weekend review

This is not the promised project.  That is close.  This is just to catch us up on a few things.  Also, the "project" is not the recruiting board stuck in development hell.  But I've got good news on that front.  I've hired a guy to finish it up; he's got a lot of project management experience having opened up a local chain of bagel stores in Charlottesville.  You've heard of Bodo's.  So any day now.

Over the weekend, the lacrosse team lost, the baseball team won three times, and I watched none of it because Tony Bennett.  The hitting is not greatly improved, and it really is not helping that weekday games keep getting cancelled because of weather.  You are authorized to continue feeling slight concern over this, but also keeping in mind two things: it is improving, and it is much easier to flip a hitting switch than a pitching switch.  The latter has been stellar, as has the defense; UVA has allowed two or fewer runs in 13 of 18 games and if you remove the numbers of a couple garbage-time relief appearances, has a 1.83 ERA.  Even the actual staff ERA of 2.03 is pretty nice.

-- Not helping in the hitting department will be the loss of Derek Fisher for about a month, month and a half due to a broken hand bone.  Fisher had been hitting .333 and playing errorless ball.  The Boston College series saw a couple different ways to replace him; for two of three games, Mike Papi played left field and John LaPrise DHed; in the middle game, Robert Bennie started in left but was lifted for a lefty-hitting PH when the Eagles sent in the bullpen.

-- It's carnage week in the basketball coaching ranks as ADs observe the ongoing dance party, reflect on their lack of invitation, and do something about it.  Two ACC coaches - VT's James Johnson and BC's Steve Donahue - are gone, and there's a watch on for GT's Brian Gregory and Wake's Jeff Bzdelik, despite John Feinstein's assertion that Bzdelik is safe.

If Bzdelik is safe, it's criminal mismanagement and nepotism on the part of Wake Forest AD Ron Wellman.  This is a guy who fired Dino Gaudio for lack of postseason success.  I guess the logic at Wake (besides "I don't want to fire my BFF from childhood") goes something along the lines of, if you never make the postseason, you can't lose there, and we're cool with that.

Donahue walked into one of the worst situations a coach ever could have, but by now was supposed to have the program back on its feet.  Instead BC took a big ol' backwards step and stunk up the joint.

As for Johnson, this one's interesting.  VT's new AD Whit Babcock gave a press conference that didn't exactly put to bed swirling rumors that Johnson was let go just as much for off-the-court stuff as on-court results.  A Hokie twitter guy wrote that, per a source, basically Johnson was kind of an asshole to people and ran his players into the ground, causing three of them to quit.  This last was corroborated by the TechSideline guys, naming Cadarian Raines as one of the walk-outs.

That would certainly explain why Raines's playing time disappeared into the ether, something even I picked up on when writing game previews of the Hokies.  Fortunately, nobody will ever use the words "donkey anus" to describe Tony Bennett's behavior, as a TSL poster did for Johnson.  At any rate, various names have popped up, as they tend to do, most of them hilariously unrealistic.  There are Hokies who think Gregg Marshall would leave Wichita State for Blacksburg, and the funny part is they mean it.  One candidate who might've actually been a serious name - Bruce Pearl - already got hired at Auburn.  Marquette's Buzz Williams is another name you might hear and not set your bullshit meter to 100%.  Other than that, the Hokies are probably looking at someone from the A-10 at best - no, not Shaka Smart - or a reasonably-achieving mid-major.  Depends on what they'll pay, really.

The other notable name to be let go is Ken Bone - Tony Bennett's replacement at Wazzu.  The coaching carousel will be worth keeping an eye on this season, as the dominos may eventually fall in the direction of Charlottesville and pick off one or more of our assistant coaches.  For example, George Washington's Mike Lonergan is a fast riser and a strong candidate for an open ACC job - and Ritchie McKay could easily be at least a candidate to replace him in DC.

-- Speaking of DC, the ACC tournament moves there in 2016 after one more year in Greensboro, and after that.... New York?  Barclay's Center, Brooklyn?  How you feel about that probably depends on how likely you are to go to the tourney in any given year - since it's not realistic for me, all basketball courts look the same on TV and a couple of years in NYC could be good for the conference.  I'm not nuts about the idea that being there will somehow "raise the profile" of the conference - it's not like people who wouldn't ordinarily watch a 12/13 game between two crappy teams will go, "oh, it's in New York?  Well, that's interesting, I guess I'll tune in after all."  Still, if your tournament banners are all over town and you sell a little advertising to go along with it, maybe you scrounge an extra half million or so, and the players would certainly appreciate a trip to New York more than Greensboro.

(This, by the way, makes you a hypocrite, if you ever said "but the players like it" to argue for whizbang uniformzz but bitch about not being able to go to the tournament if they move it somewhere the players like better.)

There are plenty of obstacles along the way, one of which is the A-10, which has a Barclay's Center contract through 2017, and plus the Barclay's folks ain't kicking the Nets out of town for 2 weeks.  This may involve a scheduling series with A-10 teams, which, hey, bonus, because those tend to be reasonably worthwhile matchups.

Truthfully, there are all kinds of different and worthwhile places to hold this tournament, and DC and Atlanta ought to be in a regular rotation too.  I don't buy that just because Maryland is gone, it makes no sense to hold the tournament there.  Plenty of ACC alums live in the area.  I mean, it's not like St. John's is an ACC school, but we're going to New York regardless.

yet another post which was supposed to be about anything else at all is gobbled up by the monster that is a coaching search

Obligatory coaching search tracking results in three links, only two of which have to do with our next coach and one of which is about the past coach.

Minnesotans were no doubt happy to read the column in the Star-Tribune today reassuring them that Tubby Smith expects to stay at Minnesota. I would probably take it as the usual bla bla bla about being happy where you are right until you sign on the dotted line somewhere else, but for the part where Tubby rang up the school president. If we want this coaching search to wrap up quickly, then I think we're all Syracuse fans on Friday night. That or Pitt fans. (Tangent alert: Pitt is the champion in my money bracket, which you can imagine led to some heart palpitations on Friday night when they threatened me with losing to #16 seed ETSU. I would have hated Pitt forever for that.)

And wrap up quickly it had better, because we're not the only school looking for a coach. Arizona's out there looking, as is Alabama, Georgia, and quite possibly Kentucky. Alabama's already looking at VCU's Anthony Grant, which, if that goes through, would remove one of our possible fallback candidates. Craig Littlepage needs to get cracking, but is kind of in a tough spot - if Tubby won't come, unfortunately Candidates 1B and 1C are still in the tournament, and just to spite us will probably meet in the Final Four.

Kentucky, by the way, is interesting. Though we might find ourselves in hot competition for Sean Miller if Billy Gillispie is fired - Miller already plies his trade just 90 minutes from Lexington and would be a natural fit - if we haven't already hired a coach by then, Littlepage would be stupid not to at least give Gillispie a look.

So then there's this, a rather less than flattering look at Dave Leitao and his well-known public disposition that resembled a wolverine with Tourette's syndrome. Actually much of this is not new, especially to anyone within hearing range of Leitao shortly after witnessing the game's 12th defensive breakdown. But I hope we didn't fire the coach because he uses naughty words. There is one troubling aspect to the article:

Hobgood wasn’t alone in his frustrations. A number of former players never made Leitao’s inner circle. One recent Virginia graduate, a starter for Leitao, e-mailed The Daily Progress shortly after the coach’s departure. “Justice served, ha ha,” the player wrote.

This does cause me to soften my stance somewhat, the stance that says Leitao's relationship with his players being too combative was wildly overblown. Soften - but not change. Players do not punt trash cans on their very angry way out of the locker room following the coaching change announcement if they are happy about the firing, as Mike Scott was reported to do.

(Side note: If I could remember whether or not Lars Mikalauskas graduated, I'd suggest maybe he's the phantom emailer above. But that would be rumormongering, and that would be wrong because you can't rumormonger on the InterWebs.)

But it's not like we didn't know what we were getting into, and frankly it's not like Leitao didn't deliver what he promised. This is what Leitao said when he was hired:

“I can tell you that the next time we play a basketball team, these young men will play and fight together like never before. … Whoever plays against us will know that we will fight you for every inch of the floor.”

And Sammy Zeglinski, ibid from the CDP article above:

Added freshman Sammy Zeglinski: “His competitiveness was unmatched. He just really taught me how to compete.”

Maybe Leitao is that hot dog salesman from the commercial: "I sell what I say! Hot dogs." You know, the one where there's no bun. Maybe we got a hot dog without the bun and watery mustard. But I'm still of the opinion that it wouldn't have been long and we'd be back where we wanted to be, with Leitao at the helm. Littlepage better not screw up this coaching hire.

Anyway. If you haven't already done so, do vote in the poll on the right. It's this blog's first foray into the wide world of completely unscientific and statistically insignificant opinion canvassing. Seems like a natural question. The poll ends on Sunday, by which time I hope that most of those candidates aren't already out of the running.

My thoughts on the first lacrosse game that I got to see this season will have to wait, as I'm learning, rapidly, that I have no ability to shut up when it comes to this coaching search. Suffice to say this for now: This team could absolutely coast to the national championship if they could play offense like they did in the first quarter and defense like they did in the fourth and play it for four quarters, every time. But any game in which they play like that third quarter for more than 15 minutes, they'll lose. Badly. Let's just hope they don't do any of that in the NCAAs. By the way, I TiVoed that game so look for it some time in the future in highlight form in the video section.

four sport superstar

It was a reasonably eventful weekend. For me it's not over yet, because I get President's Day off, so here's a post you can waste time with at work for once. And we cover four sports today, two of which we're actually good at.

Lacrosse

That season started on Saturday and continues today. The first four games, including Saturday's 13-7 win over Drexel, are cannon fodder warmup games for the big one against Syracuse next Friday. Here, I meant to link this last week, but forgot: it's the "composite top 20" as posted on the official site, and you'll notice that the top seven teams are bolded. One's us, and the other six are on our schedule. It's not like we can help playing Maryland, UNC, or Duke, but the brass balls displayed by the athletic department in scheduling basically everyone else that's a powerhouse are admirable.

As for the game itself, Chad Gaudet was brought in this year from Dartmouth to fix our biggest weakness from last year and win some damn faceoffs. This he did - 12 of 21. For reference, Drexel was a 58% team last year on faceoffs, and we won just 10 of 22 (45%) against them last year. A good start.

Next up is welcoming Bryant to the ranks of Division I. What a rude way to make your debut.

Swimming

I haven't once mentioned this sport on these pages, and for this I am shamed. It was, after all, my sport in high school. In fact, up until 2007 when the TFSU mens' team took home the ACC championship, the UVA mens' team ACC championship streak was an exact mirror of my high school team's division meet streak. (The high school streak continues intact and should add division championship #11 in two weeks at the shiny, gleaming, brand-spanking-new pool they just built for the team.)

I digress. The point here is that the women's championship meet begins this week, at Maryland. The men are next week. Both our teams went undefeated in conference dual meets. I encourage DC-area 'Hoos aching for a good Virginia team to root for to show up at 7 PM at Maryland's Eppley Natatorium on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, this week and next, and root for the swim teams to crush the ACC opposition. It's free!

Football

It's more or less official that DC Bob Diaco is leaving for Cincinnati. Diaco worked with Cincy's coach Brian Kelly at CMU before coming here, so, while it's basically a lateral move, it's pretty much an understandable one. I have no idea what effect this will have on the defense, because Diaco was DC for about two offseason months and zero practices. I also can't really think all this turnover is healthy for the coaching staff. Only two position groups - the TEs and OLs - have the same coach as they did last year. This is what's happened:

OC: Mike Groh --> Gregg Brandon
DC: Bob Pruett --> ??? (Al Groh?)
ST: Bob Diaco --> ??? (Ron Prince?)
QB: Mike Groh --> Gregg Brandon (I assume)
RB: Anthony Poindexter --> Wayne Lineburg
WR: Wayne Lineburg --> Latrell Scott
TE: Bob Price --> Price
OL: Dave Borbely --> Borbely
DL: Levern Belin --> Chad Wilt
LB: Bob Diaco --> ???
DB: Steve Bernstein --> Anthony Poindexter

That's an upgrade at RB, WR, and DB, in getting Poindexter coaching the proper position and getting recruiter extraordinaire Scott on the staff. Jury's out, though, at DL (firing Belin seemed pointless), QB (Mike Groh was considered a pretty good developer of quarterbacks right up until the part where he had to call plays for them) and LB. Diaco's special teams coaching was nothing terribly special - I never had any complaints about kick/punt coverage, but the returns left a lot to be desired.

I don't know how I'd feel about Prince coming back. I don't think he was a good OC at all. I never cared for his playcalling any more than I liked Mike Groh's. That said, though, his fingerprints won't be on this offense, and it's always nice to have a guy with head coaching experience to bounce things off of. But that said, he's definitely not the guy I want to see atop the candidates list if this is Al Groh's last year.

Thinking future-wise, the 2010 recruiting board is updated again. Changes:

- Added LB Marcus Rush (offer) and WR Brandon Coleman (offer) to the yellow section.

- Added LB Khairi Fortt, a junior day attendee along with Rush, to the red section. Too many offers to be higher right now.

- Moved RB Kevin Parks to the blue section. He's like thisclose to committing.

Basketball

This is all I know to say about the basketball team anymore:

afgherhfadknfpwjr-u23jojdfjsdijskmoweoj?????

I mean, holy bouncing Jesus. I've talked in the past about how I keep thinking about what kind of production certain players are capable of when playing their best and then projecting that into one game, but I didn't actually think it'd happen.

Indeed, most everyone played well, especially Zeglinski and his 6-for-6 shooting, but the story as always is Sylven Landesberg with the biggest and the mostest buckets. On the day when Sean Singletary's #44 was retired and a few recruits were in the house, Landesberg took it upon himself to make sure the honor didn't get wasted on a losing effort. This kid is BIG-TIME and I don't know any other way to say it. Here's hoping Landesberg was seeing himself in Singletary's place about five years down the road.

ch-ch-changes

We got what we asked for. It's common knowledge by now: Mike Groh is out as offensive coordinator, and DL coach Levern Belin and secondary coach Steve Bernstein are following him out the door.

So is this such a good thing? Well, yes. By all accounts, of course, Mike Groh is a good man, hard worker, great with the players, etc. etc. etc. Most coaches are, and I'm not here to impugn the man's character. But there was a direct correlation between Mike's hiring as OC and the sudden plop sound of our offense hitting the water in the porcelain bowl. The playcalling was a particular point of complaint; I maintain that the playcalling was the one single factor more than any other that cost us a bowl trip. So Mike had to go. Mike's been a loyal Wahoo since 1991 and hasn't held a job at any other college; it can't be fun, firing your son, which is why you don't hire him in the first place. 99% of coaching hires end badly, or at least with some degree of animosity, and it only gets worse and more awkward and more uncomfortable and more acrimonious and really adjectivey when flesh and blood is involved.

So what does it all mean?

DEFENSE

According to Al Groh's statement, most of the defensive shuffling has already been done. Your new defensive coordinator is linebackers/special teams coach Bob Diaco, as Bob Pruett moves to something of an associate head coach position. He'll likely focus very heavily on recruiting. I see no reason why Diaco wouldn't continue to coach the linebackers, something he does rather well; a new special teams coach seems likely though. This is Diaco's first gig as a primary assistant, and no, special teams coordinator doesn't count.

Anthony Poindexter finally gets to coach the secondary, and I don't doubt he'll do fine. Running backs coach? Seems like a fish out of water thing. He's back in his element. He also seems a distinct possibility to take over as special teams coordinator from Diaco - this would be as simple as taking "assistant" off his title.

The firing of Levern Belin is what puzzles me. Bernstein was probably pretty much ready to retire anyway, but letting Belin go seems strange. I don't think you can point to the defensive line as a unit that doesn't play up to its potential - in fact, you'd figure the guy who coached up Chris Long to be a second overall draft pick can't be half bad a coach. I dunno, there's probably a reason - maybe Belin kicked Littlepage's cat or something - but to me it's the strangest of the three departures. Assuming Diaco retains his linebacker duties, DL coach is now the only defensive position that we're in the market for.

OFFENSE

Couple of holes here, the most glaringly and stupidly obvious being that we need a new offensive coordinator. The only offensive coach on the staff with any previous experience as an OC is WR coach Wayne Lineburg, who was the Richmond OC from 2004-06. OL coach Dave Borbely is also the "running game coordinator" but the man's done nothing but coach offensive lines since 1986 so he's probably not a candidate. Besides, I don't think "coordinator of the 111th best running game in the nation" is a real resume builder for the spot. Lineburg seems like the only candidate to be promoted from within, but an offense as stagnant as ours desperately needs some fresh blood and outside opinions. We would be best served hiring outside the program.

We also need a running backs coach, now that Poindexter has been shuffled over to the defense.

RECRUITING

Ay, there's the rub. When coaches depart, the effect on the incoming recruiting class is always a concern. When it comes to the corps of already-committed players, I think we're fine. The bigger question comes from those who've yet to decide.

Bernstein was only the recruiter for two verbals: OT Sean Cascarano and FB Dominique Wallace. Wallace is a helluva runner, but Bernstein doesn't coach either of these positions anyway. I wouldn't worry. Mike Groh was recruiting quite a few players; perhaps the most concerning is WR Tyree Watkins, who's already been sending out maybe a mixed signal or two.

It's the not-yet-committed players where our recruiting may take a hit. The player that probably has (or maybe had) the best combination of talent and likelihood to commit to UVA is OL/DL Brennan Williams - we just fired both his recruiters. Al is going to have to do a lot of talking about the right things in order to keep him interested, because you bet your ass Butch Davis and Jeff Jagodzinski are telling Williams, "This year Mike, next year Al." DE Pat Muldoon was a Bernstein target; this is worrisome not just because of Muldoon, but his teammate Luke Kuechly is considering UVA as well. Mike Groh was also recruiting WR Justin Brown, but he was almost entirely out of the picture anyway, and this will probably cause me to just drop him off the board next update. Dude's going to Penn State anyway.

Looks like we're in for a plenty interesting offseason. But not as interesting as next year's offseason is going to be, if the 2009 season isn't up to snuff.