blip

At risk of blasting my own horn (oh hell, that's the whole point of this entire endeavor) I did something during the Duke game that's usually almost impossible to pull off: I pegged the game's turning point as it happened.  Most of the time you have to do that in retrospect, unless the game is really close and then suddenly it's not.  In this case UVA held a pretty safe lead before it happened, and a pretty safe lead after.  KenPom's win probability graph had UVA's chances moving from about 98% to 96%.  Who'd have thunk?

Well, me, when that tiny little knife in the pit of the stomach made its appearance on a Tyus Jones three-pointer shortly after a Justin Anderson miss on the same.  Anderson's shot was thisclose to going down; Jones hit nothing but net, and the result was a six-point swing.  No, it was more than six points - it was the entire spectrum of Duke's confidence.  Jones gave them their fortitude back, ten seconds after it was two inches from disappearing entirely.

As much as I'd like to move that number one from the loss column to the rankings column, at least we know what it takes to beat UVA these days: six-of-eight shooting on three pointers, and all of the last four.  After Anderson missed, that's what Duke did, en route to not missing a shot in the last four minutes of the game.  You know what?  Great.  Duplicate that formula and you've finally figured out the trick to beating Virginia Kentucky everyone up to and including the '92 Dream Team.

The rest of the week - no disrespect at all to the opponents involved - was surprisingly easy.  It's all relative, of course - it wasn't, like, Harvard-easy.  UNC and Louisville put up a fight, albeit not for 40 full minutes.  It's easier to do, of course, when one game is at home and the other is in one of the ACC less-intimidating atmospheres.  (Seriously, is there a team anywhere else, outside of Chapel Hill, where the ratio of powerhouse-ery to crowd atmosphere is so huge?)  Theory on this: these three teams are completely on another level athletically, above and beyond what UVA's gotten used to seeing the past month (or more) and it took a little time to get used to.  When they did, which was right about halftime of the UNC game, the game slowed down again.

I've been including the upcoming NC State game in the stretch of doom calculations, but if you believe the above theory, it might be more of a blowout than I've been assuming.  I mean, BeeJay Anya's a pretty good player, but once you've tried to score on Montrezl Harrell, can it be that much harder?  I still think it's a dangerous game.

That said, the chances are excellent that UVA loses just one game the rest of the way at the most, which should worry a league that all sits at least two losses behind.  Beating Duke would've been great and all, but there isn't a soul among us who wouldn't have taken two out of those last three, if offered beforehand.  And UVA has held double-digit leads in all three games.  Despite the loss, this was a test passed with flying colors so far; if they finish the final portion of it, another long and relatively relaxing stretch awaits.

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

-- It's been a while since I wrote this, so it was of course bound to rear its ugly head in a huge way: We still can't have nice things.  Justin Anderson's fractured finger capped a very rough injury stretch (at least, I really hope that capped it) in which UVA lost its top scorer in basketball, top hitter in baseball, and top defenseman in lacrosse.  Already thin from the transfer loss of Greg Danseglio, the lacrosse team really could not afford losing Tanner Scales to an Achilles' heel, but it did anyway.  Joe McCarthy's back surgery leaves a gaping hole in the lineup.  And of course, something had to be up when Evan Nolte started the second half.

Weirdly, even in a game where Anderson got hurt, Marial Shayok only got four minutes.  I might automatically assume he and Nolte would pick up most of Anderson's minutes, if not for that stat.  It's still logical, but Tony's been tinkering with the back end of the lineup a bit and I wouldn't make any hard-and-fast guesses for NC State, let alone four weeks from now.  Good news is there's a reasonable chance Anderson is back for postseason play.

-- You have to love Syracuse, which could at any time have chosen to take a postseason sanction but chose to do it in the middle of a season that wasn't likely to land them in the NCAAs anyway.... and then throw a pity party for Rakeem Christmas's playoff dreams.  Does it suck that Christmas's Syracuse career ends without any tournaments of any kind?  Yes, but to avoid that, Syracuse might have had to feel a little more pain from the self-sanction.  So Christmas gets thrown to the wolves, and just for a bonus, gets to be used by Syracuse as the face of their passive-aggressive campaign against having to bear such a brutal punishment.  How cynical.

-- Sometimes the basketball gods are just.  Not when they put Anderson's finger in a splint, no, but take Darion Atkins.  Atkins dogged a Louisville player into a turnover just seconds after a defensive rebound, giving the Hoos the ball right back.... and then Atkins scored on the ensuing possession.  Feed the guy who made the play - I like it.

-- I was reminded again why I like Doris Burke.  75% of sideline reporters ask the stupidest %@#&ing questions, mostly: "describe your emotions."  Burke pinpointed a matchup she wanted to ask about - and made a good choice - and in doing so gave Tony Bennett an opportunity to sing the praises of a deserving player, which he proceeded to do.

-- Lacrosse starts the season the same way as last year: a one-goal win over Loyola.  Now that the season is underway, that would be a good time to write a season preview, yes?  This week.  Short version of the game: offense good, defense eh.

-- I put together the next round of ACC simulations, but that's gonna wait til Tuesday also.  So now here they are:

UVA is a frightening lock for the 1 seed; it'd take a mathematically unlikely face-fall to drop out of the top spot.  What's a bit more surprising is the tight grip Duke has on #2, and UNC on #5.  Neither have much of a schedule left, except each other.  KenPom likes GT a lot more than the standings show, though, and UNC also has to visit Miami; that, combined with Duke's higher pythag, accounts for a lot of the difference.  Fortunately, it makes sense; Duke owns the tiebreaker on everyone in the top 5 except for UNC, who they haven't played yet.  By virtue of being the only team to beat UVA while the rest of the contenders have all lost, they're in great shape.

This is a great year to show off the excellence of the tourney format; five great teams looking for four double-bye slots.  It might not matter early, because the first opponent will be a putz (either #12 or #13) and then you play the 4 seed anyway, but the extra game might de-freshen the legs a little as the tourney heads toward Sunday.

Me, I'd definitely welcome a Sunday rematch of last year's final.  Both teams would be motivated by recent losses to the other, and the chance to beat Duke two years in a row would spark whispery but unmistakeable changing-of-the-guard talk.  Not to be premature or anything.

game preview: Duke

Date/Time: Saturday, January 31; 7:00

TV: ESPN

Record against the Blue Devils: 50-116

Last meeting: UVA 72, Duke 63; 3/16/14, Greensboro, NC; ACC championship

Last game: UVA 50, VT 47 (1/25); ND 77, Duke 73 (1/28)

KenPom:

Tempo:

UVA: 58.3 (#350)

Duke: 68.1 (#45)

Offense:

UVA: 117.8 (#5)

Duke: 117.4 (#6)

Defense:

UVA: 83.9 (#2)

Duke: 94.1 (#50)

Pythag:

UVA: .9801 (#2)

Duke: .9275 (#8)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (5.1 ppg, 2.1 rpg, 4.4 apg)

SG: Malcolm Brogdon (13.3 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 2.7 apg)

SF: Justin Anderson (13.9 ppg, 4.4 rpg, 1.9 apg)

PF: Darion Atkins (7.1 ppg, 6.4 rpg, 0.6 apg)

PF: Anthony Gill (11.3 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 0.8 apg)

Duke:

PG: Tyus Jones (10.9 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 5.0 apg)

SG: Quinn Cook (14.4 ppg, 3.4 rpg, 2.8 apg)

SF: Justise Winslow (10.7 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 1.8 apg)

PF: Amile Jefferson (8.8 ppg, 7.4 rpg, 1.1 apg)

C: Jahlil Okafor (18.7 ppg, 9.4 rpg, 1.5 apg)

I haven't done a single one of these yet this year in light of scaling back the regular posting schedule, but how can I resist College GameDay?  This is gonna be fun.  UVA gets showcased for everyone who tunes into some college hoops on Saturday as a Super Bowl warmup, and they couldn't have picked a better opponent because pretty much everyone (who's otherwise neutral) will be hoping to see Duke get humbled.  UVA gets a lot of temporary fans on Saturday night.

This is game one of a four-game stretch of doom.  Most pundits are calling it three, but NC State is no pushover and that one's on the road.  ESPN is already using the "u" word not in terms of the season past, but the season future, so you already know what kind of hype is at stake over the next week.

Duke is having a rough go of it in the ACC, having lost to every non-crappy opponent they've faced, except for Louisville after busting out a surprise zone defense on Rick Pitino.  Their case for being #4 in the country is built mainly on three legitimate things: beating Wisconsin and Louisville on the road, and Jahlil Okafor.  These aren't to be sneezed at, but the Fightin' Coach K's have proven vulnerable, too, and UVA is a decided favorite here.

-- UVA on offense

The Hoos had a little trouble with the VT zone last weekend, so despite the fact that Duke is usually known for aggressive man-to-man defense, you can expect to see them break it out on Saturday.  I mean, it's been working, it certainly worked against Louisville, and it seems to be their best shot at reversing the trend of mediocre defense they've been lamenting this season.

With three freshmen in the starting lineup, it's probably not all that surprising that Duke's defense isn't elite.  Duke's defense possesses the fingerprints of a team whose perimeter defense is beaten off the dribble with some regularity: relatively high 2-point shooting percentage allowed and rather high free-throw shooting percentage allowed, while at the same time relatively few opponents' baskets are assisted.  Why include free-throw percentage allowed?  Teams with higher numbers there are likely to be fouling guards more than bigs.  All this points to a vulnerability to slashing guards - hence the switch to a zone defense, which compensates for that weakness.

A slasher is something that the UVA offense lacks.  The UVA ballhandlers aren't exactly bad at this, but there isn't that one elite player who can do anything on the dribble.  With Rasheed Sulaimon's dismissal from the team, chances are excellent that either Justin Anderson or Malcolm Brogdon - probably Brogdon - will spend a lot of time matched up against a smaller player, which should encourage that mid-range jumper that Brogdon is pretty proficient at shooting.

UVA's offensive rebounding prowess could pose a problem for Duke - not just in second-chance points, but foul trouble.  Grabbing an offensive board and going straight back up is a great way to draw a foul, and Duke is thin in the frontcourt following the early-season transfer of Semi Ojeleye.  Jahlil Okafor and Marshall Plumlee rotate at center with Plumlee being used mostly only to give Okafor a breather.  Amile Jefferson is the only other true big; when he's out of the game, Duke usually pairs Justise Winslow with Matt Jones as small forwards.  Okafor is an obvious freak of nature, one of the quickest big men you'll ever see, but also the only Duke big who matches up well with UVA's frontcourt.  Mike Tobey can score on Plumlee, Jefferson is too skinny to easily handle either Anthony Gill or Darion Atkins, and the remaining forwards are 6'6" or smaller.  And Okafor isn't a big-time shot-blocker - he's about average for his size, really.

Putting him in foul trouble spells bad news for Duke's frontcourt.  Putting any of them in foul trouble, really.  Gill is a bad mismatch for anyone who might guard him save Okafor, in which case Atkins should be able to go to work.  It might be tempting to start Tobey in order to force Duke to guard him with Okafor and let Gill take advantage of the resulting mismatch.

-- UVA on defense

Okafor is scary.  It's not for no reason he gets a lot of hype.  It's rare to see such a big guy move so well.  Okafor is 6'11", 270, and moves like he's 230.  He scores on about 2/3 of his shots, and his season low is 10 points, with eight 20-point games and seven double-doubles.  He's a top-notch offensive rebounder, and by the way that foul trouble thing we talked about earlier is rare, letting him play over 30 minutes a game.

Expect, then, a healthy dose of post-doubling when Okafor gets the ball.  UVA won't front him per se, but the pack-line footwork is still designed to force him to catch the ball somewhere where he doesn't want it, and to let the double come quickly.  Expect also a lot less post-doubling on anyone else, lest they find Okafor with an awful mismatch on him.

It's not a one-man show, though; it wouldn't be Duke if they didn't have a bunch of guys who could score.  Quinn Cook moved off the ball to take a more active shooting role and let Tyus Jones run the point.  Cook made 65 threes last year; a bit more than halfway through the season, he's at 53.  Jones and Winslow aren't hacks at the long ball, but with Sulaimon gone, Cook is the one really big distance threat.  And he's automatic from the stripe, missing only two of 44 free throws this year.

Jones, Winslow, and Jefferson are all perfectly capable scorers, too.  Jefferson is shooting .639 from the field, all from two; Jones and Winslow are rangy players who like Cook can score from a lot of different places.  But that's about where the good news ends for Duke.  The loss of Sulaimon costs the Blue Devils their most versatile player and only reliable bench scorer.  Matt Jones isn't used to shouldering any scoring load, Marshall Plumlee is a body that Duke uses to give Okafor a rest, and Greyson Allen doesn't appear to yet have the full confidence of Coach K.  When Tyus Jones would go out of the game, it was Sulaimon, not the former point guard Cook, who would take over at the point; Duke's choice now is to either hand it back to Cook or make Jones play all 40 minutes.  The former detracts from Cook's scoring focus and the latter is a huge risk and not sustainable.

Sulaimon provided most of his minutes at the three, though, which leaves Duke with another choice: lean more heavily on Winslow or Matt Jones.  Leaning on Winslow takes away his availability at the four, and leaning on Jones risks letting Justin Anderson run wild.  Sulaimon's flexibility gave Coach K a lot of options; his loss is a bigger depth hit than one man normally is.

-- Outlook

Make no mistake, this is a tough game, one of the season's hardest.  My guess is that Duke will lean as hard as they can on their starters in the absence of Sulaimon to back them up, because the more they go to the bench the more they play into the hands of the deeper Hoos.  Their starters can, mostly, match up well with UVA's, and they probably have an advantage at most positions.

But that's why UVA perfects a system, and that system has beaten Duke two years running.  And Duke's margin for error is much smaller than UVA's.  Okafor has had nagging knee twinges in more than one ACC game, and Duke can't afford to have a bad game from any of their starters or have prolonged scoring droughts, because their defense hasn't been good enough to hold off opposing runs.  And playing in what's sure to be a fired-up environment won't help matters.  If UVA's offense is clicking, it's over.  Duke could zone UVA into oblivion, or shoot hot from three, or see one of their stars go off on a big-night bender, and put an end to UVA's win streak in a hurry.  Chances are, though, that to win they'll simply need to play a more complete and balanced game - with fewer players - than they have for most of the season.

Final score: UVA 71, Duke 65

the devil take it

I'd been preaching the past few weeks that it wasn't real likely that everything was gonna go right in the second half of the season, but I gotta admit I wasn't too sure what that would look like.  No, I wasn't very excited to find out, thank you.  In a nutshell, the answer is:

-- A really bad offensive game plan, badly executed
-- An opposing offensive game plan perfectly suited to nullify the strength of our defense

The latter is actually a little bit encouraging.  The pass rush was taken entirely out of the equation, Anthony Boone wasn't touched, and the defense still only allowed 20 points.  (Though aided somewhat by Boone's inaccuracy.)  There are definitely worse offenses left on the schedule, one of which was on display Thursday night.

Our own offense was a massive disappointment, though.  Yes, dropped passes hurt, and yes, Matt Johns missed some very open receivers deep.  That's not the worst part, though.  The worst part is that Duke's defense has been very, very amenable to jamming the ball down their throat, as evidenced by the fact that some of the shittiest teams in all of D-I football have done just that, and UVA elected to pass more than 60% of the time.

Let's put this in perspective: Duke has a very poor run defense and a very good pass defense.  You have a senior running back and a sophomore quarterback.**  You are presented with a wall of paper and a wall of brick, and you can either use a flamethrower on the paper or a rubber mallet on the brick.  You chose the mallet.

So yes, Matt Johns was mostly off-target with sporadic displays of brilliance, but nobody blames the foot soldiers for the failure of Pickett's Charge.  The coaches had an obvious chance to set their players up for success, and instead got outcoached on two weeks of preparation by a staff with one week of preparation.  It's not hard to see why there's still plenty of angst about the future of the program.

It's a sobering reminder of where our ambitions should be.  A division title would be cool, and jeez, even reachable, but we're probably gonna have to dial that back a bit.  I don't like it one bit, but an offense that spins its wheels as much as this one hasn't earned much confidence in the future.  13 points against that defense is just - ugh, I'm forced to deploy the word of choice for drunken Saturday-night quarterbacks everywhere - unacceptable.

**And your senior running back routinely turns in awesome performances in the state of North Carolina, because he's pissed off that none of the teams there recruited him.  GIVE HIM THE BALL!

Bullets:

-- Short-side east-west plays (the bane of my existence) and poor run-pass balance aren't the only coaching bugaboos to make a triumphant return.  Crappy timeout usage was also costly.  Not as costly as other stuff, but still.

-- I really do not like the orange helmets with gray facemasks.  Really ugly when not part of a throwback.  It's amazing how the wrong helmet turns one of the classiest looks we've ever had into one of the worst.

-- I don't want to do the research on this myself, because it'd take forever, but I wonder when the last time was that a college quarterback completed less than half his passes for over 300 yards.  Johns was nine yards shy of the sophomore record (Matt Schaub, 334) and would've threatened (if not completely blown past) the single-game record of 393 (Schaub, again) with a little more accuracy on some of those deep balls.  Or fewer dropped passes.

-- Another thing I hate: Receiving the opening kickoff.  You basically have to score right there, on that drive, or else you've blown the whole advantage of it.  Anything else - anything at all - and the other team, especially in their own stadium, gets to start the game on a momentum high.  Another reason, by the way, that all that passing was stupid.  Nothing would've been as perfect as taking the opening kick and spending the next seven minutes grinding out as many rushing yards as your heart desired.  Send the message that we're gonna do this all day so you might as well lose hope now.

 Prediction review:

-- Kevin Parks runs for over 100 yards. Well, maybe if he'd been given any carries.

-- Greyson Lambert (or our starting quarterback) attempts fewer than 20 passes.  I really need to stop making predictions based on what I would do.

-- UVA loses the turnover battle.  This did happen, although the general point was to build a narrative where UVA was good enough to overcome doing so.

-- Duke's run game is more than a yard worse than their average.  No, and Duke was surprisingly and annoyingly effective on the ground.

-- Quin Blanding has 10 or more tackles.  Blanding had nine; it was Anthony Harris who had the big day in the secondary with 14

-- UVA wins time of possession by six or more minutes.  The Hoos did win this battle, but not by that much.

New prediction stats:

14-for-35 on specifics (40%)
4-2 straight up
2-2-1 ATS

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

Two things happened over the weekend worth discussing.  Well, Thursday and then Monday.

The Monday thing is Tony Bennett building up his 2016 class with the addition of Indiana guard Kyle Guy.  As with Ty Jerome, the first member of the class, I'm gonna wait til these guys finish their junior years before even bothering with trying a profile.  But know this: The Indiana schools normally have the state of Indiana on lockdown, and if not them, the state's high-profile recruits still choose a school close by.  In 2012, for example, the state produced eight four-star prospects (by Rivals' reckoning.)  Three went to IU, two to Purdue, and one each to Butler, Michigan, and MSU.

In fact, going back to the 2009 class, there've been about 30 four-star or above prospects (Rivals, again) to come out of the state of Indiana - exactly one of them went to a school somewhere other than the state of Indiana or one of its direct neighbors.  Guy is the second.

The 2016 class is shaping up to be perhaps Tony's most heralded class of his UVA tenure; it now needs some lengthy wing types, as the only three on the 2016-2017 depth chart is Marial Shayok.  Highly fluid is the world of basketball recruiting, which is why I don't cover it til after the commitments happen; that said, if you don't know the name Mamadi Diakite yet, learn it.

The Thursday thing was the VT game against Pitt, which I watched from start to finish, the first time I'd done so all year.  I came away with a few opinions, naturally:

-- VT gets horrible safety play.  Before the game I'd noticed, during my stat-digging, that they've been prone to giving up long pass plays, a surefire indicator that safeties aren't in the right place at the right time.  Kyshoen Jarrett's awful angle on a long Tyler Boyd touchdown, as pointed out by the announcers, drove that point home.  Their corners are more or less as advertised (which is to say, very good), but the safeties - woof.

-- Michael Brewer is a good quarterback about 25% of the time.

-- VT's offensive line is fun to watch, if you like defensive line play.  Pitt's Nicholas Grigsby is not an elite defender by anyone's measurement, but on one play he blew untouched past VT's right tackle, McLaughlin.  Eli Harold and Max Valles should have an enjoyable day on Thanksgiving weekend.

-- You would expect that at least VT's run defense would be up to snuff, but James Conner and Chad Voytik ran wild all evening.

-- Did the Hokies do anything right?  Not a lot, when you're looking at no first downs in the first quarter-and-a-half.  But besides their excellent cornerbacks, Isaiah Ford and Cam Phillips make for a very impressive pair of freshman receivers.  DT Corey Marshall did a nice job on one play of dropping back into coverage and it resulted in a pickoff, a dangerous thing for our short-tossing pass offense.  (Though, most short passes go toward the sideline rather than dunkoffs over the middle.)

I'm really rooting for Miami in Lane Stadium next week - I mean, besides the whole thing about let's not root for Tech to win anything, VT is in the middle of their special scheduling handjob the ACC gives them literally every year.  (Except last year, which caused them no end of distress about having to do something most teams routinely do.)  Seeing them go 0-for-2 on Thursdays, well, it'd be no less than they deserve for the special treatment they get.  Their next three opponents - Miami, BC, Duke - all have very strong running games, and if they don't get their run defense act together at least once, UVA will have the chance to deliver the death blow to their bowl eligibility hopes.

game preview: Duke

Date/Time: Saturday, October 18; 12:30

TV: ESPN3

Record against the Blue Devils: 33-32

Last meeting: Duke 35, UVA 22; 10/19/13, Charlottesville

Last weekend: UVA bye; Duke 31, GT 25

Line: Duke by 2.5

Injury report:

Virginia:

OUT: OG Ryan Doull, C Jackson Matteo, CB Demetrious Nicholson, OG Jay Whitmire
DOUBTFUL: None
QUESTIONABLE: None
PROBABLE: None

Duke:

OUT: TE Dan Bellinson, CB Johnathan Lloyd, OL Trip McNeill, DT Jamal Wallace, LB Kelby Brown, TE Braxton Deaver, DE Taariq Shabazz
DOUBTFUL: None
QUESTIONABLE: None
PROBABLE: DE Dezmond Johnson, RB Shaq Powell

Duke has a good football team these days.  Eight years ago, that was the first definition in the dictionary under "unthinkable."  Right underneath was the idea that any ACC team might lose five out of six to them.  And let's be honest: I'm still not used to it.  The good news is, if we lose again, we can walk out muttering "just wait til basketball season" and mean it.

-- UVA run offense vs. Duke run defense

Top backs:
Kevin Parks: 104 carries, 427 yards, 4.1 ypc, 3 TDs
Taquan Mizzell: 42 carries, 173 yards, 4.1 ypc, 2 TDs

UVA offense:
177.0 yards/game, 4.23 yards/attempt
73rd of 128 (national), 9th of 14 (ACC)

Duke defense:
202.33 yards/game, 4.56 yards/attempt
85th of 128 (national), 13th of 14 (ACC)

Ryan Doull's unexpected appearance on the injury report is a medium-serious blow to the running game and a pretty solid hit to the already razor-thin depth on the OL.  Doull will probably be replaced by Cody Wallace, who's been in and out of the lineup most of his career - and mostly out this year.  Wallace has always been marginal at best; the fact that Doull jumped all the way from kick protection to starting lineup, past Wallace in his fifth year, is not a ringing endorsement of Wallace's skills.

The good news is Duke's defense, which is junk.  Elon - a 1-5 I-AA team - sent their backs through the Duke defense for 5.4 yards a carry, sacks excluded.  Tulane's top two backs combined for 6.5.  Duke's defense wasn't great last year, either; losing top linebacker Kelby Brown really hurt.  Jeremy Cash at safety is a very good run-stopper and basically a linebacker, but he can't do it all himself.  Duke's defensive front line is somewhat undersized and not very good.

So it's a resistible-force vs. movable-object kind of matchup.  It doesn't take a running game like Miami's to tear up the Duke defense (although they did as well.)  I've said that UVA could ride Kevin Parks to a pretty successful run game if the O-line could get just a little bit of push and let Parks build up momentum as he hit the line.  That could be illustrated this week, even with a depleted line, and the fact that UVA's playcalling has skewed to the run side of things should help even more.  Duke's incredible-shreddable defense should probably let Parks roll to a second straight 100-yard game.

-- UVA pass offense vs. Duke pass defense

Quarterbacks:
Matt Johns: 60/102, 58.8%; 687 yards, 7 TDs, 5 INTs; 6.74 ypa
Greyson Lambert: 63/97, 64.9%; 564 yards, 2 TDs, 4 INTs; 5.81 ypa

Top receivers:
Canaan Severin: 21 rec., 255 yards, 2 TDs
Taquan Mizzell: 21 rec., 99 yards, 0 TDs
Miles Gooch: 17 rec., 220 yards, 1 TD

UVA offense:
220.7 yards/game, 6.49 yards/attempt
95th of 128 (national), 10th of 14 (ACC)

Duke defense:
184.5 yards/game, 5.62 yards/attempt
13th of 128 (national), 2nd of 14 (ACC)

That defense that's been so friendly to run games, though, has tightened up against the pass.  Duke runs a nickel package almost exclusively and they have the safety depth to do it.  Cash is just a good defender regardless of what the offense is doing, and DeVon Edwards is an excellent complement.  There isn't much of a pass rush, but DE Jordan DeWalt-Ondijo provides a decent challenge there.

Greyson Lambert isn't on the injury report.  He'll almost certainly get the start, but nobody really knows what London is thinking when it comes to the hook.  You know my thoughts: let the starter play.  Johns has done a solid job, but Lambert, I think, has done a little bit of a better job taking care of the ball (you'll remember, his first two picks weren't his fault.)

That'll be the main thing here.  Duke's inability to stop the run could open up certain passing opportunities as well, little screens and such, the sort of thing that Steve Fairchild tries in order to put the ball in Taquan Mizzell's hands in space.  Lambert should usually have time, as well.  Duke's numbers have come largely against crap offenses - Kansas and Tulane in particular really suck at passing the ball - but they've at least stopped them, unlike in the run game.  In Tulane's case, the Blue Devil defense took two interceptions all the way back.  If the running game can get moving like I think, Lambert's main job will be zero INTs.  Not easy, against a quality group of safeties, but I don't think much will be asked of him.

-- Duke run offense vs. UVA run defense

Top backs:
Josh Snead: 49 carries, 256 yards, 5.2 ypc, 2 TDs
Shaun Wilson: 43 carries, 466 yards, 10.8 ypc, 4 TDs

Duke offense:
228.5 yards/game, 5.83 yards/attempt
12th of 128 (national), 2nd of 14 (ACC)

UVA defense:
91.5 yards/game, 2.72 yards/attempt
4th of 128 (national), 2nd of 14 (ACC)

Duke's run game has been enormously successful, frankly, and it doesn't matter who carries the ball.  They spread it out a ton.  Freshman Shaun Wilson piled up 245 yards on just 12 carries against the admittedly pitiful Kansas Jayhawks.  Josh Snead and Shaq Powell have been very solid backs throughout their careers.  And Duke likes to run their quarterbacks plenty as well; Anthony Boone is mobile enough, but Duke has packages as well for Thomas Sirk, an excellent runner with good size.

Of course, the one time Duke went against a decent defense, they got snuffed pretty good.  That was Miami - the game was played in a drenching downpour, but Miami did alright on the ground.  Duke does have a pretty solid offensive line, but I think you might have been introduced before to the UVA front six-or-seven.  Pitt's James Conner certainly was.

The main thing for UVA will be to sniff out the various looks Duke will throw at them, especially when Sirk enters the game.  Duke's O-line is good and will win their share of battles, making the linebackers and Quin Blanding pretty important.  And that should make Duke fans nervous.

-- Duke pass offense vs. UVA pass defense

Quarterback:
Anthony Boone: 121/210, 57.6%; 1,186 yards, 8 TDs, 3 INTs; 5.65 ypa

Top receivers:
Jamison Crowder: 32 rec., 372 yards, 2 TDs
Max McCaffrey: 23 rec., 236 yards, 3 TDs
Issac Blakeney: 19 rec., 212 yards, 3 TDs

Duke offense:
205.5 yards/game, 5.50 yards/attempt
122nd of 128 (national), 13th of 14 (ACC)

UVA defense:
239.3 yards/game, 6.81 yards/attempt
54th of 128 (national), 8th of 14 (ACC)

Statistically, Anthony Boone appears to have taken a step backwards from last year, a worrying sign given Duke's competition so far (remember, GT's defense = not that good.)  Six and a half percentage points worse in the completion department, a yard and a half worse per attempt.  This is the one point where we'll make a big allowance for the rainstorm in Miami, though - even though it was only during the second half.  Take away Boone's Miami stats and he's still worse, but not appreciably.

Still, perhaps this will be a telling stat: the WRs' yards per catch.  UVA fans at times bemoan a dink-and-dunk approach, but every one of UVA's top four wide receivers (RBs not included) has a higher per-catch average than every one of Duke's top four.  Duke and dunk.

This is reflected in Duke's pass protection stats; they've only allowed four sacks all season, which is a testament to the O-line, the mobility of the quarterbacks, and the quickness with which they get rid of the ball.  Duke will probably try and drop the ball off even quicker given UVA's blitzy pass rush.  There could be some plays where that burns us - slant routes and the like - so safety play will be huge.  The other important thing is not getting sucked in on Sirk packages, although he hasn't completed a pass since the Kansas game (third of the season) and isn't guaranteed to even try a pass here.

-- Favorability ratings:

UVA run offense: 6
UVA pass offense: 4
UVA run defense: 6.5
UVA pass defense: 6

Average: 5.6

-- Outlook

It's certainly possible I'm just getting sucked in to the excitement of novel ideas like a winning record, but - I'm not impressed with Duke's schedule, I'm not impressed with their results, with scores that belie a lack of statistical dominance, and I'm not impressed with their front six.  And I'm like a tweenage girl at a One Direction concert for the front line of our defense.

So I'm optimistic.  Any time a team faces us with a bad defense and a good offense, rather than the other way round, we have at least a chance and probably more.  UVA's defense isn't good enough to carry the offense through every single game, but this one - I'd say yes.

-- Predictions

-- Kevin Parks runs for over 100 yards.

-- Greyson Lambert (or our starting quarterback) attempts fewer than 20 passes.

-- UVA loses the turnover battle.

-- Duke's run game is more than a yard worse than their average.

-- Quin Blanding has 10 or more tackles.

-- UVA wins time of possession by six or more minutes.

Final score: UVA 28, Duke 17

-- Rest of the ACC

Bye: Miami

Virginia Tech @ Pittsburgh - Thu., 7:30 - I've been watching this game all evening, and Tech's offense is pitiful and the Hokies are basically getting dominated, but I've never seen a team blow stuff up in its own face like Pitt is doing.

Syracuse @ Wake Forest - 12:00 - A pair of 0-2 teams battle.  Critical game for Cuse if they're going to salvage bowl eligibility.

Clemson @ Boston College - 3:30 - Clemson is favored, but only by 4.5; a huge game if they want to try and stay in shouting distance of FSU.

NC State @ Louisville - 3:30 - The Pack started 4-0 and are now 4-3, staring at 4-4, proving that you can "schedule for success" and still be a total embarrassment.

Georgia Tech @ North Carolina - 7:00 - I may actually Tivo this one in hopes that the final score is like 84-77.

Florida State vs. Notre Dame - 8:00 - Whoever wins has a very, very inside track for inclusion in the four-team playoff.

2014 season preview: Duke Blue Devils

Schedule:

8/30: Elon
9/6: @ Troy
9/13: Kansas
9/20: Tulane
9/27: @ Miami
10/3: BYE
10/11: @ Georgia Tech
10/18: Virginia
10/25: BYE
11/1: @ Pittsburgh
11/8: @ Syracuse
11/15: Virginia Tech
11/20: North Carolina (Thu.)
11/29: Wake Forest

Skip: Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, Louisville, NC State

2013 results:

NC Central: W, 45-0
Memphis: W, 28-14
Georgia Tech: L, 38-14
Pittsburgh: L, 58-55
Troy: W, 38-31
Navy: W, 35-7
Virginia: W, 35-22
Virginia Tech: W, 13-10
NC State: W, 38-20
Miami: W, 48-30
Wake Forest: W, 28-21
North Carolina: W, 27-25
Florida State: L, 45-7 (ACC Championship)
Texas A&M: L, 52-48 (Peach Bowl)

Record: 10-4 (6-2); 1st, Coastal

Projected starters:

QB: Anthony Boone (5Sr.)
RB: Josh Snead (5Sr.)
WR: Jamison Crowder (Sr.)
WR: Max McCaffrey (Jr.)
WR: Issac Blakeney (5Sr.)
TE: Braxton Deaver (5Sr.)
LT: Takoby Cofield (5Sr.)
LG: Lucas Patrick (rJr.)
C: Matt Skura (rJr.)
RG: Laken Tomlinson (5Sr.)
RT: Casey Blaser (rSo.)

DE: Dezmond Johnson (5Sr.)
DT: Jamal Bruce (5Sr.)
DT: Carlos Wray (Jr.)
DE: Jordan DeWalt-Ondijo (5Sr.)
MLB: Kelby Brown (5Sr.)
WLB: David Helton (Sr.)
CB: Bryon Fields (So.)
CB: Breon Borders (So.)
S: DeVon Edwards (rSo.)
S: Jeremy Cash (rJr.)
S: Deondre Singleton (So.)

K: Ross Martin (Jr.)
P: Will Monday (rJr.)

(Italics indicate new starter.)

Coach: David Cutcliffe (7th season)

Media prediction: 2nd, Coastal

All-ACC:

2013 1st team: WR Jamison Crowder, LB Kelby Brown, CB Ross Cockrell, S Jeremy Cash
2013 2nd team: OG Laken Tomlinson, KR Jamison Crowder, DE Kenny Anunike
2013 3rd team: TE Braxton Deaver, OT Perry Simmons, PR DeVon Edwards, P Will Monday
2013 HM: K Ross Martin
2014 preseason: WR Jamison Crowder, OG Laken Tomlinson, LB Kelby Brown, S Jeremy Cash

(Italics indicate departed player.)

If at every opportunity I get to talk about the supremely brilliant prediction I made about Boston College last year, then I guess I also have to dredge up the final lines from last year's Duke preview: "I don't see three ACC wins on their schedule."  We know how that went.

Then again, Duke's presence in the ACC CG was predicted by precisely zero people on the planet.  David Cutcliffe, fresh off Duke's first bowl trip in ages, skipped quite a few steps in the development of a team and brought them (sort of) to the brink of a real live ACC championship.  OK, they got smoked by the future national champions, but, future national champions and all.  Now there's a feeling of arrival in Durham, and people are giving them a healthy amount of respect: the Blue Devils were second by just a nose in preseason ACC voting.  They're considered as strong a contender as anyone to get back to that title game.

-- Offense

The media will usually give you a boost in their voting if you have a quarterback they know and like, and Anthony Boone fits the bill.  With backup QB Brandon Connette transferring due to family issues, Duke will lean heavily on Boone, as he's now backed up by a whole string of guys who've never played.  Boone didn't quite blow the world away last year, as he mixed in some awful clunkers in his game log, but he's a legitimate dual threat with a solid arm, and, never underestimate the value of a fifth-year senior under center.

The real star of the offense, though, is receiver Jamison Crowder, who can break the ACC records for receptions and yards with a big season this year - though it doesn't have to be as big as last year when he recorded 1,360 yards on 108 catches.  Crowder isn't your typical ace receiver - he stands just 5'9", but he's a ridiculously difficult cover nonetheless.  Duke's next-biggest pass-catching threat is TE Braxton Deaver, who finally came into his own last year after an injury-filled 2012.  Max McCaffrey is a dependable possession guy who plays on the outside opposite Crowder, and an interesting platoon is being set up in the slot, where 6'6" senior Issac Blakeney is being pushed by 5'7" sophomore Ryan Smith.

The running back rotation took a hit last winter when second-leading rusher Jela Duncan was suspended for two semesters, which includes this coming season, for academic reasons.  Duncan split carries at the top of the depth chart with Josh Snead last season, and Snead averaged over six yards a carry, so Duke isn't hurting too badly here.  Though, it's actually junior Shaquille Powell who's listed atop the pre-fall depth chart; Powell did a solid job in Duke's second tier of backs, averaging 5.5 a carry on a little over 60 chances.

The offensive line is once again a strong foundation for this offense.  The unit is led by RG Laken Tomlinson, entering his fourth year as a full-time starter, and LT Takoby Cofield, entering his third.  Tomlinson is a huge, 330-pound mauler and one of the best offensive guards in the country.  At the all-important center position, Matt Skura was given the job out of last summer and held it down all season, giving Duke three returning starters on the line.  Lucas Patrick is expected to take over at left guard after starting the bowl game last year against Texas A&M, leaving just one uncertain spot on the line: right tackle.  Here, the competition, at least initially, will be betweenr redshirt sophomores Casey Blaser and Tanner Stone, who have a combined 17 snaps in their careers - all belonging to Blaser.

Despite that one small hiccup, the Duke line ought to be among the stronger ones in the league, and there's little reason to expect any regression from this offense.  They're able to rotate freely at the tailback position, keeping their legs fresh, and Crowder is one of the league's top weapons.  Combined with Cutcliffe's smarts and occasional mad science on offense, it'll take quite an effort for any defense to stop the Blue Devils this year.

-- Defense

Despite eating some words last year on this subject, I'm still not fully convinced when it comes to Duke's defense.  They certainly have some stars, pre-eminently linebacker Kelby Brown, a tremendous weapon against the run (11 TFLs in 2013) who's also much more than adequate against the pass.  Brown is joined in the linebacking corps by David Helton, who seized a starting position last year from C.J. France and never let it go - Helton was the team's leading tackler with 133.

With France and Deion Williams, both of whom played respectably as reserves, Duke has more depth at linebacker than they did in the past, but still operates mainly out of a 4-2-5 nickel defense.  They started two freshmen at safety last year, DeVon Edwards and Deondre Singleton, and both acquitted themselves very well.  Singleton did so as a true freshman, but it's Edwards who ought to be watched closely, as he not only picked off three passes last year but was also a top-flight kick returner.  The star of the secondary, though, is do-everything safety Jeremy Cash, who had 121 tackes (9.5 for loss) and picked off four passes in 2013.  Finally, at cornerback, Duke will start another pair of sophomores in Bryon Fields and Breon Borders.  Both are moving up from reserve roles last season, but that didn't stop Borders from intercepting four passes; both have enough experience that Duke should be able to rely on them without much worry.

Up front is where Duke has most of their question marks.  Duke graduated a pair of productive defensive ends, and may struggle to replace them.  Listed as starters are Dezmond Johnson and Jordan DeWalt-Ondijo, a pair of fifth-year seniors and career reserves.  Their backups are Kyler Brown and Jonathan Jones - again, career backups, though injuries forced them both out of a few games last season, during which they should've been taking significant steps forward in their development.  Either could play their way into the starting lineup, but that's partly a function of having relatively unimpressive starters.  In the middle, the news is a little better: Jamal Bruce is a returning full-time starter, and while Carlos Wray technically isn't, he played as much in the rotation as a starter would anyway.  Both were solidly productive last year for defensive tackles, though neither made a major name for themselves either.

Players like Cash, Kelby Brown, Helton, and up-and-comers like Edwards and Borders, should lend a sense of legitimacy to this defense, and the back seven has plenty of quality, even above-average players.  But even with such players - as well as now-departed stars like Ross Cockrell and Kenny Anunike - Duke's defense was deep in the bottom half of the league last year both against the pass and the run.  The back seven should be improved with a ton of returning starters and another year of experience under their belts, but the front four is cause for concern.  Duke will need some surprises up front, I think, in order to maintain the W/L success from last year.

-- Special teams

Duke has some of the best in the league here.  They use Jamison Crowder on punt returns, and he rewarded them last season with a 16-yard average.  DeVon Edwards topped 30 yards on average in kick return duty.  Ross Martin took a bit of a step backwards in the accuracy department last year, but he's still considered a highly dependable kicker, and Will Monday is a strong-legged punter who could have the NFL in his future.

-- Outlook

Can Duke make it back to the championship game?  That's going to be the big question for the year.  The offense is certainly a capable unit, and even brings some flash and star power to the table now, enough to hold their own against most any team in the conference.  The defense, though - well, it'd be hard for me to have a lower outlook on them than I did last year, and I don't still think that lowly of the unit.  But it's also hard to ignore that even in a year where they placed four starters on various all-ACC teams, the bottom line (for which I use yards per play) wasn't all that good.  I think the defense will cause a slight regression to the mean in the win column for Duke.  Do they go bowling?  Sure, easily.  They still have an OOC schedule totally lacking in games of interest, and they play in the wide-open Coastal.  But they won several close ones in the ACC last year and can't be expected to win them all again this year.  The good news is they skip anyone of note in the Atlantic - no FSU, no Clemson, no Louisville - but if they do make a repeat trip to the ACCCG, it'll be thanks to some surprises on defense and, likely enough, a healthy dose of tiebreakers.  Otherwise I think this is more of an eight-win squad when all's said and done - seven if they didn't play a chicken schedule in the OOC.

weekend review

Woo-hoo, I partook in the annual ritual of watching the no-defense festival that is the annual loss to Duke on the lacrosse field.  Well, I take it back somewhat: not every game against them is completely without defense.  We never play it, but sometimes Duke does.  Sometimes we lose by a lot and sometimes by a little, but one thing is usually a given: Duke will wear out the netting, usually around 15 times.  The last time there was a low-scoring affair against those guys: 2007, a 7-6 loss for us.

This happened to be one of those days where UVA could keep pace somewhat.  UVA has been in the game in every one of its losses but the Notre Dame one; even more interesting, we've been able to play any kind of game the opponent wants.  Defensive slugfest?  Sure.  Shootout?  Sure.  And therein, I think, lies part of the problem.  When have we seen UVA impose its will on the other team?  Only in games against much lesser opposition, and even then you saw problems against Rutgers and Richmond, to name a few.

Goalie play took a dump, of course, which didn't help.  I was surprised to see that Duke's Luke Aaron failed to reach a .500 save percentage, because it seemed like he was saving basically everything, which may have been only in comparison to our own goalies, who saved nothing.  That's "goalies" because Matt Barrett got yanked for Dan Marino, who was just as bad.

I'm not prepared to guarantee UVA will make the NCAA tournament because I'm not prepared to guarantee this team can beat Bellarmine; they absolutely should and I think they will, but the flaws are such that you just never know.  How often do they look like they know what they're doing?  I'd say, not much.  The offense doesn't know whether to be patient or to run'n'shoot; the defense doesn't know whether to sit back or be aggressive, and they try all of them at various times and don't get consistent results.  The coaches have tried all they can think of to win faceoffs and have resorted to an apparently random pattern of choosing the ineffective short stick or the ineffective long stick.  Likewise they can't decide who should run the offense from the X; they don't seem to have confidence in either Owen van Arsdale or Ryan Lukacovic, and have equally inconsistent substitution patterns there as well, to say nothing of the midfield.  The whole operation stinks of throwing crap against the wall just to see what sticks.

I don't think this season is a total loss.  Any time you beat Hopkins and Syracuse you've succeeded at a portion of the goals that UVA lacrosse sets out to accomplish.  Then again, any time you lose to Maryland, UNC, and Duke, and get to mid-April not 100% sure about making the NCAA tournament, not to mention not even playing in the ACC one, you've fallen short of quite a few others.  The atmosphere around the program is starting to look like the one around Debbie Ryan's hoops program a couple years before her resignation.  When a respected Sabre poster lets loose on the coaching staff and program with cannons blazing like this and this, and is not told out of hand to stuff it, you can tell the cracks are appearing.

I link those epistles for you, and even find them well-reasoned, but I don't (yet) fully endorse them.  I'm painfully aware this is the worst two-year stretch for UVA lacrosse in quite some time, but I'm also painfully aware of what happens when fans let expectations run too wild, revolt, and accelerate the downward spiral.  Tennessee boosters pitched Phil Fulmer overboard because they were tired of Outback Bowl seasons and he had the audacity to go 5-7 that one time, and in the five years since they've won 7, 6, 5, 5, and 5 games.  People around here got tired of Debbie Ryan because we didn't win enough in the ACC and didn't go far enough in the NCAAs, and Joanne Boyle has only managed to spin her wheels at best.  Is Dom Starsia getting lazy at recruiting and allowing the program to get bogged down in the mud?  Maybe.  Are we capable of screwing this up by running him off and spending six winless years in the ACC?  More than.

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

-- It's amazing how a shutout can feel like anything but a dominant pitching performance.  Brandon Waddell combined with Whit Mayberry and Nick Howard to hold Clemson entirely scoreless on Sunday and take the series, and yet it sure had none of the feeling of the same result a week prior.  Waddell was dominant against Pitt, and forever walking the edge against Clemson.  Much better team this week, yes.  And honestly, a pitching coach will be at least as happy, if not happier, to see his charges battle back against multiple basepath incursions, than to see them breeze through with little trouble.  The Pitt shutout showed a lot of ability; the Clemson shutout showed ability and character.

Miami managed to sweep the same Pitt team that we took only two of three from, however, and thus UVA finds itself tied atop the division.  This means less than it did last year, though, now that the ACC tournament has moved away from pool play and to a basic double-elimination format.  The 1 and 2 seeds used to get their choice of game times, and that mattered much more then.

-- If this doesn't impress you or do anything for you at all, you're in the wrong place.  How about the ACC all-sport record for most consecutive conference wins?  Men's tennis brought that distinction to UVA by winning its 117th straight conference match - counting both regular season and tournament play, meaning, NCAA tournament as well.  117 straight wins against ACC foes, no matter when or where the competition.  That's a mark that, if it's ever topped by anyone, will take a good ten years to achieve, minimum.  (Though I haven't checked to see if anyone anywhere is working on a streak of like 70 or so right now, which is possible but not real likely.)

-- I wouldn't have bothered watching the spring football game even if it had been on, honestly.  It just doesn't excite me; for one, because the affair is never a real game; two, because you can never really tell whether one side's dominance is a good thing or a bad thing and therefore the thing is not all that instructive; three, because 2-10.  (#1 is that way because coaches are always concerned about injuries and depth - there's no way we could've put together two full teams' worth of O-linemen - but it's also easily fixed such that my attention could be restored.  Play a full speed 7-on-7 game.  Problem solved.  Injury risk is minimized and fans get something to watch.)

However, Jeff White's article answered the one question we all want to know, even if Mike London is still playing coy.  Greyson Lambert, besides being voted a team captain, threw 31 passes while Matt Johns threw 19 and David Watford just 14.  I leave you to draw your own conclusion, with every confidence you'll decide the same as I did.

game preview: Duke

Date/Time: Sunday, March 16; 1:00

TV: ESPN

Record against the Blue Devils: 49-116

Last meeting: Duke 69, UVA 65; 1/13/14, Durham

Last game: UVA 51, Pitt 48 (3/15); Duke 75, NCSt. 67 (3/15)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 61.0 (#345)
Duke: 66.0 (#196)

Offense:
UVA: 113.6 (#28)
Duke: 124.6 (#2)

Defense:
UVA: 89.5 (#3)
Duke: 101.0 (#95)

Pythag:
UVA: .9394 (#5)
Duke: .9177 (#8)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (5.1 ppg, 2.3 rpg, 3.8 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (12.3 ppg, 5.6 rpg, 2.7 apg)
SF: Joe Harris (11.6 ppg, 2.9 rpg, 2.3 apg)
PF: Akil Mitchell (7.0 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 1.3 apg)
C: Mike Tobey (6.4 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 0.3 apg)

Duke:

PG: Tyler Thornton (3.1 ppg, 1.8 rpg, 2.4 apg)
SG: Rasheed Sulaimon (9.8 ppg, 2.3 rpg, 2.4 apg)
SF: Rodney Hood (16.5 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 2.0 apg)
PF: Jabari Parker (19.2 ppg, 8.8 rpg, 1.3 apg)
PF: Amile Jefferson (6.5 ppg, 6.8 rpg, 1.0 apg)

Now they've gone and done it: they've got me working overtime.  I couldn't pass up the chance to write about this blog's first crack at the ACC title game.  This serves as your official welcome to Cloud 9.  If there's a storybook finish in store, then it would have to come not only against the one team that all right-minded people in the country will root against, but the one ACC team UVA hasn't yet beaten this year.  It's time to find out if there's another banner at the end of the rainbow.

-- UVA on offense

There are two flavors of Duke teams.  One is elite.  When they go to the tournament, if they lose, everyone breathes a sigh of relief.  The other is still in the top echelons of the country, but beatable.  This year's Duke is the latter.  Unless they win on Sunday and win the national title, Duke will finish with eight losses, which is more than all but one of their teams since 1997.  (That "one" finished 22-11 in 2007.)  Defense is the reason for this.

And the reason for their mediocre defense is their size.  Former UVA target Marshall Plumlee can't unglue himself from the bench, and Josh Hairston has seen his minutes swirl the drain all season.  Hairston has only played in four of the last nine games, one being a Senior Night start.  Duke's CGNFT (Close Game No Foul Trouble) rotation has only three bigs: Jabari Parker, Amile Jefferson, and Rodney Hood - and Hood is more of a tall wing.  And only Jefferson is taller than 6'8" - he's a 6'9", 210 beanpole.

Duke has tried to cover up their soft middle with their athleticism, but it's been a struggle; most decent teams, and some not-decent teams, will score on them.  They struggle to rebound on defense and they've allowed better than 50% shooting from two, sitting at 237th in the country.

This means the way you should attack them is just the way UVA wants to attack.  Deliberate, and work the ball inside, which has the added benefit of limiting the number of possessions.  Duke actually defends the three very well (12th in the nation in opponents' 3-point FG%) on account of all that perimeter athleticism, which has the effect of skewing opponents' point distribution ridiculously toward the two-pointer.  Opponents get 17.4% of their points from three and 61.0% from two; the former number is the lowest in the country and the latter, 2nd-highest.  The game plan, then, is pretty obvious.

A final point on the operation of the offense: if in fact UVA does earn a lead of some kind in the last quarter of the game, trying to sit on it for eight minutes the way they did against Pitt will probably fail miserably.  Pitt has a good, athletic defense and all that dribbling around was probably a poor idea.  This'll be even more so against Duke.

-- UVA on defense

This is the end of the court where the game becomes a clash of titans.  Duke's current KenPom O-rating of 124.6 is higher than any team has ever finished the season with in the KenPom era.  (And it's still more than two points behind Creighton, which explains a lot about why Doug McDermott is such a runaway Wooden winner.)  UVA is third in the country with an outstanding, but non-historical, D-rating of their own.

It's really not just Jabari Parker - he is in fact eighth on the team in individual O-rating.  (That said, usage tends to drag one's rating down, and it's very hard to find someone else who can be so high in possession usage - 31.4% - and keep his O-rating that high too.)  Still, Parker is KenPom's #3 player in the country for a reason.  There's nowhere he can't score from.

Just about everyone in Duke's rotation - Amile Jefferson being the one exception - is a scary three-point shooter.  Leaving the lightly-used Matt Jones out of it, their worst distance shooter is Quinn Cook at 35%.  Four of these guys are over 41%.  Kinda frightening.  And Duke as a team doesn't hesitate to fire away.  For the most part, when they lose it's because their three-point shooting failed them, the shots just didn't fall, and their defense couldn't keep them in it.

Complicating the matchups a bit is that K has switched Quinn Cook out of the starting lineup in favor of Tyler Thornton.  Thornton's a better distance shooter but Cook is otherwise the better player; Cook scores and distributes much better.  In UVA's case, "complicating" might be the wrong word, since seeing Cook come off the bench might well be a cue for Justin Anderson to stand up as well.  Anderson would be wasted on Thornton in any go-defend-that-point-guard assignment.  (Then again, Anderson might well be deployed on anyone from Hood to Parker as well.)

Beating Duke this year tends to involve a little luck; you basically hope their threes don't all drop at once and get everyone involved in chasing down the misses.  This is not to say they have no inside game; unlike on defense, they're plenty effective from two.  Jefferson, for example, is shooting .652, and four rotation players are over 50% as well.  But I see this as an area that'll cancel out.  They'll get a few, we'll stop a few, and what we'll really hope to do is keep those threes from being shot in the first place.

-- Outlook

The arena will probably be reasonably noisy for UVA and much louder for Duke.  But for the rest of the country, the TV audience, when you play Duke on a big stage like this, for two hours you become America's Team.  And we don't want to let America down, do we?  1976 - the nation's bicentennial - is the most recent, and only, number on the ACC Tournament banner in the JPJA.  Kind of lonely-looking.  It's high time to get another one.  For America.

Final score: UVA 67, Duke 66

season preview: Wake Forest

Media prediction: 13th of 15

Last season:

Record: 13-18 (6-12); ACC 10th seed
Postseason: none
KenPom: 134th of 347

Returning scoring: 67.1%
Returning rebounding: 82.6%
Returning assists: 71.9%

2012-2013 all-ACC:

1st team: none
2nd team: none
3rd team: none
HM: G C.J. Harris, F Travis McKie
Defensive: none
Rookie: F Devin Thomas

(Italics indicate departed player.)

Starting lineup:

PG: Codi Miller-McIntyre (So.)
SG: Madison Jones (So.)
SF: Travis McKie (Sr.)
PF: Devin Thomas (So.)
PF: Tyler Cavanaugh (So.)

Bench:

G Coron Williams (5Sr.)
F Arnaud William Adala Moto (So.)
F Aaron Rountree (So.)
C Andre Washington (So.)
G Miles Overton (Fr.)

Coach: Jeff Bzdelik (4th season)

ACC schedule:

Twice: Clemson, Duke, North Carolina, NC State
Once: Boston College, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Maryland, Miami, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech

Would it be wrong to call the Deacons' lineup....sophomoric?  I know the word has a totally different meaning, but honestly, it's hard to think of a team with more weird imbalance than Wake Forest - they list 17 players on their roster and 11 are sophomores.  The majority, not the plurality, of the team.  I'm not going to bother researching how many are scholarship players, but I'm guessing at least the ones in the rotation, which number seven.  More than half the scholarship allotment.

For a little while, Wake had been two players and eleven nobodies.  The two players were C.J. Harris and Travis McKie.  Harris is gone now and McKie is one of only two seniors on the roster (the other being graduate transfer Coron Williams) so you'd think McKie would be taking over the stat sheet.  Jeff Bzdelik's Wake teams have always had some questionable usage rates, though, and McKie, despite being a very efficient scorer and the star in the past, has been reduced to a role player.  With the ball in his hands, he's an athletic player who can score in a variety of ways, though neither is he unstoppable.

Williams is doing a lot of scoring for Wake despite coming off the bench mostly; he's a deadeye three-point shooter and a smart veteran player who has always taken care of the ball well, largely by being a catch-and-shoot player who doesn't fool around with getting too fancy.  The starting guards, Codi Miller-McIntyre and Madison Jones, share a lot of the ballhandling duties such that it's not quite accurate to call Miller-McIntyre the point guard.  Jones largely eschews the jump shot, shooting almost exclusively on layup attempts (and not getting many of those either), while Miller-McIntyre will shoot from anywhere.  Miller-McIntyre is the team's leading scorer, but his efficiency drops off a ton beyond the arc.

Up front, Devin Thomas is the most important player, the team's top rebounding presence by far and an able though not overpowering scorer.  There's some help, too, from Tyler Cavanaugh and Arnaud William Adala Moto, the latter being a strong defender and rebounder while Cavanaugh plays a little more of a perimeter game despite being a pretty bad three-point shooter.  Wake only gives a few minutes a game to center Andre Washington, but when he's in he's a shot-block factory, racking up almost two per game in less than ten minutes.

You wouldn't know it from the licking the Hoos laid on them a little while back, but Wake has been playing reasonably solid defense this year.  Holding them back is an anemic offense; the Deacons get nothing out of Madison Jones and lack a true inside scoring threat.  Thomas is as good as it gets there, and while he's not terrible, he's not the kind of guy you need to pay special attention too.  Bzdelik doesn't really seem to know who his top offensive options are, allowing less efficient players like Thomas to dominate the usage rates while McKie and Williams languish.  Wake is a faster-paced team, masking their offensive struggles.  They're going to have to scratch and claw their way to .500 in the conference and will probably fall short; the best case for their season is a very low NIT seed or a CBI bid (which they might turn down, since schools have to pay their own costs in that tournament.)  Better than the past few years, but not likely to make the Buzz Off movement go away either.

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

Raise your hand if you think Duke has about ten thousand horseshoes crammed up the rear end of every occupant of a Cameron seat, and twice that many for the players themselves.  Yup, that's all of you.  It is the only conceivable way Rasheed Sulaimon can brick the game-winning shot so badly, and still make it.

Had UVA been able to put home a few layups here and there, however, there might have been no opportunity for a game-winner by Duke.  The athleticism gap between Duke and the teams UVA has played thus far is palpable; nevertheless, the battling attitude from the Hoos was extremely heartening.  I don't just mean the last four minutes; Duke must have had six or seven different double-digit leads through the game and the Hoos chipped away at all of them.

Another layup here or there, a couple missed threes by Duke (who shot .455 from long-range, not a crazy number but somewhat above average) and UVA is walking away with a win - at Cameron, where the noise was still noisy but seemed relegated to the background.  Duke's athletic, in-the-grill defense (no doubt partly inspired by some matador efforts of late) threw UVA off far more than the vaunted atmosphere.  If we meet again in the ACC tournament - well, I'm not stupid enough to guarantee anything, but neither would anyone feel all that comfortable picking Duke.

season preview: Duke

Media prediction: 1st of 15

Last season:

Record: 30-6 (14-4); ACC 2nd seed
Postseason: NCAA 2 seed; lost in Elite Eight
KenPom: 6th of 347

Returning scoring: 42.9%
Returning rebounding: 46.4%
Returning assists: 68.5%

2012-2013 all-ACC:

1st team: C Mason Plumlee
2nd team: G Seth Curry
3rd team: G Quinn Cook
HM: F Ryan Kelly
Defensive: none
Rookie: G Rasheed Sulaimon

(Italics indicate departed player.)

Starting lineup:

PG: Quinn Cook (Jr.)
SG: Tyler Thornton (Sr.)
F: Rodney Hood (rSo.)
F: Jabari Parker (Fr.)
F: Amile Jefferson (So.)

Bench:

G Rasheed Sulaimon (So.)
F Josh Hairston (Sr.)
G Andre Dawkins (5Sr.)
G Matt Jones (Fr.)

Coach: Mike Krzyzewski (34th season)

ACC schedule:

Twice: Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Syracuse, Wake Forest
Once: Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, Maryland, Miami, NC State, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Virginia, Virginia Tech

Early returns on the season suggest this may be an off year for Duke, by which I mean they might be as low as a 3 or 4 seed in the NCAAs.  Horrors.  Perhaps even lower, depending on how they do in the ACC season, as their two best chances for a glamor win slipped them by, with losses to Kansas and Arizona early on.

Duke's roster took a lot of turnover during the offseason, losing three top players to graduation.  There are still some seniors here, but the reins have been handed to junior point guard Quinn Cook, a savvy player with a well-developed game.  Cook has a good shot and a sky-high assist rate and is every bit the player his recruiting rankings expected him to be.

Cook has some veteran help in the backcourt; though Seth Curry is finally out the door, two more seniors step up to take his place.  These seniors are here to shoot threes.  Tyler Thornton hardly shoots at all, actually, though when he does shoot from long-distance he's pretty decent.  His defense is what's earning him 20+ minutes a game, though.  Andre Dawkins is back on the team after taking a year off of basketball, and his three-point shot hasn't left him.  Likely due to conditioning issues he's only played 11 or so minutes a game, but he's good for a little instant heat off the bench.

Rounding out the backcourt are freshman Matt Jones, in for some spot minutes at times, and Rasheed Sulaimon.  Sulaimon had a good season as a freshman last year but has managed to play his way into K's doghouse, and didn't unglue his butt from the bench in Duke's win over Michigan.

Duke lacks a traditional center now that Mason Plumlee has moved on and Marshall Plumlee seems unable to get off the bench.  The youngest Plumlee is getting walk-on minutes only, and Duke depends on a fairly deep set of 6'8"-ish athletic forwards for backcourt minutes.  Jabari Parker is showing why he was such an elite recruit; he's become Duke's go-to guy with an astounding 22.1 ppg this season, and 7.8 rebounds as well.  Parker dominates the ball, but he ought to; he can score from anywhere at all, and he's also a high-level defender, too.

The Blue Devils also get plenty of quality minutes from Mississippi State transfer Rodney Hood, another deadeye shooter from anywhere you please.  Hood is averaging 19 points a game, and while he's not the rebounder or defender Parker is, he's actually shooting a higher percentage from both inside and outside the arc.  Amile Jefferson is proving to be a nice complementary piece, missing only seven of his thirty shots this year (though you can foul him without fear; he's a rotten free-throw shooter.)  These guys are pushing senior Josh Hairston to the sideline; Hairston has started three games and plays about 14 minutes a game, but barely registers on the stat sheet.

No question that Duke can score; the leading trio of Parker, Hood, and Cook are combining for 56 points a game.  And the worst part of it is, any one of them can score inside or out.  Outside of Jefferson, this is a really good free-throw shooting team, too.  However, their defense is up and down.  They've been dominant, but only in patches.  Probably their worst moment: getting outscored by seven in the second half against Vermont and winning that game by just one point.  The Catamounts scored 90 points in only 65 possessions.  (Vermont, by the way, is 3-6, with wins over Siena, Illinois State, and D-II Sonoma State.)

So there's no reason they shouldn't go through the ACC like a knife through butter, except that there'll be a few nights here and there where the defense fails them.  The tournament committee will probably penalize them a touch, though, for not having any OOC games on the road and (so far) only having a win over Alabama in the preseason NIT to burnish their away-from-home resume.  They'll have a crack at UCLA later this month, and the outcome could move them up or down a seed.  They're a strong contender for the ACC title, but they'll need to improve their defense in order to make a deep NCAA run.

unfavorable comparison

I have to admit I've been unsure how to start this post.  I have all sorts of great ideas for how to finish it, each more spiteful than the last.  Maybe I'll go with the anecdote of the Cleveland Browns fan who died this past summer and wrote in his obituary that he wanted some of the Browns to act as pallbearers for his funeral - so they could let him down one last time.

I only hope I can maintain that kind of phlegmatic humor for the next 15 months, because they're going to be awful ones as far as football is concerned.  Probably the next 12 after that too since it looks likely that a new coach will take a minute or two in getting up to speed as well.  Hopefully that guy can coach his way out of a brown paper bag, because he's going to get here and find a lot of fans wearing them.

This season is a lesson, really.  I'm starting to feel awfully vindicated, in a grotesque way. The UVA-fan conventional wisdom has always been about "building for the future" by pulling experienced players the moment the season starts to go south and putting in wide-eyed freshmen to "get their reps" because it will "pay dividends down the road."  When Marc Verica was starting, fans wanted Ross Metheny or Mike Rocco instead.  When Rocco was starting, fans wanted David Watford instead, and then they wanted Phillip Sims.  Now we're doing exactly what this breed of fans has always wanted, because we have no choice - and it's pissing the future down the drain.  Every loss brings us mercifully closer to the end of the Mike London era, and sends recruits scurrying elsewhere.  Melvin Keihn has liked UVA for a long time and he comes from a very pro-UVA school, and he will probably not go to UVA.  London has been working on Jamil Kamara for three years, and his current leader is Wisconsin. (This said, Kamara seems to be the type of recruit whose leader is the last school he visited.)   Tim Settle is a crucial 2015 recruit, whose recruitment is getting more and more wide open by the day.  2015 needs to be a huge class, because there will be jillions of seniors next year, and London is going to walk into that recruiting cycle with one foot in the lame-duck grave.

Watford may yet bloom in 2015, of course.  Can't rule that out.  The play-for-the-future crowd certainly doesn't have that part wrong yet.  I couldn't decide whether he would progress or regress during this Duke game, I just didn't anticipate him doing both.

At any rate, we are now in dangerous territory.  It could've been avoided simply by not shitting the bed with the lights on in the second half.  The danger is not so much that the London era might be over soon.  I'm taking it for granted that it will be.  You're to take for granted now that I don't have any more faith in his coaching abilities.  I say this reluctantly and with a twinge of regret, even, because he seems like good people, and a guy who genuinely gives a shit about his players.  But I've given him the same slack one gives a player - and in a player's fourth year, we expect him to stop making stupid freshman mistakes because he ought to have grown up enough by now.  Well, here is London's senior year, so to speak, and he hasn't figured out shit.  I'm not going to spend every week ranting about it because I accept that he's not going anywhere after this season.  Just read into everything I say an assumption that London doesn't know how to fix the problems.

No, the real danger is that London's tenure, five years long if we continue down this path, is going to go down in history as even worse than that of the most vilified figure in UVA football history.  Al Groh at least started off pretty well.  Sure, he might have been micromanaging, overly self-assured, and totally inflexible; sure, he irritated a few high school coaches; sure, he pissed off a few people on the way out, and again by letting Georgia Tech structure his contract so we were paying him to coach there; sure, he helped dry up the instate recruiting pipelines; sure, he went to one bowl game in his last four years.  But you have to give this to the man in the glass: He had a winning record against fucking Duke.

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

Prediction summary:

-- Kevin Parks gains 100+ yards.  Parks sputtered out with lame blocking and generally bad decisions from Watford on the read-option, and gained only 50.

-- The UVA run offense generates about 200 yards.  I really thought we were well on our way here, but again, thppbbbtt, and again, exactly half what I expected.

-- David Watford averages over six yards a throw. (Whee.)

-- Watford tops 200 yards passing. (Whee, again.)  Watford did succeed in both endeavors; the Duke pass defense was pretty awful and Watford looked very good early in calmly finding the guy that some Duke safety or linebacker would leave wide open in a futile all-out rush at the QB.  Unfortunately, Watford got happy-armed as time went on and started overthrowing everyone in sight.

-- Duke's passing game tops 300 yards.  It "only" got 292.  Can I have that one?  I'm having that one.  Largely the reason it didn't is because Boone looked like crap early.  He settled in nicely, though, eh?  And he'd have blown past 300 easily based only on how our defense played.

-- Neither team comes up with a turnover all game long.  Both quarterbacks threw a pick, so, no.

Going three of six - a very dubious three of six, but whatever, the Tigers lost and the Lions lost and the Red Wings lost and UVA lost and I had the restraint not to drive into a bridge embankment so the third prediction is my prize - makes me 16-for-36 on the season.  Also, I came damn close to nailing that final score, so I'm 4-3 both straight up and against the spread now.  This might be unfair, though, at this point; all I have to do is pick us to lose every week and at least then I'm guaranteed a winning record.

game preview: Duke

Date/Time: Saturday, October 20; 3:30

TV: RSN, ESPN3

Record against the Blue Devils: 33-31

Last meeting: Duke 42, UVA 17; 10/6/12, Durham

Last weekend: Md. 27, UVA 26; Duke 35, Navy 7

Line: UVA by 3

Injury report:

Virginia:

OUT - OL George Adeosun, PK Ian Frye, CB Demetrious Nicholson, TE Mario Nixon, DT Brent Urban, CB Wil Wahee

DOUBTFUL - none

QUESTIONABLE - none

PROBABLE - LB Daquan Romero, RB Khalek Shepherd

Duke:

OUT - CB Jared Boyd, LB Kyler Brown, QB Thomas Sirk, OT Tanner Stone, DT Jamal Wallace

DOUBTFUL - none

QUESTIONABLE - WR Johnell Barnes

PROBABLE - QB Brandon Connette, DT A.J. Wolf

I can't believe I'm still using the word "bowl" anymore, but I'm stupid like that, and if UVA wants to get there, this game is basically a must-win.  Most games are these days; Mike London is finding the recruiting trail colder and colder.  The losses will do that.  Yet another loss to Duke would be another pile of ammo for opposing coaches.  Even better, UVA will have to go after this game without two of its best defensive players.  This is what the beginning of the end of a coaching regime looks like; the Hoos need a win here to stave that off.

-- UVA run offense vs. Duke run defense

Top backs:
Kevin Parks: 116 carries, 510 yards, 4.4 ypc, 6 TDs
Khalek Shepherd: 29 carries, 223 yards, 7.7 ypc, 1 TD

UVA offense:
188.83 yards/game, 4.24 yards/attempt
69th of 125 (national), 8th of 14 (ACC)

Duke defense:
178.00 yards/game, 4.12 yards/attempt
67th of 125 (national), 11th of 14 (ACC)

You just wonder which offensive line will show up this week.  The one that couldn't move a wad of cotton candy, or the one that has paved the way to consecutive 240-yard (ish) running games?  Probably both, actually; the question might be better put as, how will Steve Fairchild scheme this out?

For all the Duke-sucks-at-defense publicity out there, the run defense is not completely terrible.  Much of the yardage they've given up has been at the hands of Georgia Tech and Navy, the triple-option warriors.  Other teams have found room, but not a wide world of it.  Duke is getting respectable linebacker play from Kelby Brown and David Helton, and the defensive line has at least one very good all-around player in defensive end Kenny Anunike.

However, Duke is far from dominant, even if their stats are skewed somewhat by the triple option.  And despite the last couple games, UVA is far from dominant as well.  This is one of those matchups that is just there.  UVA will have a fair amount of success and none of it is likely to swing the game one way or the other.  With the season slipping away, the offense is going to lean hard on what's been working and experiment furiously with what hasn't.  Kevin Parks is one of those things that's been working.  Khalek Shepherd may have earned a few extra carries against Maryland, as he ran the ball well when given a chance, but I think those will come at the expense of Taquan Mizzell, not Parks.

So you'll probably see Parks settle nicely in to another grinding 20-carry, 100-yard game.  I think the 240-yard success they've been having isn't especially sustainable, but I'm sufficiently de-traumatized to think that between Parks, Shepherd, and some Watford scrambles, the offense should be able to grind out around 200 or so.

-- UVA pass offense vs. Duke pass defense

Quarterback:
David Watford: 128/215, 59.5%; 1,076 yards, 4 TDs, 7 INTs; 5.01 yards/attempt

Top receivers:
Jake McGee: 27 rec., 233 yards, 2 TDs
Kevin Parks: 19 rec., 182 yards, 0 TDs

UVA offense:
186.7 yards/game, 4.8 yards/attempt
125th of 125 (national), 14th of 14 (ACC)

Duke defense:
208.5 yards/game, 7.4 yards/attempt
80th of 125 (national), 9th of 14 (ACC)

You'd have to be blind not to see the improvement in David Watford the past two weeks - and equally blind not to see the very incremental nature of that improvement.  It's a cruel way to make me have to try and predict what'll happen next.  Anything from regression to another jump forward is possible at this stage of Watford's development.

As Tom Savage at Pitt proved, it's possible to utterly shred Duke's pass defense.  Troy was able to do the same, which is why Duke's game against them was close.  It takes a good quarterback to pull that off (which is sort of circular reasoning in that if you can pick up 400 yards through the air you're considered a good quarterback) but UVA could roll up many fewer yards than Pitt or Troy and it would still be considered a good sign of improvement.

Duke's top cornerback Ross Cockrell is a quality player, but that's basically the full list of them in the secondary.  Freshman nickel corner Bryon Fields has been outplaying fifth-year senior Garett Patterson.  Safety Jeremy Cash does have two interceptions, but UVA's not-deep-at-all pass game tends to leave the opposing safeties out of it.

Kenny Anunike at DE is a good pass-rusher as well as run-stopper, so he'll be Watford's main concern here; Duke will also bring in speed rusher Jonathan Woodruff on passing downs in the other DE position, and he too has a few sacks to his name this year.  There's otherwise no real threat, so Watford should have more time than he's used to as long as the tackles keep their man in front.

I don't know how many passes it'll take, but Watford ought to be able to reach 200 yards for the third straight game.  I may even be setting the bar too low.  I'm definitely exhibiting some low-ass standards when I say that he should also be able, for the second straight game, to top six yards per attempt.  That's such a weak number to aim for but since he's getting no help at all from his receivers, it's what we got.

-- Duke run offense vs. UVA run defense

Top backs:
Jela Duncan: 56 carries, 292 yards, 5.2 ypc, 3 TDs
Josh Snead: 46 carries, 280 yards, 6.1 ypc, 0 TDs

Duke offense:
183.17 yards/game, 4.58 yards/attempt
54th of 125 (national), 6th of 14 (ACC)

UVA defense:
147.00 yards/game, 3.96 yards/attempt
53rd of 125 (national), 7th of 14 (ACC)

A big reason for Duke's renaissance has been the development of a respectable offensive line.  It's very cohesive and has started all six games for Duke in the same configuration.  Must be nice.  Anyway, they've been doing a nice job paving the way for running backs Jela Duncan and Josh Snead.  The competition hasn't been bad, either; Memphis, for example, is a surprising seventh in the nation in run defense.

So, going at this without our top defensive lineman is going to be a challenge.  There's a pretty clear step down in results when you ask true freshman Donte Wilkins to step in for Brent Urban.  It's no knock on Wilkins, who will probably develop into a pretty good player, but Urban is Urban.  His loss will be huge.

I don't like seeing Daquan Romero on the injury report either, even if he is listed as probable.  I damn near threw something at the TV when I saw Romero being tended to, because that made him, Jake McGee, and Urban the subject of the trainers' attention against Maryland.  Pick the three players we can least live without.  Probably those three.

Anyway, I digress.  Duke will present a challenge and a half here, more so depending on how they use backup QB Brandon Connette.  Anthony Boone is a small threat to run; Connette is a bigger one.  Before Boone broke his collarbone and Connette's ankle kept him out of last week's game against Navy, Duke liked to use both.  Connette averages about 12 carries a game and even had a 101-yard day against Pitt.  It's a wrinkle that'll make the task all the harder.

If we had Urban, I'd feel good about holding Duke down here.  Good defenses have been able to limit them.  Urban is the kind of guy who can win matchups on his own and free up others to watch the pass.  Without him, that favorability rating is going to drop a notch or two, and I think Duke can move the ball just enough to open up their dangerous passing game.

-- Duke pass offense vs. UVA pass defense

Quarterback:
Anthony Boone: 58/74, 78.4%; 570 yards, 3 TDs, 1 INT; 7.7 yards/attempt

Top receivers:
Jamison Crowder: 47 rec., 618 yards, 2 TDs
Brandon Braxton: 21 rec., 206 yards, 2 TDs

Duke offense:
265.7 yards/game, 8.3 yards/attempt
33rd of 125 (national), 7th of 14 (ACC)

UVA defense:
214.8 yards/game, 6.3 yards/attempt
29th of 125 (national), 6th of 14 (ACC)

Once again this becomes the game determinant.  Anthony Boone has been extraordinarily efficient.  Brandon Connette has been good too, but Boone will be the starter and the primary passer.  He had a terrific game against a pretty good Navy pass defense last week, and that 78% completion percentage is outstanding.

Boone will get the ball out quick, which was the bane of our existence against Ball State.  The Ball State game is not without its parallels here.  Duke's receivers are capable of big plays but will probably be targeted quickly rather than Duke having Boone sit in the pocket waiting for the play to develop.  Jamison Crowder is the favorite target of both quarterbacks, and has two double-digit reception games with Boone throwing to him.  Ordinarily we'd have Demetrious Nicholson on him and that would be a pretty big matchup, but now, I guess we'll have to see.

Brandon Braxton does a nice job complementing Crowder, and Duke will use some huge targets over the middle as well.  Tight end Braxton Deaver is a key part of the attack, and Issac Blakeney is a massive possession receiver at 6'6", 235.  The array of weapons presents a big challenge.  Additionally, because of the scrambley nature of Duke's quarterbacks, and their quality offensive line, teams have had a tough time getting to them on the pass rush.

I do not like our chances one bit here.  Jon Tenuta's aggressive style kind of demands that the opponent take a little extra time finding a receiver.  That would be hard enough with Nicholson.  Now you've got no Nicholson and upheaval at the free safety position; I won't be the least bit surprised if the Duke passing game racks up 300 or more yards.  If we can stop them from doing that, that's the biggest chance we have at a win.

-- Favorability ratings

Run offense: 4
Pass offense: 4
Run defense: 3.5
Pass defense: 2.5

Average: 3.5

-- Outlook

That's a lot more pessimistic than Vegas is, since they - for whatever reason - have us favored in this game.  It's a home game, that's why, and we're favored only by the three points given to home teams.  But we've got two colossal injuries on defense and our starting placekicker is out as well, and we've yet to see that the offense has any quick-strike ability at all.  It doesn't, to be honest, which means having to march down the field if we want to score.  Nor have we seen much evidence that London can coach his way to a win, and David Cutcliffe can be a cagey bastard.  "Duke's defense sucks" is the only reason anyone might have to predict a UVA win, and what evidence is there that UVA can take advantage enough to win the inevitable shootout?

-- Prediction summary

-- Kevin Parks gains 100+ yards.

-- The UVA run offense generates about 200 yards.

-- David Watford averages over six yards a throw.  (Whee.)

-- Watford tops 200 yards passing.  (Whee, again.)

-- Duke's passing game tops 300 yards.

-- Neither team comes up with a turnover all game long.

Final score: Duke 38, UVA 24

-- Rest of the ACC

Miami 27, North Carolina 23 - Thu. - The Coastal Conference is doing its damndest to clear a red carpet for the Hokies' path to the ACCCG; Miami had to salvage this one in literally the last minute.

Syracuse @ Georgia Tech - 12:30 - Cuse is fresh off what was considered an upset win over NC State, but that "upset" status will be re-evaluated after the season; Cuse isn't great, but the Pack definitely aren't.  GT is likely to expose the Orange here.

Maryland @ Wake Forest - 3:30 - Hope you like seeing the Terps get bowl-eligible.

Pittsburgh vs. Old Dominion - 7:00 - With the London recruiting train coming to a crashing halt, you really don't want ODU to be able to say, "Look who beat Pitt."

Florida State @ Clemson - 8:00 - Being called the biggest ACC game since UNC-FSU in 1997 on ESPN's "Judgment Day."  Of course the stupid conference scheduling office would have the game in October.

Byes: Boston College, NC State, Virginia Tech