Ah, Bill Simmons. The only sportswriter with whom a love-hate relationship can truly blossom. Simmons is at times the most entertaining guy in the business and highly useful, and at others obnoxiously unreadable. Falling (mostly) into the former category is the Levels of Losing that he made popular.
Incredibly, UVA found a way to lose in such a way as to bring like two-thirds of these levels into the equation. I wonder if that's ever been done before. There are fifteen levels. (Simmons claims there are sixteen but that's because he allows the insufferable whiny Red Sox girly-girl that exists within every Red Sox fan to write the end of the column, and places Bill Buckner at Level I. I acknowledge no such extra level.) Take a gander at how many of these applied to last night's lacrosse game:
- Level 15: Princeton Principle. No - we are not a Cinderella team.
- Level 14: Achilles' Heel. Yes. Faceoffs faceoffs a thousand times faceoffs. I told you we would not win if we couldn't win faceoffs. Final result: 26% - and we still almost won.
- Level 13: Alpha Dog. Duke's 14th goal was Max Quinzani's 68th goal of the season on Ned Crotty's 62nd assist. We have an excellent, well-rounded offense, but nobody that statistically dominant. Mark it a yes.
- Level 12: Rabbit's Foot. No.
- Level 11: Sudden Death. Not technically, but, yes, with 12 seconds left, it might as well have been. Don't tell me you weren't thinking "they can't score here or we lose."
- Level 10: Dead Man Walking. No, not really. The Stony Brook game caused a palpable sense of dread but that's not quite how this is meant.
- Level 9: Monkey Wrench. Not only yes but fuck yes. Picture the scene, in case you didn't watch. It's 8-5. Duke has the ball but our defense has been doing a good job of keeping them at bay, and it culminates in a shot that goalie Adam Ghitelman saves - with his damn face. Announcers make joke about courage. The ball, incredibly, is lodged in his facemask, but the refs don't blow the whistle, so the closest Duke attacker tries to dislodge it with his stick. Repeat: ball stuck in facemask, Duke attacker poking at it. HE IS HITTING OUR FUCKING GOALIE IN THE GODDAM HEAD WITH HIS FUCKING STICK. Defenseman Matt Lovejoy sees this and does the only thing a defender is honorably allowed to do in that situation: levels the Dookie with a vicious shoulder check. Penalty is called, but not for the faceshots; on Lovejoy for unnecessary roughness. Because there's no reason to hit a guy who's clocking your teammate in the head, right?
Duke doesn't score on the ensuing man-up chance - in fact, Ghitelman makes yet another nice save and UVA clears, but Duke naturally doubles the ball as our middie (Pomper, I think, but I can't remember and I'm not going back to look) tries to burn time. With the penalty expired, or nearly so, Duke regains the ball and races downfield for a transition goal to make it 8-6. They would score six more after that before we finally got the ball in the net again.
No doubt Ghitelman would have been penalized if he'd grabbed the ball out of his mask during play - you can't use your hand to play the ball - which is obviously why, other than the fact that there was a crosse up in his face, he didn't do that. So why is the presence of the ball an excuse to take illegal headshots? And if the ball was live (which I guess it was til the refs blew the whistle) then why the penalty for a shoulder check to the front of a guy who's playing the ball? Because it's Duke. You play Duke, Duke gets the calls. Duh.
Level 8: Butt-Kicking. No - and in fact, this shouldn't even be that high. A full-fledged butt-kicking wouldn't have been half so painful to watch.
Level 7: This Can't Be Happening. No. Reserved for losing to a clearly way inferior team. Stony Brook would have fallen under this category.
Level 6: Drive-By Shooting. No. Reserved for teams even worse than clearly way inferior.
Level 5: Broken Axle. Yes, on account of not scoring at all while Duke rattled off seven straight.
Level 4: Role Reversal. No. Sadly, this is what happened to Duke in the ACCs. But not here.
Level 3: Guillotine. Gotta go with yes. The whole time, the lead felt tenuous. We weren't winning faceoffs, we were looking sloppy, and at the same time so were they and you just knew that if Duke ever stopped being sloppy, the result wouldn't be pretty. All it took was an executioner to set it off, and this one came dressed in black and white.
Level 2: Stomach Punch. Tie game, momentum on our side, faceoff, ball right there on a UVA crosse for a last possession - and then it wasn't. Yes, and for a couple other reasons besides.
Level 1: The Tailspin. No, I suppose not. This one seems anticlimatic.
In one game, UVA found a way to lose in seven of the fifteen ways on Simmons's Levels of Losing, which has got to be some kind of record. And where's the category for Missing Your Best Chance when you know you haven't had this good a team in years, you won't next year, and there's no doubt in anyone's mind that yours was the best team all season? What about Didn't Win For The Gipper? What about The Next Game Would Have Been Way Easier? Notre Dame's had a good run of it so far but Duke is going to crush them, and yes I know they already lost to the Irish once but they won't again. What about Great Now There's Nothing Left But A Meteor Game? Yes, I actually hope Duke wins because I like Notre Dame way less than Duke and if someone's going to win their first-ever lacrosse championship it better be a team that's paid a few dues, but still: ewwww.
Great way to kick off the decade.
Showing posts with label pomper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pomper. Show all posts
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
weekend review
Such a big weekend, it's gonna need to be broken down into a couple different pieces. Lax and baseball get their turn in the spotlight today.
Because speaking of the spotlight, the baseball team is back in it. Every poll moved the Hoos up a notch or two, and one puts 'em right back in the #1 spot. Even better, how about this headline: "Virginia Tech Following Virginia's Footsteps."
How cute. And what perfect timing, with that series on deck this coming weekend. Tech's series wins over FSU and Miami give them some legitimacy they lacked, but they're still capable of crashing out and putting up some real stinkers (they split a series with brand-spanking-new D-I school Bryant.) So they have some work to do, and obviously the troubling thing is they're going to want to do it this weekend. It would be a good time for sweeping them, just because.
But our team isn't too shabby either, you know. Both the bats and the pitching shone against one of the top teams in the nation, and certainly one of the best-hitting:
- The offense just hammered GT's pitching. The Jackets' ace Deck McGuire fell apart in the seventh trying to protect a one-run lead. Saturday starter Brandon Cumpton faced five batters and walked four of them before being yanked having not retired a single hitter. All in all 23 UVA runs crossed the plate over the weekend.
- In turn, our own pitching was mostly great. GT's fearsome bats only really touched up one of our pitchers. Danny Hultzen had a little bit of an un-Danny-like outing, but most pitchers don't actually hold GT to four runs like that. Morey got bombed, though. But two performances stand out: Cody Winiarski, who did his little trick of making sure all the hits come in different innings; and Branden Kline, who pitched four very nice innings in relief of Morey, giving up just three hits.
- The pitching caveat is that O'Connor really shortened up the bullpen this week. Only three pitchers trotted out of there: Kline, and Tyler Wilson and Kevin Arico in games 1 and 3. With a 9-1 lead on Sunday, it might not have been the worst idea to give Shane Halley or Chad O'Connor an inning instead of Arico, but clearly O'Connor has no intention of dicking around against a team that's already bombed 70 home runs on the season. So I get that.
- So VMI this week - likely looking at Will Roberts for the start on Wednesday - then revenge time against the Hokies for winning the series last year and causing VT fans to care about baseball. We can turn off the Hokie give-a-shit meter about this sport by sweeping them out of Davenport.
Speaking of revenge, that's kind of the theme for this coming weekend. This past weekend we had just these colossal titanic matchups of top-five teams; coming up, it's revenge time. The lacrosse team can't ever seem to get past Duke, and this is a great time to start piling on for the seven or so years of tough times against them.
Astute observers will notice that this is the second year in a row that we've seen the lax team go undefeated into the Duke game, and last year it didn't work out so well. I think the team is playing much better this year, though. Much better. They look the part of a championship team, so I've got high hopes for this one. But what about Saturday's game?
- I was especially pleased with the physicality of the play. The team played a very physical game and at the same time managed to stay mostly out of the penalty box, unlike against, say, Syracuse, where we spent half the game a man down. Mostly, but there were exceptions....
- ....like Bray Malphrus, who should be sitting for half or all of the Duke game. Maybe he was retaliating for the equally late and even more purposeful hit on Shamel Bratton earlier in the game, but it doesn't matter. No place for head-to-head hitting like that. I don't wanna hear that lax is a contact sport; that's why he should sit, the game is dangerous enough as it is. You look at what Max Pomper did to Ian Braddish, there's nothing wrong with that. Not late and not aimed at the head; unfortunately for Braddish his ribs didn't feel too good afterwards, but it happens. Head-butting doesn't just happen.
- I think you have to put a little bit of an asterisk next to the defensive performance, considering Billy Bitter missed half the game, their top two goal-scorers missed the entire game, and as I mentioned earlier Carolina isn't a real efficient or accurate team on offense. But you can't use the asterisk for Adam Ghitelman. Good Adam showed up to play and left Bad Adam in College Park where he belongs, and the reward was an ACC POTW nod. Whenever Good Adam is in net, this team is nigh-unstoppable.
- No complaints about the offense, either. OK, they looked kind of bad at times, but we won't see a better defensive team than Carolina all year, and their goalie isn't too shabby either.
So yeah, Duke next week. Oh, and might I point out that in this week's USILA rankings, ACC teams occupy four of the top five spots, now that Duke vaults over Princeton after the latter's faceplant in the Big City Classic nightcap. Pretty good for a four-team league. Syracuse is the only interloper, and yeah, they've lost to us too.
Tomorrow, I finally say something about spring football practice (now that it's over of course) and on Wednesday, FOV goes all fashion critic on you and gives the new uniforms the ol' once-over.
Because speaking of the spotlight, the baseball team is back in it. Every poll moved the Hoos up a notch or two, and one puts 'em right back in the #1 spot. Even better, how about this headline: "Virginia Tech Following Virginia's Footsteps."
How cute. And what perfect timing, with that series on deck this coming weekend. Tech's series wins over FSU and Miami give them some legitimacy they lacked, but they're still capable of crashing out and putting up some real stinkers (they split a series with brand-spanking-new D-I school Bryant.) So they have some work to do, and obviously the troubling thing is they're going to want to do it this weekend. It would be a good time for sweeping them, just because.
But our team isn't too shabby either, you know. Both the bats and the pitching shone against one of the top teams in the nation, and certainly one of the best-hitting:
- The offense just hammered GT's pitching. The Jackets' ace Deck McGuire fell apart in the seventh trying to protect a one-run lead. Saturday starter Brandon Cumpton faced five batters and walked four of them before being yanked having not retired a single hitter. All in all 23 UVA runs crossed the plate over the weekend.
- In turn, our own pitching was mostly great. GT's fearsome bats only really touched up one of our pitchers. Danny Hultzen had a little bit of an un-Danny-like outing, but most pitchers don't actually hold GT to four runs like that. Morey got bombed, though. But two performances stand out: Cody Winiarski, who did his little trick of making sure all the hits come in different innings; and Branden Kline, who pitched four very nice innings in relief of Morey, giving up just three hits.
- The pitching caveat is that O'Connor really shortened up the bullpen this week. Only three pitchers trotted out of there: Kline, and Tyler Wilson and Kevin Arico in games 1 and 3. With a 9-1 lead on Sunday, it might not have been the worst idea to give Shane Halley or Chad O'Connor an inning instead of Arico, but clearly O'Connor has no intention of dicking around against a team that's already bombed 70 home runs on the season. So I get that.
- So VMI this week - likely looking at Will Roberts for the start on Wednesday - then revenge time against the Hokies for winning the series last year and causing VT fans to care about baseball. We can turn off the Hokie give-a-shit meter about this sport by sweeping them out of Davenport.
Speaking of revenge, that's kind of the theme for this coming weekend. This past weekend we had just these colossal titanic matchups of top-five teams; coming up, it's revenge time. The lacrosse team can't ever seem to get past Duke, and this is a great time to start piling on for the seven or so years of tough times against them.
Astute observers will notice that this is the second year in a row that we've seen the lax team go undefeated into the Duke game, and last year it didn't work out so well. I think the team is playing much better this year, though. Much better. They look the part of a championship team, so I've got high hopes for this one. But what about Saturday's game?
- I was especially pleased with the physicality of the play. The team played a very physical game and at the same time managed to stay mostly out of the penalty box, unlike against, say, Syracuse, where we spent half the game a man down. Mostly, but there were exceptions....
- ....like Bray Malphrus, who should be sitting for half or all of the Duke game. Maybe he was retaliating for the equally late and even more purposeful hit on Shamel Bratton earlier in the game, but it doesn't matter. No place for head-to-head hitting like that. I don't wanna hear that lax is a contact sport; that's why he should sit, the game is dangerous enough as it is. You look at what Max Pomper did to Ian Braddish, there's nothing wrong with that. Not late and not aimed at the head; unfortunately for Braddish his ribs didn't feel too good afterwards, but it happens. Head-butting doesn't just happen.
- I think you have to put a little bit of an asterisk next to the defensive performance, considering Billy Bitter missed half the game, their top two goal-scorers missed the entire game, and as I mentioned earlier Carolina isn't a real efficient or accurate team on offense. But you can't use the asterisk for Adam Ghitelman. Good Adam showed up to play and left Bad Adam in College Park where he belongs, and the reward was an ACC POTW nod. Whenever Good Adam is in net, this team is nigh-unstoppable.
- No complaints about the offense, either. OK, they looked kind of bad at times, but we won't see a better defensive team than Carolina all year, and their goalie isn't too shabby either.
So yeah, Duke next week. Oh, and might I point out that in this week's USILA rankings, ACC teams occupy four of the top five spots, now that Duke vaults over Princeton after the latter's faceplant in the Big City Classic nightcap. Pretty good for a four-team league. Syracuse is the only interloper, and yeah, they've lost to us too.
Tomorrow, I finally say something about spring football practice (now that it's over of course) and on Wednesday, FOV goes all fashion critic on you and gives the new uniforms the ol' once-over.
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