pre-weekend review

Time for a little housekeeping.....

- The baseball recruiting class is down by one player and then up by one.  Nolan Clark, the juco catcher with the bat (as opposed to the one with the glove, which would be Chace Mitchell) signed a contract with the Phillies, which terminates his college eligibility.  However, I did miss another juco player when I rolled through the baseball commits: Joel Effertz, a pitcher from the same Wisconsin juco that sent us Cody Winiarski.

Not having Clark means that Mitchell is probably the front-runner for catching duties but will (at least at first) split them with Ryan Levine and/or maybe incoming freshman Nate Irving.  Levine and Mitchell are the top two choices, though.  It also means that my musings on Clark taking over third base are moot.  So that will probably be Stephen Bruno.

Effertz posted a 3.03 ERA with 79 Ks and a 7-4 record at MATC this spring.  (For useless comparison's sake, Winiarski had an ERA of 2.39 the year before he came to UVA.)  He'll be an incoming sophomore.  Having another arm to throw at the weekend starter problem is a fantastic thing.  Candidates now include Branden Kline, Kyle Crockett (the two that probably have the biggest lead on the field) as well as Effertz, Scott Silverstein, and Whit Mayberry.  Somebody out of that group might well also be the closer, or, for that job, O'Connor may turn to Artie Lewicki.

- Georgia Tech got in some trouble the other day.  GT fans are pretty pissed about the whole thing, but if you ask me they got off easy.  At first glance, vacating the 2009 ACC championship over a couple of shirts seems harsh.  But the NCAA had a long list of nasty words to say about GT's apparent hindrance of the investigation.  So a couple hundred dollars' worth of apparel became a major violation that the NCAA takes very seriously.

The thing is, this gives them repeat-violator status: "If Tech commits another major infraction before Nov. 17, 2010, it will be subject to added penalties as a repeat violator."  And for supposedly being a huge hindrance to an investigation and being a repeat violator, GT football gets....four more years of probation.  It's pretty clear the NCAA thinks vacating games is a serious penalty just shy of chopping off a leg or two.

For anyone hoping to see any of the various programs currently under the NCAA microscope (Auburn, OSU, Oregon, UNC) hammered with the hammer of thunder and justice, this is a disappointing development.  Vacating games is nobody's idea of a deterrent.  Let me state that a little more clearly: Nobody gives a fuck.  Administrators and the NCAA act like the condemned on death row when they have to take down a banner, but they know it's a facade and we know they know.  Vacating games is, like, the absolute minimum that can possibly happen.  As a penalty for hindering and obstructing an investigation, GT got probation.  And since they did this while under the shadow of previous violations, becoming a repeat violator, I think we all know what probation is good for.  (I suggest wiping your ass with it.)

Bottom line: If you're hoping UNC is going to be slammed by the NCAA, your hopes just got a lot dimmer.  They were ever so angry at GT and gave them probation.  We're a few short steps away from being able to say that Mark Emmert's call for toughness is an empty shitpile.  We'll see how they deal with UNC.  If they can't be nuked to the Stone Age for allowing a coach to run an agency's branch office out of the football facilities - or if the NCAA thinks vacating games is the same thing - then we can officially call Emmert an empty, lying sack.

- The basketball penalties on GT are a little more along the lines of fitting the crime.  Those combined with Brian Oliver's transfer to Seton Hall (I read Rutgers at first but apparently, Seton Hall it is) are going to conspire to give GT a long climb back to basketball respectability.  GT will be an eminently beatable team this season without Oliver or Iman Shumpert (off to the draft) but even so, one less three-point shooter in the league is a good thing for UVA.

- Danny Hultzen continues to add things to his trophy pile: John Olerud Award for best two-way player in the country, and all-state baseball and academic teams as voted on by the SIDs of Virginia.  How he lost out on best baseball player in the state is beyond me being as he was a Golden Spikes finalist and the kid from JMU (Jake Lowery) is not.  One can be the best player in the nation but not the state; that is an interesting dynamic.

- Anthony Cooper will make his selection on Wednesday.  Or at least, make it public.  This is hopefully UVA's race to lose.

- Lastly, I spent yesterday smoothing out the video-production process, and I've got the Cornell game from the lax quarterfinals uploaded too.  So check that out on the videos page.  Things are a little streamlined now when it comes to making videos, and the quality is better too.  I hated all those little lines on the screen that were caused by converting to a different format.  Now I can use the format that comes from the special box.  I still want my Tivo back, and believe me by football season I'm getting it, but at least I can catch up a little now.

- Administratively, expect full posting and/or video production next week; after that, on Saturday, I go on my summer vacation.  That means hiatus the following week.  Two or three posting days will be missed, to return to regular programming on Wednesday or Thursday.  On the other side of vacation, we'll start to shift to full-time football coverage.  Don't you love how the offseason only lasts like a month or so?

series preview: Maryland

Date/Time: March 25-27; 6:00/1:00/1:00

TV: UVA webcast only

History against the Terps: 101-76

Last matchup: UVA sweep (5-1, 27-4, 11-2); 4/16/10 - 4/18/10; College Park

Last game: UVA 5, Towson 0 (3/23); Md. 8, GWU 2 (3/22)

Last weekend: UVA 2-1 over FSU; BC 2-1 over Md.

National rankings:

Baseball America: UVA #3; Md. unranked
Collegiate Baseball: UVA #3; Md. unranked
NCBWA: UVA #3; Md. unranked
Perfect Game: UVA #3; Md. unranked
Coaches: UVA #3; Md. unranked

Opposing blogs: no baseball-inclined ones

So, Maryland has been godawful at baseball. This year, probably less so. Second-year coach Erik Bakich is working on fixing the laughingstockitude that was Maryland baseball and has them taking steps from being the laugher of the East Coast to merely bad. This is bad for my ability to write jokes about Maryland but good for the ACC in general when the bad teams aren't pitching-free zones. More improvement may or may not be on tap for the future, but for now Maryland is still an extreme longshot to be eligible for any kind of postseason play. Thus, anything less than a sweep would be disappointing.

HOW WE CAN WIN**

- Roll out the lefties. Southpaws, they haz none. The only left-handed pitcher on Maryland that we're ever likely to see on the hill is Sunday starter Eric Potter. The left-handed batters in our lineup mostly aren't full-time regulars, but they've seen their share of at-bats. Keith Werman is the only really everyday lefty, but David Coleman, Danny the Destroyer, and Reed Gragnani all bat from that side of the plate too. Along with possibly Ryan Levine, they'll see plenty of plate appearances to take advantage of the fact that pretty much everyone the Terps trot out from the bullpen will be right-handed.

- Dominate on Friday. Maryland's pen isn't half bad, but it's shallow. Much shallower than ours, at any rate. It can be taken advantage of. Brian O'Connor is a master of pitching staff usage, but his job there can be cake and a half this week if his job is made that much easier by his hitters burning through Maryland pitchers on the first day of the series. Danny will strike out 13 batters, of course, so if the batters can open up a can on Sander Beck (the likely Friday starter) and then open up a can on his relief, we can turn to someone who might normally be a weekday guy and save the bigger guns for the later games, and let them pitch against a bullpen that's wearing thin quickly.

**By "win" I mean sweep. Can't afford to give up a game against the Marylands of the world, especially since we don't get a series against Wake.

HOW WE CAN LOSE

- Let a pitchers' duel break out. Any one of the games could be. Sander Beck held Georgia Tech(!) to one lousy run, David Carroll held Texas(!!) to one lousy run, and I actually think it's Eric Potter who's pitching the best of the three. His .181 opponents' BA has a lot to do with it. Not that our own pitchers can't hold up in a pitcher's duel, of course. They're still better. But Maryland's best hope for stealing a game in any of their series is in a pitchers' duel. They don't have the lineup horses to win anything 10-8. They've hit double digits once this year: against Liberty, whom they'd lost to the day before.

HOW THE SERIES WILL GO

Seriously, if we lose even one it'll be a big disappointment. GT swept 'em, FSU will probably sweep 'em, Clemson will probably sweep 'em. Win them all, or else have to try and earn the tournament 1 seed the hard way. Fortunately, a sweep is exactly what I see with my magic 8-ball. Maryland scores no more than eight runs all weekend, strikes out at least 10 times against Hurricane Danny, and UVA is 8-1 with an excellent chance to return to at least a tie atop the division standings, what with Miami hosting Georgia Tech this weekend.