weekend review

Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?  Bad news it is, and that means lacrosse.  UVA surrendered its #1 ranking this weekend by surrendering an overtime goal to Johns Hopkins.  As was only fitting with the direction of that game, it happened with five seconds to go.

The final sequence of the game was laced with some of the finest examples of traded attempts to give away a game that I have ever seen.  Hopkins, with a golden opportunity to win the game in regulation, was called for offsides and followed it up with a too-many-men penalty.  UVA, for its part, decided to wait out the penalty in order to guarantee first possession of overtime (a strategy I disagreed with) and then watched as Rob Emery allowed a routine pass to sail over his stick, handing possession right back.  Hopkins didn't actually want it, but another too-many-men penalty - this one on UVA - forced them to actually try and take a shot to win.  And so it went until John Ranagan of Hopkins said to hell with it and potted the game-winner just to spare the crowd the agony of watching another overtime play out like that.

What will give the Hoos confidence should there be a tournament rematch is this: Hopkins hardly ever scored in settled situations.  Rob Fortunato's brilliance in net may have had something to do with it.  Hopkins scored 11 goals, and I count at least seven in "special" situations; three man-up goals, two directly off faceoffs, and at least two fast breaks that I can remember.  Six-on-six, offense vs. defense, the UVA defense was outstanding.

The offense, yes and no.  Some nice plays, but I think the story of the game ultimately is the UVA failure to capitalize on chances.  10 goals in 32 chances - that's a good number against the Hop defense but a bad one for the UVA offense, and you can't pile on mistakes and expect a team like Hopkins not to take advantage.  The one that sticks out most prominently is a pass to someone all alone in front of the goal (Bocklet?  Briggs?  Can't remember exactly) from behind the net in semi-transition.  The pass was in the dirt, and was scooped by Hopkins and instead of a two-goal lead, it was tied five seconds later.

At any rate, the #1 seed is now out of the picture, and fine whatever, We Don't Want That Bullseye Anyway and all that.  The ACC season is upon us, with some opportunities to do some major damage.  It is now Hit A Terp With A Stick Week, which is my way of saying it's time to play Maryland, and you know how it is here at Maryland: we don't lose to Virginia.  So they have that going for them, especially in things like football and baseball and basketball and whatnot.  Maryland will go in slightly shorthanded after this little altercation that forced us to miss the first five minutes of our game while the refs decided who exactly should be ejected.  Maryland's #41 in that video - the guy who delivered the cross-check, and shortly thereafter several punches, to a Tar Heel's head - is second-line midfielder Kevin Cooper, who'll miss the UVA game by NCAA statute that requires a one-game suspension for players ejected for fighting.  This isn't exactly Cornell minus Rob Pannell, but they did seem to think enough of Cooper to have him out there for the game's crucial furious-rally moments.  I don't care enough to get involved in the debate between There's No Place For That In Lacrosse and He's A Classy Kid Who Got Caught Up In The Moment - I simply enjoy watching players from our next opponent, regardless of who it is, remove themselves from our game with them.

Ultimately, though, the impact of Cooper's suspension on the UVA game is likely to be so negligible as to be not worth analyzing.  Unless for some reason the NCAA suspends both Carolina's and Maryland's entire team - except for the guys currently on the field - for leaving the bench.  That'd be fun if it happened, which it won't.

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

Fortunately, the baseball weekend went a lot better, with a sweep over now 3-6 Clemson.  I fear I may have overrated the Tigers in my season preview; they have no hitting, and in my humble estimation the wrong pitchers are in the starting rotation.  The bottom of the order is terrible, and the bottom starts at like #5.  The one guy who should have been bashing - third baseman Richie Shaffer - went zero-for-three-games with four strikeouts.

The stories of each of the three games were, in order, Jared King, Branden Kline, and Jason Stolz's absolutely terrible bunt.  (This is why Brian O'Connor's philosophy is you don't play if you can't bunt.)  Said bunt was representative of UVA's fielding cutting down Clemson's chances and limiting them to one run in the innings they did score, when they could've had more.  UVA turned, on Sunday, some unorthodox double plays, including 3-6-3, 1-6-3, and most notably, 1-6; the latter was Stolz's popped-up bunt to Austin Young, who then doubled off the baserunner at second that had no business not already diving the hell back to the bag when that bunt went upwards in the first place.

The starting pitching was outstanding all weekend, especially Saturday's starter, Kline.  To start the game, Kline allowed a triple and a sac fly, and then nine innings of zeroes save for one scratch single.  That's how you earn ACC Pitcher of the Week.  (That article notes that UVA leads all teams with 23 Pitcher of the Week awards in the last nine years.  If I were less lazy I would find out how many of them are Danny Hultzen.  I bet the answer lies somewhere between "several" and "many.")

It's also how you earn the confidence of every observer, including the ones that matter and make the decisions.  Artie Lewicki was also strong on Sunday, and if that kind of thing continues and Whit Mayberry comes back strong from his elbow issues, the Hoos will have four solid starters, a prerequisite for serious contention in postseason play.  I don't think there'll ever be a group that holds a candle to what we had last year - for crying out loud the third-best guy was the one who threw the perfect game - but this group of four, if pitching up to their actual reachable potential, is the kind of group that launches you to postseason overachievement.

UVA has two games against Towson this week, and then a very tough weekend matchup looms against NC State.  The Wolfpack always seem to have our number, and the games are on the road, and that's a tough team this year that took two of three from Georgia Tech, swept the halfway-decent Wake Forest, and threatens tonight to also take a series from North Carolina.

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

The latest hilarious googletubes rumor is the idea of Seth Greenberg going to SMU - remember they will be in the Biggish Eastish next year as part of that conference's master plan to to dilute the everloving piss out of their basketball product - to replace the lately fired Matt Doherty. (As the guy who led North Carolina all the way to the NIT and took the SMU program from 11th place in a 12-team conference to 11th place in a 12-team conference, Doherty's skills will no doubt be in high demand.  In, like, Estonia.)  I don't put any stock in the idea really; unless there's a huge pay raise involved or Greenberg just loves Dallas, that job would be a huge step down.  Even from VT.  Still, the idea is sobering.  The day Greenberg is no longer in charge in Blacksburg will be a sad one at the FOV offices.  Greenberg's style is enjoyable if you're rooting against the Hokies; his teams are undisciplined and just this side of unwatchable most of the time, and he's always good for some quotes when the tournament committee once again deems VT the 39th-best at-large team in the country, out of 37 actual tourney entrants.  That said, he's an excellent recruiter.  Unless they're paying lottery jackpot money, I'm very skeptical of the Hokies' ability to find a coach, when the time comes, that can match Greenberg's success.

weekend review

Before we begin our basketball discussion, the prosecution will stipulate to the following items:

-- Stipulated: That had we hit just one of the large number of missed three-pointers, we probably wouldn't even be having this discussion.  Had we hit two, we definitely wouldn't be.

-- Stipulated: That North Carolina is a much larger team, and therefore much less likely to foul; in addition, the numbers prove this, as they are the best team in the country at keeping the opponent off the free-throw line.

-- Stipulated: That John Henson is a floppy douchebag, about which we will certainly have words later on, and as such, is likely to fool a referee into calling fouls which are then unretractable.

-- Stipulated: That complaining about the refereeing is whiny as hell, most of the time.

That said:

Regardless of the above, you cannot tell me that, for example, Akil Mitchell's "moving screen" was caused by UNC's size advantage, or that said size advantage means UNC committed zero such infractions themselves.  You can't tell me that there's such a thing as a foul for boxing out.  There isn't.  There also is no such thing as a technical foul for a blatant flop, but there should be.

Ironically, that flop by Henson - yes, it was a flop even though he didn't actually fall to the ground - might have enlightened the referees.  My working theory is that, in going to the monitor to check if a flagrant foul was called, saw instead why the crowd was hurling boos at them, and backed off for the rest of the game.  The fouls being called were so astoundingly weak that I don't know how you stop doing them.  Don't box out?  Don't set screens?  So I rule out the idea that UVA was playing any less aggressively, especially since UNC didn't suddenly go on a scoring run.

No, I think it's the exact opposite of a coincidence that, after that trip to the monitor, only two fouls were called on UVA for the next 12 minutes.  One of those was with three seconds left in a last-ditch attempt to get the ball back.  Think of that: 15 fouls called in 28 minutes, and 2 (really 1) in the next 12.  The refereeing was so bad that even the refs knew it.  Too late, of course; foul trouble is irreversible.

It's a shame and a half, because the defensive effort was maybe the best of the season.  I mean, what the Hoos did in sticking it to a team that's much bigger and ostensibly a zillion times more talented is beyond impressive.  It was the kind of effort that deserved the recognition that a win would've brought.  The team battled.  Hard.  They were on the verge of being blown out of their own gym and it didn't faze them; they just buckled down and got 'er done.  With the exception of four-star Malcolm Brogdon, every player fielded by UVA was a measly three-star.  With the exception of four-star Kendall Marshall and Tyler Zeller (who's friggin 7'2"), every player fielded by UNC (that played more than three minutes) was a super-recruit five-star.  That team should blow ours out of the building, every time, and they shouldn't have to flop like Dookies to get it done.

Which brings us to John Henson.  This is the same douchecannon who felt it necessary to throw down a dunk with, like, twelve seconds left in the last game with a 16-point lead.**  He was on the receiving end of at least two of Scott's fouls, both of which he embellished like an Italian soccer player, and when the refs had the temerity to call a foul on him, he earned himself a technical foul.  They didn't call one, but he earned it.  With Greivis Vasquez playing in the League, Henson is officially the heir apparent to the ACC DOY (Douche of the Year) title.

Obviously, though, the refereeing needs to be fixed.  At some point, this independent-contractor model has got to go, in favor of permanent referees.  I don't even care if they hire the same guys. (Except Karl Hess, the Napoleon of refs.)  At least then you'd have better accountability.  The conference bears some blame, too, for promoting, among their refs, an atmosphere of "every little thing is a foul."  The other thing that would be nice: the ability to award a technical foul for exact situations like the one that earned Scott his fourth foul.  I looked in the rulebook; there's no provision for a T for flopping.  There ought to be, and it should say something to the effect that if the referees check the monitor for a flagrant and it turns out that it wasn't even a foul, they have the discretion to award a tech.  Shouldn't that be considered as unsportsmanlike as foul language?

**Typically the response to this is "well you should've played better and then you wouldn't be in that situation," which misses the point. The point is that dick behavior will surface regardless of situation.

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

The spring sports did their thing, fortunately.  They were so brutally efficient in their work that I only have bullet points:

-- The first bullet isn't a spring sport at all; it's to let you know that the men's swim team joined the women in winning the ACC title.  It was much closer for them - VT made a meet of it - but the good guys prevailed in the end, and by fewer than 100 points.

-- The lacrosse game against Stony Brook was a 12-5 win, which was (I think) largely a function of the fact that Stony Brook lost everyone who was any good.  They've still got that tendency to be nigh-impossible to shake just when you think you're breaking it open, but with less than half the offensive firepower and no Adam Rand on faceoffs.  So it's kind of relative; used to be you couldn't seem to open it up past three goals, and now it's more like the six-goal barrier you have a hard time with.

-- Congrats are in order for Steele Stanwick, who became only the 7th player in ACC history to break 100 goals and 100 assists in a career.  And he topped both in the same game.

-- And even then, a contribution from him in the goals column wasn't necessary for the Hoos to stake themselves to a fairly sizable lead.  I'm glad I'm not a fan of someone else, coming to the realization that UVA can smoke you even without Stanwick on the scoresheet.  Owen Van Arsdale made some nice early contributions to that effect.  He made some freshman mistakes too, that you could see fairly easily, but I bet you that guy is a Tewaaraton finalist at some point in his career.

-- Baseball outscored Monmouth 38-6 over the three-game series.

-- Seriously.  38-6.

-- Freshman catcher Nate Irving has been providing a nice bat, as has Reed Gragnani.  Most of the rest of the freshmen have been playing only sporadically, but when they do, they're hitting such that the future looks very bright indeed.  Even Mitchell Shifflett is 3-for-4 on the season.  But the guy who's been raking in a way that oughta be outlawed?  Jared King.  He's 14-for-27 (.519) with five extra-base hits (including a home run) and 11 RBIs.

-- This weekend will be a four-game series instead of the traditional three, as we host a "tournament" of our own with two games each against Wright State and Seton Hall.  That means a need for a fifth starter.  Either Joel Effertz will go tomorrow to keep him on the weekdays and the fifth starter will take a turn on Sunday, or - more likely - Effertz will be held for the weekend and this fifth guy will go both tomorrow and next Tuesday.

-- Football schedule!  Finally.  Remember when it would come out the first week of February and we'd all be like, "waaaaahh this is late!"  We can blame a couple of the ACC's member schools for the holdup, in doing some last-minute scheduling calisthenics.  Florida State was one of them; it wasn't entirely their fault, as you can place the blame on a certain ex-Big East school that sued Rich Rodriguez because they think contracts are sacred holy grails that must always be followed to the letter, and then sued the Big East because the Big East insisted on holding them to a contract.  In moving to the Big 12, they had to add a conference game and therefore had to buy out their FSU game, sending FSU scrambling.  In case you're wondering, no, Syracuse and Pitt are not on this schedule.  It would be funny if they were, just to watch the Big East try and put a football schedule together with only five teams.  They'll be in the ACC in 2013, though.  Bet on it.

At any rate, you have to like what you see.  No super-long homestands or road stretches, and the bye week in a good, opportune place.  (I hate early-season bye weeks.  Waste of good rest time.)  And a Thursday night home game on the second-to-last week of the year against UNC, which means a little extra rest before the VT game.  A relatively tough OOC schedule is balanced by a favorable ACC one.  I think we're set up for success here.

game preview: South Carolina

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 21; 7:00 PM

TV: ESPN

History against the Gamecocks: 27-35

Last matchup: USC 8, UVA 2; 6/3/2006; NCAA Tournament, Charlottesville regional

Last game: UVA 4, Cal 1 (6/19); USC 5, Texas A&M 4 (6/19)

Blogs of the enemy: Garnet and Black Attack, Leftover Hot Dog

South Carolina possible lineup:

C: Robert Beary (.296-3-35)
1B: Christian Walker (.357-10-60)
2B: Scott Wingo (.350-4-28)
3B: Adrian Morales (.281-3-39)
SS: Peter Mooney (.276-3-35)
LF: Jake Williams (.273-2-38)
CF: Jackie Bradley, Jr., (.259-6-26)
RF: Evan Marzilli (.299-3-30)
DH: Brady Thomas (.305-4-39)

Pitching probables: RHP Will Roberts (11-1, 1.58, 91 K's) vs. RHP Colby Holmes (7-3, 3.78, 70 K's)

South Carolina's bullpen:

RHP John Taylor (6-1, 1.25, 63 K's)
LHP Steven Neff (3-1, 2.45, 29 K's)
RHP Jose Mata (3-0, 1.76, 16 K's)
LHP Tyler Webb (3-1, 3.21, 28 K's)
RHP Matt Price (6-3, 2.13, 68 K's, 18 sv)

UVA took care of Cal the same way they dispatched UC-Irvine: threatening most of the time and then finally stringing the hits together in the later innings.  Danny Hultzen threw 6 1/3 innings with his Sunday-best slider but lousy fastball command, and didn't allow a run; he left with no possibility of a decision because the score was 0-0 at the time.  It took - of all people - Keith Werman to get things going, setting the table with a single to lead off the seventh and driving home a run in the eighth with another base hit.  Jared King followed up three absolutely awful at bats with an eighth-inning triple just over the right fielder's glove and scored on Werman's slap single to left.

The (slightly) bad news: the 0-0 game required Brian O'Connor to stretch Hultzen's arm as long as possible instead of holding back a little, and when he went to the pen it was for Tyler Wilson, who threw 2 1/3 innings in relief before giving way to Branden Kline for the final out.  That means Will Roberts will take the hill on Tuesday instead of Wilson.  Hultzen, of course, is right out.

In terms of starting pitching, Roberts should have the advantage.  (Cue Gamecock fans: he didn't pitch against ess-eee-cee competition though.)  He'll go against right-hander Colby Holmes.  He's likely to pitch deeper into the game than Holmes is; South Carolina sometimes has a quick hook with Holmes.  They yanked him in the fifth inning of their super-regional game against UConn despite only being down 2-1 at the time.  He also got totally bombed out of the Ole Miss game.  Holmes has a tendency to give up the gopherball; of the 26 home runs allowed by the South Carolina pitching staff, 12 are Holmes's responsibility.  Holmes is one of those pitchers who throws three or four pitches but doesn't have consistent command of most of them yet.  There's nothing that our hitters like better than a 91-mph fastball that isn't accompanied by a slider or change that gets over the plate.  (That was Irvine ace Matt Summers's problem.)  Holmes could have the breaking stuff working and have a fair amount of success; if not, he'll be pulled in the third inning and leave behind some tired outfielders and probably a sizable deficit.

However, the gopherball isn't a UVA specialty, and the CWS stadium is a big one, so don't expect anything to go flying out of the park.  It's been playing very homer-unfriendly so far.  And if UVA hitters can't jump on Holmes quickly, South Carolina may well be able to neutralize the UVA advantage on the hill by going to their bullpen early.  The only unavailable pitcher after their game against A&M is the starter, Michael Roth, who wasn't pulled until the eighth inning.  South Carolina will have a full bullpen; UVA will as well, but with Wilson's availability in question, doesn't have a long-relief horse like the Gamecocks' John Taylor.  And closer Matt Price is lights-out and a 6th-round pick.

Roberts will have his hands full with the South Carolina lineup, of course.  Christian Walker was a super-late round pick out of high school two years ago by the Dodgers, but being picked 1477th overall doesn't inspire one to try the professional track, and South Carolina is much the better for it.  Walker has hit 10 home runs this year, driven in 60 runs, and bats .357.  Scott Wingo, the walkoff hero of the A&M game, also bats .350+.  He's an 11th-round pick this year.  But the highest draft pick isn't Price, or Walker (who's only a sophomore), or Wingo - it's 9th hitter Jackie Bradley, picked 40th overall by the Red Sox.  Bradley's had a disappointing season, batting only .259, which is why he's in the 9th slot, but his presence there just reinforces the notion that Roberts won't be able to relax just because he got to the bottom of the order.  Bradley still packs a little pop in his bat and obviously, the major leagues think he's got a pile of talent.

I'd remind you that South Carolina is the defending national champion, but ESPN will probably take care of that for most of the game's duration, so I won't.  One thing that is interesting is that this is the first time in quite a while that they've won their first CWS game.  And of course, this being only UVA's second trip, it's the first time ever for UVA in the winner's bracket, too.  Both teams have been to Omaha before, but still it's the Omaha debut for both pitchers; neither pitched in their respective teams' previous appearances here.  I don't know if Gamecock fans are worried about Colby Holmes's mentality, but with a perfect game under Will Roberts's belt, I'm not worried about his handling of pressure.

What worries me is this: In seven previous games in this tournament so far, we've faced a three-seed five times, a four-seed once, and a two-seed once, and that two-seed had burned up its pitching staff and wasn't a very good two-seed anyway.  This'll be UVA's first tournament test against a regional host, and a national seed at that.  I won't call it luck, I call it the benefit of being the national #1 seed - your part of the bracket is likelier to flame out than the rest of it.  But it's time to play with the big boys now.  Can we get this done against an honest, legitimate title contender, the first such opponent in this tournament run?  UVA will get no respect from Ess-Eee-Cee fans or most pundits - I mean, actual they-could-actually-win-this-tournament respect - until we beat one of their own, someone who's been all the way to the top before.  UVA opened some eyes in 2009 by eliminating Irvine and Ole Miss, but there's a next step to be taken now, and Tuesday is our chance.