bronc and roll

UVA fans watch the Bronco Mendenhall press conference

It's been a little over six years and seven months since Craig Littlepage dropped a bomb by hiring someone other than Rick Barnes or Tubby Smith to coach the basketball team.  That was surprising, and I reacted by going "who the hell is that?" and being incredibly put out for about 10 seconds - the amount of time it took me to look up where he was coming from.  Oh.  Washington State.  I know two things about them.  They've been in the Sweet 16 lately, and they have the basketball tradition of a potato.  They're really good, it's really hard for them to be good, this might work.

But an ACC team trying to find a basketball coach can pick from a large set of possibilities, including other Power 5 conferences and the NBA, so dropping a surprise is not too tough.  An ACC team trying to find a football coach has a much smaller group of candidates.  Football is a smaller pool of teams and the ACC doesn't rank so high on the pecking order.  The media is usually pretty good at identifying the list of available coaches, and surprises are usually unpleasant.  Like when South Carolina turns to Will Muschamp and says, gee, you did such a bang-up job coaching in the SEC East with more resources than any other school in the division, why not take a crack at it with the degree of difficulty cranked way up?  Surprises are bad.

Except, apparently, when pulled off by Craig Littlepage and whatever search firm dug this up.  Littlepage saved me 10 seconds this time around - I knew exactly where Bronco Mendenhall coached.  I got to skip the "who?" stage and go right to "this might work."  The surprise lingered all weekend and into Monday and probably for quite a while.

The pessimistic view on UVA's head-coach gig has been that it's not very attractive because losing record.  I've always called that nonsense.  There's too much going for it for it not to be attractive, and coaches always think they can turn it around - I sure wouldn't want one who didn't.  Mendenhall just vindicated the hell out of that position and took it just one step further: UVA's record was a reason he came.  He had a great thing going at BYU, and there wouldn't have been any point to leaving it for a light maintenance job.  It's clear from everything that's come out since Friday - up to and including Monday's press conference - that he's looking forward to seeing his approach can make a difference.  A really big difference.

Mendenhall said all the right things at the presser about how UVA is a special place with high standards, which is what coaches always say when they're being introduced.  A certain part of fanhood of losing teams involves wanting to be told that things will be all better soon, and the place for that is the introductory press conference, but that's not why Mendenhall blew that press conference away.  He blew it away because he was very blunt and very uncompromising on certain things.  Yes, it would have been a deal-breaker to not be able to coach BYU's bowl game.  No, I'm not gonna sleep at the office.  Yes, I'm going to pay attention to things other than my job, starting with my family.  These are things usually used to demonstrate your all-in-by-golly commitment to your new job, and Mendenhall flat-out told everyone that's not what his commitment entailed.  And it made everything else ring loud, clear, and true.  Because of that, it's easy to believe that the buzzwords like accountability and standards aren't just buzzwords.

Mendenhall, in short, is Mike London with a plan.  It's funny - going back, the things London talked about in his press conference, he did just that.  He talked about being energetic, recruiting the 757, the character he wanted his players to exhibit.  The word "discipline" was not spoken once.  He never talked about the systems he planned on installing, other than a passing mention of a 4-3 defense.  He was asked about his offensive philosophy and gave a generic answer about scoring a lot, and then said, "I think there are several positions that are key" and then proceeded to list all the offensive positions on the field except offensive line.

Eerie, then, how it turned out.  Ironically, that too is reason for optimism.  If London's presser turned out so prophetic, why shouldn't Mendenhall's?  There was a lot of overlap.  Both coaches said, more or less exactly, "you're not just getting me, you're getting my family."  Both talked about academics and character and UVA being the kind of place where it matters, and that being why they wanted to be here.  The difference is that London stopped there.  Mendenhall laid out a plan, a system, and the results it's achieved so far.

And those results are impressive.  BYU has an impressive football history, which belies how tough it is to win there.  You have to convince players to go to a place with behavior restrictions topped only by military academies.  Many of them leave for two years and don't do anything more physically strenuous than ride a bike.  And Mendenhall further limited himself by being Tony Bennett-esque in demanding his recruits fit the requirements, even believing that they should have to sell themselves to him as much as the other way around.  On the one hand, right now, I could probably do a better job than Mendenhall of knowing, say, which are the pipeline schools in Hampton Roads.  (Not for long, but, y'know, this minute at least.)  On the other hand, UVA is supposed to be this hard place to recruit to, and Mendenhall is coming from one of the few places where it's tougher.

It's the splash of the year, at just the right time.  The ACC Coastal won the coaching carousel this year.  The SEC hired two coordinators with no head coaching experience and one retread in all the worst senses of the word.  Maryland and Rutgers did that too and those were the two better hires in the Big Ten, because Illinois hired a guy who was fired from Western Michigan.  USC went full inbred, making it 2-for-2 in laughable hires by schools initialized USC.  VT, on the other hand, made the best Conventional Hire in the country, and Miami took the best coach actually known to be available.  Duke still has the guy that made Duke into a good football team.  Pitt went the coordinator route last year but at least it was with the reigning Broyles winner.  None of these are the guy who actually went undefeated in conference play, which would be Larry Fedora.  UVA needed to find some way to keep up.  Consider it done and then some.  Bronco Mendenhall is both a damn good coach and the right coach.  UVA needed both.

not with a bang

Frank Beamer played it how Frank Beamer always plays it.  One of his players hit a referee - short of committing an actual prosecutable crime, basically the single most felonious thing you can do on a football field - and that player was suspended for a half.  Because it was "unintentional."  This is sort of like when your kicker breaks into someone's house to steal back his weed and that becomes "trespassing."

And Mike London played it how Mike London always plays it.  Two timeouts burned during his final game because his team couldn't figure out how to substitute.  Three false start penalties and one dingus lined up on offense straddling the neutral zone, which latter penalty you could see coming a mile away.  And a quarterback who's been so well developed and coached that his first choice in the two-minute drill (one minute, actually) is to chuck the ball deep down the middle to a quadruple-covered tight end.  Great play design, incidentally.

Thus did the head coaching careers of two coaches end - the only way either coach knew how.  Mike London's last game could only have been more of a microcosm of his career if he had taken his last timeout to ice Joey Slye on his game-winning kick.  That would've been absolutely precious.  Otherwise it checks all the boxes.  Red zone ineptitude, poor discipline, getting outcoached at halftime, headscratchingly bad QB decisions, and just because Steve Fairchild absolutely had to get in on the be-who-you-are action, lots of third-and-long screen passes.  One of them finally worked, and I imagine that was the instant Fairchild at long last felt at peace with his not-too-illustrious tenure in Charlottesville.

Any further flowery eulogizing of the Mike London era would be literary onanism.  It's not an era much worth remembering.  It wasn't just losing football, it was bad football.  It was aimless, unplanned, unencumbered by identity.  Everything good that can be said about it, is said about the off-field aspects of running a program.  This is like house-hunting and being shown a dilapidated terrible old house with a palatial, immaculate basement.  The other way round isn't desirable either, and at least you've got a nice foundation, and foundation matters, but the world remembers the face you show it.

******************************************************

I'm not going to exhaustively cover the coaching search, but how about a quick tiny blurb on some of the possible candidates?  First impressions, call them, and almost nothing at all to do with probability of landing them.

Mike Bloomgren: One of several under-experienced offensive coordinators on the list, and the least connected in this area of the country.

Jeff Brohm: Impressive offense at WKU, which won their bowl game last year by coming back from a 49-14 deficit.  Experience playing and teaching quarterback a plus.  Would need a very strong DC hire.  Risk to jump ship to Louisville should anything happen to Bobby Petrino, but one of the top fallback options.

Mack Brown: The fanbase is harshly divided on whether this would be a good idea or not; count me in the Yes camp.  A Hall of Fame coach with a national championship ring and extensive coaching tree is not a guy you turn your nose up at.  His age isn't a major issue; if successful here, he could coach 6-8 years and put the program on the right track.  This is an attractive enough job to draw Brown's eye as well as other high-profile names like Mark Richt and Dan Mullen - imagine what it could do with a winning record and full stadium?  Brown would likely provide that.

Troy Calhoun: In the past he's had the reputation of being tough to pry out of the AFA.  His record at a very tough place to win is impressive, as is the accountability he demands - a very welcome departure from London for sure.  And he's got a very good mind for offense.  On the down side, there are very real reasons to be wary of Ken Niumatalolo, and Calhoun has had a tough time beating him.  Calhoun's offense, while more multi-dimensional than Navy's, only relies slightly less exclusively on the run.

Al Golden: Similar to London in that his Miami teams lacked identity.  Far more talented of a coach, obviously.  High-floor, low-ceiling hire.

Pep Hamilton: Star fell a bit after being fired as Colts OC, but was a hot wish-list name for a lot of vacancies for a while.  Seems to prefer the NFL, however, and has never been a head coach.

Dan Mullen: Was winning at Mississippi State before Dak Prescott, so concerns that he's a one-trick pony are unfounded.  Mullen was the favorite choice of the knowledgeable wing of the Michigan fanbase before it was clear Jim Harbaugh was a real thing, and a concerted effort could reel him in.  The top home-run choice now that Mark Richt is more or less off the board.

Ken Niumatalolo: Has done well at Navy, but Paul Johnson is already in the division; trying to beat the master with the student isn't a very likely proposition.  Army has been trying to beat Navy at their own game for a while now and it's not working.

Matt Rhule: Interesting career path; while at Temple, he switched from being DL coach to QB coach, then became OC a year later.  He's certainly taken a difficult situation to tremendous heights this year, but I think, more than any other current HC we could look at (even Brohm), we'd be taking a risk that he's not a flash in the pan.  Temple's defense, not their offense, is leading them to the top.

Mark Richt: The very best choice for the job, tempered only by the fact that he's pretty much turned it down.

Lincoln Riley: Has exactly one year of experience at a Power 5 school; Oklahoma's offense has improved between last year and this year, but it's too soon to tell how much of that is Riley's doing.  And ECU's offense was decent but far from explosive during his time there.  Too thin of a resume to be anything but a colossal leap of faith.

Mike Sanford: See Riley, Lincoln.

Greg Schiano: Reputation as an asshole will precede him wherever he goes.  A Sports Illustrated article painted the picture of a reformed coach hoping for a second chance, and he'll need a fresh start somewhere in order to lose said reputation.  In Schiano you'd certainly see the discipline lacking under London; if the reform job works, Schiano has potential to be the architect of a major turnaround, but you're taking a risk that leopards do change spots.

Matt Wells: Solid record at Utah State for two years - not so much this year.  Raises questions about whether he's been riding coattails.  Also has zilch connections on the East Coast.

game preview: Virginia Tech

Date/Time: Saturday, November 28; 12:00

TV: ESPNUVA

Record against the Hokies: 37-54-5

Last meeting: VT 24, UVA 20; 11/28/14, Blacksburg

Last weekend: UVA 42, Duke 34; UNC 30, VT 27

Line: VT by 3.5

As you might have guessed by the utter lack of football content lately, it's been hard to form any emotions or strong opinions about football these days.  Impressively, the players keep plugging.  There's nothing tangible at stake and hasn't been for a while, but they're getting after it.  That whole losing-to-Duke thing was getting really old, so it's nice at least to have that on the resume this year.

It's rivalry week though.  I don't care what anyone says, this is the right week to play this game.  Are the students gone?  Yeah, but most of them can make a day trip anyway.  I made it back from 750 miles away, so the Fairfax mafia can too.  Are people busy with friends and family?  Yeah, but surely a reasonably successful program can scrape up enough fans to fill a stadium.  All we need to do is find a reasonably successful program.

This is the right time for this game because no matter what happens in the season, you still have one last thing to look forward to.  Play this game in October and then what?  Hit the seven-loss mark and look forward to that epic end-of-season clash with Pittsburgh?  No offense to Pitt, but I'm gonna say nah.  Rivalry games are storyline games.

And this one has more than enough to go around.  Frank Beamer is definitely coaching his last ACC game and maybe (if things go just right) his last game ever.  Mike London is almost definitely coaching his last at UVA as well.  These two schools meet for a basketball game on January 4 and both may well have introduced new football coaches by then.  Change is in the air.  Both teams are trying to extend their coach's career - one by going bowling and one by hoping they can stave off a firing.

This latter doesn't seem likely, by the way, even with a win.  Just as the economics made it difficult to fire London last year, they make it even harder to keep him this year.  UVA will have to swallow about a $3.5 million pill, but refusing to do would be the very definition of penny-wise and pound-foolish.  Only two coaches are owed any money after this season: London and Jon Tenuta.  No college football coach ever coaches the last year of his contract - the optics of doing so are prohibitive - so keeping London means extending him, and extending him means doing so for like four years.  Or, I suppose, he could coach the last year of his contract, and UVA can figure out how to convince a whole staff worth of assistant coaches to coach on a one-year contract.  There are those who'll say that the huge number of vacancies this year means that the competition for the right coach is bloody and fierce, and they're not wrong, but the size of the coaching carousel also means lots and lots and lots of assistant-coach vacancies.  Any assistant who chooses a one-year contract working for an obvious lame duck over a longer-term contract on a new staff is too stupid to be placed in charge of mentoring young adults.

For this weekend, that means I can stand on very solid ground in predicting that London's days as UVA's head coach are numbered in the single digits.  I'm not going to spend my time chasing rumors about his replacement - and depending on how various teams' postseasons go, that could take a while - but the spectrum of readings about London's impending release are advanced enough to be somewhere between rumor and confirmed fact.  The program and the rivalry will shortly enter a new era.  Given how both have proceeded recently, it's a welcome sight.

-- UVA run offense vs. VT run defense

Top backs:
Taquan Mizzell: 153 carries, 638 yards, 4.2 ypc, 4 TDs
Albert Reid: 57 carries, 257 yards, 4.5 ypc, 2 TDs

UVA offense:
134.09 yards/game, 3.84 yards/attempt
101st of 128 (national), 10th of 14 (ACC)

VT defense:
172.55 yards/game, 4.36 yards/attempt
72nd of 128 (national), 9th of 14 (ACC)

So last week, ACC ref Ron Cherry called an offside penalty on Tech DE Dadi Nicolas, and Nicolas did what anyone would do in that situation: hit Cherry in the arm.  And by "anyone" I really mean no one at all because hitting a referee is as big a taboo as there is in all of sports.  Nicolas wasn't just randomly flailing his arms and didn't realize who was behind him; he actually walked up behind Cherry and angrily whacked him in the outstretched arm (Cherry was signaling "on the defense").

Because Frank Beamer is either an idiot, or thinks we're all idiots, he claimed it was unintentional and suspended Nicolas for 30 minutes.  And because the ACC is full of gutless wonders, they let the suspension stand instead of immediately stepping in and telling Beamer "nuh-uh."  So VT will be missing one of their better run-stoppers for a half - but not the important half.  Great precedent.  Hit a referee, be suspended for basically no time at all.

UVA's running game has settled into an area a notch or two above what it was to start the season.  Back then it was minimally functional - now it's sort of just plain functional.  It strikes fear in the heart of nobody, but at least it moves the ball.  But fortunately, Tech's defense is a tiny shadow of its past self.  The VT D-line has held up well.  Nicolas was much more terrifying last year, but he and Ken Ekanem do a more than passable job of keeping the edges clean.  VT is undersized at tackle, but it doesn't matter too much; Luther Maddy, Corey Marshall, and Woody Baron make for a pretty good rotation in the middle.

The difference is at linebacker, where VT is accustomed to getting good if not great play, and they're not getting it this year.  Hokie fans complain incessantly about Andrew Motuapuaka's play in the middle.  Deon Clarke has done alright, but it's clear the linebacking isn't up to the usual standards.

Still, VT will have the advantage in the trenches and a fresh Nicolas to start the second half, so running the ball will be difficult.  VT can only be said to have truly shut down one team this year (the totally impotent Boston College offense) so there'll be yardage at the end of the day.  It's not likely to move the needle much, though.

-- UVA pass offense vs. VT pass defense

Quarterback:
Matt Johns: 229/365, 62.7%; 2,639 yards, 19 TDs, 15 INTs; 7.23 ypa, 132.4 rating

Top receivers:
Taquan Mizzell: 68 rec., 671 yards, 4 TDs
Canaan Severin: 51 rec., 713 yards, 7 TDs
T.J. Thorpe: 20 rec., 295 yards, 1 TD

UVA offense:
244.4 yards/game, 7.2 yards/attempt
68th of 128 (national), 9th of 14 (ACC)

VT defense:
174.0 yards/game, 7.1 yards/attempt
67th of 128 (national), 8th of 14 (ACC)

The yards-per-attempt numbers that I like so much don't tell the story here.  VT is missing Kendall Fuller, who's been out since September.  Without him, opponents have generally avoided Brandon Facyson (who has 10 PBUs and 26 tackles) and gone after Chuck Clark instead.  Clark's not the worst, but he leads the team in tackles, which is partly a function of run support and partly a function of getting thrown at.  A lot.

The real story, though, is still in the numbers.  Tech has only allowed three opponents to complete more than 50% of their passes.  Good for them.  When opponents do complete passes, they average over 14.7 yards per completion.  Bad for them.  To put that in perspective, UNC is the fourth-best passing offense in the country and the second-best non-wacky passing offense in the country (Army and Air Force run goofball offenses where passing is used as a trick play) and they average about 14.5 yards per completion.

In other words, welcome to the wild funland of inconsistent safety play, where VT trusts their free safeties so much they only ever start strong safeties.  (Or rovers, in VT terminology.)  Adonis Alexander is the team leader in picks and he lost his starting job a few weeks ago because he's a wide receiver adventure waiting to happen.

Because of UVA's use-the-pass-game-as-the-run-game approach to offense, that 14.7 is coming down, and Matt Johns probably will complete more than 50% of his passes.  Bypassing the defensive line in this way is probably smart.  Facyson will probably draw Canaan Severin, so with adventureland safety play and the potential for some big gains, T.J. Thorpe could be the game's X-factor.

-- VT run offense vs. UVA run defense

Top backs:
Travon McMillian: 166 carries, 880 yards, 5.3 ypc, 5 TDs
Brenden Motley: 88 carries, 224 yards, 2.5 ypc, 3 TDs

VT offense:
159.09 yards/game, 3.71 yards/attempt
109th of 128 (national), 13th of 14 (ACC)

UVA defense:
164.91 yards/game, 4.68 yards/attempt
96th of 128 (national), 13th of 14 (ACC)

The numbers are a little misleading here, too.  VT looks like one of the worst run offenses in the country at first glance.  When they're handing off to Travon McMillian, though, they get a lot more effective all of a sudden.  McMillian started the season at the end of the depth chart, but by the beginning of November he'd shunted aside both Trey Edmunds and J.C. Coleman and has become the official workhorse back.  With fullback Sam Rogers getting a steady diet of change-of-pace carries, Edmunds and Coleman have all but disappeared.

The stats are also skewed by Brenden Motley, a mobile-ish quarterback who doesn't actually run all that well.  Motley was standing in for Michael Brewer, who returned to the lineup four games ago from a broken collarbone and who never runs anywhere if he can help it.

Neither UVA's D-line nor VT's O-line has been anything like you'd call impressive this year; the thing that matters here is McMillian vs. the linebackers.  McMillian has been very good.  Micah Kiser's 107 tackles say he probably knows what he's doing too.  If the linebackers are on point, McMillian will be bottled up, but that's something most teams have had trouble doing consistently.

-- VT pass offense vs. UVA pass defense

Quarterback:
Michael Brewer: 88/150, 58.7%; 1,122 yards, 10 TDs, 5 INTs; 7.48 ypa, 136.8 rating

Top receivers:
Isaiah Ford: 57 rec., 816 yards, 9 TDs
Cam Phillips: 43 rec., 536 yards, 2 TDs
Bucky Hodges: 33 rec., 458 yards, 6 TD

VT offense:
214.1 yards/game, 7.2 yards/attempt
66th of 128 (national), 8th of 14 (ACC)

UVA defense:
256.4 yards/games, 8.2 yards/attempt
110th of 128 (national), 13th of 14 (ACC)

Some teams spread the ball around, getting passes to a lot of different receivers.  Then there's Virginia Tech.  The backs are a small, barely significant part of the passing game.  Backup tight end Ryan Malleck gets a token catch or so each game.  Three guys have 72% of VT's completions.

Those would be receivers Isaiah Ford and Cam Phillips, and tight end Bucky Hodges.  To be sure, these are three legitimate players.  Particularly Ford, the ACC's receiving yards leader.  Hodges is a difficult mismatch; he's huge, standing 6'7", 241, and your prototypical tough cover as a tight end that nickel corners can barely tackle let alone reach balls thrown high in the air, and who linebackers have a tough time chasing down.

At quarterback, Brewer is....fine.  He doesn't light up the stadium, but he doesn't lose the game by himself, either.  He lets his three main receivers do most of the work and then finds the one that's most open.  If they're open, he can usually find them; if not, he can't throw them open.  He won't make any plays with his feet, either; Brewer is one of the least mobile quarterbacks around.  VT doesn't protect him real well, so Tenuta should be able to pressure him.

-- Favorability ratings

Run offense: 4
Pass offense: 5
Run defense: 4
Pass defense: 4

Average: 4.25

-- Outlook

Stat sheets and past impressions, yes, all well and good; this one's still coming down to intangibles.  These teams are about evenly matched; the difference between them is basically one extra OOC challenge game.  Both have solid quarterbacks, large positional weaknesses that prevent them from contending for anything, and coaches on the way out.

So, cliche as it sounds, it comes down to things like turnovers, wanting it more, making a clutch play, all those things that announcers think every game is about.  VT carried Beamer off the field despite the loss last week; no doubt they'll be motivated to win the last one for him.  UVA, likewise.  VT is pretty good at coming up with wrinkles for the UVA game that surprise the Hoos; UVA, not so much likewise.

Still, UVA is at home, where it so happens they're 4-2, and 3-0 in ACC play.  Tech has a slight edge on paper and a big edge on the sidelines, but....if not now, when?  Mike London shrugged off one demon last week and beat David Cutcliffe.  Why not another one?  Let's go ahead and say the extra motivation is on the good guys' side for once.

Final score: UVA 24, VT 21

-- Rest of the ACC

Miami @ Pittsburgh - Fri. 12:00 - Nothing at stake here anymore except trying to look good for bowl suitors.

Georgia Tech vs. Georgia - 12:00 - 8-3 vs. 3-8 would seem like a pretty lopsided matchup, but GT did beat FSU at home.

Louisville @ Kentucky - 12:00 - UL tries to keep one SEC team out of bowl contention.

Clemson @ South Carolina - 12:00 - The third-best football team in the state of South Carolina stands between Clemson and an undefeated regular season.

Boston College @ Syracuse - 12:30 - Battle for Atlantic un-supremacy.

Duke @ Wake Forest - 12:30 - Wake me when it's over.

North Carolina @ NC State - 3:30 - UNC could set up an ACC CG between 8-0 teams.

Florida State @ Florida - 7:30 - FSU isn't going to the CFP, but they can throw a wrench in the works.

always look on the bright side of life

Oh come on guys.  That wasn't so bad.  You act like nothing good comes out of a game like that.  Well I got news for you.  Lots of positives to take away from that shellacking mildly disappointing outcome.

-- Chrome helmets!  Siiiiick.  Players think that kind of thing is totally sweet.  I know because I hear it all the time from fans who think that kind of thing is totally sweet.  (UVA's only actual good performance this year has come in the classy and traditional regular blue helmets, blue jersey, and white pants.  Just sayin'.)

-- Chrome helmets bonus!  You couldn't see the V-sabre logo on them, which means slightly less association with that disaster mildly disappointing outcome.

-- Olamide Zacchaeus blew away the UVA record for kick return yardage in one game.  That's what we call taking advantage of your plentiful opportunities!  Plus he didn't let loose any embarrassing quotes afterwards, distinguishing him from the guy whose record he broke.**

-- Consistency, and lots of it.  Boise's line score was 17-12-17-10, the symmetrical halves marred only by Matt Johns's intentional-grounding safety.

-- I mean c'mon, it wasn't that bad, it wasn't even the worst embarrassment mildly disappointing outcome, margin-wise, of the London era.  It wasn't even the second-worst.

-- Boise State's not in our conference, so we still control our own destiny in the ACC.  Unlike, oh, say, Georgia Tech.

**Marquis Weeks and his hilariously infamous "just like running from the cops" blurt.

So now that I'm fresh out of smoke to blow up your ass, I was thinking.  What did I like least about that....thing?  Was it the usual run-game incompetence?  Was it Matt Johns's Verica-esque decision to start the game?  It sure sets an awful tone when your offense's first act is to try and get its own quarterback killed and for him to respond by panicking.

No, I think it was the players' behavior, themselves.  T.J. Thorpe doing a little dance after scoring his touchdown....ok, the game is not at all out of reach and you've just done something to halt the nasty momentum you've built up.  Fine.  I'm thinking more the second half.  I'm thinking Tim Harris, down 20-some points, emphatically signaling incomplete pass at the Boise bench, having had very little to do with said incomplete pass but it happened near him so I guess that's all the excuse you need to strut.  I'm thinking Zach Bradshaw, twice in a row, flirting with a roughing-the-passer call that he probably deserved.  I'm thinking Keeon Johnson getting a personal foul penalty on a kick return - and Mike London's first instinct being to whine at the refs instead of chew out Johnson.  Who, by the way, was sent right out on offense.

This team is in theory saying all the right things; we know we're better than we showed, we can still reach all our goals for the year, we just have to move on and get it right, etc. etc.  The unfortunate thing is that when you combine it with all the peacocking they're doing out there, they give off the undeniable impression that they're the most overconfident crappy team in history.

I suspect they're in play-for-each-other mode at this point.  Usually that comes around November when bowl eligibility is no longer a thing.  But this wasn't the first time Mike London has been miked up for a pre-game speech.  They never fell quite so flat in the past, though.  Past speeches, you've also seen the team responding enthusiastically.  Friday?  They stood still as stone, letting London motivate the camera while they impassively absorbed his "who do you play for?" speech.

It's an un-encouraging sign for the London tenure.  One of hundreds, yes.  One I may be wildly misinterpreting, yes.  I don't think I'm missing the significance, though.  56-14 means the team was not motivated.  A sack-averting interception on the first play from scrimmage means not motivated.  Armchair psychology though this may be, it seems plain that London has lost one of his major remaining selling points.  The last one that remained to affect any results in-season, actually.

A wildly undisciplined and unmotivated football team, cocky for no reason, uncoached in fundamentals and unable to execute most plays, even on the rare occasion those plays are well-called and well-timed, coached by a staff that reportedly** doesn't even get along with each other too well - mortgage the house and bet that there are more mildly disappointing outcomes on the horizon.

All that's left to look forward to is the cleaning house, and the truest sign of the toxic fecklessness of the architects of this mess is that nobody's even sure that'll happen.

**very much only message board talk, but the kind that you at least cock an interested ear to.

identity crisis

Football season is underway.  Could you tell?  Probably not from inside a UVA bubble.  There's little excitement, little buzz, and little attention being paid to the Hoos by anyone outside the state.  When attention is paid, it's almost always to the proverbial hot seat under Mike London's proverbial posterior.  UVA fans weren't alone in being incredulous that London was kept around after last season.  Grantland calls it "the utterly baffling phenomenon that is his continued employment by the Commonwealth of Virginia" as the grand finale to their hot-seat preview.  The only other theme you ever really see is "tough schedule"; ESPN's ACC power rankings have UVA 12th out of 14, on the premise of "gee, this team is talented but that schedule is so hard."  This more or less ignores their own player rankings which gave UVA exactly one player in the nation's top 100 and ACC's top 25.  (Quin Blanding.)

The truth is the schedule isn't that hard.  Sure, the nonconference schedule isn't piled high with weenies.  It's basically Three Men and a Baby William & Mary.  It's also two-thirds ACC.  The Coastal Conference is the most milquetoast division in all of college football.  If you think the conference schedule is overly challenging, there's a saying about suckers at the poker table, which applies here.

Sooner or later, and probably sooner but I've been burned by that assumption before, I'll write the obit for the London regime.  It'll say the words quarterbacks about a hundred times.  The list of things London has mismanaged is long and distinguished and - here's the scary part - mostly unfixable this year.  He could address a few things, like the crappy special teams and his nonsensical clock management, but truly fixing them - no, that would take a couple years.  In some cases because the issues are structural and in some cases because we need a couple years of evidence to call them fixed.

There is one place he can make tangible progress, though.  Besides winning, there's one absolutely huge, glaring difference between the football team and the other major programs at this school: Identity.  Basketball, baseball, lacrosse, you've seen what they've built and the reputations they have.  A program's identity and its relationship to success is a little bit of a chicken-or-egg question, but a coach has gotta know what he stands for, and I don't mean getting his players to go to class.  That's what drives your recruiting and your teaching and your coaching.

I know Mike London is a man of character and he wants his players to be great guys and hard-working and all that, but that's not really it.  That doesn't translate into coaching and to the extent that it's translated into recruiting, it hasn't driven the on-field direction of the team.  Tony Bennett recruits players of tremendous character, not just for the sake of it but because his incredibly successful system requires a ton of selflessness and trust in your teammates.  Brian O'Connor recruits only college-enthusiastic players because it means he doesn't have to sweat out the draft and because they see Omaha as more than just a place where scouts gather.

What's Mike London's philosophy?  Best I can tell, it's that athletes and speed make a football team and you can recruit a bunch of them and mold them into football players.  Besides the obvious roster-management problems with this (essentially, these guys can only play three positions - WR, CB, S) it's sort of telling: even the one thing that London can be said to be consistent about is essentially a scattershot lottery.  Take a decent-looking athlete and hope he develops.  Trent Corney has for years now tantalized with his immense raw talent, and played almost never.

There are hopeful glimmers.  They're not likely to be enough to save the regime, but they're out there, and all on defense, where the one truly credible name on the coaching staff resides.  In just a couple short years Jon Tenuta has established his identity on his side of the ball, and you saw it emerge last year.  Offense is a so-far hopeless cause; it's just kind of there and the coaches are still talking about changing its aims and goals.  Now we want to be a power-running team, right after spending years neglecting O-line recruiting.  That should work.  Defense, though, is Tenuta's blitzy-blitz scheme and his disruption, and you can actually tell what he's trying to do.

This is the challenge that awaits the football team this year: On offense, start developing some kind of identity.  Most successful football teams are known by what they do on offense.  If they're going to put their chips on the power running game, that means they can't go out to Pasadena and start going all screen-happy again.  The defense has to be able to keep up this year what they did last year, with almost entirely new front-seven personnel.

If London, Tenuta, and Steve Fairchild are successful in finally moving the football team toward a defined plan, an identity, a meaning, then they'll probably be at least somewhat successful in the one metric that matters, and they just might keep their jobs.  If they can't, they won't get another chance.

how to lose every fan in 10 days

I was prepared for a loss.  I mean, with a Mike London-coached team, that's a given.  You live in Oklahoma, you have a tornado shelter.  You root for a team coached by Mike London, you take nothing for granted in the win column.  I wasn't at all prepared to be slapped upside the face by our own administration.

The idea behind that somewhat controversial countdown clock was simple: X days until we know whether we had a successful season, in which case, good, or we had a bad season but could look forward to a better day ahead with a better coach, in which case, good.  Either way, things were going to look up.

So much for theories.  Leave it to this administration to screw up a good thing.  I suppose they had their reasons and the chances are good that they go beyond the public blather they put out last week.  Maybe it's money, in which case they're being cheap.  Or maybe Craig Littlepage just doesn't have the guts to fire someone he personally likes, until circumstances force him over the edge.**  Regardless of the reason, it makes all this talk about competing for ACC championships just that - empty talk.

A few people theorized that the reason I was asked to take down the old site banner for "copyright reasons" (despite the fact that the picture of Tony Bennett was from his time at Washington State and could not possibly have been owned by the University of Virginia) last year was because of the countdown clock.  I'm not sure that's true, but I'm not sure it's false, either.  Well, there's no clock anymore, and there's not going to be one, and in case the administration really is paying that close of attention to the goings-on at a tiny little 200-readers-a-day blog, here is the exact reason for that: I have less than zero faith anymore in their rational decision-making or the standards they claim to set for the football program.  From where we sit now it's no stretch to imagine they'll let London bumble along and win four to six games for the next ten years.

We've all heard since we were four that actions speak louder than words, and the actions here say that:

-- it's OK to never beat Virginia Tech
-- it's OK to never beat North Carolina
-- it's OK to go 11-29 in conference play
-- it's OK to go bowling once every five years or so, and when you do,
-- it's OK to get your ass kicked
-- it's OK to win one road game in three years

Uncompromised Excellence my ass.  The only thing uncompromised is the rotting stink of a losing atmosphere emanating from the McCue Center.  That's coming through loud and clear.  So is the message that a losing program is acceptable.  Standards have sunk that low.  Teams all around the country fire coaches every year when they don't perform; UVA is happy to keep the one they've got because he's a nice guy.  So we're stuck, for at least one more year, with our offensive-line-neglecting, no-accountability-having, clock-management-fumblefucking, nice guy for a head coach.

Amazingly, there are still apologists for this performance.  A lot of them suit up in uniform on Saturdays, which is understandable considering London's charisma.  You'd think if they wanted to play for and win for their head coach, they'd stop doing incredibly stupid shit like roughing the passer on the Hokies' last-chance drive, or watching the senior captain of the offensive line haul ass downfield on a pass play as if he were an eligible receiver.  But then, the coach doesn't hold them accountable for that kind of thing, and in the game they stay, so why should they ever change?

As for the people in the stands making excuses, you have to admire their creativity.  First it was that the coordinators were all wrong, so they changed them.  Then it was that the team was just too young.  Then it was the fact that we just didn't have an experienced quarterback.  And through it all, the schedule is too hard.  So I guess if we have a senior quarterback leading a team full of seniors, coached by really awesome coordinators, and playing Tulane, Troy, and VMI, we'll win football games.  And in every other year, when adversity reality occurs, well, the head coach can't be blamed for that stuff.  Never mind that the head coach created his own damn adversity by recruiting no offensive linemen and screwing up the quarterback situation beyond recognition.  Never mind that every head coach has some version of these problems.  Most successful head coaches can spell WINNING without being spotted W-I-N-N-I-N.

Now that we've made this very stupid decision, we're basically stuck with it.  I know nobody's all that happy with Steve Fairchild.  Lord knows I was furious at the decision to keep running smack into the middle of the line against VT when it was obvious our offensive line was piteously overmatched.  Hell, I'm sure most people within hearing distance could tell.  But if you fire him now, who do you get?  The rest of the country assumed London would be fired this year, and you can bet they assume he'll be fired next year.  Nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to sign on for what they figure is a one-year gig with a dead-man-walking for a head coach, unless that person is thoroughly unqualified, destitute and begging, or both.  And it's certainly not a good idea to put our quarterbacks through the old three-OCs-in-three-years trick, which is quite likely should Fairchild be shown the door.  The administration has made the decision to ride or die with London - they need to realize that extends to the staff too.

So, next year.  We'll probably go through this whole thing again.  This team is talented enough to win a few games.  There are eight Hoos on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-team all-ACC groupings.  That's more than all but two ACC teams.  (And we go 3-5.)  They're likely going to beat Cuse and W&M, and there are about seven games on the schedule where the opponent is at least beatable enough that the team ought to be able to pull a few wins out of that bunch.  6-6 is an awfully likely outcome.  Bowl game in sunny Shreveport.  And with the shit-for-standards set by this administration, can you say with absolute certainty that that won't earn London an extension?  For the sake of the future, this team needs to either win 10 games or lose 10 games, and nothing in between.  And if you think London is capable of winning 10, look up - I can see the word "gullible" written on your ceiling from here.

**I will offer one possibility that - sort of - exonerates the administration.  Rumors abound that Craig Littlepage will be retiring soon, possibly as soon as this summer.  It's somewhat plausible that Littlepage is thinking in the very long term, and allowing his successor (who had damn well better not be Jon Oliver) to hire a head coach.  If Littlepage hires a coach this winter and then does retire this summer, that coach will have the specter of working for a boss who didn't hire him - which is usually a difficult situation that doesn't work for more than a couple years.  And of course, Littlepage can't just come out and say all this.  If you held a gun to my head, I'd grudgingly admit that I prefer to have a new coach and new AD all at once for the long haul, than to have a new AD come in and be more or less held hostage for a few years with a coach he may or may not want to keep.  But this situation basically depends on Littlepage retiring this summer.  If he doesn't, the whole program is going to be one big ball of dysfunction for years to come.

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With the football season over, it's about time to transition this thing to Monday postings.  But I'm probably not going to be 100% strict about it.  What I will do is make sure there's a nice, long column to go up on Monday mornings.  But the possibility exists that things will happen midweek, too.  For example, I fully intend to at least finish writing about the recruiting class of 2015, and I want to write some basketball game previews too, this week especially since there are two pretty big games.  The "new era" of FOV isn't defined in stone yet, but it's going to start happening more or less this week.

breakdown

I think it's interesting that, sometimes, a seemingly unremarkable play catches the eye of a lot of different people, all independent of each other.  On third-and-18 on UVA's opening drive (an ominous phrase in and of itself) Greyson Lambert threw a screen to Kevin Parks that picked up two yards.  Really explosive offense, this.

I decided, for reasons unknown to myself, to rewind and see what had happened; perhaps the play looked like it should have picked up a great deal more.  Perhaps I was just perturbed, which would be understandable given that our opening salvo exploded in the breech.  Upon a second look, it was easy to see what had happened: Conner Davis whiffed a block, badly.

At least one game thread picked up on that fact too, and quickly; the play became a matter of discussion to the extent that a game thread allows.  Even more interestingly, eminent Sabre philosopher JHoo picked up on it too, and provided one small note that I missed on my own reviewing:

So plenty of folks did their job well … … but guard Conner Davis, who had responsibility for the outside man on the play – here, cornerback D.J. White – broke one of those little rules on screen passes: he looked back to watch the pass and see the completion.

I'm normally very loath to copy and paste paywalled stuff, but there's a point to be made here.

A third look at the play confirms it completely.  Davis had eyes only for the backfield; when he turned around after the catch, he found a defender flying past him.

Think about the implications of this.  Consider:

-- Davis is not only a fifth-year senior, but also the most experienced player on his unit.
-- This is a big game.  The players know the deal when it comes to bowl eligibility, as well as their coach's job situation.  And they happen to really like their coach and want to keep him around.
-- It's the third play of the game.  Everyone's fresh.  Fatigue is not a thing right now.
-- It's early, so we're almost certainly on a script here.  This play has been practiced a hundred times and the players know it's coming.

A fifth-year senior doesn't have the mental discipline to carry out a simple assignment.  That's a sad commentary.

That is not to single out Conner Davis.  The point is: if this is the case with our fifth-year seniors, it's the case all up and down the board.  Attention to detail waved bye-bye to Mike London ages ago, assuming the twain ever met.  And if it's foreign to the head coach, it's not getting passed on to the team.  This explains London's puzzling approach to clock management.  (Why didn't he take a timeout when GT faced 3rd-and-23 at the end of the first half?  It probably didn't even occur to him.)  This explains (in a blast from the past) how it's possible that London can make a big deal out of accountability in a press conference, and then forget to remove a player from kickoff duties whose bonehead kickoff penalty cost his team three points.

You might say it's unfair to extrapolate a whole huge generalization like that out of one play, but it's not like there isn't a mountain of evidence of London's failure to instill any mental discipline in himself or his team.  And the end-of-half play provided another example of the same.  Let's break down this play.

First off, some perspective on how hideously badly this play was executed.  UVA sent three receivers downfield and left seven men back in protect.  GT rushed three.  Four seconds after the snap, GT defensive end KeShun Freeman is swiping the ball out of Lambert's hands.

Seven on three and we can't protect the QB for five seconds.  That is pitiful.  The play starts with Zach Swanson lined up as an H-back, and in motion from left to right, likely because GT has overloaded the right side with defenders and is showing blitz on that side while the linebacker on his side is backing off.  Swanson is supposed to handle Freeman until the cavalry arrives in the form of Ryan Doull, pulling around from left to right as if it were a run play.  Swanson whiffs, badly, jumping outside while Freeman jumps inside.  Fortunately, Doull arrives just in time to give Freeman a shove that uses his own momentum to carry him well past the QB.  Swanson sees this and turns upfield, apparently seeing if there are any delayed rushers.  Finding that eight men have dropped into coverage, he spends the rest of the play looking a bit lost.

Doull's shove has taken Freeman out of the play momentarily.  That's enough for Doull, who decides the play is over, and starts spectating.  Freeman, of course, does not oblige, and Doull is just in time to gather up the ball from the ground (and earn an attaboy from the announcers for a "heads-up play", which would've been nice if it were true.)

Doull's a third-year player, and older than most, having taken a post-grad year as well.  Quitting on a play - it's just an inexcusable lack of sharpness from someone with his experience.  But it's fruitless to direct your anger at Doull.  This is the attitude that has permeated the whole team.  How can we expect the players to be mentally accountable if the head coach doesn't demand it?  For every such event easily spotted on TV, you can bet there are ten or fifteen more that are impossible to see.

It's hard to imagine a coach less interested in attention to detail than London is, which means the next coach will likely demand more of it than now, which means the players are in for a rude awakening when he shows up.  It might not be fun for them at first, but the end result will be a lot more watchable.

****************************

Quick brief things:

-- Some people are bellyaching about David Watford being in the game at receiver while Jamil Kamara languishes on the bench.  Oh please.  Nobody has any damn clue what Kamara is doing or not doing in order to not earn playing time, and the fact that London does actually seem to demand some kind of minimum standard of behavior or knowledge of the offense or something in order to earn your way onto the field - that does not register on the list of things to complain about.  You actually find people bringing up how bad he was as a quarterback, as if that somehow affects his ability to stick his hands out and hold on to a flying football.

-- If I'm London, I don't queue up one inch of game film on Florida State.  What good is preparation - take it from a 1% to a 2% chance to win that game?  Just punt that game - the path to a bowl game is much easier through Miami and VT, and hyper-preparation for the latter is not something I'd be against.

Prediction summary:

- Kevin Parks runs for 120 yards.  My God, not even close.  And no, being down 14-0, 21-7 in the first quarter is emphatically not a reason to abandon the run.  Maybe the fact that it wasn't working would've been a reason, but going pass-happy because of a two-TD deficit in the first half is pure panic.

- Keeon Johnson has a big day, which these days means four or more catches.  No, but he was certainly targeted more than often enough to succeed.

- UVA's season average for rushing yards allowed per attempt jumps at least a quarter-yard.  Remarkably, no.  I'm impressed.  It was very close, but didn't make it.  This is the point where I single out Max Valles for at least one ridiculously good play in which he got in position to discourage an option pitch and then ate up the quarterback.  Who the hell defends both options all by his own self?  Valles, that's who.  It was the football equivalent of Akil Mitchell's brilliant play on Jabari Parker from the ACC CG - you know the one.  Only, better.

- Lambert throws at least two more picks, one of which isn't his fault.  Tossing up a lame duck of a throw because he's being crushed by a pass rusher certainly qualifies.

Season prediction stats:

17-for-45 on specifics (38%)
5-3 straight up
4-2-1 ATS

tipping point

It's not always you can tell exactly when the end comes.  You could call us fortunate in that regard.  We can debate for a long time why Mike London has not succeeded as UVA's head coach, and will not succeed as UVA's head coach, but at least now we know when it ended.  As soon as the ball landed in the hands of a UNC defensive lineman during a horribly ill-advised screen pass.  Flip the switch, turn out the lights, and start the search.

Kevin Parks talked about a knife to the gut, and it's extremely hard not to feel bad for the guy.  The ball was taken out of his hands by the coaching staff.  I don't get it.  The announcers spent the whole game talking about Parks and how the coaching staff raves about his character and talent - which is great, and I believe it 100%.  Now I'm just wondering when the staff plans on using that to their benefit.  Parks was left waiting for a pass that never got there, which is somehow sadly fitting.

Sure, there's four games left.  Anything could happen and so on and so forth.  I don't see it.  Not from a coaching staff that constantly puts its players in position to fail.  It's everything from the preposterous to the amateurish.  After five years, Mike London still can't figure out how to make sure the right number of players go on the field.  It's not even the first time, nor is it the first time a special teams unit ran pell-mell down the field without caring where the ball was.  You can look it up.  It's a pitiful disservice to his guys.

There's one thing left to hope for: sending him off with a win on Thanksgiving.  Maybe a bowl game in Shreveport or Detroit.  If the Hoos can figure out how to beat a Georgia Tech team that just dropped 56 points on Pittsburgh, or a Miami team that looks like the division's best so far.  Maybe the VT game can be a 5-6 Thunderdome match.  Two teams enter, one team leaves bowl-eligible.  Not what anyone envisioned, that's for sure.

**************************************************

Let's talk offense for a little here.  One of the most common complaints about Steve Fairchild is that the offense is "vanilla."  It's time to put that to rest once and for all.  Next time you hear someone complain that it's "vanilla," just know they're only saying that as a reflex action.  The design is actually rather good, and here's the thing: I really like it.  UVA ran a couple reverses and a tricky WR pass that Lambert caught, the second WR pass they've run this year.  There was plenty of downfield passing.  Lots of different players are involved.  This is not just some handoff-handoff-dump pass-punt crap.  This is pretty complex.

And here's what I like best: Most run plays are run from a look that could send the ball any one of three different ways.  You have a shotgun look with a running back next to the QB.  A receiver (or someone like Taquan Mizzell) goes in motion and the snap is timed so that the motion man arrives just about the same time the snap does.  This isn't easy; the quarterback needs a lot of reps to get that timing down.  Then the QB can hand to the motion man, he can hand to the RB, or he can simply take it himself.  I don't think this is ever read-option, even though it was called that when Fairchild first got here.  It just looks like one.  I think this is called by the coaches.  That's just fine.  The point is that the defense has to hesitate a split second before committing to a ballcarrier.  This has given the O-line room to execute a block, and in turn, the run game is fairly productive.  This is despite an O-line lacking badly in experience and held together with chicken wire and duct tape.

I have just about no problems with the design of this offense.  Given an experienced, healthy O-line and maybe a real explosion threat at receiver, which is missing right now, you could really see some fireworks with this offense.  However, I have huge problems with the execution.  Fairchild isn't too vanilla, he's too goddam tricky.  Too fast to abandon what's working, too quick to try and out-chess-match the other DC.  Here's how you coach the last drive** that ended in the screen pass pick: You call together your O-linemen.  You get in their faces and inform them - loudly - that the plan is to stuff the ball down the throats of those no-tackling pretenders over there and they'd better hit some SOB as hard as they can and the devil take the hindmost.  And then you three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust your way to a win.  Especially when you're one more first down away from game-clinching field goal.  When, on the other hand, the trick play you so desperately want to run is so damn predictable that the announcers had you pegged, you're doing it wrong.  I don't blame Greyson Lambert one bit for the pickoff.  I blame Mr. Tricky up in the booth.

(I do, though, think the first one was totally on Lambert.  You gotta know in that case: an incompletion is just as good as a dumpoff.  They both mean a field goal.  Some people called it bad luck that the ball landed in the hands of a defender, but, no, that's entirely predictable when you throw toward that many defenders.

**I know, I know: said the keyboard jockey who's never coached a game of football in his life.  But then, the guys who do coach for a living, aren't exactly doing a better job.

**************************************************

So, let's review some predictions:

- Greyson Lambert starts.  Yup.

- The UVA passing game generates over 300 yards.  Ah, bummer - they were close at 284.  And getting to 300 probably would've won the game.

- UVA passes more than they run.  The Hoos attempted 41 passes and were credited with 43 runs, but one sack by UNC makes it an exactly even split.  Still not good enough.

- UNC also passes for more than 300 yards.  They did not, which is rather a credit to the defense.

- Zero sacks again for UVA, but not zero turnovers.  Half right is wrong.

- UNC averages fewer than 4 yards a carry.  UNC's running game was absolutely stuffed.  Very good work there by the defense, again.

New stats:

16-of-41 on specifics (39%.)
4-3 straight up
3-2-1 ATS

coaching position paper

You know by now how I feel about the current football regime.  It stinks.  I'm not 100% sure when Mike London lost me, but I think it was a combination of two things.  The first was his comment following the Clemson game (which I hate to mention again because I feel like I've done so several times already.)  For the forgetful or those who've missed it, London was asked after that game how he felt about his team's effort and intensity, and he said early on it was great and that Clemson played four quarters.  The second thing was his idiotic decision to accept the holding penalty against North Carolina that gave them a second crack at scoring a touchdown, which of course they did.  I finally hit my breaking point for terrible game management.

Anyway, all that is stuff I've railed on before.  You know all about London's game management; everyone does.  The one thing he does well is motivate players, and if he's losing even that ability, it's over, that's all there is to it.  But I thought it was necessary to pull all my opinions into one post and then move the hell on.  I probably won't bother with a full seasonal review, because most grades would just be D or F, but I'm tossing around the idea of a "bright spots" post.  And I'm sure most of you just went right ahead and made the "well that'll be a short post" joke in your heads.

So, the coaches.  Individually I think most of the coaches probably do a fair job, but they're all taking their direction from someone who is just in over his head.  The difference between good coaching and bad coaching is often small and not easily noticeable, and the players probably can't tell the difference at all.  Technique is technique - there's a right way and a wrong way to do a lot of things.  But the devil is in the details, and it's the things the coaches never think to say that makes the difference. 

Such as, why did Anthony Harris - a junior - not know to bat down a deep fourth-down pass?  Why did Mark Hall down a punt that would've rolled at least another 10 yards?  Why does Dominique Terrell always make the wrongest decision possible when catching punts?  Why was Kyle McCartin allowed to keep playing as if nothing had happened when his bonehead-ass penalty cost his team three points - the very week Mike London had made noise about accountability for boneheadedness?  Why did Tim Harris fall hook line and sinker for a double-move well short of the sticks on 3rd-and-15 - do you really care if Clemson gains ten yards from their own 4?  Tim Harris is not a veteran player, but the rest are, and when veteran players make silly mistakes, it means they're not being coached not to.

Accountability and details are two things this program lacks, severely.  London is extremely slow to bench players.  No, they shouldn't have to worry about being one mistake away from the pine, but they should worry about being five or six mistakes from it.  London never benches anyone until the media starts asking about problem areas, as in, "Coach, this is the third week in a row the receivers have dropped all the Watford passes that actually make it within a catchable radius of their body, what do you think the problem is?"

London is also long past excuse-making time.  "Well, it's a tough schedule."  And it's gonna be one next year, too.  Too bad - he burned up all his goodwill capital, in his fifth season (which it will be next year) your program should be able to handle difficult schedules.  "Well, we had a lot of injuries."  Yes, there's no doubt that losing Sean Cascarano, Brent Urban, Demetrious Nicholson and Maurice Canady lowered the achievable ceiling for this team.  (Not to mention Chris Brathwaite's academics.)  But 1) everyone has injuries, 2) at 2-10, what was the ceiling with those players, 4-8? and 3) it's the coaching staff's job to develop replacements.  Virginia Tech also lost two cornerbacks, Kyle Fuller and Antone Exum.  They still had a good defense.

All this said, however, I'm utterly resigned to another year of this staff, as you might guess by the clock.  (And as you might also guess by the clock, only one more year, as I've got little faith in their abilities to turn it around.)  That means the whole staff.  You hear a lot of calls to fire Steve Fairchild, for example, which is a foolish idea even considering the many legitimate criticisms.  (Which in a nutshell are foolish play-calling at critical times, apparent inability to get David Watford to improve any, and apparent tendency to put a huge bearing rein on Watford's decision-making.)

Let's face it: is this team just one assistant coach away from respectability?  Come on, man.  Here's the result of firing Fairchild: the quarterbacks and the offense get their third coach in three years.  That's entirely the hallmark of a bad team.  Marc Verica also had that situation and anyone who thinks that played no part in his development (or general lack thereof) is being willfully ignorant.  And it's worse than that, really, because another continuity break would put another big hole in this sinking ship and make it even more likely the whole staff is broomed out next year - which in turn means a fourth OC and QB coach in four years.  Terrible situation if you're trying to develop Greyson Lambert, Matt Johns, and Brendan Marshall.  Calls to fire Fairchild come out of a short-sighted desire to make someone pay rather than a reasoned look at the situation.

Besides, the kind of OC we'd get if we tried would have to be either really dumb or really desperate to take a job in a regime that's one step away from the chopping block.  Either way it wouldn't be an improvement.  "But Tom O'Brien could do it," you might say.  TOB was supposed to come onboard and fix London's game management.  Any day now.  TOB is a former Marine, which is to say, chain of command is everything, and I doubt he's given London much unsolicited advice.

So it's got to be the same staff, and London will sink or swim with them.  Eight wins needs to be the barest minimum.  You showed no progress this year; in fact you regressed miserably.  Therefore it needs to be made up next year.  What I'm afraid of is that we'll win six or seven games, go to some fourth-rate bowl, and Craig Littlepage will call it a joyous occasion and extend the whole staff in the name of Making Progress.  Dave Leitao did not even get a fifth year, so why London should get a sixth unless he takes the team to a really, really nice bowl is beyond me.  And in point of fact, October really ought to be the drop-dead date for progress.  If we're sitting at 3-3, or 2-4, or what have you, then London ought to go right then and there and TOB named the interim head coach.  Literally the only argument I've ever heard against this approach is "we've never done it that way, it's not the Virginia way," whatever the Virginia way is, and that argument is a pile of bullshit seven feet high.

I don't think Littlepage will have the guts to do it, though, which is why the countdown clock goes til Thanksgiving weekend.  But as long as we're talking succession, here's some more things I don't want to see out of the next staff:

-- Any holdovers.  At all.  Fresh start.  There was much concern last time whether Anthony Poindexter would be retained.  Hopefully not this time; nobody from a 2-10 staff is so damn important they can't be replaced.  He's a great recruiter; fine.  He's not the only one in the world.

-- Whatever the conventional wisdom says.  I've come to decide that the conventional message board wisdom is really, really dumb.  The CW wanted Mike London ("it HAS to be London" was a phrase I saw more than once), it wanted Tubby Smith and was furious (for varying lengths of time, given the individual) about Tony Bennett, it wanted a "hyper-aggressive" defensive coordinator to replace Jim Reid, it thought Phillip Sims would march right in and take over at quarterback and that would fix everything, it thought Keith Payne was going to make everyone forget about Tiki Barber, it thinks a lot of things and most of them turn out wrong.  If the CW wants Pete Lembo, I want Dave Clawson.  If the CW wants a MAC coach, I want a coordinator.  If the CW wants Nick Saban, I want Greg Robinson.

-- Anyone previously connected with UVA.  When I say fresh start, I'm not kidding.  Nothing against UVA alums Tenuta, O'Brien, Poindexter, and Hagans.  The latter two, though, have not proven themselves; they're just here because we like them.  Hagans, in my opinion, has done an absolutely brutal job as receivers coach.  Let's find some coaches who have proven themselves at other stops for once.  Tenuta and TOB, at least, have a resume and were last here long enough ago that almost everything has changed.  I'd still rather, when it's time to build the next staff, have it full of people who aren't stuck in our own rut.  I don't want any of that voice on the staff.

Mostly, though, I'm just looking forward to seeing a new-coach press conference in which a different face shows up behind the podium and promises better days or at least some on-field discipline.  And then maybe even deliver them.  London's promises ring hollow as a drum these days.

weekend review

So, the more astute members of the audience, and the less astute ones too, should notice a new addition to the blog.  I figure it this way: Al Groh was let go the very same day in 2009 as the season-ending loss to VT.  That was November 29.  By Gregorian coincidence, next year's Thanksgiving Saturday is also November 29, and if things go as everyone fully expects, five years to the day of Groh's sacking, UVA will fire another football coach.  And the team will be freed from the yoke of pathetically undisciplined, aimless coaching.  Maybe that'll only be for a week - we have no idea who'll take London's place - but there's no way the replacement can be less adept at obnoxiously basic crap.

This year's edition of the VT game was London in a nutshell.  He did a great job at firing the team up and getting them ready to play; I certainly did not see any of the quit that was hinted at in the Clemson game and seemed more than evident against UNC.  He also did a shit job at preparing them.  As ever.  We didn't do anything different like you'd like to see against an archrival; we just did a few things better.  And most things just the exact same as always.  The unused first-half timeout can be sold to raise money for the program, of course, but the chance to score off of an opponent's turnover is lost to the wind forever.

I'll probably write a position paper or something on the coaching staff later on, but the cliff notes here are: we're stuck with them; fire all or fire none but don't make any more piecemeal changes; Steve Fairchild comes in for some unfair criticism at times but lots of perfectly good criticism too; whatever the conventional wisdom is about who the next coach should be, I don't want it; and there's not a single coach including alums Dex and Biscuit that I'd shed a single tear over losing.

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Basketball was much more entertaining, wouldn't you agree?  In fact, I have the games downloaded and will spend time this week chopping them into highlights - and not only that but the very first HD highlights I've done.  I expect so, at least.  They're very worthy games.  The Fightin' Smoos put up a real scuffle and a scare into the Hoos; that looks to be a pretty darn good frontcourt they have there, and hopefully they put it to good use in the newly-constituted AAC.

The SMU game was a great time for the free-throw shooting to come alive (if only temporarily) as the refs called well over a foul a minute.  Even more so, it was a great time to shoot 10-for-14 from three-point range, which ultimately is what sank the Mustangs.

Interestingly, though, I think I found the Missouri State game more educational, despite the carpet-bombing the Hoos delivered.  It was 11-3, bad guys, at one point, and then an 80-45 run squashed flat any hopes of a Bears upset.  UVA has made a bit of a pattern this year of going on a long, morale-crushing run in the latter part of the first half, clamping down on defense to hold the opponent scoreless for long stretches.  At some point there, Tony Bennett yells something in Russian, and the pack-Drago defense unleashes its cold, calculating fury.

What I think is happening is that opposing coaches are scouting the pack-line a little harder, and finding a couple ways to attack it, and the UVA players need a few passes against whatever the opponent is bringing to adjust.  It helps if the opponent starts the game 4-for-5 beyond the arc.  Then an adjustment is made, and the opponent goes poof.  Against Hampton, the frontcourt guys worked a little harder on denying entry passes, because the Hampton forwards were catching the ball in good position.  Against Missouri State, the guards helped a little less down low and stayed home a little more so as to make those threes just that little bit harder to shoot.  And voila: game over.

Next up is the toughest remaining non-con game: Wisconsin.  The Badgers have remained perfect against some very decent competition: St. Louis, West Virginia, St. John's, and the apple of the bunch, Florida.  On the plus side for UVA: Their defense isn't as elite as it's been in recent years, and they run with a very thin rotation.  Eight players get 97.8% of their minutes, and their five starters get 78.4%.  As you'd expect from a team like that which also hasn't lost a game, they're among the very best in the country at staying out of foul trouble.

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Recruiting board needs an update due to commitment today:

-- Added DE Michael Biesemier to orange.  I know I shouldn't talk down about a recruit who just committed like six hours ago and who I haven't even come close to profiling yet, and I know I'm still grouchy about a two-win season, and I know we needed to find a defensive end somewhere in this recruiting class, and commitments are supposed to be exciting, but.... I still have an awfully tough time getting fired up over stealing a recruit from James Madison.  This is what you reap when you sow a 2-10 season.  Eventually we'll have a closer look to see what we see.

-- Added TE Blake Whiteley to yellow.  Whiteley is - brace yourself - a JUCO player, certainly the first I've ever put on the recruiting board.  (UVA's transfer-credit policies tend to rule out most JUCOs.  It's different sending someone to Piedmont to get re-eligible, because the school can tell them what to take.)  Texas will almost certainly snap him up if they offer, otherwise it looks like Arkansas is the main competition.

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Elsewhere news:

-- The David Teel interview of Craig Littlepage ruffled a lot of feathers.  Count mine as not among them.  Nothing there came as a surprise; the fact is that once the statement is made that London isn't going anywhere, Littlepage has to back that up with all his guns every time he's asked.  It's a lose-lose proposition, because the tiniest crack in that facade is met with huge headlines all but officially proclaiming the end of the London tenure.  Hell, I've gone and done it myself without Littlepage's help.  The only thing is that Littlepage ought to know it's a lose-lose proposition and politely decline the interview, because now he sounds like a clueless bumbler who takes a 2-10 coach and says, yup, what a great job he's gonna do, I just know it.

The other problem I have is that the transcript there only stokes my fears that Jon Oliver, far from being next to face the firing squad, is actually being groomed as Littlepage's successor.

-- Oval-football season is over, but Euro-football rolls on smartly.  The men's team was shown a red card 57 seconds into the game against Marquette, and so played damn near a full game a man down, and still stomped the Golden Eagles 3-1.  And then received a fortuituous bit of news: as the 8th seed in the tourney, UVA would've had to play #1 seed UCLA in the quarterfinals, but unseeded UConn put a stop to that.  Which means one more game at friendly Klockner.

That will not be televised, but the women, in the women's College Cup against UCLA, will be.  Friday the 6th at 7:30, ESPNU.  Going to be on the TiVo for sure.

-- Alabama fans are officially horrible people.  Not content with killing mere trees, Alabama fans have graduated to actual human murder, the motive being: not being upset enough over the loss to Auburn.  In recent memory, Alabama fans have:

- Publicly teabagged a passed-out LSU fan
- Destroyed a popular monument at Auburn
- Sent death threats to the kicker who missed the field goal this week - and the kicker's family.
- Murdered a fellow Alabama fan because that person joked about the loss.

At some point there - it might've been after the 100th death threat, or when some crazy bitch pulled a gun and started popping caps - Alabama fans lost the right to whine about judging the whole fanbase by a few bad apples.  If you are an Alabama fan there's a smallish but reasonable chance that you're a sick fuck, and a 100% chance you take football far too seriously and need to get a damn life.

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Senior Seasons feature as a few of our players move closer to state titles.

Centennial 86, Upland 56: Jeffery Farrar obviously didn't do anything special here, I just felt like pointing out the 909 yards racked up by Centennial.  Farrar's Upland had 557.  Defense was not something anyone was interested in, apparently.

Clearwater Central Catholic 7, Miami Westminster Christian 0: And Caanan Brown could not have played a more different game.  CCC will play for the state championship next week.

Oscar Smith 40, Forest Park 7: The actual notable thing is that the big Smith-Ocean Lakes matchup was derailed, and Oscar Smith will now play Colonial Forge in the semifinals next week.

Salem 42, Woodgrove 25: J.J. Jackson's season ends this week as well.

the situation

Big trouble in little Charlottesville requires that I chime in with something resembling an official position on the football team and its direction.  Not one to mince words, I, so here's the foundation of that official-ish position: this team sucks far worse than my most wildly pessimistic preseason estimates.  And what's worse, it appears to be quitting on its coach.  Is there any way to know that for sure?  No.  And I make it absolutely a point to never question the team's effort unless given very, very good reason to.  London gave me very good reason to in the way he answered the question about effort during the Clemson game.  When they follow that up by not being remotely competitive during any minute from 1 to 60 against UNC, I have a tough time ignoring the obvious.

Mike London's strength as a coach is motivation.  He can't manage a game for shit.  His roster management is pretty lame.  What he can do is motivate the heck out of just about anyone he meets, which is the source of his recruiting skills.  If Mike London can't motivate a team, there's nothing left.

The shit state of the football team has fans calling for various firings.  From just a totally unscientific reading of message boards, I would say that about half want London gone at the end of this year.  Those who would call for his firing right now but have resigned themselves to one more year of this based on the two-year contracts for the new set of assistants probably account for another one-quarter to one-third.  30% to 40% want Craig Littlepage fired.  And 95% want Jon Oliver fired; the other 5% are weird.

You might be wondering where I stand on all this and what I'd do if I were king.  Glad you asked.

-- First, I'd bench David Watford.  At this point there is no possible way of avoiding a quarterback competition that starts the moment the offseason begins.  So this is less about benching Watford and more about giving us (and the coaching staff) some data points by which to evaluate Greyson Lambert.  A little bit more of a level playing field for the competition, in other words.  We've already seen how quarterbacks can play better or worse depending on how they're used; simply letting Lambert mess around a little in garbage time isn't an evaluation.

-- I'd give London his one more year, based on the idea that just maybe it takes a little while for the new coordinators to get their systems settled in.  Plus it's not like the defense has sucked all year.  Losing Brent Urban and both starting cornerbacks pretty much killed it.  Now, should the defense be so dependent on these three players that it turns to soppy mush when they leave?  No.  Not one bit.  But the smallest of benefits of the doubt will be given here, and London should be kept around long enough to see if he can engineer a quick turnaround.

-- That leash, however, should be mightily short.  This team needs eight or nine wins next year.  And it needs to pile them up early; a 1-3, 2-4 type of start, or 3-3 even, should be the end of the road.  We have a great interim-coach candidate in Tom O'Brien.  And I am, by the way, fucking sick of hearing, "that's not how Virginia does business."  In reference to midseason firings, that is.  That has always been the end of the argument, too, as if that's a reason.  It's a trash argument.  Not one iota of harm to UVA's reputation would result from it.  USC fired Lane Kiffin midseason, Texas fired their DC midseason (and both saved their seasons in doing so) and not one human being on this planet called them sleazy for doing it.  I'm all for holding ourselves to a higher pedestal of behavior; shunning midseason firings does not qualify and does not make anyone think, gee, there's a school that does things the right way.

The only context in which this argument makes sense (and it has not always been presented in this context) is, "It's not realistic to think it'll happen, so we need to let London go now in order to avoid the painful lame duckery that next season will inevitably become."  Fine.  Just stop telling me we shouldn't do any midseason firings.  We damn well should if we keep London and still suck next year.

-- Lastly, whatever Jon Oliver's duties are outside football, reassign him to those.  I doubt he'll be fired outright.  In fact, I have this ugly suspicion he's being groomed for the AD job.  I don't know how capable an administrator he is behind the scenes; he must be doing something right somewhere or he wouldn't have lasted this long.  But he makes football worse.  Actually, I doubt anything at all will happen to his job and he'll continue to be allowed to make decisions for the football program that belong to the head coach, but we can dream.

On the plus side, at least the Oregon game didn't cost us a bowl trip, right?

There's certainly no one thing that can be done to fix anything.  The fact is, firing Oliver wouldn't make the program better.  The only thing that can make a program good or bad is the coaching staff.  Players win games, and coaches select and teach the players.  If Oliver is perceived as a meddlesome influence, it might reduce the chances of hiring a decent coach, but you still might get a good coach - and you still might get a bad one without him.

I think the above represents more patience with the leadership than the average UVA fan has right now.  That could change if the last two games are disasters.  I'm fully expecting a 2-10 season, but if the journey there involves two more pathetic blowouts, I can't promise I won't write a burn-it-down post charged with emotion and not rationality.

well that was stupid

I don't know what the hell possessed me the other day, but God forbid I ever again show an ounce of enthusiasm over this sad-sack bunch of poorly coached misfits.  David Watford is quoted saying, "We haven't been executing like we were before."  I'm sorry, when was that again?  I must have missed it.  I suppose it must have been VMI and maybe the first 20 minutes of Duke.  I'm not sure VMI counts.

And Mike London continues to be quoted as saying, "I need to coach better."  Well, yes, admitting you have a problem is more or less the first step, according to Alcoholics Anonymous.  London's been admitting this for months now, and then continues making decisions with his ass.  Sort of like an AA member stumbling in drunk to his 20th meeting in a row.

Case in point, obviously, is accepting a holding penalty to give UNC a 3rd and 15 instead of a 4th down.  The London explanation?  "It could have been fourth-and-5 and they kick the field goal or you take them back, blitz them, knock them back again."  Really?  You were counting on a 15-yard sack? That was the basis of your brilliant strategy?

I saw it jokingly suggested on TheSabre's forums that we should just forfeit the Miami game and spend all the extra prep time on VT.  Bad idea.  Giving this group of players more time with this incompetent coaching staff is likely to double the number of touchdowns we lose by.  The staff is going to be on the road recruiting next weekend.  My suggestion: Take an early start, and stay out late.  Send the players back to their high schools for two weeks - that way they can get their coaching from the guys who molded them into four-star prospects instead of the guys molding them into a 2-win juggernaut.  In this way maybe we will lose to Miami by 14 instead of 40.

It would be much easier to listen to the announcers patronize us with "Virginia fans just need to be patient" if the team weren't regressing mightily the more "coaching" they get.  You could maybe even brush off a seven-game losing streak and say "wait til next year" and use the youth excuse if these were close losses.  The patience line is a pander, not their real opinion - their real opinion came when they suggested that going down 14-0 after one quarter and small change would be the end of the game.  "This team sucks too bad to come back from that," was the suggestion, and damn if they weren't right.

Enjoy your Sunday.  I'm off to go watch old tapes of the Lions' 0-16 season under the illustrious Rod Marinelli so I can remember what a well-coached, disciplined football team looked like.

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Prediction wise, I forgot to review them last week.  It doesn't matter: I didn't get any of them right this week or last.  So 19-of-40 turns into 19-of-49, plummenting below the 40% mark.  My overall predictions go to 5-4-1 ATS and 6-4 overall.

Tomorrow's post won't be the usual weekend review; that'll go Tuesday so I can preview the VCU game in a timely manner.

weekend review

Damn right I didn't write anything yesterday about the game.  How many different ways can you say, "Yup, we still suck."  I guess in German maybe.  "Ja, wir sind immer noch schrecklich."

It couldn't be more obvious that London is coaching himself onto thin ice.  Nothing has happened this season to suggest he deserves to stay on, and it's probably two people - named Quin Blanding and Andrew Brown - that are keeping him here, plus the money it would take to buy out the contract.  I suspect if this recruiting class had nothing but three-star players, the money would come a lot easier.

The only suspense left for this season is whether London indeed stays on til next year.  I still think so.  I've seen stuff floating around - besides Craig Littlepage's quotes to the papers - that suggest so.  I also have this in my email inbox:

"The BOV member told [the emailer's dad] that there was a private meeting with Littlepage and two of our biggest boosters regarding a buyout of London's contract. According to the BOV member, London is gone if we finish 2-10."

That could still mean anything, really; it might simply be the board member putting two and two together in a way that leads him to that conclusion.  Or it might be straight from the mouth of Littlepage and then to my inbox, via a few detours on the way.  You know how these things go.

At any rate, London only has a few more games left to save his job.  The next two don't count.  Oh, I suppose if he goes on a three-game winning streak he can ease up the pressure on 2014.  Don't worry, he won't.  Starting with the last game of this season, London probably has seven games at most to keep his job.  It might not be the Virginia way, for whatever dumb reason, to fire someone midseason, but whether or not London is actually fired midseason next year, the decision will be made by then.  Maybe sooner if we should lose to Richmond, which is the second game of the year.  UVA hasn't been 0-5 in the ACC since 1981, which means that London has succeeded in putting himself in the company of the immortal Dick Bestwick.

A few notes from press conferences London has held of late:

-- Demetrious Nicholson, out for the season.  That's not going to improve the situation.

-- Various players will be looking for medical redshirts.  They'll probably get them as the NCAA gives only the most cursory look before rubber-stamping such requests.

-- Not to do with London's press conferences, but it was just awfully nice of both Dabo Swinney and the announcers during the game to make some noise about how UVA is oh so close and just a little more patience and UVA will be a real surprise team and all that.  I'm sure they meant well.  Really.  When your opponents are throwing you a pity party, though....you probably suck a hell of a lot.

-- And now the most troubling aspect by far.  Jamie Oakes paraphrased a London quote this way:

"When asked about the effort and intensity of the team in yesterday's game, London said that at the beginning of the game it was excellent. Clemson executed their offense and defense like an experienced team should.  London said that the team was reeling after Clemson's scoring binge in the second quarter. He said that Clemson played all four quarters like all good teams do."

That's the closest you'll get to a neon marquee with spotlights and a great big flashing sign that says THE TEAM UP AND QUIT.  "At the beginning of the game [effort and intensity] was excellent" is another way of saying "at the end of the game it sucked horse balls."  And "Clemson played all four quarters" is the same thing as "and we most certainly did not."

London's messages to the media about not dwelling on the losses and staying positive are not making it through to the team.  Then again, why should they, when London's pre-game message is "nothing to lose" and his first big decision of the game is to punt on 4th-and-1 from midfield?

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-- Speaking of crappy teams, how about a look at a sport that I'm not sure has ever been featured on these pages: Volleyball.  They haven't had a winning record since 2008 and haven't won four ACC matches in a row since 2006, but the latter streak ended this week and they carry a 14-10, 7-5 record so far.  Get a new coach and watch things look a lot brighter; Dennis Hohenshelt is in his second season.  The team is in 6th place in the ACC and has already (with eight matches left to go) earned as many ACC wins as the last two seasons combined.

-- The ladies' soccer team dispatched Maryland with prejudice from the ACC tournament by a 6-1 score.  The semifinals (against 4-seeded VT) are on Friday on ESPN3, and if they make the final, that's on ESPNU.  There were no upsets in the first round, so the other game is the 2-3 between UNC and FSU.  I might just have occasion to post a highlight video; who'd have thought I'd have women's soccer and not a single football video?

-- I'll update the recruiting board when there's more than one update to make, but Madre London went and committed to Michigan State.

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Senior Seasons and so on and etc.

Peachtree Ridge 47, Meadowcreek 0: Jordan Ellis set a school record with five touchdown runs in his team's blowout win.  Peachtree Ridge is 7-2.

Bayside 20, Cox 14: Quin Blanding took a 56-yard wildcat run to the end zone for the game-winning score as Bayside improved their playoff hopes.  Bayside is 5-4.

Upland 26, Etiwanda 19 (Jeffery Farrar) - Upland is 6-3.
IMG Academy 19, Central Catholic 13 (Caanan Brown) - CCC is 7-2.
Dacula 24, Central Gwinnett 6 (Darious Latimore) - Central is 2-7.
Reidsville 35, Cummings 7 (Will Richardson) - Cummings is 3-7.
Malvern Prep 49, Episcopal 21 (Evan Butts) - Episcopal is 7-2.
Oscar Smith 35, Great Bridge 0 (Andrew Brown) - Oscar Smith is 9-0.
Courtland 34, Chancellor 0 (Steven Moss) - Chancellor is 1-8.
Woodgrove 24, Broad Run 23 (J.J. Jackson) - Woodgrove is 6-3.