FOV Cavalier of the Year 2011, #7/#8

From Old Virginia celebrates its birthday in a unique way: by recognizing one of Virginia's student-athletes as the Cavalier of the Year. What are the criteria for the award? You decide; that's the beauty. I nominate the 12 athletes that I think have been the most outstanding during the latest season of UVA athletics, and provide a short summary of their accomplishments. You choose the winner in a poll that goes up after all 12 have had their moment in the spotlight.

Over the next two weeks, two athletes at a time will be profiled, and you'll hear about what they've accomplished while representing Mr. Jefferson's University this year. The athletes are presented in a totally random order so as to hopefully not imply any endorsement one way or another. Athletes from all fields are considered; part of the point is to emphasize that UVA is about excellence across the entire department and doesn't shortchange its so-called non-revenue sports simply because they don't make headlines. The previous winners are Danny Hultzen (2009) and Diego Restrepo (2010); today's athletes are Keith Payne and Lauren Perdue.

Keith Payne - Football - Running back

Team accomplishments:

- Didn't embarrass themselves

Personal accomplishments:

- ACC touchdown leader
- ACC per-game scoring leader
- Second-team all-ACC
- Invited to NFLPA All-Star Game
- UVA's leading rusher

OK, so, of all the sports featured in this year's nominations, football definitely had the worst showing.  And still you can tell things are improving because they didn't even get a nomination last year.  Speaking of redemption stories, here is probably the biggest and best for the season, and probably in quite a while.  Until 2010, the high point of Keith Payne's UVA career was the day he committed.  It went all downhill from there, as hype gave way to the doghouse that Payne slowly and steadily worked his way into.  He finally quit the team midway through the 2009 season when it became evident Al Groh had no intention of putting him on the field again.  Groh was a stubborn guy who wasn't big on second and third chances, but a lot of Payne's problems were Payne's own fault.

When Mike London was hired, Payne asked for another chance, to have a senior season back.  London laid down the conditions and Payne met them all, and when the season opened up, there he was, back in uniform, and with no less a position as the starting tailback.  He scored four touchdowns in the season opener and ended the year with 16 touchdowns, three more than his closest competition in the ACC, and could have had more if injuries hadn't slowed him up at the end of the year.  Payne scored so much that he ended up as the ACC's per-game scoring leader and in fourth place overall, on the list normally reserved for kickers.  Of the top ten per-game scorers in the conference, Payne was the only non-kicker.  Just exactly what Hoo fans envisioned for his senior year after all.

Lauren Perdue - Women's swimming - Sprint freestyle

Team accomplishments:

- Fourth consecutive ACC championship
- 13th place at NCAA championships

Personal accomplishments:

- ACC Swimmer of the Year
- 2-time ACC Swimmer of the Championships
- Set ACC record in 200-yard freestyle, 100 freestyle and 200 yard free relay
- NCAA 200 free runner-up
- NCAA 50 free 8th place
- Led off UVA's all-American 800 freestyle relay
- Two-event ACC champion
- 4-time ACC Performer of the Week

The epitome of ACC dominance at UVA is either men's tennis or the swim teams, and it's the swim teams that are setting records.  And in this case it's one of the youngest COY nominees; Lauren Perdue is just one of two sophomores (and no freshman) nominated this year.  Perdue broke a passel of ACC records at the ACC meet, broke them again at the NCAAs, and helped her team come from behind to win their fourth straight ACC championship, sealed when the relay that Perdue leads off took first place in the final event.

Perdue's also proven to be an elite swimmer on the national level, earning a couple of all-American awards (which in swimming are given for being top-eight in an event) and earning a second-place finish in her best event, the 200 free.  Potential future national champion?  Perhaps.  It takes a deep lineup to win the ACC title, but Perdue stands well above a crowd of teammates that's awfully hard to stand above.

sweeps weekend

It must be spring when UVA fans get a whole weekend full of good news. Never happens otherwise. Hardly a Wahoo took the court, or field, or starting block, without leaving victoriously. Best of all: completing the hardcourt sweep of Virginia Tech in front of a sold-out JPJ Arena.

Did I say sweep? I said sweep. Of Tech. Barring a semi-miraculous run to the NIT (which would likely require winning the next three games in a row) or a thoroughly miraculous tournament run to the ACC championship, that's probably the highlight of the season. It's not a minor deal; regaining our identity as Virginia Basketball requires, among other things, putting Tech back in their place. In the future this needs to be the norm.

I must be the only person who cares enough to write about this stuff to have seen this coming, though. The rest of the media - and certainly just about every Hokie in existence - is all surprised and shit. The excuses are flying. I'm not surprised, because I told you before the game: UVA matches up very well with Tech. We're bigger. We're either deeper, or Seth Greenberg is insane for never playing anyone but his starters. We're smarter. With Mike Scott out, Tech does have the two and maybe three best players on the court (Malcolm Delaney, Jeff Allen, and maybe Erick Green) but otherwise, the point is this: Basketball is a game of matchups, and that can sometimes overcome a sizable talent deficit. And you won't find many other ACC teams that UVA is as well-equipped to beat as Tech. The reason for the sweep doesn't go much beyond that, and to whatever extent it does, it sure as hell wasn't fatigue on Tech's part, as has been suggested. Anyone who thinks that ought to be embarrassed.

Another thing that's been made a big deal of, and shouldn't be, is that UVA outrebounded Tech. By one, but that's not the reason it shouldn't be a big deal. It's true that we usually get outrebounded, because somebody will launch a three and most of the team will be on the other side of halfcourt by the time it hits the rim. That's Tony Bennett's way. On the defensive end, though, guess who the best rebounding team in the conference is? If you guessed "not Virginia," you're wrong, and you're making the same mistake everyone else does, by using raw, non-tempo-adjusted rebounding averages. The fact is, UVA has the best defensive rebounding percentage in the ACC, and 36th best in the country. File under "another reason I'm not surprised we won."

So yes, Akil Mitchell had a nice game with seven rebounds, but I'll wait to throw his debutante party til he double-doubles one of these days. Stats-wise the player of the game really is Sammy Z, who should never be allowed to shoot until thirty seconds of the shot clock have elapsed, but if you want to make a case for "blossoming potential" from that game, Assane Sene and Jontel Evans are your guys. Jontel actually can shoot, and when he realizes it he'll be that much better. Sene can score when he catches the ball. We just have to figure out how to optimize the transition from someone else's hands to his, and we're set.

The future holds three winnable games, and I'd allow you to get excited about the possibility of winning them all except the moment I do, we'll lose by 30 in Atlanta. So as far as the fates are concerned, it's one-game-at-a-time mode from here on out. Just to be on the safe side, try and give 110% too. It is what it is.

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Sweeps weekend continued in Auburn, where Danny Hultzen, in between striking out 10 UAB Blazers and driving in seven runs for the weekend, also took a leak on Toomer's Corner and healed the trees. Chuck Norris has nothing on Danny. The opponents for the weekend were UAB, Auburn, and Arkansas State, in that order; UAB and ASU are fringe top-100 types in the RPI, while Auburn isn't SEC royalty like LSU but is a borderline top-25 team. Tyler Wilson shut down their powerful lineup, and UVA nickel-and-dimed their way around the basepaths for 13 runs against Auburn and 27 on the weekend in sweeping the tournament.

It's certainly refreshing to see that Hultzen is in his usual form. Enjoy it; the man will be a first-rounder this year. It's even better to see Tyler Wilson pitch six innings of shutdown baseball as the new Saturday starter, and Cody Winiarski did the same on Sunday. It makes me giddy. Winiarski, even at his best last season (and he certainly got better as the year went on) was never a strikeout pitcher, barely averaging one every two innings. He posted six on Sunday in six innings of work. Branden Kline also proved worthy of the closer role, slamming the door on a UAB rally on Friday. Six pitches, six strikes, and a one-out situation became Kline's first save of the year.

The wins bump UVA a few spots in most of the polls. East Carolina comes to town next weekend, with a home game against VMI in between. The ECU series won't have the same stature it did last year when ECU was considered the up-and-comer on the baseball scene, and a sweep there would open up the possibility of being undefeated heading into the ACC season in about three weeks.

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The lax team started its season with its usual solid, if slightly uninspiring, win over Drexel. Drexel's a half-decent team, so the margin of victory - 12-9 - is no cause for worry. As per usual, though, the game offered some reasons for optimism and some for worry. UVA won the faceoff battle, which they did not last year, and maintained its usual dominance in clearing the ball, successfully clearing all but one opportunity. This was without Adam Ghitelman (who is one of the nation's top goalies at starting a clear) in net, who didn't dress because of a mystery suspension. Rob Fortunato played, and played reasonably well.

On the other hand, ground balls, normally an area of UVA dominance, tilted only slightly in UVA's favor, at 46-43. (That's a lot of ground balls to begin with.) Nothing's perfect, though.

Ghitelman will hopefully be back in net tomorrow against Mount St. Mary's; it'd certainly be ideal to have him see game action before Saturday's dangerous matchup against Stony Brook.

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For the fourth straight year, the women's swim and dive team is ACC champions, and for the second straight year, it's sprinter Lauren Perdue taking home the honors as the meet's most outstanding swimmer. Perdue sets records like it's her job, but freshman butterflier Rachel Naurath gave her a run for her money for the top-swimmer title. This was, as suggested by the psych sheet scoring, a close meet - our girls were behind UNC by 37 points (not quite a virtual dead heat but close) going into the final day, and the meet was in doubt until the 200 yard butterfly - the second-to-last event. UVA swimmers went 1-2-3-5, seizing the lead and putting UNC far enough behind that they could afford a safe-start relay in the final event; they went ahead and won the relay regardless. You have to love the championship attitude Mark Bernardino has instilled into his swim teams, as well as the talent he's brought to UVA.

This week, it's the men's turn. Psych sheet scoring, with all the caveats of last week's exercise, is as follows:

UVA - 844
UNC - 764
FSU - 500
VT - 314
NCSt. - 190
Clem. - 186
Md. - 177
Duke - 160
GT - 150
BC - 70

Wake Forest doesn't have any swim teams, and Miami doesn't have a men's one.

This is eerily similar to the women's results, no? UVA and UNC will duke it out for the title, and it'll definitely be close. We are nasty strong in distance events - all strokes - and a little thin on sprinters - all strokes. FSU is a factor, but probably not a threat for the title, VT is a comfortable fourth, and the peasants will have themselves a really stirring chase to line up fifth through ninth. (Except BC - as with the women's events, the only points they'll garner will come from placing last in every relay.)

This is even closer than it looks thanks to the general lack of points we'll get from diving. The women didn't get any - the men might scrape a couple but we'll take a bath here. Figuratively. Frankly, this meet should be considered just about neck and neck, just like the women.

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Speaking of four straight championships, and national-wise this time, it's the men's tennis team's turn for championship glory. This is indoor tennis, so before you get too excited - it still doesn't count in the NCAA tally. Not once in this run has UVA managed to win an outdoor tennis title. Why so different? Beats me. They'll have another shot this spring. This championship was a 4-0 win over Tennessee - yup, another sweep - and that's the kind of dominating fashion they've been using this winter, so with any luck this is a stronger team than years past and they can finally bring home an NCAA title in a couple months.

That finishes the good news weekend. Hope it wasn't too much all at once. They say starving people shouldn't pig out the moment they see food, it's not healthy. Unfortunately for your health, there's a recruiting board update in the hopper for tomorrow and you'll probably like what you see there, too.

FOV Cavalier of the Year, #11/#12

From Old Virginia celebrates its birthday in a unique way: by recognizing one of Virginia's student-athletes as Cavalier of the Year. What are the criteria for the award? You decide: that's the beauty. I nominate the 12 athletes that I think have been most outstanding during the latest season of UVA athletics, and provide a short summary of their accomplishments. You choose the winner in a poll that goes up after all 12 have had their moment in the spotlight.

Over the next two weeks, two athletes at a time will be profiled, and you'll hear about what they've accomplished while representing Mr. Jefferson's University. The athletes are presented in a totally random order so as to hopefully not imply any endorsement one way or another. Athletes from all fields are considered; part of the point is that UVA is about excellence across the entire department and doesn't shortchange its so-called non-revenue sports simply because they don't make headlines. Last year's winner was Danny Hultzen; today's athletes are Ken Clausen and Lauren Perdue.

Ken Clausen - Men's lacrosse - Defense

Team accomplishments:

- #1 seed in NCAA tournament
- NCAA Final Four
- ACC champions

Personal accomplishments:

- Tewaaraton Trophy finalist
- USILA first-team all-American
- Schmeisser Award recipient as nation's outstanding defensive player
- USILA Scholar All-American
- All-ACC selection
- Lowe's Senior Class Award finalist

There was no doubt about this one: Clausen was the country's top defenseman, period. There was a little question before the season about how UVA might replace a few key departures on the defensive side of things, but Clausen put those questions to rest, quickly. He led the ACC in turnovers caused and was always assigned to the opposition's best player, which he usually shut right down. It's not often a defenseman is selected as a Tewaaraton finalist; in fact, Clausen is only the second long-stick player ever selected for invitation to the awards banquet, and first since 2005.

UVA is known for churning out top-notch goal scorers: over the years, players like Matt Ward and Ben Rubeor and Danny Glading pass through, and you chalk them up for 30 goals and maybe a Tewaaraton finalist nomination. But none of them have been three-year all-Americans: Ken Clausen is the first Cavalier to claim that honor. And by starting every game in his career, he shares with Brian Carroll the UVA record for games played with 70. Chances are it'll be years, if ever, until we see another UVA defenseman of Clausen's caliber.

Lauren Perdue - Women's swimming & diving - Freestyle



Team accomplishments:

- ACC champions
- 9th place at NCAA championships

Personal accomplishments:

- ACC Freshman of the Year
- ACC Championships Most Valuable Swimmer
- Two-time ACC Performer of the Week
- 5 All-American events and 1 honorable mention
- 3 individual and 4 relay ACC championships
- 3 UVA records and 1 ACC record

A champion swim team needs a champion freestyler - a point I made when it was Scot Robison's turn in the spotlight. Lauren Perdue is a champion freestyler as well as an ACC record holder (200 yard freestyle.) Those are the kind of accolades you expect for a veteran swimmer; Lauren Perdue is a freshman. She stepped right in and anchored our relays, won multiple events at the conference meet, and finished fifth in the nation in the 50 free and 8th in the 200.

The UVA Invitational was a perfect microcosm of the way Perdue's career might be expected to go. She led off the 400 free relay with a 100-yard swim of 49.06, which set a new pool record. The old record was set by....uh, Lauren Perdue, about an hour prior in the individual 100 yard swim. That record broke the old record held by.....yes, Lauren Perdue, which she'd set the day before. Breaking her own records - I think there's a lot of that in her future.

it's a party and you're all invited

One week from today is a Very Special Day. No, it's not the day your propeller beanie finally comes in the mail. It's my birthday, wheee! Or to get all technically correct about it, it's the birthday of this blog, which dates its founding to June 10, 2008. That means FOV is turning two years old.

It certainly has been an interesting two years, full of triumph, tragedy, and heartbreak. UVA is the most successful ACC athletic department since expansion, and that is awesome, and nearly half those ACC titles have come in the last two years. On the other hand, the last two seasons have both seen major coach firings. Al Groh and Dave Leitao were the big-cheese coaches when this blog began; they've been replaced by Mike London and Tony Bennett. (This also necessitates a change of banners, which I'm working on. My limited graphic design skills are combining forces with my limited software to produce a bunch of stuff I hate. Getting there, though.)

Interesting times for the blog itself, too. I've been so idiotically wrong at times, and prophetic at others. (It counts even if that foresight was the result of a visit to Emo Myspace Land.) I've been quoted at Yahoo and won interesting awards, the latter of which I'd like to think is for being bloody damn right.

Anyway, just like last year, birthday party means it's time to recognize the athletes that are out at the forefront, wearing the colors and representing the school. The 2nd annual FOV Cavalier of the Year Award, which is basically the prestige equivalent of a Nobel Athletics Prize and therefore only Hoos are eligible, is hereby announced. Last year's winner was baseball's Danny Hultzen, a worthy awardee, and he returns as a nominee this year as well. The twelve nominees, in alphabetical order, are:

Robby Andrews (track)
Ken Clausen (lacrosse)
Drew Courtney/Michael Shabaz (tennis)
Chris Henrich (wrestling)
Danny Hultzen (baseball)
Brittany Kalkstein (lacrosse)
Lauren Perdue (swimming)
Diego Restrepo (soccer)
Scot Robison (swimming)
Paige Selenski (field hockey)
Sarah Tacke (softball)
Monica Wright (basketball)

Here's the format: over the next couple weeks, I'll be profiling these standout athletes for you with a summary of their accomplishments this season, two at a time and in a random order. Just about every one of them has earned some kind of hardware or individual recognition for their exploits. When I'm done with the summaries, a poll will go up on the right-hand side. I determine the nominees, but you the readers determine the winner. Hultzen was indeed the people's choice last year, and I must say you chose wisely. The power will again be in your hands; do not use it for evil.

director's cup update

Well, not officially. Not til Thursday. But they finished up all the championships that go into this update, so I did some back-of-the-envelope type numbercrunchinating, and came up with the following projected standings at the top:

Stanford - 555.5
Florida - 548
Penn State - 521.5
Virginia - 515
North Carolina - 457
Oregon - 454
Florida State - 448

Just rough pinscratch figuring, mind you, but the standings should be just about right and the numbers probably not much more than, say, plus-or-minus eight. In any case three things are pretty clearly true:

- UVA's not falling further than 4th in this update.
- Despite that, UVA actually made up ground on first place.
- That's as good as it gets for the winter. We should stay in the top ten at the final winter update but won't look much better than that, and may drop further.

There's 25 more points coming this way - that's what you get for losing in the first round of basketball tournaments. It sucks gonzo that the women's team decided to be the 5/12 victim in their tournament - it cost at least 25 points in the standings. Plus, the men's swim team should probably be good for another 70 or so.

Winter sports are not usually our strong point, but there's a lot that went right so far, despite the lady hoopsters' Green Bay fiasco:

- The lady swimmers grabbed ninth place at nationals. Lauren Perdue grabbed three top-eight finishes, and the team would have ended up eighth but for a DQ'd relay. Not a big DC points difference, though.

- The wrestlers took 15th at nationals, their best finish ever.

- Robby Andrews' national championship earned a 20th-place finish for the Hoos.

All are among the top finishes ever for the program - in wrestling's case, best ever. So with a likely top-ten finish after the winter sports wrap up and the really strong stuff - the spring sports with baseball, lacrosse, and tennis - coming up, is this the year, somebody (us, natch) knocks Stanford out of the #1 spot?

Uh, no. Keep in mind Stanford owns at sports we don't even participate in, like water polo. You only get to count 20 sports toward your Director's Cup standings and because of that, Stanford always has to leave off points in some of their sports. But, if our powerhouse teams don't stumble at the wrong times, a top-five is definitely attainable.

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So speaking of the powerhouse teams, what did they do this weekend? Powerhoused, of course.

- Baseball swept Boston College, and in superdominating fashion. Game 2 only looked close because Kevin Arico, brought in to close out Robert Morey's gem, decided to make it interesting. The rotation absolutely killed the Eagles. In 21 total innings, Hultzen/Morey/ Winiarski gave up 10 hits and 2 earned runs. TWO. RUNS. Hultzen pitched eight of those innings and is a frickin' machine, as usual. Morey pitched seven and is a machine in training. Winiarski went six and probably extended his stay in the rotation til at least next week (I'd say it was probably do or die this weekend for him; there's only one weekday game and Roberts or Kline would be ready to go on Sunday if they had to be) and gave us reason to believe he can do a pretty good impression of a machine at times. We'll go as far this year as our pitchers can take us.

And the bullpen, outside of Arico who I'm really not worried about, was similarly sparkling. Not that the starters gave them much chance to work, but Halley, Davis, Wilson, and Mayberry didn't allow any runs at all. Mayberry had to work himself out of a little jam, but the nice thing about ten-run leads is they give the manager a lot of confidence in deciding to give his freshman pitcher more than enough rope to hang himself. Mayberry responded nicely, grew up a little bit, and the bullpen just got better.

Speaking of getting better, Halley's separated shoulder has done just that, as you might notice, and the bullpen has just gone from thin-looking to pretty damn robust. Get Halley and a looking-better-all-the-time Mayberry in the mix and suddenly Brian O'Connor has options and lots of them. I'd like to have another lefty in the pen, but Scott Silverstein can't stop getting hurt, so we have Neal Davis and that's it. Still, picky picky.

- Lacrosse didn't quite dominate the way they have the ability to, but hey: win's a win. The defense looks like it could really use Ryan Nizolek back, and took a lot of blame for letting Towson get closer than they probably should have. I say, throw this game on the pile with every football and basketball game we lost - the one labeled "sucky offense leads to sucky-looking defense." My take on lacrosse is: look, sooner or later, the other guys are gonna score, so you better be scoring too. The faceoff men were absolutely murdering Towson's in the first half, but when you turn it over eight times in a quarter, of course you're going to be losing.

Granted, there were at least three Towson goals that I can remember where I said to myself, hey, you got any clothespins? Cause we're hanging Ghitelman out to dry here. Like that third quarter goal where Lovejoy got burned on the restart. I mean, pay attention, dude. Lovejoy actually looked really good at times, but his mistakes were exceedingly visible.

Oh well. Guess it was nice that we could give Towson native Harry Prevas a start in Nizolek's absence. And it certainly speaks to our offensive talent that we can get 15 goals in a not-real-impressive showing. Yup, just another day at the office.

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I suppose it wouldn't be UVA if I didn't have the chance to crap on your parade route a little bit and mix in some bad news with all the sunshine. The football team will be short one more player for the upcoming season without Riko Smalls, and the basketball team is losing - yeah, you guessed - Tristan Spurlock. Both had played similarly miniscule roles with their respective teams - Smalls, in fact, never appeared in a game - so it's largely just a lot of potential being lost. In Spurlock's case that potential is probably a lot more real than with Smalls, who was heir to the Keith Payne mantle of "player most wildly and unrealistically overrated by overexcited Hoo fans."

And in Spurlock's case especially, you have to at least tip your hat and wish him well. I don't know what things were like behind the scenes any more than you do, but Spurlock made an effort not to be a public distraction when he clearly was chafing at the bit to get in the games. And he wasn't recruited to play this system, he was recruited to be J.R. Reynolds reincarnate. He gave it a shot anyway - I don't think you can ask for much more.

Once we get the official word that Landesberg is out as well - and believe me, I'd like nothing more than to be wrong about that - then you may commence random and almost totally useless speculation about what Bennett's rotation will look like next year. Useless because we pretty much have no way of knowing which of the six freshmen will adapt best to the system; did you honestly expect Will Sherrill to see more than 10 minutes of total floor time all year, let alone start a few games?

weekend review: championship edition

Big weekend for 'Hoos of all stripes. Lots of blue and orange being represented in assorted venues around the East Coast - none of them actually in Charlottesville, but hey. Records were set, milestones were reached, history was made, championships were won. Yeah, the basketball team got smoked again, but don't let that cloud your perspective. It was a fine weekend to be a Hoo.

Starting with the biggest accomplishment of the week.....

SWIMMING

Huzzah! Like I told you last week, it's ACC championship time. UVA got conference championship #2 on the year - one of only two schools to earn two so far by the way - and did so once again in dominating fashion. The women's swim team added nearly 30 points to their total from last year and finished with 877.5. The results are here; I will summarize for you.

1st place events:
200 medley relay
800 free relay
200 IM
50 free
200 free relay
100 fly
200 free
100 back
400 medley relay
200 back
100 free
200 breast (tie)
200 fly
400 free relay

1st place swimmers (individual only):
Amanda Faulkner (200 IM)
Lauren Perdue (50 free, 200 free, 100 free)
Lauren Smart (100 fly)
Mei Christensen (100 back, 200 back)
Christine Olson (200 breast)
Liz Shaw (200 fly)

NCAA 'A' cuts:
200 medley relay (Christensen/McDonnell/Smart/Davis)
200 free (Perdue)
100 back (Christensen, Smart)
200 back (Christensen)
200 breast (Olson)

NCAA 'B' cuts:
800 free relay (Narum/Flynn/Harris/Perdue)
500 free (Bachrouche, Harris, Narum, Myers)
200 IM (Faulkner, Crippen, Shaw, McDonnell)
50 free (Perdue, Christensen, Flynn, Davis)
200 free relay (Christensen/Flynn/Perdue/Davis)
400 IM (Crippen, Olson, Bachrouche, Faulkner, Myers)
100 fly (Smart, Shaw), 200 free (Flynn, Harris, Narum, Moores)
100 breast (Olson, McDonnell, Freeman)
100 back (Cavalier (note - yes this is her name and that's awesome), Stewart)

400 medley relay (Christensen/McDonnell/Smart/Perdue)
1650 free (Narum, Bachrouche, Myers, Harris)
200 back (Smart, Stewart)
100 free (Perdue, Davis, Flynn, Moores)
200 breast (McDonnell, Faulkner, Freeman)
200 fly (Shaw, Crippen)
400 free relay (Christensen, Flynn, Moores, Perdue)

ACC records:
200 medley relay (1:37.33)
200 free relay (1:29.25 - meet record only)
200 free (1:43.86)
400 medley relay (3:32.97 - meet record only)
200 breast (2:09.94)

Miscellaneous domination notes: 4 of top 5 and 1-2-3 in 200 IM, and only one is a senior ... 4 of top 6 in 400 IM ... first place in all five relays and 9 of 13 individual events ... five records set and the final relay came within 0:00.02 of setting another one

Perhaps more records would have been toppled if we hadn't set so damn many last year. Oh well.

By the way, the difference between A cuts and B cuts isn't quite as gaping as it might sound. They're actually fairly unnecessary; the NCAA has a maximum number of swimmers they'll invite to their championship for each event. To oversimplify it, they invite all the A cuts and then go one-by-one and invite B cuts til they hit the max. Why not just have one cut time? I don't know. I liked it better in high school where if you swam a state cut time, you got to go to the state meet - period. (Not that I was ever in danger of making it.)

Anyway, as you can see, we're pretty well set to make a splash (HA!) at nationals, which will be nice for Director's Cup purposes. We won't win (not all those swimmers above are going to score points), but the girls finished 12th last year and maybe a top ten finish is on the horizon.

By the way, Lauren Perdue's name shows up a lot, as you might notice. That's because she's really, really good. And she's a freshman. There are some phenomenal swimmers up there, like Christensen, but Perdue is unbelievable. How good? Like, maybe Olympic good. You can use this to convert these yards times (used here) to meters (used in the Olympics.) Right now, that time is just off the pace that would have put her in the 200 freestyle semifinals in Beijing. You have to be elite as all hell to get onto the US national team, and she's not quite there yet. Give it a couple years. You just might see her in London.

But all these ACC teams have some incredible swimmers. I mean, we did let the other teams win four of those individual events, after all. The difference here is we have incredible swimmers in every event two, three, four deep. That's where the meet really is won. In no event did UVA place fewer than two swimmers in the A heat (top 8) and in just under than half of the events, UVA was in four of the eight A lanes, piling up the points. The B heats were similarly stacked with Cavaliers. (Sometimes literally. Tell me this young lady wasn't destined for Virginia.)

Bottom line: congrats to the ladies for kicking ass at the ACC's, and on Wednesday, get ready for the men to do it all over again.

BASKETBALL

Ah, now for the crash back to earth. Let me keep this short and sweet: Until the hoops team re-learns how to shoot the ball, we will go nowhere and there won't be any point in analyzing why. Turnovers, defense, rebounding, size, grueling travel, matchups, none of it matters at this point. We're losing because we can't shoot. It's 2009 all over again. Sylven and Mike Scott can't be effective, because the moment the ball goes inside, whether on a drive or pass, four defenders collapse on it because they don't respect the shooters. Bad offense begets bad defense, just like last year, and the result is ugly.

It does tend to debunk two myths about Dave Leitao's coaching style that were taken as gospel last year:

- The team was shooting poorly because they couldn't get into a rhythm thanks to Dave's incessantly inconsistent substitutions and rotations. No, they couldn't shoot because they can't shoot. A few more games of this will give us a very definitive answer to that particular chicken-or-the-egg question.

- The team's confidence was shot because Dave was screaming at them all the time. No, it was shot because they were losing. A lot. Tony doesn't scream, at least not during games, and don't tell me there's a small part of you that sorta wishes he would, just a little.

LACROSSE

Little closer than it should have been, but the lacrosse team earned Dom Starsia his 200th win at UVA. First college coach ever to rack up 200 wins at one D-I school and 100 more at another.

Part of the reason it was so close is that the Drexel goalie did really well for himself. Last year in our game he earned himself CAA rookie of the week honors for his performance, and statistically he was even better this year: 17 saves against 11 goals. A save percentage over .600 is pretty dern good.

On the one hand, it was nice to see more people besides just Steele Stanwick lighting up the scoreboard. We knew he'd be good, but six other Hoos besides him scored a goal, including hotshot freshman Connor English. (English is from, let's see, Manhasset, NY - I just bet that's on Long Island (checking: aaaaaand, yup) - and damn if Connor English doesn't sound exactly like a kid from Long Island who's really damn good at lacrosse. Between him and Steele Stanwick I think we're all set.)

I'm not sure yet where the faceoffs are going to come from, though. I hope we turn out better than the very average showing we had this weekend. Chad Gaudet was a one-year wonder for us, and he was very good, but his replacements (Benincasa and Ince, mostly) need to prove themselves all over again in his place.

Still: #1 ain't bad. (Even if it's a "tepid" #1.)

BASEBALL

Think this says it all, no?

We're similarly gracing the front pages of the baseball coverage on Rivals and ESPN. (Lax made the same ESPN page as well as the NCAA's.) Wahoo indeed. That's what happens when you're #1. Not just "power rankings," either; Baseball America and Rivals are generally accepted as legit actual rankings. UVA is #1. Just say it. It feels good.

The bats did their thing in Greenville, taking two of three on the road to start the season. That's good enough when the opponent is ranked #11. And I'll tell you what, I'm not even worked up over the disastrous 8th inning on Sunday in which ECU scored 7 and threatened to actually win a game in which they had been facing a 13-4 deficit. A lot of that was thanks to O'Connor's decision to start up the Dan Grovatt and Corey Hunt experiments as relief pitchers. We may not see a lot of that going forward, given the results. Nor am I concerned about Saturday, when the bats fell silent. They came back alive on Sunday, hitting .441 for the day, and Kevin Brandt (ECU's Saturday pitcher), I suspect he's going to be making a name for himself before all's said and done this year. Sunday was a hitting party and everyone was invited. All nine starters in the lineup gathered at least one hit, seven of them got at least two, and Keith Werman managed to be hit by a pitch. Werman has been found to actually be smaller than the strike zone itself, so this is pretty remarkable.

Actually, the only thing that worries me is that Cody Winiarski's debut was a little less than stellar, and Neal Davis had to be brought in to get the last out of the fourth. Yes, ECU has some hotshot bats, but so does most of our ACC competition. Consider the third starter spot still up for grabs, with Will Roberts being another candidate.

All in all, a weekend that true blue 'Hoos should bask in. Never mind the basketball team, Bennett knows what he's doing and they'll come around sure enough. Enjoy the dynasties we have going: one that's reloading, one that's ongoing, one being born in front of your eyes.

meet preview: ACC swimming championships

This was my sport in high school, so I take a little extra pride in the fact that this is a sport in which UVA is more or less the undisputed ACC lord and ruler. (Little personal note: my mom tried to convince me to try and walk on to the team at UVA, but....well, my senior season 50-yard freestyle time - which was the result of the most perfect race I have ever swam - would have seeded me 84th in the ACC finals. The women's finals. I might as well have tried to walk my 150-pound self on to the football team.)

Anyway, in the doing awesome things department, the women had a little catching up to do to the men this decade; the men's team won eight straight ACC titles until a slight hiccup in 2007, and then won two more in '08 and '09. It's only been recently that the ladies returned to their rightful place atop the ACC, and the men have a few more championships to their name, but back they are, and ready to go for a third straight year of simultaneous championships. Coach Mark Bernardino has built himself a true dynasty, and ought to be considered among UVA's greatest coaches in any sport.

Tomorrow, the womens' championship gets underway for four days of a swimming extravanganza, hosted by UNC, and the men follow next week, same time same place. How dominant are the UVA squads? Take a look for yourself on the psych sheet.

(For the non-initiated, the psych sheet lists all the seed times for all events, which are a swimmer's best time over the course of the season in each event they swam in. You have to swim an event at least once in the season to be allowed to swim it in the finals. Why is it called a psych sheet? Because you're supposed to psych yourself up by looking at how close you are to moving up in the seedings. What if you're the top seed? I never had to deal with that issue, I don't know.)

Anyway, that's the women's psych sheet - the men's isn't posted yet. So this post will deal with this week's women's meet. To summarize, UVA is seeded first in all five relays and a UVA swimmer is seeded first in 9 of 13 individual events. Some of these top seeds belong to backstroker extraordinaire Mei Christensen, whose unbelievable performance last year led to, among other honors, a nomination on this blog for Cavalier of the Year. She got votes, too. Christensen is a senior and already set to represent UVA at the NCAA championships. But lest you think our domination is graduating, three of the top seeds belong to freshman sprinter Lauren Perdue, a good bet to knock down a few ACC records maybe even as soon as this year.

But the most dominant event we'll have is the 800-yard freestyle relay, where we are seeded almost eight seconds ahead of the second-place team. Eight seconds is a bloody eternity in swimming. That's two seconds per swimmer, and to put that in perspective, two seconds in the 200-yard freestyle (the distance each swimmer will have to go in that relay) is the difference between being seeded 17th and out of the finals (top 16 score points) and being seeded fifth. Two seconds in that event is worth a full 14 points. This is the event to really pay attention to as you peruse the scoresheet. Last year our girls had a seed time of 7:15.81 and swam a 7:05.72 to smash the ACC record. This year the seed time is 7:12.80.

So what teams do we have to be concerned about? Who's a threat to knock UVA off the first-place stand where we belong? I took the liberty of scoring out the psych sheet - a highly unscientific exercise for reasons which I'll get into in a minute - and these are the results (Wake Forest doesn't compete, by the way):

Virginia - 914
UNC - 529
FSU - 457
VT - 306
Md. - 303
Clemson - 228
NC State - 191
Duke - 164
GT - 147
Miami - 116
BC - 60

Poor BC. You get 12 points for coming in last in a relay, so if you've been paying close attention, you'll realize they earned their points only by virtue of finishing last in all the relays.

That's what the scoreboard would look like if everyone on the psych sheet swam exactly their seed times in every event they're listed for. This won't happen, obviously, for quite a number of reasons:

- I excluded the diving; the psych sheet is horribly unreliable as not even all the teams are seeded with scores. There are three diving events - add points as you feel appropriate. UVA doesn't have a real strong diving contingent, but it doesn't matter.

- You can only bring so many swimmers to the meet and they can only swim in a limited number of events. The psych sheet seeds swimmers in events they won't be swimming in. As just one example, Liz Shaw is seeded and earning megapoints in both the 400-yard IM and 100-yard butterfly; it's highly unlikely she'll do both as they're back-to-back events. This is where coaches make their money, by the way - if you could just chuck all your swimmers in all their events, where would the strategy be? These limits prevent a team like, ohhhh say, Virginia, from crowding out all the other teams from the finals and blowing you away with sheer numbers.

- Obviously, not everyone is gonna swim these times. Swimmers at the championship meet tend to outperform their seed times - the interesting part is always by how much? And then there will be disqualifications. The psych sheet is highly unreliable as a predictor of actual scores, but it's also quick and easy. Here is something a little more scientific and probably more accurate.

But, though it doesn't get the scores quite right, it's probably going to be pretty close to the end results anyway. Because when it comes down to it, faster swimmers are faster swimmers. Swimming doesn't lend itself to upsets very much. Your top swimmer might DQ, and that would suck because you don't get those points, but that's not the same thing as throwing an interception on the game-winning drive. It's perfectly plausible that Will Sherrill would go off for 18 points and 6 rebounds after scoring 15 over a two-year career, but a lower-end swimmer isn't suddenly going to shave 30 seconds off her 500-yard freestyle time, and even if she did, it doesn't make her teammates do it too. When you dominate, you dominate. So unless Bernardino has turned into a complete and total lunkhead and forgotten how to fill out a lineup card (he hasn't) or the team wakes up tomorrow with a sudden and debilitating case of the 120-hour flu, Saturday will bring our second ACC championship of the '09-'10 season.