Jamie Dixon won't see the ACC as anything but a sideways move. Maryland will have to look probably into the SEC or Big 12; the big rumor today is Texas A&M's Mark Turgeon.
- A bad week for Maryland is usually a decent week for Hoos, and a good week for Mike Scott is a great week for Hoos. His medical waiver was already a 90% fait accompli, but it's really, really good to have that in writing. Except for the one VT game we never got to see him terrorize the ACC; this coming year he'll get to do so alongside a team that should be hugely improved from last year's.
- Back in the world of lacrosse, it's been made official we won't see Rhamel Bratton this week against Bucknell. I am so, so torn as to whether it's a good idea or not to reinsert him into the lineup after seeing the obvious wild improvement in chemistry during the Penn game. Probably the best thing is to keep him at defensive midfield - his defensive talents are undeniably excellent - and let him play offense once every eight possessions or so just to fuck with the opposition's game plan. I really do wish Dom Starsia had kept it a state secret whether or not he'd be playing right up until game time. Bucknell's planning just got a lot easier.
- Like an amoeba, Davenport Field keeps growing. And growing. In increments small enough to be completed in between home series. You show up to the ballfield one day and you could swear those seats didn't used to be there. But there they are, and now the stadium has cracked the 5,000 mark.
- Some congrats are in order for former Hoo ballplayer Brandon Guyer, who became the 109th player in MLB history and the first Tampa Bay Ray to smack a home run in his first major-league at-bat.
- There's still no good reason not to be voting every day for Tyler Wilson.
No, the only nutz thing that happened was matching up Maryland and UNC, which I think is a bit of a screwjob on Maryland but it's not like I'm unhappy seeing our three ACC rivals in Syracuse's side of the bracket. (Besides, Maryland's schedule was lamesauce.) Our own matchup with Bucknell is perfectly fair. 7th is the lowest UVA's been seeded since not making the tourney in 2004 (by far the lowest) but we did that to ourselves.
The bracket didn't produce much else that jumps out as being really weird, except for maybe ignoring the seemingly-natural Hopkins-Delaware matchup that pretty much every bracketologist ever had predicted. Speaking of which: I said I was looking forward to comparing my bracket to those of the professionals. LaxPower and Inside Lacrosse each did their own, of course. Who's the champion bracketologist? I compared each prediction bracket with the final result and gave each of them one point per team per difference in final seeding. For example, Delaware is "seeded" 12th (by virtue of playing the 5th seed, Duke) and each of the three prediction brackets had them 14th (playing the 3rd seed) so each of them get two points.** Fewer points is better, obviously.
Result: LaxPower's was the most accurate bracket with 17 points; mine second with 18, and IL least accurate with 21. (And I'd've been two points fewer and scored the title if I'd put Siena and Hartford in the right spot.) All three of us got all 16 teams correct; that was the easy part. Both IL and LP underrated Bucknell and badly overrated Hofstra; I had both just about nailed and further I was the only one of the three to award Denver a seed and a home game; the others had them traveling to the 8 seed. (Denver is the 6th seed, hosting Villanova.) On the other hand, I had UNC massively underrated and LaxPower was the only one to nail the top five seeds. I hit the top four and IL had the top three.
So either lax bracketology is easy enough for anyone to try their hand at and the pros don't do any better a job than the average schmo or I'm just that damn good and ought to be getting paid for this. It's almost definitely the former but I'm happy to pretend to believe the latter.
**I know the NCAA is generally believed to not seed the bottom eight and assign games based on travel, but if you think about it, not seeding the bottom eight at all would make seeding the top eight totally pointless. What good is it being the 1 seed if you're handed the 9th best team because they're close by? The committee ranks the bottom eight too and then fudges a bit for travel as needed. I think it's pretty clear they do consider Maryland the 9th-best team, Bucknell the 10th, and so on.
**************************************************
The news and stuff:
- It's a bad week for Maryland. Besides losing to Colgate and probably costing themselves a host game, they also lose a basketball coach. Just when the ACC coaching wheel of fortune had stopped turning, Gary Williams decided to step up and give that mother another turn. Part of me is sorry to see this. My utter dislike of nearly everything Terrapin does not extend one iota to Gary Williams, who I've always thought of as one of the most respectable coaches in the biz. Terrific coach and a clean program. Jordan Williams kept his butt parked in the NBA draft, so Maryland gets a double whammy, with more possibly on the way depending on how the recruits, both 2011 and 2012, react to the new hire. Always a concern.
Where will the Terps go for a new coach? The CAA well is about dried up now, with Larranaga off to Miami and Shaka Smart having signed an extension. They struck out on Arizona's Sean Miller, who leveraged his way into an extension in the desert. Right now unless your letterhead says UNC or Duke, Big East coaches like Jay Wright, Mike Brey, and Jamie Dixon won't see the ACC as anything but a sideways move. Maryland will have to look probably into the SEC or Big 12; the big rumor today is Texas A&M's Mark Turgeon.
- A bad week for Maryland is usually a decent week for Hoos, and a good week for Mike Scott is a great week for Hoos. His medical waiver was already a 90% fait accompli, but it's really, really good to have that in writing. Except for the one VT game we never got to see him terrorize the ACC; this coming year he'll get to do so alongside a team that should be hugely improved from last year's.
- Back in the world of lacrosse, it's been made official we won't see Rhamel Bratton this week against Bucknell. I am so, so torn as to whether it's a good idea or not to reinsert him into the lineup after seeing the obvious wild improvement in chemistry during the Penn game. Probably the best thing is to keep him at defensive midfield - his defensive talents are undeniably excellent - and let him play offense once every eight possessions or so just to fuck with the opposition's game plan. I really do wish Dom Starsia had kept it a state secret whether or not he'd be playing right up until game time. Bucknell's planning just got a lot easier.
- Like an amoeba, Davenport Field keeps growing. And growing. In increments small enough to be completed in between home series. You show up to the ballfield one day and you could swear those seats didn't used to be there. But there they are, and now the stadium has cracked the 5,000 mark.
- Some congrats are in order for former Hoo ballplayer Brandon Guyer, who became the 109th player in MLB history and the first Tampa Bay Ray to smack a home run in his first major-league at-bat.
- There's still no good reason not to be voting every day for Tyler Wilson.
Monday, May 2, 2011
biggest weekend review ever
I feel a little overshadowed this week. Between Osama getting a bullet in the brain pan (squish), the NFL draft, the royal wedding, and Princess Beatrice dressing up as Cthulhu for said wedding, the little happenings here in the world of UVA seem a little minor.
But that's why there's this blog. You can read about stupid hats on TMZ. You can't read about the terrific game played by the lacrosse squad there, which is TMZ's loss because it was the best game of lacrosse this team's played in a long time. Considering the strength of the opponent, probably all season. No, scratch that: definitely the best game of the year. Go down the list and check off the indicators. Faceoffs, ground balls, clearing, goalie play - all near-flawless. Terrific discpline. The defense allowing just two goals and muddling the opposition offense by switching from man to zone and back.
Besides the yeoman defensive effort, the best thing about the game was the offense. Certainly it was the most refreshing. Eight minutes into the game you could see the difference in the offense without either Bratton twin on the field. There was passing. Sometimes, like, two or three passes in a row. Or more! It made the offense fun to watch again. My favorite statistic of the game was not the two allowed goals; it was the 8 assists on 11 goals scored. This team has had fewer assists on its goals - barely over 50% - than any in recent memory, which if you ask me was a cause of problems. It was holding the team back. Even without the Brattons' athleticism this'll be a harder team to defend if the defenses actually have to give a damn about all six attackers. I don't know if the awesome defensive effort can continue - Penn's offense isn't the strength of their team - but I've got my optimism restored in the offense at least.
Without the Brattons it's an awfully thin midfield, and Dom Starsia was in an experimental mood with the second offensive midfield. John Haldy, Rob Emery, and Colin Briggs are the first group, and that's a group that's been on the field a lot this year and they acquitted themselves well in the spotlight. Several folks not usually seen on the field in actual situations made their appearances. The second midfield was typically Kugler, Harbeson, and once-upon-a-time attackman Mark Cockerton, but even faceoff specialist Garrett Ince got in on the action, scoring a rare goal, just the fifth of his career. A fine display of team lacrosse.
Our tournament fate is now out of our hands. That was one last bid to the tournament committee to host a game; Villanova and Maryland are our two biggest competitors in that regard and they each have a game left, albeit neither against an opponent of Penn's caliber. As you'll see in my tournament bracketology I have UVA as an 8 seed hosting a game; that means realistically we're on the bubble for it. With Syracuse probably awaiting the winner of the 8 seed's game, it might almost be to our benefit to go on the road against a 7 or even a 6 seed. Tougher first game, easier path to Baltimore for the championships. And I guarantee you if Villanova or Denver gets their first-ever chance to host a tournament game they're not gonna want to see Virginia headed their way.
****************************************************
The baseball team lost a game this weekend (oh NOEZ) but it didn't matter because they earned their 13th and 14th shutouts of the year to bookend the loss and picked up a game in the standings anyway (oh yayz) because Georgia Tech lost their series to Clemson. (Grumble grumble those are the only Tigers that can be said to be hitting well and no I'm not complaining about LSU.) Friday was an especially outstanding day: the offense generated 18 hits, 17 runs, and Danny Hultzen and Shane Halley combined to allow one walk, one hit (a squib swinging bunt), and struck out 11, eight of which were Danny's. It's this kind of thing which makes losing one of the three OK.
At 42-5 it's been pretty well established at this point who the best team in the ACC is, and you are well within your rights to brush off the Saturday loss and any loss between now and the postseason with the words "well, that's just baseball." That's why the NCAA tourney is double-elimination and they have seven-game series in the pros. From here on out every shutout is a conference record, every Steven Proscia RBI is a team record (he broke through with the record on Friday), and every Danny Hultzen strikeout is also a team record.
The team now sits two games ahead of Georgia Tech - a de facto three game lead - and has one game left (on the road at VCU) before exam break. I hate exam break but it's a very necessary evil. After that are a series against Miami and one against North Carolina, so there'll be no shortage of quality competition to keep the team sharp for the ACC tournament and beyond.
****************************************************
Normally I devote a whole column to the future prospects of our NFL draftees, but there's only one of them and the lockout prevents any free-agent signings, so this'll have to do. The Patriots pissed me off by selecting Ras-I Dowling as the first pick of the second round, setting off a run on cornerbacks that kept them all (particularly Dowling) out of the Lions' hands. I wanted Dowling dammit. Anyway, he's a Patriot. The Pats had Devin McCourty selected to the Pro Bowl as a rookie last year, and there are some decent veterans in Kyle Arrington and Leigh Bodden on the roster. (Then again, Bodden was cut loose by the Lions after his one season there going 0-16, so how much competition can he be?) Dowling is highly unlikely to jump right into the starting lineup, but he should at least get a chance to show what he can do (and show that he can stay healthy) as a nickel corner.
I don't know what I'm going to do with myself without either lacrosse or baseball this weekend. I may roll out a mid-week bracketology if events warrant, otherwise there'll be one more before the selection show on Sunday at 9.
But that's why there's this blog. You can read about stupid hats on TMZ. You can't read about the terrific game played by the lacrosse squad there, which is TMZ's loss because it was the best game of lacrosse this team's played in a long time. Considering the strength of the opponent, probably all season. No, scratch that: definitely the best game of the year. Go down the list and check off the indicators. Faceoffs, ground balls, clearing, goalie play - all near-flawless. Terrific discpline. The defense allowing just two goals and muddling the opposition offense by switching from man to zone and back.
Besides the yeoman defensive effort, the best thing about the game was the offense. Certainly it was the most refreshing. Eight minutes into the game you could see the difference in the offense without either Bratton twin on the field. There was passing. Sometimes, like, two or three passes in a row. Or more! It made the offense fun to watch again. My favorite statistic of the game was not the two allowed goals; it was the 8 assists on 11 goals scored. This team has had fewer assists on its goals - barely over 50% - than any in recent memory, which if you ask me was a cause of problems. It was holding the team back. Even without the Brattons' athleticism this'll be a harder team to defend if the defenses actually have to give a damn about all six attackers. I don't know if the awesome defensive effort can continue - Penn's offense isn't the strength of their team - but I've got my optimism restored in the offense at least.
Without the Brattons it's an awfully thin midfield, and Dom Starsia was in an experimental mood with the second offensive midfield. John Haldy, Rob Emery, and Colin Briggs are the first group, and that's a group that's been on the field a lot this year and they acquitted themselves well in the spotlight. Several folks not usually seen on the field in actual situations made their appearances. The second midfield was typically Kugler, Harbeson, and once-upon-a-time attackman Mark Cockerton, but even faceoff specialist Garrett Ince got in on the action, scoring a rare goal, just the fifth of his career. A fine display of team lacrosse.
Our tournament fate is now out of our hands. That was one last bid to the tournament committee to host a game; Villanova and Maryland are our two biggest competitors in that regard and they each have a game left, albeit neither against an opponent of Penn's caliber. As you'll see in my tournament bracketology I have UVA as an 8 seed hosting a game; that means realistically we're on the bubble for it. With Syracuse probably awaiting the winner of the 8 seed's game, it might almost be to our benefit to go on the road against a 7 or even a 6 seed. Tougher first game, easier path to Baltimore for the championships. And I guarantee you if Villanova or Denver gets their first-ever chance to host a tournament game they're not gonna want to see Virginia headed their way.
****************************************************
The baseball team lost a game this weekend (oh NOEZ) but it didn't matter because they earned their 13th and 14th shutouts of the year to bookend the loss and picked up a game in the standings anyway (oh yayz) because Georgia Tech lost their series to Clemson. (Grumble grumble those are the only Tigers that can be said to be hitting well and no I'm not complaining about LSU.) Friday was an especially outstanding day: the offense generated 18 hits, 17 runs, and Danny Hultzen and Shane Halley combined to allow one walk, one hit (a squib swinging bunt), and struck out 11, eight of which were Danny's. It's this kind of thing which makes losing one of the three OK.
At 42-5 it's been pretty well established at this point who the best team in the ACC is, and you are well within your rights to brush off the Saturday loss and any loss between now and the postseason with the words "well, that's just baseball." That's why the NCAA tourney is double-elimination and they have seven-game series in the pros. From here on out every shutout is a conference record, every Steven Proscia RBI is a team record (he broke through with the record on Friday), and every Danny Hultzen strikeout is also a team record.
The team now sits two games ahead of Georgia Tech - a de facto three game lead - and has one game left (on the road at VCU) before exam break. I hate exam break but it's a very necessary evil. After that are a series against Miami and one against North Carolina, so there'll be no shortage of quality competition to keep the team sharp for the ACC tournament and beyond.
****************************************************
Normally I devote a whole column to the future prospects of our NFL draftees, but there's only one of them and the lockout prevents any free-agent signings, so this'll have to do. The Patriots pissed me off by selecting Ras-I Dowling as the first pick of the second round, setting off a run on cornerbacks that kept them all (particularly Dowling) out of the Lions' hands. I wanted Dowling dammit. Anyway, he's a Patriot. The Pats had Devin McCourty selected to the Pro Bowl as a rookie last year, and there are some decent veterans in Kyle Arrington and Leigh Bodden on the roster. (Then again, Bodden was cut loose by the Lions after his one season there going 0-16, so how much competition can he be?) Dowling is highly unlikely to jump right into the starting lineup, but he should at least get a chance to show what he can do (and show that he can stay healthy) as a nickel corner.
I don't know what I'm going to do with myself without either lacrosse or baseball this weekend. I may roll out a mid-week bracketology if events warrant, otherwise there'll be one more before the selection show on Sunday at 9.
Friday, April 29, 2011
game preview: Pennsylvania
TV: UVA webcast
History against the Quakers: 2-2
Last matchup: UVA 12, Penn 7; 3/11/98; Charlottesville
Last game: Duke 19, UVA 10 (4/22); Penn 9, Dartmouth 4 (4/23)
Opposing blogs: I don't think the Ivy League "blogs," it's a very public-school thing to do
I missed my chance to get in some quality rumormongering. Now that the school has put out a press release confirming that, yes, Shamel Bratton has finally misbehaved his way right off the team, I guess it no longer qualifies as a rumor. Would Rhamel's status still be rumory? Probably, and honestly it wouldn't surprise me if he's at least unavailable for this game.
I don't know if this is a result of Starsia cracking down on the crap after last season's mess, or if Shamel has been thinking "fuck it, I'm a senior and this season is going nowhere, wuteva I do what I want," or both. I'm not gonna bother psychoanalyzing this because I'm a little bit relieved we won't have to put up with this Viking drama during the postseason. Here's to hoping that addition by subtraction means anything.
HOW WE CAN WIN
- Hope for the Ewing Theory to come through. You know, where you remove the star player and everyone thinks you're through and then you crush everyone because of better chemistry, motivation, whatever. This didn't work with Stanwick out, but Stanwick is not a constant distractor off the field. No Shamel means a lot less athleticism on offense but hopefully fewer screwy turnovers as well.
- Dominate the faceoff X. We can do this. We can do this. It might come true. Masked by the godawful 1-for-5 slide we entered a month ago is some improving faceoff performance. Penn is a sub-50% performer here, checking in at 44%. This would be a great chance to get back onto the plus side of the ledger ourselves (we're exactly 50%) and keep our defense rested.
- Stop making goalies look like all-stars. If we can't get shots past this guy, we can't get them past anyone. Penn's Brian Feeney has an awful save percentage of .488.
HOW WE CAN LOSE
- Matchup nightmare. OK, so get this. Remember a couple days ago I posted a quick look at our offensive and defensive efficiency as compared to a few select teams we've played. Since then I've done the same for every team in the country. Here's a miserable stat: In terms of percentage of defensive possessions that result in a turnover, UVA is second to last in the country. The bottom six are, from least bad to worst: VMI, Mercer, St. Joseph's, Presbyterian, UVA, Providence. That's five of the country's shittiest teams, and Virginia. One of those teams is in its first year of D-I lax. One is in its last. The combined record of those teams: 8-53.
We also do very badly in percentage of defensive possessions that result in a goal, but not that bad. Penn, on the other hand, is the second-best team in the country at getting the ball back from opposing offenses. So they'll find it easy to get the ball and easy to keep it.
HOW THE GAME WILL GO
Penn is not to be taken as lightly as I thought earlier this year. They're solidly in the tournament. They opened the season by beating Duke and Bucknell. But their resume is perhaps stronger than their stats. The silver lining in the above matchup nightmare is that Penn is not much good at holding onto the ball - their offensive turnover percentage is very high. So that's weakness vs. weakness there, and something's gotta give and you have to like our chances. It also turns out that UVA is actually quite good at holding onto the ball on offense, despite what your eyes have been telling you, so that end of the field is strength vs. strength.
Since we should do well on faceoffs, and Penn isn't well-equipped to take advantage of UVA's biggest weakness, and besides that Dom just kicked a turnover machine off the team, I think you have to like our chances. This game is a godsend, a chance for the team to get its collective head right before the postseason, and not only that but a team that looks good in the metrics and if we can get the win it'll be a boost to our seeding and offer a chance to host a first-round game. I rarely make specific predictions, but we need a break in our luck, so I'll break tradition: UVA wins this game 10-7.
Monday, April 18, 2011
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.
***************************************************
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.
***************************************************
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.
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.
***************************************************
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.
***************************************************
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.
Monday, April 11, 2011
weekend review
Thank everything for Steele Stanwick and a slippery Klockner field, or this wouldn't be a very fun weekend review in the lacrosse section. The good news in that department: An 11-10 win in which UVA significantly outplayed UNC for long stretches. The bad: Dipshit brainfarts that put the game severely in jeopardy.
Nobody was immune. Adam Ghitelman's decision to heave the ball upfield with six seconds on the clock in the third quarter led to one Carolina goal four seconds later. Rhamel Bratton tried the slick, low-percentage pass toward the net (and copious defenders) when all that was required was to run around the field for three minutes. Chris LaPierre froze in the face of a double team, which naturally dislodged the ball a split second later. All of these led to goals and heightened blood pressure.
The other thing that kept leading to goals was the defense's decision to defend everyone but the ballcarrier in transition. This is probably brain-damaged coaching rather than brain-damaged playing. Yes, I get that we don't want the ball to be passed to one of UNC's actual stars, but once the guy with the ball gets within eight yards, does it matter if it's Billy Bitter or Billy the Clown? They're going to score from that range, and it's not helpful to let them get there.
That said, transition defense was a major struggle but settled defense, amazingly, was not. My first thought was that the defense had improved just enough to allow Ghitelman to make the saves and look like the goalie he really can be. Later I realized that was wrong: the defense improved a ton. It turned Carolina's offense into our own offense at its most frustrating: ball gets passed around the perimeter until it's turned over or shot harmlessly into the goalie's stick. Credit the switch to the zone, a timely adjustment that was probably forced upon the coaches as much as anything by Matt Lovejoy's season-ending (OH GREAT) surgery. UNC clearly didn't expect that.
Overall a pleasant surprise that shouldn't have been a surprise at all (a reminder that this can still be a dominant team, even against quality opponents, when it wants to be) pockmarked by some monumental insanity. Encouraging; dumb mistakes are more easily fixed than the entire system.
It sets up the Duke game next week for an interesting scenario: because of how the tiebreakers work, UVA is either going to be the #1 seed or the #4 seed in the ACC tournament. Not that it ever matters, but that's the way it breaks this year.
*************************************************
Just to get this part out of the way: the baseball team lost a game. OH NO. We being UVA fans, no doubt by now the meltdown is well underway. (checking to see.) (not finding anything.) (doublechecking.) (still no.) Huh, OK, so, baseball fans are a patient bunch, or more patient than basketball fans anyway. It helps that that was only the third loss in 34 games and that a series win on the road against a top-ten team that's probably second-best in the conference is a good thing, not a bad thing. And you'd expect this patience from a group of people who enjoy a game in which they have to sometimes wait for the pitcher to get done scratching his ass and horking loogies on theball ground before he decides he's ready to deliver again. Gives us time to get another beer.
Anyway, even then it's not entirely rainbows. All three losses have been on Sundays, which means Sunday starter Cody Winiarski is in for some scrutiny, especially after a game that saw his ERA jump up nine-tenths of a point. Every time he struggles and every gem that Will Roberts pitches on Tuesdays increases the call for Roberts to be moved to the weekend rotation. Never mind that Winiarski completely shut down both Poly and Maryland; a bad outing against the team with the seventh-best batting average and ninth-best slugging percentage in the country is enough to bring the doubters out of the woodwork. Explaining to people that George Washington bats .254 as a team and is 245th in the country and Georgia Tech bats .330 and is seventh never seems to have any effect; there's still a crowd that wants to see Roberts "get his chance," as if pitching on Tuesdays isn't a chance and as if that means he'll be forgotten about come the postseason and further as if he and Cody and the rest of the pitching staff hadn't been pitching side by side all offseason under the scrutiny of the coaches. RRGGH. Roberts is pitching wonderfully but Winiarski isn't pitching badly.
Anyway. Georgia Tech. Killed 'em. Danny Hultzen was lights the hell out again, allowing one earned run and one walk and striking out 12 on Friday. The bats came alive late, and Danny had his 7th win of the season. The lineup continued to hammer GT pitching for the rest of the weekend, earning a 12-9 win on Saturday and taking a 10-8 loss on Sunday. Even with the loss and a few extra runs for GT hitting, you are directed to be ecstatic about this: GT's starters are not chumps - they are the opposite of chumps - and our bats chased Mark Pope from what had been a pitchers' duel til the 7th, beat Jed Bradley into submission, and rained hits on Buck Farmer, too.
So: 31-3. Two one-run losses and a two-run loss, up against more than a five-run average margin in our wins. This team has never been out of a game. They're loose, enjoying themselves. They've got that swagger, without swaggering. The last time we saw a UVA team rolling like this was probably during the soccer team's run to the national title (not to put any pressure on.) But soccer is the kind of game where any old fluke at any time can explode all your work up to that point. Baseball can be fluky too but you know you're gonna get your nine hacks, every time, and there's something reassuring about that. There's also something reassuring about Danny Hultzen being on your team. Don't forget that.
Nobody was immune. Adam Ghitelman's decision to heave the ball upfield with six seconds on the clock in the third quarter led to one Carolina goal four seconds later. Rhamel Bratton tried the slick, low-percentage pass toward the net (and copious defenders) when all that was required was to run around the field for three minutes. Chris LaPierre froze in the face of a double team, which naturally dislodged the ball a split second later. All of these led to goals and heightened blood pressure.
The other thing that kept leading to goals was the defense's decision to defend everyone but the ballcarrier in transition. This is probably brain-damaged coaching rather than brain-damaged playing. Yes, I get that we don't want the ball to be passed to one of UNC's actual stars, but once the guy with the ball gets within eight yards, does it matter if it's Billy Bitter or Billy the Clown? They're going to score from that range, and it's not helpful to let them get there.
That said, transition defense was a major struggle but settled defense, amazingly, was not. My first thought was that the defense had improved just enough to allow Ghitelman to make the saves and look like the goalie he really can be. Later I realized that was wrong: the defense improved a ton. It turned Carolina's offense into our own offense at its most frustrating: ball gets passed around the perimeter until it's turned over or shot harmlessly into the goalie's stick. Credit the switch to the zone, a timely adjustment that was probably forced upon the coaches as much as anything by Matt Lovejoy's season-ending (OH GREAT) surgery. UNC clearly didn't expect that.
Overall a pleasant surprise that shouldn't have been a surprise at all (a reminder that this can still be a dominant team, even against quality opponents, when it wants to be) pockmarked by some monumental insanity. Encouraging; dumb mistakes are more easily fixed than the entire system.
It sets up the Duke game next week for an interesting scenario: because of how the tiebreakers work, UVA is either going to be the #1 seed or the #4 seed in the ACC tournament. Not that it ever matters, but that's the way it breaks this year.
*************************************************
Just to get this part out of the way: the baseball team lost a game. OH NO. We being UVA fans, no doubt by now the meltdown is well underway. (checking to see.) (not finding anything.) (doublechecking.) (still no.) Huh, OK, so, baseball fans are a patient bunch, or more patient than basketball fans anyway. It helps that that was only the third loss in 34 games and that a series win on the road against a top-ten team that's probably second-best in the conference is a good thing, not a bad thing. And you'd expect this patience from a group of people who enjoy a game in which they have to sometimes wait for the pitcher to get done scratching his ass and horking loogies on the
Anyway, even then it's not entirely rainbows. All three losses have been on Sundays, which means Sunday starter Cody Winiarski is in for some scrutiny, especially after a game that saw his ERA jump up nine-tenths of a point. Every time he struggles and every gem that Will Roberts pitches on Tuesdays increases the call for Roberts to be moved to the weekend rotation. Never mind that Winiarski completely shut down both Poly and Maryland; a bad outing against the team with the seventh-best batting average and ninth-best slugging percentage in the country is enough to bring the doubters out of the woodwork. Explaining to people that George Washington bats .254 as a team and is 245th in the country and Georgia Tech bats .330 and is seventh never seems to have any effect; there's still a crowd that wants to see Roberts "get his chance," as if pitching on Tuesdays isn't a chance and as if that means he'll be forgotten about come the postseason and further as if he and Cody and the rest of the pitching staff hadn't been pitching side by side all offseason under the scrutiny of the coaches. RRGGH. Roberts is pitching wonderfully but Winiarski isn't pitching badly.
Anyway. Georgia Tech. Killed 'em. Danny Hultzen was lights the hell out again, allowing one earned run and one walk and striking out 12 on Friday. The bats came alive late, and Danny had his 7th win of the season. The lineup continued to hammer GT pitching for the rest of the weekend, earning a 12-9 win on Saturday and taking a 10-8 loss on Sunday. Even with the loss and a few extra runs for GT hitting, you are directed to be ecstatic about this: GT's starters are not chumps - they are the opposite of chumps - and our bats chased Mark Pope from what had been a pitchers' duel til the 7th, beat Jed Bradley into submission, and rained hits on Buck Farmer, too.
So: 31-3. Two one-run losses and a two-run loss, up against more than a five-run average margin in our wins. This team has never been out of a game. They're loose, enjoying themselves. They've got that swagger, without swaggering. The last time we saw a UVA team rolling like this was probably during the soccer team's run to the national title (not to put any pressure on.) But soccer is the kind of game where any old fluke at any time can explode all your work up to that point. Baseball can be fluky too but you know you're gonna get your nine hacks, every time, and there's something reassuring about that. There's also something reassuring about Danny Hultzen being on your team. Don't forget that.
Monday, April 4, 2011
spring game and weekend review
I probably should write this stuff sooner, because the spring game is already floating out of my head. That's what happens when nothing at all stands out. I don't know about the event, but the game was awful. Yes, awful. I blame the lack of receivers; the offenses couldn't open anything up because the defenses had absolutely no trouble covering the bench-warming receivers in single coverage. So the run looked as if it was always going up against an eight-man front.
I'd like to say, for example, that Rijo Walker had an excellent game, and truthfully he might well be ready to leapfrog the competition and join Chase Minnifield as a starter. But how ready is he, really, when the best we've seen is against a sixth-string receiver? So, I don't feel comfortable making any observations whatsoever about the defense.
So we'll stick to the quarterbacks. It was disconcerting watching them flip back and forth between teams. Rosters were handed out that had two on one team and two on another, but what we got was the all-time-QB look that I was afraid of. Did we learn anything, though? Plenty, actually. Mike London will insist from now til September that there's no hierarchy, the depth chart is filled with ORs, that it's a competition to the end. And it is a competition, but one in which Mike Rocco has the clear advantage for now. We know this because Rocco took easily the most snaps in this game. The order looks like Rocco, Strauss, Metheny, Watford.
None of the quarterbacks were consistent. The lack of excitement in the game can be pinned on the lack of receivers, but not the QB inconsistency. All of them, even Watford, showed they can at least be functional if called upon. But most of them had at least one ill-advised throw. Rocco and Strauss each threw a pick that should never have happened, and Rocco would've had at least one more if Steve Greer had any hands. Rocco's inaccuracy on short throws cost at least 20 yards overall, not counting the yards that might've been picked up after first downs that didn't happen. Strauss actually looked like the most accurate thrower, but his pick was also the worst. Metheny didn't make many mistakes, but needed to add zip to his throws.
There were some quality throws, though, too. Everyone but Watford picked up a big chunk of yards on more than one occasion with a well-placed downfield throw. Strauss had the throw of the day, nailing walk-on receiver Johnny Pickett in perfect stride for a big gain. I would guess that the QB situation isn't actually going to be much worse than last year, but with growing pains and the potential to be better by November.
Anyone else catch my eye? Khalek Shepherd was the surprise of the day with some decent gains at running back and a very nice kick return. Clearly outplayed Kevin Parks, who had major ball control issues. Looked like nerves, honestly. But as I've said, there's a ton of playing time at stake at tailback alongside Perry Jones (who looked good catching the ball on the occasions it wasn't thrown two feet away from where it should) and Shepherd just took a big step toward claiming some.
Speaking of Jones, how about the team captaincy in his third year in the program? I think we should expect big things from this kid.
******************************************************
I have to keep reminding myself that it's only two losses for the lacrosse team (in a row, that is) but it feels like we haven't won all season. That kind of a pathetic second-half effort against Maryland no less will give you that ugly feeling in the gut. Did anyone play well? Adam Ghitelman, for a half, but the off-ball defense is so poor that opposing attackers are so open that no save is even possible, hurting his numbers. On-ball defense wasn't too bad. Chris LaPierre seems to be the only guy not needing a written invitation to get a ground ball.
Other than that, pfeh. There's an ongoing debate that crops up every now and again about whether our years-long inability to win a single damn faceoff is poor coaching or poor recruiting, and with as many faceoff violations as I've seen go against UVA and as few on other teams, I've decided I'm on the "coaching" side.
And don't even get me started on Shamel Bratton. If he's going to get his dumb ass suspended for the second time this season - indefinitely this time - I don't want to see him on the sideline having a merry old time laughing it up. It doesn't take a crotchety old bastard to be pissed off about that. If Shamel's played his last game in a UVA uniform then it might very well be a short season, and that shouldn't mean happy-time.
It sucks to lose, given the expectations this program has built up, but it's not the end of the world. There are at least three more chances to beat someone - anyone - in the ACC, and there's Penn too. It's easy to feel like the wheels are coming off, and they might be. But they might not.
******************************************************
In case they are, let's ramp up the baseball talk. Now here is a team getting it done. VT apologists - if there are any that still care about baseball given their team's losing record - that the reason for their struggles is because they've lost so many players to graduation. And so they have. I said as much in the preview. But I didn't see Tyler Cannon, Jarrett Parker, Robert Morey, Franco Valdes, Dan Grovatt, Phil Gosselin, or Kevin Arico anywhere in Blacksburg for the series this weekend, and the 37-8 difference in runs is the difference between a program and a fleeting blip.
The UVA nine was so dominant this weekend that Brian O'Connor only threw closer Branden Kline in the ninth inning of Sunday's game for the sake of it. Gotta get the man some work or he'll be rusty. Tech scored just two runs off UVA starters all weekend, and here's the crazy stat: all their eight runs came off home runs, while UVA hit just one all weekend - David Coleman went yard in a 4-for-5, 5 RBI effort on Saturday, three of those ribbies as a result of the moon shot. This is why O'Connor shuns the home run and prefers to play Oakball.
The sweep of Tech gives the Hoos an astounding 28-2 record after 30 games. Everyone - everyone - is playing well. The team is absolutely humming along, just in time for the showdown of the year next weekend in Atlanta. Georgia Tech is 23-6 and tied with UVA at 11-1 atop the Coastal standings. (It continues to be totally baffling as to why there are divisions. They playin' some shit baseball in the Atlantic.)
******************************************************
News section!
- We got us a hoops commitment on Friday! Score-o. Evan Nolte is a unanimous four-star and one of the top-rated recruits Tony Bennett's ever picked up for UVA. Like Malcolm Brogdon, he's from Atlanta. Nolte is a player very similar to Paul Jesperson, who'll join the program in the fall. That gives us an overabundance of 2-3-maybe-four-ish tweener types (wings, they're often called, but I don't care for thet term because it's overused) but Nolte is the kind of guy you bring in if you can and work the system to make it fit. More about him tomorrow or Wednesday.
- NC State still doesn't have a coach, and their search has officially dragged to the point where it seems obvious that whoever is hired is like the ninth choice. They're not close. Remember, Tony Bennett was announced on March 31, and that was after a week of cloak-and-dagger shit that had the whole fanbase in a frenzy. Shaka Smart turned them down, and who knows who else has? Maryland blogger Testudo Times can be forgiven for being a Maryland blogger for this well-timed (ahem) nugget of info on their search.
- Speaking of Maryland, they just became a little less of a threat on the recruiting trail this year. Perfect timing since we're recruiting against a new regime, which is always tricky. They got bit by the APR bug and will forfeit three football scholarships. Per Testudo Times that'll take effect after this year, meaning the impact is on the 2012 recruiting class. That's not an insignificant thing in a coach's first year when he wants to build a huge class.
- Could this happen? A neutral-site hoops doubleheader in Richmond with UVA, VT, VCU, and ODU? It would be fun right here to bring up Seth Greenberg's sniveling about ODU not being the kind of school that would help VT "grow a brand" but the truth is, such an event would be a much bigger deal for VCU and ODU than for the two ACC schools. Hence the line about "some concerns." If either Tech or UVA want any instate recruits, it's not really in their interest to try to give them the big-time basketball pitch after losing to VCU. I hate to say it but Greenberg, for all his gum-flapping about everything else, is right: Old Dominion would stand to gain a lot more from a game against UVA or Tech than we would. Mid-majors like to complain about the big boys refusing to play them, but the fact is they have to find a way to make it worth the big boys' while to do so - kind of like how Boise State agreed to come to Landover, MD to play VT in football - because you know they'll celebrate like lottery winners if they win, while the big-boy-turned-victim looks a huge fool.
Also a concern: please don't play a hockey game at the Coliseum the day of because our memories of the last time that happened are lousy.
I'd like to say, for example, that Rijo Walker had an excellent game, and truthfully he might well be ready to leapfrog the competition and join Chase Minnifield as a starter. But how ready is he, really, when the best we've seen is against a sixth-string receiver? So, I don't feel comfortable making any observations whatsoever about the defense.
So we'll stick to the quarterbacks. It was disconcerting watching them flip back and forth between teams. Rosters were handed out that had two on one team and two on another, but what we got was the all-time-QB look that I was afraid of. Did we learn anything, though? Plenty, actually. Mike London will insist from now til September that there's no hierarchy, the depth chart is filled with ORs, that it's a competition to the end. And it is a competition, but one in which Mike Rocco has the clear advantage for now. We know this because Rocco took easily the most snaps in this game. The order looks like Rocco, Strauss, Metheny, Watford.
None of the quarterbacks were consistent. The lack of excitement in the game can be pinned on the lack of receivers, but not the QB inconsistency. All of them, even Watford, showed they can at least be functional if called upon. But most of them had at least one ill-advised throw. Rocco and Strauss each threw a pick that should never have happened, and Rocco would've had at least one more if Steve Greer had any hands. Rocco's inaccuracy on short throws cost at least 20 yards overall, not counting the yards that might've been picked up after first downs that didn't happen. Strauss actually looked like the most accurate thrower, but his pick was also the worst. Metheny didn't make many mistakes, but needed to add zip to his throws.
There were some quality throws, though, too. Everyone but Watford picked up a big chunk of yards on more than one occasion with a well-placed downfield throw. Strauss had the throw of the day, nailing walk-on receiver Johnny Pickett in perfect stride for a big gain. I would guess that the QB situation isn't actually going to be much worse than last year, but with growing pains and the potential to be better by November.
Anyone else catch my eye? Khalek Shepherd was the surprise of the day with some decent gains at running back and a very nice kick return. Clearly outplayed Kevin Parks, who had major ball control issues. Looked like nerves, honestly. But as I've said, there's a ton of playing time at stake at tailback alongside Perry Jones (who looked good catching the ball on the occasions it wasn't thrown two feet away from where it should) and Shepherd just took a big step toward claiming some.
Speaking of Jones, how about the team captaincy in his third year in the program? I think we should expect big things from this kid.
******************************************************
I have to keep reminding myself that it's only two losses for the lacrosse team (in a row, that is) but it feels like we haven't won all season. That kind of a pathetic second-half effort against Maryland no less will give you that ugly feeling in the gut. Did anyone play well? Adam Ghitelman, for a half, but the off-ball defense is so poor that opposing attackers are so open that no save is even possible, hurting his numbers. On-ball defense wasn't too bad. Chris LaPierre seems to be the only guy not needing a written invitation to get a ground ball.
Other than that, pfeh. There's an ongoing debate that crops up every now and again about whether our years-long inability to win a single damn faceoff is poor coaching or poor recruiting, and with as many faceoff violations as I've seen go against UVA and as few on other teams, I've decided I'm on the "coaching" side.
And don't even get me started on Shamel Bratton. If he's going to get his dumb ass suspended for the second time this season - indefinitely this time - I don't want to see him on the sideline having a merry old time laughing it up. It doesn't take a crotchety old bastard to be pissed off about that. If Shamel's played his last game in a UVA uniform then it might very well be a short season, and that shouldn't mean happy-time.
It sucks to lose, given the expectations this program has built up, but it's not the end of the world. There are at least three more chances to beat someone - anyone - in the ACC, and there's Penn too. It's easy to feel like the wheels are coming off, and they might be. But they might not.
******************************************************
In case they are, let's ramp up the baseball talk. Now here is a team getting it done. VT apologists - if there are any that still care about baseball given their team's losing record - that the reason for their struggles is because they've lost so many players to graduation. And so they have. I said as much in the preview. But I didn't see Tyler Cannon, Jarrett Parker, Robert Morey, Franco Valdes, Dan Grovatt, Phil Gosselin, or Kevin Arico anywhere in Blacksburg for the series this weekend, and the 37-8 difference in runs is the difference between a program and a fleeting blip.
The UVA nine was so dominant this weekend that Brian O'Connor only threw closer Branden Kline in the ninth inning of Sunday's game for the sake of it. Gotta get the man some work or he'll be rusty. Tech scored just two runs off UVA starters all weekend, and here's the crazy stat: all their eight runs came off home runs, while UVA hit just one all weekend - David Coleman went yard in a 4-for-5, 5 RBI effort on Saturday, three of those ribbies as a result of the moon shot. This is why O'Connor shuns the home run and prefers to play Oakball.
The sweep of Tech gives the Hoos an astounding 28-2 record after 30 games. Everyone - everyone - is playing well. The team is absolutely humming along, just in time for the showdown of the year next weekend in Atlanta. Georgia Tech is 23-6 and tied with UVA at 11-1 atop the Coastal standings. (It continues to be totally baffling as to why there are divisions. They playin' some shit baseball in the Atlantic.)
******************************************************
News section!
- We got us a hoops commitment on Friday! Score-o. Evan Nolte is a unanimous four-star and one of the top-rated recruits Tony Bennett's ever picked up for UVA. Like Malcolm Brogdon, he's from Atlanta. Nolte is a player very similar to Paul Jesperson, who'll join the program in the fall. That gives us an overabundance of 2-3-maybe-four-ish tweener types (wings, they're often called, but I don't care for thet term because it's overused) but Nolte is the kind of guy you bring in if you can and work the system to make it fit. More about him tomorrow or Wednesday.
- NC State still doesn't have a coach, and their search has officially dragged to the point where it seems obvious that whoever is hired is like the ninth choice. They're not close. Remember, Tony Bennett was announced on March 31, and that was after a week of cloak-and-dagger shit that had the whole fanbase in a frenzy. Shaka Smart turned them down, and who knows who else has? Maryland blogger Testudo Times can be forgiven for being a Maryland blogger for this well-timed (ahem) nugget of info on their search.
- Speaking of Maryland, they just became a little less of a threat on the recruiting trail this year. Perfect timing since we're recruiting against a new regime, which is always tricky. They got bit by the APR bug and will forfeit three football scholarships. Per Testudo Times that'll take effect after this year, meaning the impact is on the 2012 recruiting class. That's not an insignificant thing in a coach's first year when he wants to build a huge class.
- Could this happen? A neutral-site hoops doubleheader in Richmond with UVA, VT, VCU, and ODU? It would be fun right here to bring up Seth Greenberg's sniveling about ODU not being the kind of school that would help VT "grow a brand" but the truth is, such an event would be a much bigger deal for VCU and ODU than for the two ACC schools. Hence the line about "some concerns." If either Tech or UVA want any instate recruits, it's not really in their interest to try to give them the big-time basketball pitch after losing to VCU. I hate to say it but Greenberg, for all his gum-flapping about everything else, is right: Old Dominion would stand to gain a lot more from a game against UVA or Tech than we would. Mid-majors like to complain about the big boys refusing to play them, but the fact is they have to find a way to make it worth the big boys' while to do so - kind of like how Boise State agreed to come to Landover, MD to play VT in football - because you know they'll celebrate like lottery winners if they win, while the big-boy-turned-victim looks a huge fool.
Also a concern: please don't play a hockey game at the Coliseum the day of because our memories of the last time that happened are lousy.
Monday, February 28, 2011
weekend review
So it's back to the grind. Losing by 19 to Boston College, if nothing else, serves to remind us of the cavernous talent (and more importantly, experience) chasm separating this basketball team from the rest of the ACC. Various game reports opened by wondering what to point to in order to explain the blowout - or more specifically, the total lack of ability to play either offense or defense in the second half. The answer is simple: the implicit conclusion from last week's column that this team has been playing way over their heads. At some point that has to be expected to catch up to you.
You are now forbidden, for your own health, from uttering the word "NIT." I suppose it doesn't especially matter what happens for the rest of the season, but since Tony Bennett is still Tony Bennett it's not like the team is going to agree with that. Worse teams than this one have made the CBI, and even if that's the only tournament we get invited to we should accept. It's probably a money-loser, but this is the most profitable athletic department in the conference and what good is making all that money if you don't spend it on something like that? This team needs to cram as much basketball into its gullet as possible. And even if the only thing we have to look forward to this year is three more losses to end the season, we'll always have Paris, where "Paris" is code for "sweeping the Hokies right the hell out of the arena."
Speaking of the Hokies: Fuck you, Duke. Seriously. You run roughshod over the entire conference for three decades and then the one time I want you to actually take care of business and crush someone, you choke like Monica on the President's cigar. I hope when Coach K retires you hire Matt Doherty.
*****************************************************
OK, now that the profanity is out of the way let's talk about things that make us happy, like lacrosse and baseball.
I don't know whether to worry or not about the start of the lacrosse season. Yes, 3-0 is a good thing, and Drexel is no slouch of a team and Stony Brook is potential final four material, so beating them is great. Beating them without the suspended Bratton twins is pretty incredible.
That said, why the rash of suspensions? First Ghitelman and now both Rhamel and Shamel, and both for games of importance. Let's hope this is Starsia's way of reacting to the problems of last year and clamping down on stuff that he wasn't clamping down on before. And let's hope the team gets the message.
Discipline problems aside, this why there's such a thing as Steele Stanwick. Five goals against Stony Brook, including the OT game-winner, should tell you who the team sees as their go-to guy, especially when last year's second-line midfield of Haldy, Briggs, and Emery is suddenly the first-line midfield. The Brattons got the preseason hype and they'll be creating all the highlight goals, but Stanwick might well be the irreplaceable one.
The Stone-Age lack of TV means I'm still at a loss for individual observations, and tonight's VMI game won't add anything to what we know. Fortunately, it's Syracuse on Friday.
*****************************************************
I might be waffling on the lacrosse team, but not the baseball team. Despite losing on Sunday and allowing East Carolina to avoid the sweep, the start to the season has been fantastic. Danny Hultzen, of course, sparkles as the Friday starter. Fifteen strikeouts and top-notch work with the bat earned him National Player of the Week honors from Collegiate Baseball. (Seriously, read that article. Hultzen's pitching on Friday was as dominant as you can get short of throwing a perfect game.) Hultzen's dominance is to be marveled at, and should result in all kinds of recognition, gaudy numbers, and Friday evening victories as the season goes on.
But we've kind of been counting on that. The same for Tyler Wilson's excellent job on Saturdays. Wilson's an excellent pitcher too, and we knew that. Even though Cody Winiarski took the Sunday loss with one bad inning, I'm more encouraged by his play than by that of anyone else so far this season. Winiarski has struck out six in each of his two starts, almost doubling his K rate from last season. A weekend rotation without a hole in it means lofty ACC expectations; this is probably the top rotation in the conference and should result in a solid 20 conference wins and maybe then some. This is an awesome development. This is how you live up to people calling you "one bad machine."
I was going to get moving with a full-out preview of the season this week, but actually it'll probably have to wait til next week when the basketball regular season is done.
*****************************************************
And now, the rest of the story:
- Ralph Sampson, Hall-of-Famer. My initial reaction was this would've happened fifteen years ago if Sampson were a Dookie. Instead he played for lowly - which wasn't at all lowly at the time - Virginia. After all, Sampson is a member of a three-time-NPOY club that includes just two other players - Oscar Robertson and Bill Walton. Screw the man, man. Then I remembered that the NCBHOF is only like four or five years old, and Sampson wouldn't have been part of the (absolutely enormous) founding class because he's not in the big HOF on account of a mediocre NBA career. Still, how does Ralph Sampson, Three-Time-National-Player-Of-The-Effing-Year Ralph Sampson, have to wait behind Christian Laettner for his turn? Oh, right: Duke, and Not Duke.
Anyway, justice is done. The fact that a College Basketball Hall of Fame could exist as an institution with a building and everything and not have Ralph Sampson inside it was silly. Now it's not.
- Swimmers rock. The men's team, as predicted, made it two-for-two at the ACC Swimming & Diving championships. The meet, as not predicted, wasn't even close. 232 points separated UVA and 2nd-place UNC, which is more points than four of the competing teams achieved at all.
The meet's MVP was distance swimmer Matt McLean for the third time in four years. Other event winners: sprinter Scot Robison and butterflyer Peter Geissinger. The tone of the meet was pretty well set in the first individual event - the 500-yard freestyle - where Virginia swimmers took 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 8th. For those keeping score at home, the meet's over so you can put your pencils away, but that's still 92 of the event total 155 points. In one event UVA scored more than Boston College or Miami combined.
Nationals are next, where hopefully top-10 finishes await both the men and women.
- Can't let this go without a recruiting board update. But first, something even better. A map. I put together a Google Map of the recruiting board. It's color-coded and everything, although the red is kinda pink. And the orange looks red if you don't have the pink near it to compare it to. Blame Google's pastel coloring. Anyway, the link will have a permanent home on the recruiting board page so you can check it out whenever.
Now, the update:
- Added RB Kye Morgan and WR Drakar Harvell to yellow. Both might be green, but for a couple mitigating factors: Morgan lives almost literally in the shadow of Rutgers The SUNJ, and Harvell needs an offer. Harvell will eventually get one, I think, at which time he'll be instabumped to green or blue.
- Moved DT Korren Kirven from yellow to red.
- Moved ATH Cyrus Jones from red to yellow. Jones hails from Gilman - Darius Jennings's alma mater.
Full schedule this week (that's code for "I don't have to pull anything from my ass this week"): I'll preview the NC State game, and lacrosse's Syracuse game. I don't know if I'll preview the Maryland game, as we're destined to be killed by a team we match up with exceedingly poorly. As much as I enjoy this very likable version of our basketball team, I am really looking forward to spring sports.
You are now forbidden, for your own health, from uttering the word "NIT." I suppose it doesn't especially matter what happens for the rest of the season, but since Tony Bennett is still Tony Bennett it's not like the team is going to agree with that. Worse teams than this one have made the CBI, and even if that's the only tournament we get invited to we should accept. It's probably a money-loser, but this is the most profitable athletic department in the conference and what good is making all that money if you don't spend it on something like that? This team needs to cram as much basketball into its gullet as possible. And even if the only thing we have to look forward to this year is three more losses to end the season, we'll always have Paris, where "Paris" is code for "sweeping the Hokies right the hell out of the arena."
Speaking of the Hokies: Fuck you, Duke. Seriously. You run roughshod over the entire conference for three decades and then the one time I want you to actually take care of business and crush someone, you choke like Monica on the President's cigar. I hope when Coach K retires you hire Matt Doherty.
*****************************************************
OK, now that the profanity is out of the way let's talk about things that make us happy, like lacrosse and baseball.
I don't know whether to worry or not about the start of the lacrosse season. Yes, 3-0 is a good thing, and Drexel is no slouch of a team and Stony Brook is potential final four material, so beating them is great. Beating them without the suspended Bratton twins is pretty incredible.
That said, why the rash of suspensions? First Ghitelman and now both Rhamel and Shamel, and both for games of importance. Let's hope this is Starsia's way of reacting to the problems of last year and clamping down on stuff that he wasn't clamping down on before. And let's hope the team gets the message.
Discipline problems aside, this why there's such a thing as Steele Stanwick. Five goals against Stony Brook, including the OT game-winner, should tell you who the team sees as their go-to guy, especially when last year's second-line midfield of Haldy, Briggs, and Emery is suddenly the first-line midfield. The Brattons got the preseason hype and they'll be creating all the highlight goals, but Stanwick might well be the irreplaceable one.
The Stone-Age lack of TV means I'm still at a loss for individual observations, and tonight's VMI game won't add anything to what we know. Fortunately, it's Syracuse on Friday.
*****************************************************
I might be waffling on the lacrosse team, but not the baseball team. Despite losing on Sunday and allowing East Carolina to avoid the sweep, the start to the season has been fantastic. Danny Hultzen, of course, sparkles as the Friday starter. Fifteen strikeouts and top-notch work with the bat earned him National Player of the Week honors from Collegiate Baseball. (Seriously, read that article. Hultzen's pitching on Friday was as dominant as you can get short of throwing a perfect game.) Hultzen's dominance is to be marveled at, and should result in all kinds of recognition, gaudy numbers, and Friday evening victories as the season goes on.
But we've kind of been counting on that. The same for Tyler Wilson's excellent job on Saturdays. Wilson's an excellent pitcher too, and we knew that. Even though Cody Winiarski took the Sunday loss with one bad inning, I'm more encouraged by his play than by that of anyone else so far this season. Winiarski has struck out six in each of his two starts, almost doubling his K rate from last season. A weekend rotation without a hole in it means lofty ACC expectations; this is probably the top rotation in the conference and should result in a solid 20 conference wins and maybe then some. This is an awesome development. This is how you live up to people calling you "one bad machine."
I was going to get moving with a full-out preview of the season this week, but actually it'll probably have to wait til next week when the basketball regular season is done.
*****************************************************
And now, the rest of the story:
- Ralph Sampson, Hall-of-Famer. My initial reaction was this would've happened fifteen years ago if Sampson were a Dookie. Instead he played for lowly - which wasn't at all lowly at the time - Virginia. After all, Sampson is a member of a three-time-NPOY club that includes just two other players - Oscar Robertson and Bill Walton. Screw the man, man. Then I remembered that the NCBHOF is only like four or five years old, and Sampson wouldn't have been part of the (absolutely enormous) founding class because he's not in the big HOF on account of a mediocre NBA career. Still, how does Ralph Sampson, Three-Time-National-Player-Of-The-Effing-Year Ralph Sampson, have to wait behind Christian Laettner for his turn? Oh, right: Duke, and Not Duke.
Anyway, justice is done. The fact that a College Basketball Hall of Fame could exist as an institution with a building and everything and not have Ralph Sampson inside it was silly. Now it's not.
- Swimmers rock. The men's team, as predicted, made it two-for-two at the ACC Swimming & Diving championships. The meet, as not predicted, wasn't even close. 232 points separated UVA and 2nd-place UNC, which is more points than four of the competing teams achieved at all.
The meet's MVP was distance swimmer Matt McLean for the third time in four years. Other event winners: sprinter Scot Robison and butterflyer Peter Geissinger. The tone of the meet was pretty well set in the first individual event - the 500-yard freestyle - where Virginia swimmers took 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 8th. For those keeping score at home, the meet's over so you can put your pencils away, but that's still 92 of the event total 155 points. In one event UVA scored more than Boston College or Miami combined.
Nationals are next, where hopefully top-10 finishes await both the men and women.
- Can't let this go without a recruiting board update. But first, something even better. A map. I put together a Google Map of the recruiting board. It's color-coded and everything, although the red is kinda pink. And the orange looks red if you don't have the pink near it to compare it to. Blame Google's pastel coloring. Anyway, the link will have a permanent home on the recruiting board page so you can check it out whenever.
Now, the update:
- Added RB Kye Morgan and WR Drakar Harvell to yellow. Both might be green, but for a couple mitigating factors: Morgan lives almost literally in the shadow of Rutgers The SUNJ, and Harvell needs an offer. Harvell will eventually get one, I think, at which time he'll be instabumped to green or blue.
- Moved DT Korren Kirven from yellow to red.
- Moved ATH Cyrus Jones from red to yellow. Jones hails from Gilman - Darius Jennings's alma mater.
Full schedule this week (that's code for "I don't have to pull anything from my ass this week"): I'll preview the NC State game, and lacrosse's Syracuse game. I don't know if I'll preview the Maryland game, as we're destined to be killed by a team we match up with exceedingly poorly. As much as I enjoy this very likable version of our basketball team, I am really looking forward to spring sports.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
