Name: Will Richardson
Position: OT
Hometown: Burlington, NC
School: Cummings
Height: 6'6"
Weight: 320
24/7: 90, four stars; #22 OT, NC #10, US #247
ESPN: 83, four stars; #8 OG, NC #9, SE #71, US #129
Rivals: 5.7, three stars; #41 OT, NC #17
Scout: three stars; #86 OT
Other offers: Florida State, Virginia Tech, NC State, Louisville, Duke, Indiana, East Carolina, Ball State, Ohio
Time to take advantage of the bye week to catch up on the 2014 recruiting class. Today we have Will Richardson, who committed in May and combines his presences with Steven Moss to give UVA a pretty formidable offensive line class even with just two members in it.
Richardson, first off, is a large, large guy. I put 320 up there for his weight because the sites can't agree; he's either around 305 or 335 depending on which site you ask, so I split the difference. Either way, he's huge. And could get even bigger if he's not careful: ESPN notes, and from the pictures that are out there, truthfully, that his frame could carry even more weight, and that Richardson will need to work to make sure he doesn't get too big and that the weight he adds is lean weight. (It seems, in looking around, that the 305-ish figures are the more recent ones, which is good news.)
Anyway, that's a good problem in an offensive lineman, especially one as nimble as Richardson. He played basketball for a while at Cummings, and ESPN also likes his ability to move around in space. Richardson has been told by the coaching staff that they want him at left tackle, and it's not hard to imagine that the staff does see him as the left tackle of the future.
The guru ratings have a little bit of a wide-ish split, but I think that's explainable. Richardson doesn't seem to have hit the camp circuit much, for one, and the fact that he's earned four-star ratings without doing so is impressive. Also, the pessimistic one is Scout, which is the guiltiest of the four in not scouting players who aren't already big-time recruits or going to a big-time school. Rivals is decidedly less optimistic than the other two, as well, but they still rate him pretty highly.
Offers-wise, well, I'll take anyone with an FSU and a VT offer. Richardson didn't really allow a lot of time for many other schools to offer him, having focused a lot on FSU and UVA in his recruiting, and there's a blurb in one of the articles I read about him basically telling the UNC coaches not to bother. Otherwise he'd almost certainly have had an offer from there, too. Just having FSU on his list is enough to justify the four-star ratings, though.
So: future left tackle prospect if everything works out. Massive yet nimble player who is in good enough shape to play some basketball as well as both sides of the line in football. Oh, and he's a 3.9 student who wants to study architecture. (We'll see about that with the time commitment and all - I can't remember a single football-playing A-schooler who was in something other than urban planning - but just remember Will Hill double-majored, one of which was bloody biology.) What's not to like? Just one thing: health. Richardson tore his meniscus in Cummings's first game of the season and will probably have knee surgery. It's not his first rodeo with the knee doctor; he also hurt it (although I don't know if it's the same one) playing basketball last winter.
Richardson's coach says he's had players have that meniscus surgery and come back in "two to three weeks" but I bet none of them weighed 300 pounds. And the coach doesn't know when the injury happened, which is a bad sign, because it means it just happened without a big production with trainers and being helped off the field and all. Could it be that Richardson is just too big for the stress he's putting on his knees? Playing basketball, offensive line, defensive line, and oh yeah the shot put too? I think that's possible.
So it's not just for mobility and strength reasons that Richardson will need to watch his weight. The knee thing could very well linger enough to force a redshirt, even if that weren't already par for the course for O-linemen. If he stays healthy, there's little doubt Richardson has the goods to develop into the left tackle of the future. Both tackle second-stringers are true freshmen, so it's far too early to project their development, which means it's also awfully tough to say when Richardson might expect to see the two-deep. Health, though, appears as if it'll be a little bit more of an effort for him than for most others.
Showing posts with label richardson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label richardson. Show all posts
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
weekend review
Of the big four sports played in North America, as well as some of the next-tier ones like soccer and lacrosse, baseball is easily the most structured. That's why it lends itself so well to advanced statistics. That's also why it's the most prone to bizarrity; in a more free-flowing game like hockey or basketball, there's less of a structure to break free of, which means there's less opportunity for something nutty to happen. And usually when it does, it's because of the officials.
So you get games like Saturday's against UNC. It's impressive how fast a pitchers' duel turned into a slugfest. Whit Mayberry did a great job in five innings of starting, needing only about 60 pitches and moving very efficiently. Nathan Kirby was great for two innings; unfortunately, he pitched in three, with the wheels coming off in the eighth. (He wasn't the only one, though; the boys in Carolina blue fell apart at exactly the same time. And I was impressed in the confidence the coaches put in Kirby, having him pitch through some tough situations in a very tight game.)
Thankfully, UVA scoring runs and then UNC giving them back wasn't the ultimate story. Carolina boneheadedness was. UVA's 11th-inning rally started to bear fruit when UNC tried to get the lead runner at third on a sacrifice bunt, and Colin Moran biffed the throw, which of course moved everyone up a bag. That's how the 11th started; it ended when Skye Bolt hit a deep drive that Mike Papi caught against the wall (saving at least a double), and for whatever reason, the pinch-runner on first never tagged up. He was nowhere to be found when the ball arrived back at the base to double him off and polish off the game.
You can argue for a while whose fault that was (and we have, believe me) but since none of the replays show where he ended up, it's all speculation. My guess: he came in thinking there were two outs (there was one) and that Papi's catch was the end of the inning. And therefore went tearing around the basepaths at the crack of the bat with home plate on the mind. If that's the case, I blame the first-base coach; I mean, I used to kind of internally roll my eyes in my baseball playing days, when I'd reach first and the coach there would remind me how many outs. But there's a reason they do that. I doubt it happened this time.
So with Thursday's game being a carryover of the scorching-bat attack from the Duke series and the VCU midweek game, and UVA scoring 10 runs on Carolina's ace Kent Emanuel (the more-than-heavy implication on the Sabre board is that Emanuel was tipping all his offspeed pitches) the only thing that kept UVA from a sweep was one really lousy inning on Friday.
It's really not that bad a deal, though. If you buy that there are five real competitors for the ACC title, any of which could win the tourney, UVA is in the tourney pool that has only two of them; us and FSU. UNC has to deal with both Clemson and NC State. On the other hand, we do have the only two teams that beat us in a series this year (that would be the two Techs.)
Some other notes in brief:
-- Nate Irving moves like a sloth in molasses, which makes it all the more exciting when he does things like beat out a bunt and score from second on a single to left.
-- Kyle Crockett was absolutely devastating on Thursday. In retrospect it's a shame we used him Thursday, because he got shelled Friday and might not have if he hadn't pitched the day before, but man: when his curve is working, left-handers look like total dipshits against it. And let's face it: we all know UNC has a nasty good lineup, and a six-run lead isn't totally safe. As we sort of learned on Saturday when the Heels overcame a three-run deficit and nearly blew past a four-run one. So no bagging on BOC for using Crockett to "save" a huge lead in game one.
-- Colin Moran won the ACC POY award over Mike Papi. I am not sure whether to be enraged or not. Papi probably had one of the best seasons ever for a non-winner. I mean, hello, national OBP leader. (Then again: national RBI leader Moran.) On the one hand, Papi was probably penalized for not playing the whole season. He wasn't even a starter at the beginning and sat about 10-12 games entirely. This is probably part of the reason Joe McCarthy won freshman of the year instead of Skye Bolt. So in that respect it evens out. And it wasn't the media voting, it was the coaches, so for once we can't blame Caulton Tudor and his ilk.
On the other hand, the coaches couldn't even agree on which third baseman should be on the all-ACC first team; Moran shared that honor with VT's Chad Pinder. If he's not definitively the best at his position, is he really the best overall player in the conference?
Oh well; we don't really know if Papi was "definitively the best" outfielder either, and he might well not have been. Anyway, UVA was well represented on the honors list: Papi, Reed Gragnani, Nick Howard, and Kyle Crockett all made the first team; McCarthy and Branden Cogswell the second team, and UVA took home FOY and COY honors while UNC took pitcher and player of the year. Of 36 slots on the honorees list, 15 are filled with Hoos or Heels. Nice especially to see Gragnani honored after a career spent mostly on the injured list.
-- A few other bragfacts from the ACC release on this honors stuff: this is BOC's third COY award in four years and fourth of his UVA tenure. During that tenure, UVA has only failed to reach 40 wins twice; we got 39 those times.
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-- Clifton Richardson's impending transfer is definitely one of the more disappointing ones of late. I think pretty much all of us had high hopes for his future. It doesn't hurt the depth too badly, but Richardson had more potential than either of the backs in front of him on the chart. Even if Taquan Mizzell was likely going to ensure Richardson never hit the top of the food chain. It leaves basically four backs on the roster for 2013, all of whom will almost certainly see the field at some point. Kevin Parks and Mizzell likely hold the inside track on the top two slots, and Khalek Shepherd and Kye Morgan will at a bare minimum get garbage time - though probably a little more than that.
-- An article that casts some doubt on the future, as-yet-nonexistent ACC Network. Consolation prize if the ACC Network falls through: more cash from ESPN, quite probably meant as a way to ensure the viability of the conference since it's really in ESPN's best interest for the ACC to exist. The article says that works out to about $2 million more per school per year, which after a little math and some assumptions means about $336 million total. So what I hear from that is that if ESPN can buy out the necessary rights from the other media entities that own them for less than $336 million, it's network city.
-- The men's tennis team plays in its third straight national championship matchup tomorrow against UCLA. A win would give UVA its first ever title, and extend our national championship streak to five years (UVA has won a national title in something every year since 2009) as well as give us a chance at our first multiple-title year since 1993.
So you get games like Saturday's against UNC. It's impressive how fast a pitchers' duel turned into a slugfest. Whit Mayberry did a great job in five innings of starting, needing only about 60 pitches and moving very efficiently. Nathan Kirby was great for two innings; unfortunately, he pitched in three, with the wheels coming off in the eighth. (He wasn't the only one, though; the boys in Carolina blue fell apart at exactly the same time. And I was impressed in the confidence the coaches put in Kirby, having him pitch through some tough situations in a very tight game.)
Thankfully, UVA scoring runs and then UNC giving them back wasn't the ultimate story. Carolina boneheadedness was. UVA's 11th-inning rally started to bear fruit when UNC tried to get the lead runner at third on a sacrifice bunt, and Colin Moran biffed the throw, which of course moved everyone up a bag. That's how the 11th started; it ended when Skye Bolt hit a deep drive that Mike Papi caught against the wall (saving at least a double), and for whatever reason, the pinch-runner on first never tagged up. He was nowhere to be found when the ball arrived back at the base to double him off and polish off the game.
You can argue for a while whose fault that was (and we have, believe me) but since none of the replays show where he ended up, it's all speculation. My guess: he came in thinking there were two outs (there was one) and that Papi's catch was the end of the inning. And therefore went tearing around the basepaths at the crack of the bat with home plate on the mind. If that's the case, I blame the first-base coach; I mean, I used to kind of internally roll my eyes in my baseball playing days, when I'd reach first and the coach there would remind me how many outs. But there's a reason they do that. I doubt it happened this time.
So with Thursday's game being a carryover of the scorching-bat attack from the Duke series and the VCU midweek game, and UVA scoring 10 runs on Carolina's ace Kent Emanuel (the more-than-heavy implication on the Sabre board is that Emanuel was tipping all his offspeed pitches) the only thing that kept UVA from a sweep was one really lousy inning on Friday.
It's really not that bad a deal, though. If you buy that there are five real competitors for the ACC title, any of which could win the tourney, UVA is in the tourney pool that has only two of them; us and FSU. UNC has to deal with both Clemson and NC State. On the other hand, we do have the only two teams that beat us in a series this year (that would be the two Techs.)
Some other notes in brief:
-- Nate Irving moves like a sloth in molasses, which makes it all the more exciting when he does things like beat out a bunt and score from second on a single to left.
-- Kyle Crockett was absolutely devastating on Thursday. In retrospect it's a shame we used him Thursday, because he got shelled Friday and might not have if he hadn't pitched the day before, but man: when his curve is working, left-handers look like total dipshits against it. And let's face it: we all know UNC has a nasty good lineup, and a six-run lead isn't totally safe. As we sort of learned on Saturday when the Heels overcame a three-run deficit and nearly blew past a four-run one. So no bagging on BOC for using Crockett to "save" a huge lead in game one.
-- Colin Moran won the ACC POY award over Mike Papi. I am not sure whether to be enraged or not. Papi probably had one of the best seasons ever for a non-winner. I mean, hello, national OBP leader. (Then again: national RBI leader Moran.) On the one hand, Papi was probably penalized for not playing the whole season. He wasn't even a starter at the beginning and sat about 10-12 games entirely. This is probably part of the reason Joe McCarthy won freshman of the year instead of Skye Bolt. So in that respect it evens out. And it wasn't the media voting, it was the coaches, so for once we can't blame Caulton Tudor and his ilk.
On the other hand, the coaches couldn't even agree on which third baseman should be on the all-ACC first team; Moran shared that honor with VT's Chad Pinder. If he's not definitively the best at his position, is he really the best overall player in the conference?
Oh well; we don't really know if Papi was "definitively the best" outfielder either, and he might well not have been. Anyway, UVA was well represented on the honors list: Papi, Reed Gragnani, Nick Howard, and Kyle Crockett all made the first team; McCarthy and Branden Cogswell the second team, and UVA took home FOY and COY honors while UNC took pitcher and player of the year. Of 36 slots on the honorees list, 15 are filled with Hoos or Heels. Nice especially to see Gragnani honored after a career spent mostly on the injured list.
-- A few other bragfacts from the ACC release on this honors stuff: this is BOC's third COY award in four years and fourth of his UVA tenure. During that tenure, UVA has only failed to reach 40 wins twice; we got 39 those times.
*****************************************************
-- Clifton Richardson's impending transfer is definitely one of the more disappointing ones of late. I think pretty much all of us had high hopes for his future. It doesn't hurt the depth too badly, but Richardson had more potential than either of the backs in front of him on the chart. Even if Taquan Mizzell was likely going to ensure Richardson never hit the top of the food chain. It leaves basically four backs on the roster for 2013, all of whom will almost certainly see the field at some point. Kevin Parks and Mizzell likely hold the inside track on the top two slots, and Khalek Shepherd and Kye Morgan will at a bare minimum get garbage time - though probably a little more than that.
-- An article that casts some doubt on the future, as-yet-nonexistent ACC Network. Consolation prize if the ACC Network falls through: more cash from ESPN, quite probably meant as a way to ensure the viability of the conference since it's really in ESPN's best interest for the ACC to exist. The article says that works out to about $2 million more per school per year, which after a little math and some assumptions means about $336 million total. So what I hear from that is that if ESPN can buy out the necessary rights from the other media entities that own them for less than $336 million, it's network city.
-- The men's tennis team plays in its third straight national championship matchup tomorrow against UCLA. A win would give UVA its first ever title, and extend our national championship streak to five years (UVA has won a national title in something every year since 2009) as well as give us a chance at our first multiple-title year since 1993.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
answers from spring
The spring game has come and gone, and now spring practice as well. The football team got to break in its fancy new practice facility, which is a vast improvement over walkthroughs on the JPJA floor. You'd think we'd have some answers as to how things might look in the fall, and it so happens we just might. I've been taking notes, and as usual here's what I think:
STUFF THAT GOT CLEARED UP:
-- Quarterback, sort of. Just having something resembling a depth chart at this stage of the game is an improvement over the past. At the beginning of spring practice it was clear that Phillip Sims had somehow worked his way to the bottom of it. Mike London made noises about how nothing's decided this is just a guide of sorts blah blah blah, but it became clear pretty quickly that Sims was being sent a message. David Watford and Greyson Lambert more or less split the first-team quarterback duties, and one starts to get the sense that Watford has a slight leg up on Lambert. And that Sims hasn't done anything to move out of the doldrums; his 8-for-18 spring game performance was something less than impressive.
-- Defensive line should be pretty sweet. The age-old question of whether we should rejoice or jump off a bridge when one unit dominates the other naturally applies. However, there's good reason to believe the D-line was showing off for real. David Dean in particular came in for high praise from all corners - including, most importantly, the coaches - and there's a good chance he becomes the disruptive three-tech we thought we'd get out of Chris Brathwaite. (For whom, praise be, the door is not closed for a return. It looks like he'll be trying to follow in the footsteps of Jameel Sewell.)
-- Wide receiver should also be in good shape. Good things are being said about the second line. Dominique Terrell had a Jeff White article devoted to his good work, CavsCorner had a flowery one about E.J. Scott, and Adrian Gamble is getting noticed too.
-- We do seem to have a starting linebacker corps. And Henry Coley in particular is stepping into the leadership gap left when Steve Greer and Laroy Reynolds graduated. Coley had a little disciplinary hiccup last year, and it's nice to see that seems to be resolved. Occasionally I've seen a couple hyperactive imaginations worrying that Coley's entrenchment at middle linebacker means Kwontie Moore is a bust, to which I say piffle: Coley has two years of experience on Moore. And Demeitre Brim is moving quickly to secure the strongside spot. UVA's front seven will not be among the most-hyped in the conference when the season begins, but it could have some eyes open and looking their way by November.
STUFF THAT DIDN'T:
-- We heard precious little out of the running back realm that was especially useful. Even if we had, Taquan Mizzell is still showing up in the fall ready to scramble whatever pecking order has been established. Even so, I was hoping to hear what that pecking order might have been, and specifically, where Clifton Richardson fits. In the pre-spring depth chart he's third, and didn't appear to make a strong upward move.
-- It's all well and good to know sort of where the quarterbacks stand, but we still don't have a starter.
-- The O-line. This is the real question mark. It would be getting a lot more attention if we had a settled quarterback situation. I think the running game in particular is the most at risk, because the interior of the line is the least secure. And David Watford may have an advantage at quarterback partly because he can scramble out of the way of incoming pass rushers much better than either Sims or Lambert.
Everything will get ten times more complex when the rubber hits the road in September, of course. But if I were to break things down as simple as possible, here in April, I'd say this: The defense has the bodies and the talent to be very good, and it depends on how well they take to Jon Tenuta's schemes. And how often they blitz into a screen pass. The offense depends on the line, and secondarily on the quarterback. Quarterback is going to get the attention, and let's hope the line doesn't because poor play will be much more readily apparent than quality play. But the offense will have the weapons it needs; we'll see if the line can let them shine.
***************************************************
Just a couple things I thought shouldn't wait til Monday. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an excellent interview with George Adeosun. Refreshingly honest and insightful. And Joe Lunardi's "I need to justify my existence for the other ten months out of the year" early bracketology has UVA a four seed. This means absolutely nothing for next year's tourney but is interesting in the sense that we know the hoops team should do very well next year, but it's a little surprising to see the media powers-that-be thinking so highly of them as well. Much more surprising than Chris Nelson's decommitment, anyway. Dude visited damn near every school in Florida in the last two months. Nelson will probably land on his feet, and I do appreciate that he decided to get it over with rather than holding a spot until the last minute before committing elsewhere. UVA will be fine, as long as they snag Andrew Brown and/or Derrick Nnadi.
STUFF THAT GOT CLEARED UP:
-- Quarterback, sort of. Just having something resembling a depth chart at this stage of the game is an improvement over the past. At the beginning of spring practice it was clear that Phillip Sims had somehow worked his way to the bottom of it. Mike London made noises about how nothing's decided this is just a guide of sorts blah blah blah, but it became clear pretty quickly that Sims was being sent a message. David Watford and Greyson Lambert more or less split the first-team quarterback duties, and one starts to get the sense that Watford has a slight leg up on Lambert. And that Sims hasn't done anything to move out of the doldrums; his 8-for-18 spring game performance was something less than impressive.
-- Defensive line should be pretty sweet. The age-old question of whether we should rejoice or jump off a bridge when one unit dominates the other naturally applies. However, there's good reason to believe the D-line was showing off for real. David Dean in particular came in for high praise from all corners - including, most importantly, the coaches - and there's a good chance he becomes the disruptive three-tech we thought we'd get out of Chris Brathwaite. (For whom, praise be, the door is not closed for a return. It looks like he'll be trying to follow in the footsteps of Jameel Sewell.)
-- Wide receiver should also be in good shape. Good things are being said about the second line. Dominique Terrell had a Jeff White article devoted to his good work, CavsCorner had a flowery one about E.J. Scott, and Adrian Gamble is getting noticed too.
-- We do seem to have a starting linebacker corps. And Henry Coley in particular is stepping into the leadership gap left when Steve Greer and Laroy Reynolds graduated. Coley had a little disciplinary hiccup last year, and it's nice to see that seems to be resolved. Occasionally I've seen a couple hyperactive imaginations worrying that Coley's entrenchment at middle linebacker means Kwontie Moore is a bust, to which I say piffle: Coley has two years of experience on Moore. And Demeitre Brim is moving quickly to secure the strongside spot. UVA's front seven will not be among the most-hyped in the conference when the season begins, but it could have some eyes open and looking their way by November.
STUFF THAT DIDN'T:
-- We heard precious little out of the running back realm that was especially useful. Even if we had, Taquan Mizzell is still showing up in the fall ready to scramble whatever pecking order has been established. Even so, I was hoping to hear what that pecking order might have been, and specifically, where Clifton Richardson fits. In the pre-spring depth chart he's third, and didn't appear to make a strong upward move.
-- It's all well and good to know sort of where the quarterbacks stand, but we still don't have a starter.
-- The O-line. This is the real question mark. It would be getting a lot more attention if we had a settled quarterback situation. I think the running game in particular is the most at risk, because the interior of the line is the least secure. And David Watford may have an advantage at quarterback partly because he can scramble out of the way of incoming pass rushers much better than either Sims or Lambert.
Everything will get ten times more complex when the rubber hits the road in September, of course. But if I were to break things down as simple as possible, here in April, I'd say this: The defense has the bodies and the talent to be very good, and it depends on how well they take to Jon Tenuta's schemes. And how often they blitz into a screen pass. The offense depends on the line, and secondarily on the quarterback. Quarterback is going to get the attention, and let's hope the line doesn't because poor play will be much more readily apparent than quality play. But the offense will have the weapons it needs; we'll see if the line can let them shine.
***************************************************
Just a couple things I thought shouldn't wait til Monday. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an excellent interview with George Adeosun. Refreshingly honest and insightful. And Joe Lunardi's "I need to justify my existence for the other ten months out of the year" early bracketology has UVA a four seed. This means absolutely nothing for next year's tourney but is interesting in the sense that we know the hoops team should do very well next year, but it's a little surprising to see the media powers-that-be thinking so highly of them as well. Much more surprising than Chris Nelson's decommitment, anyway. Dude visited damn near every school in Florida in the last two months. Nelson will probably land on his feet, and I do appreciate that he decided to get it over with rather than holding a spot until the last minute before committing elsewhere. UVA will be fine, as long as they snag Andrew Brown and/or Derrick Nnadi.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
weekend review
Phew. It's been a busy weekend, which is why you haven't seen a poll ballot. Here is that ballot, provided with little explanation because we have got to get a move on here.
I think GT's drop out is because they didn't do so hot against Duke. No, I once again have not cast a ballot for UVA. Moving up, but they wouldn't have made it this week because Rutgers came in 2nd in the preliminary ranking, with UVA 5th. Consider UVA 29th in my ballot, if you like. Those darn games against Idaho and Indiana are dragging us down. Not in the eyes of some voters, however; UVA is ranked 24th in the AP poll (woo!) and is likely to also be ranked when the Blogpoll itself comes out, as 41 blogs have given us a ranking that lands anywhere from 18th to 25th. (The 18th-place vote comes from Track 'Em Tigers, the SB Nation blog that covers our former uniform pants sister school, Auburn.)
So I'm getting increasingly lonely in my holding out on that particular issue. Last week - before the FSU game - UVA garnered votes from seven or eight blogs, including VT people Gobbler Country (with whom we will have a Civil Conversation later this week) and - this may come as a surprise to those of you who paid particular attention to the part of last week's Civil Conversation in which was listed a bevy of three-loss-or-worse teams that they felt were better than UVA - Tomahawk Nation. The bloke who answered that question and the bloke who cast the ballot were two different blokes, however.
Anyway, I promise you this: if we beat Tech, I'm casting a UVA vote, regardless of what my system says to do.
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So let's check out predictions real quick. I didn't have that many this week.
- Perry Jones and Kevin Parks combine for about 3.8-4.0 yards per carry.
Nope, they got stuffed, pretty much. The FSU run defense was as advertised. By them, not me. Even if I include Clifton Richardson here, which I was considering doing, we only get to 3.4.
- The UVA rushing game totals about 140 yards.
If you take out the sacks, which you're supposed to do, it's about 95-100. Not close enough to give me this one.
- Mike Rocco throws more TDs than INTs.....if even any INTs at all.
FSU fans may have been right about the run defense but they were oh so wrong about their secondary, which they hella bragged on and called me a homer when I praised ours in the Q&A. I'm a blogger. Of course I'm a homer. But I also know what I'm talking about, and the FSU pass defense was little better than any other we've seen this year. Rocco threw a beautiful toss to Superman Jones for his TD; when you let a 5'7" elf catch a quasi-fade route throw, you're doing it wrong. And he had zero picks.
- Devonta Freeman also gets about four yards a carry.
Freeman had lotsa yards per carry, actually, and besides that the FSU coaches decided to use Jermaine Thomas as the primary back and he had almost five himself. The run defense was more of a good-when-it-had-to-be kinda deal than actually good. So I get another nope.
- Florida State has at least one scoring play of 50+ yards.
With apologies to Chase Minnifield, executor of the play of the season so far, I am gonna take credit for this one because I think I was right in spirit. Bert Reed's 68-yard reception was precisely what I had in mind, and FSU knocked out a couple other 50+ yard plays, one of which got called back on a holding call that was kinda semi-holding. (That's OK, their TD drive was full of actual holding that went unflagged.) I'm taking credit for this one, thanking our lucky stars and the aptly named (on that play) Chase Minnifield that it was a 68-yarder and not a 69-yarder, and chalking it up to a backhanded way of giving props to the play because who could foresee that kind of superhuman effort?
- FSU converts a long third down (10 yards or more) by picking up at least twice the necessary yardage.
The Noles only had two such opportunities; one was a 3rd-and-14 that was picked up with a 17-yard pass and one was a 3rd-and-11 that just so happened to be Steve Greer's NO-FG-FOR-YOU sack on E.J. Manuel. No dice on this, which is good because I hate when this happens.
Two-for-six moves me to 33-of-82 for the season. And I'm now doing better against the spread (6-4-1) than I am on real score (6-5.)
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OK, Senior Seasons continues to wind down, but playoffs continue for a few. Here are this week's high school results:
St. John Lutheran 28, Victory Christian 26: Demeitre Brim ran for a 70-yard and an 81-yard touchdown, but his season comes to a close in overtime. He ran or threw for all four touchdowns, but Victory couldn't get a necessary 2PC in OT. It also comes out that Brim's shoulder was hurt three weeks ago, but he's been playing through it and not throwing the ball much.
Salem 35, Bayside 21: Anthony Cooper had four catches for 110 yards and a touchdown, but it wasn't enough as Bayside bows out.
L.C. Bird 21, Varina 16: Maurice Canady fumbled on Varina's last-gasp drive, and Varina is denied a rematch in the regional championship with Hermitage.
Buford 31, Jefferson County 0 (C.J. Moore)
Garnet Valley 52, Central Bucks South 48 (Matt Johns)
Nederland 21, Houston Stratford 14 (Kelvin Rainey)
North Cross 26, Norfolk Christian 14 (Moore/Nixon/Wahee/Wynn)
I.C. Norcom 20, Hampton 14 (Jamall Brown)
Hermitage 14, Thomas Dale 0 (Andre Miles-Redmond)
All in all not the kind of weekend you'd hope for. Especially for Norfolk Christian, upset in the state championship game. Most other recruits' seasons have ended as well; only Hermitage, Buford, and St. Joseph are still alive. (St. Joseph, Max Valles's team, didn't play this week, and in fact doesn't play their state championship game until the first weekend in December. They have a game against in-town public school rival Hammonton next weekend.)
Hermitage will play Bird in the Division 6 Central Region final; if they win, Miles-Redmond will get an early taste of Scott Stadium in the state semifinals. As for Buford and C.J. Moore, they are now in the state quarterfinals.
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Are you disappointed that the hoops team lost its first game in the Virgin Islands to TCU? Don't be. At least, not too badly. For one thing, they still finished 2-1, and for another, they still got Drexel on the schedule, a reasonably good CAA team, and Drake isn't half bad either. Losing to TCU won't look good in the committee's eyes, but RPI-wise it wasn't a disaster. (Although, the way Norfolk State played down there, they might just end up tearing up the MEAC and turning into an RPI boost themselves.)
The offense still needs plenty of work, as the TCU loss and Drexel win (49 points) are perfect evidence of. But the defense has been nothing short of outstanding in the first five games, and if that continues it'll carry the Hoos a long way. KenPom's numbers now have UVA as the 12th-best defensive team in the country, and don't be surprised if that kind of success lasts all season. Of course, the ACC being what it is, right now there are six conference teams in the top 25 in that category.
The weekly RPI tracker has been updated and added to the sidebar for your edification.
Lastly, there's no lacrosse schedule yet, which drives me a little bit crazy even though it's not really time yet, if history's any guide. (There is a baseball schedule, but I never bothered pointing it out because it's lame.) However, one more game has been announced: in addition to Cornell in Baltimore (not entirely newsworthy since UVA typically always plays an NFL-stadium game in either Baltimore or New Jersey) the Hoos will also head out to Denver to play Penn at Mile High Stadium or whatever the hell the Broncos play in these days. So that's cool. I'm always in favor of this kind of game because it usually, if not always, means TV. Like last year's game against Penn, this one will also take place after the ACC tournament, or at least, so I'm assuming, as the date is April 27.
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Some programming notes for this week. Obviously it's a shorter one. Game preview will go up on Wednesday instead of Thursday because if you think I'm spending all that time putting that thing together on Thanksgiving Day you're nuts. Thursday posting will be limited to the standard Thanksgiving Day greeting. I do expect we will have a Q&A session with Gobbler Country on at some point. This game will not be one in which you can find me on the Twitters, but you should follow @MaizeNBlueWahoo anyway because I'm greedy for followers. As it's a holiday weekend, take yourself a holiday after the game preview and don't expect much out of me til Sunday or Monday.
From Old Virginia Ballot - Week 13
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | LSU Tigers | -- |
| 2 | Alabama Crimson Tide |  1 |
| 3 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys |  -1 |
| 4 | Michigan Wolverines | 3 |
| 5 | Oklahoma Sooners | -1 |
| 6 | Boise St. Broncos | -- |
| 7 | Oregon Ducks | -2 |
| 8 | USC Trojans | 6 |
| 9 | Stanford Cardinal | 2 |
| 10 | TCU Horned Frogs | -1 |
| 11 | Arkansas Razorbacks | 10 |
| 12 | Houston Cougars | 8 |
| 13 | Virginia Tech Hokies | 2 |
| 14 | Wisconsin Badgers | -2 |
| 15 | Clemson Tigers | -5 |
| 16 | Penn St. Nittany Lions | 1 |
| 17 | Georgia Bulldogs | 2 |
| 18 | Nebraska Cornhuskers | -10 |
| 19 | Kansas St. Wildcats | 4 |
| 20 | South Carolina Gamecocks | -7 |
| 21 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | -5 |
| 22 | Michigan St. Spartans | -4 |
| 23 | Southern Miss. Golden Eagles | -1 |
| 24 | Baylor Bears | -- |
| 25 | Rutgers Scarlet Knights | -- |
| Dropouts: Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, Florida St. Seminoles | ||
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »
I think GT's drop out is because they didn't do so hot against Duke. No, I once again have not cast a ballot for UVA. Moving up, but they wouldn't have made it this week because Rutgers came in 2nd in the preliminary ranking, with UVA 5th. Consider UVA 29th in my ballot, if you like. Those darn games against Idaho and Indiana are dragging us down. Not in the eyes of some voters, however; UVA is ranked 24th in the AP poll (woo!) and is likely to also be ranked when the Blogpoll itself comes out, as 41 blogs have given us a ranking that lands anywhere from 18th to 25th. (The 18th-place vote comes from Track 'Em Tigers, the SB Nation blog that covers our former uniform pants sister school, Auburn.)
So I'm getting increasingly lonely in my holding out on that particular issue. Last week - before the FSU game - UVA garnered votes from seven or eight blogs, including VT people Gobbler Country (with whom we will have a Civil Conversation later this week) and - this may come as a surprise to those of you who paid particular attention to the part of last week's Civil Conversation in which was listed a bevy of three-loss-or-worse teams that they felt were better than UVA - Tomahawk Nation. The bloke who answered that question and the bloke who cast the ballot were two different blokes, however.
Anyway, I promise you this: if we beat Tech, I'm casting a UVA vote, regardless of what my system says to do.
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So let's check out predictions real quick. I didn't have that many this week.
- Perry Jones and Kevin Parks combine for about 3.8-4.0 yards per carry.
Nope, they got stuffed, pretty much. The FSU run defense was as advertised. By them, not me. Even if I include Clifton Richardson here, which I was considering doing, we only get to 3.4.
- The UVA rushing game totals about 140 yards.
If you take out the sacks, which you're supposed to do, it's about 95-100. Not close enough to give me this one.
- Mike Rocco throws more TDs than INTs.....if even any INTs at all.
FSU fans may have been right about the run defense but they were oh so wrong about their secondary, which they hella bragged on and called me a homer when I praised ours in the Q&A. I'm a blogger. Of course I'm a homer. But I also know what I'm talking about, and the FSU pass defense was little better than any other we've seen this year. Rocco threw a beautiful toss to Superman Jones for his TD; when you let a 5'7" elf catch a quasi-fade route throw, you're doing it wrong. And he had zero picks.
- Devonta Freeman also gets about four yards a carry.
Freeman had lotsa yards per carry, actually, and besides that the FSU coaches decided to use Jermaine Thomas as the primary back and he had almost five himself. The run defense was more of a good-when-it-had-to-be kinda deal than actually good. So I get another nope.
- Florida State has at least one scoring play of 50+ yards.
With apologies to Chase Minnifield, executor of the play of the season so far, I am gonna take credit for this one because I think I was right in spirit. Bert Reed's 68-yard reception was precisely what I had in mind, and FSU knocked out a couple other 50+ yard plays, one of which got called back on a holding call that was kinda semi-holding. (That's OK, their TD drive was full of actual holding that went unflagged.) I'm taking credit for this one, thanking our lucky stars and the aptly named (on that play) Chase Minnifield that it was a 68-yarder and not a 69-yarder, and chalking it up to a backhanded way of giving props to the play because who could foresee that kind of superhuman effort?
- FSU converts a long third down (10 yards or more) by picking up at least twice the necessary yardage.
The Noles only had two such opportunities; one was a 3rd-and-14 that was picked up with a 17-yard pass and one was a 3rd-and-11 that just so happened to be Steve Greer's NO-FG-FOR-YOU sack on E.J. Manuel. No dice on this, which is good because I hate when this happens.
Two-for-six moves me to 33-of-82 for the season. And I'm now doing better against the spread (6-4-1) than I am on real score (6-5.)
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OK, Senior Seasons continues to wind down, but playoffs continue for a few. Here are this week's high school results:
St. John Lutheran 28, Victory Christian 26: Demeitre Brim ran for a 70-yard and an 81-yard touchdown, but his season comes to a close in overtime. He ran or threw for all four touchdowns, but Victory couldn't get a necessary 2PC in OT. It also comes out that Brim's shoulder was hurt three weeks ago, but he's been playing through it and not throwing the ball much.
Salem 35, Bayside 21: Anthony Cooper had four catches for 110 yards and a touchdown, but it wasn't enough as Bayside bows out.
L.C. Bird 21, Varina 16: Maurice Canady fumbled on Varina's last-gasp drive, and Varina is denied a rematch in the regional championship with Hermitage.
Buford 31, Jefferson County 0 (C.J. Moore)
Garnet Valley 52, Central Bucks South 48 (Matt Johns)
Nederland 21, Houston Stratford 14 (Kelvin Rainey)
North Cross 26, Norfolk Christian 14 (Moore/Nixon/Wahee/Wynn)
I.C. Norcom 20, Hampton 14 (Jamall Brown)
Hermitage 14, Thomas Dale 0 (Andre Miles-Redmond)
All in all not the kind of weekend you'd hope for. Especially for Norfolk Christian, upset in the state championship game. Most other recruits' seasons have ended as well; only Hermitage, Buford, and St. Joseph are still alive. (St. Joseph, Max Valles's team, didn't play this week, and in fact doesn't play their state championship game until the first weekend in December. They have a game against in-town public school rival Hammonton next weekend.)
Hermitage will play Bird in the Division 6 Central Region final; if they win, Miles-Redmond will get an early taste of Scott Stadium in the state semifinals. As for Buford and C.J. Moore, they are now in the state quarterfinals.
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Are you disappointed that the hoops team lost its first game in the Virgin Islands to TCU? Don't be. At least, not too badly. For one thing, they still finished 2-1, and for another, they still got Drexel on the schedule, a reasonably good CAA team, and Drake isn't half bad either. Losing to TCU won't look good in the committee's eyes, but RPI-wise it wasn't a disaster. (Although, the way Norfolk State played down there, they might just end up tearing up the MEAC and turning into an RPI boost themselves.)
The offense still needs plenty of work, as the TCU loss and Drexel win (49 points) are perfect evidence of. But the defense has been nothing short of outstanding in the first five games, and if that continues it'll carry the Hoos a long way. KenPom's numbers now have UVA as the 12th-best defensive team in the country, and don't be surprised if that kind of success lasts all season. Of course, the ACC being what it is, right now there are six conference teams in the top 25 in that category.
The weekly RPI tracker has been updated and added to the sidebar for your edification.
Lastly, there's no lacrosse schedule yet, which drives me a little bit crazy even though it's not really time yet, if history's any guide. (There is a baseball schedule, but I never bothered pointing it out because it's lame.) However, one more game has been announced: in addition to Cornell in Baltimore (not entirely newsworthy since UVA typically always plays an NFL-stadium game in either Baltimore or New Jersey) the Hoos will also head out to Denver to play Penn at Mile High Stadium or whatever the hell the Broncos play in these days. So that's cool. I'm always in favor of this kind of game because it usually, if not always, means TV. Like last year's game against Penn, this one will also take place after the ACC tournament, or at least, so I'm assuming, as the date is April 27.
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Some programming notes for this week. Obviously it's a shorter one. Game preview will go up on Wednesday instead of Thursday because if you think I'm spending all that time putting that thing together on Thanksgiving Day you're nuts. Thursday posting will be limited to the standard Thanksgiving Day greeting. I do expect we will have a Q&A session with Gobbler Country on at some point. This game will not be one in which you can find me on the Twitters, but you should follow @MaizeNBlueWahoo anyway because I'm greedy for followers. As it's a holiday weekend, take yourself a holiday after the game preview and don't expect much out of me til Sunday or Monday.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
weekend review
UVA just beat Maryland, in College Park, to earn bowl eligibility and officially deny Maryland theirs, so I think you'd forgive me if I just rode the high from the weekend and posted a bunch of :)'s and left it at that. But maybe not.
There are way too many impressive things from this weekend to list them one by one, so how about this: three more Hoos earned player of the week honors in the ACC, one of them being Austin Pasztor, which makes it three out of five starting offensive linemen (so far) that have done so this year.
Rodney McLeod's three picks made him a no-brainer for defensive back, but honestly, I only liked one and a half of them. Knock it down on fourth down, man! McLeod's second pick actually nearly cost the Hoos; two plays later, Rocco threw a pick that gave Maryland the ball at the edge of the red zone. If he'd have just knocked the ball to the ground, UVA gets the ball inside the 50 instead of their own 20, a 35-yard field position swing. The third pick was also on fourth down, but in a crowd so batting the ball might have been a risky play; hence, one and a half.
Let's dig into the extensive list of predictions this week.
- UVA running backs total at least 40 carries.
They had exactly 40, but I probably would've cheated a little and counted David Watford's carries too. Fortunately, I didn't need to. Once again, Bill Lazor leaned on the run.
- Jones and Parks total at least 30.
They had 36, which qualifies me to start off 2-for-2. Let me break off into story time here for a second: one thing I loved about growing up watching Michigan football was that Michigan always - always - had a workhorse running back they could rely on game in, game out to pile up the yardage. Generally a single hoss. There was Ricky Powers, Tyrone Wheatley, Touchdown Tim Biakabutuka, the A-Train, Anthony Thomas, Chris Perry, Mike Hart. Perry once toted the ball 51 times in a game. Running back is my favorite position on the field, and there's no fun quite like watching a dominant one do his thing.
UVA probably will never go with that strategy - in fact, the days of a single workhorse putting the team on his back like that are probably sliding slowly into oblivion - but what we're seeing now is close. No, nobody's going to average 26 carries a game the way Perry did, but the workload handed these backs is workhorse stuff all the same, and it's just a treat and a half to watch them do their thing. Plus, UVA is not Michigan and cannot click its heels together three times and make dominant running backs appear out of thin air; this platoon is a great thing for recruiting. Perry Jones has a terrific shot at getting to 1,000 yards; the fact that he can do so without hogging the depth chart allows Mike London to tell recruits that they can have their cake and eat it too. Playing time and stats are readily available regardless of the depth chart. Having a single workhorse is a lot of fun, but it turns your RB recruiting into QB-style recruiting where you can only attract a really good player once every three years or so. As long as there are this many carries to go around, UVA should be able to do very well for itself in picking up stars to carry the ball.
- All three backs exceed their season averages.
Jones did, but unfortunately for me here, Parks and Richardson did not. We saw much less of Clifton Richardson than usual and I just chalk that up to Perry Jones having a really good day.
- UVA piles up at least 200 yards on the ground.
And then some - we got to 220. Maryland's run defense was about as bad as advertised.
- Mike Rocco's season passing average after this game is over 7 yards per attempt.
Rocco had what I think anyone would say was his best game of the year. His only season high was in yardage (he's put together better completion percentages, passer ratings, etc.) but when it comes down to body of work, this was Rocco's best of his career. He looked like a seasoned vet and, for one game at least, shed the dreaded "game manager" label and progressed to controlling the game, not just managing it. And yes, his season average is boosted up to 7.22. Prior to the Miami game it was down at 6.52; yes, that three-quarters of a yard is a big deal. UVA's passing attack has jumped from 104th in the country to 73rd in just two games.
- Rocco has about 20 pass attempts for about 170 yards.
That is 8.5 yards per attempt. Actual stats: 36 attempts for 307 yards, which is about 8.53. I do not get credit for the prediction because UVA went to the pass almost twice as much as I expected, but let the record show that Rocco played about exactly as well as I expected him to. And look, Maryland's kinda crappy so don't let your expectations go overboard for when we play teams with defenses like FSU and VT, but averaging 8.53 yards an attempt would make you 11th in the country in that regard.
- In terms of average, C.J. Brown is Maryland's leading rusher.
Should I get credit for this one? Brown averaged 12 per carry because his day consisted of taking off for a 25-yarder and one carry for -1, which if I remember right was just a fumble that he fell on. I'll go ahead and say yes because it's plays exactly like that 25-yarder that I was afraid of here, and UVA bottled up Davin Meggett (a 42-yarder and then seven carries for 10 more) and Justus Pickett (didn't do anything much) which was basically what I figured would happen.
- If Brown is held to less than 20 yards rushing, UVA wins by at least two touchdowns.
Well, he wasn't, and we did. I'm gonna call this one void and not count it because the "if" wasn't met, and I'll count my blessings that it wasn't, because the reason it wasn't is that Randy Edsall did exactly what I didn't expect. Brown just wasn't even used as a rushing threat. That quarterback situation looks eerily like our Rocco/Watford platoon from pre-Miami times, right down to the coach claiming that Brown has certain skills they want to take advantage of, and then just running the same plays for both of them. Danny O'Brien isn't a bad quarterback, and Maryland would be well-advised to drop the platoon or figure out some better way to utilize it.
- Tight end Matt Furstenburg leads Maryland in both receptions and yardage.
He did not, and wasn't even close. Maryland's receivers were targeted extremely heavily, and I was gonna say they had a much better day than I expected, except that would've sounded silly after watching them drop O'Brien's throws like they were poisoned.
- Neither Maryland quarterback completes more than 50% of their passes.
Thanks partly to the aforementioned dropsies, this proved true. Well. OK, fine. Mostly true. Brown was 4-for-7. Whatever. The total tally was 20-of-43, which is what I'm gonna defer to here and give myself another point. O'Brien was probably accurate enough to make me miss this one, but his receivers let him down too much, and catching the ball is half the battle.
- Maryland passes for less than 150 yards.
OK, maybe I was a little overenthusiastic on how well UVA might shut down the Maryland passing game.
- Official attendance is less than 40,000.
37,401. It was neat how stocked full the visitor's section was and how spotty and barren was the rest of the joint. Reports from people who attended said that Maryland fans spent their energy berating Edsall, not the visiting fans, which was a welcome change from the usual College Park atmosphere. The profane jerk-asses don't tend to be the ones willing to sit in the cold watching a terrible team get killed; they'll wait for fair weather, both literally and figuratively.
Mike Rocco had his best week passing, and I had my best week predicting: tally them up and it's 7 for 11. That brings me to 29-for-70, which looks bad because of the 2 and the 7, but it's 41%. Getting both the outcome and the spread right gets me to 5-4 both ways. In case you're wondering, winning 55% of your bets would make you rich if you could do it consistently, so all hail the 5-4 record.
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A busy Senior Seasons week; not as many games going on, but, playoff brackets are getting set left and right. Here's how your boys did this week:
Victory Christian 58, Santa Fe Catholic 20: Demeitre Brim ran for 227 yards and three scores, and - here's the part you might be more interested in - intercepted a pass as well. Victory finishes the season 8-2 and district champions, and has a week off next week before the playoffs begin.
St. Joseph 37, Egg Harbor Township 0: Max Valles caught a touchdown pass. St. Joe's finishes unbeaten at 8-0, and their defense with Valles and one-time UVA recruit Kaiwan Lewis has allowed an average of two points a game.
Franklin 41, Ridge 3: Kye Morgan had four rushing touchdowns and 139 yards, then sat for the second half in a rout. Franklin finishes the season 6-2 and playoff-bound.
Central Bucks South 61, Central Bucks East 40: As you might expect in scoring 61 points, Matt Johns had a big day, with 291 yards passing and four touchdowns. CB South is 7-3 and also headed to the playoffs.
Landstown 34, Kempsville 0: Kyle Dockins had four receptions and 101 yards. Landstown is 8-2.
Ocean Lakes 21, Kellam 12: Eli Harold had five carries and five catches for a total of 158 yards and two touchdowns. Ocean Lakes is 8-2.
Varina 42, Hanover 3: Maurice Canady went apeshit on Hanover; he carried for 148 yards and three touchdowns, threw for another, and returned an interception 70 yards for yet another. Varina is 8-1.
DeMatha 21, Bishop McNamara 8 (Michael Moore; DeMatha is 6-3.)
Malvern Prep 17, Haverford School 14 (Michael Mooney; Malvern is 8-1.)
Brenham 28, Stratford 3 (Kelvin Rainey; Stratford is 6-4.)
Worcester Academy 28, Phillips Andover 6 (Canaan Severin; WA is 4-3.)
Hampton 13, Phoebus 10 (Jamall Brown; Hampton is 8-2.)
Green Run 30, Tallwood 0 (Mark Hall; Green Run is 5-5.)
Hermitage 51, Thomas Jefferson 0 (Andre Miles-Redmond; Hermitage is 9-0.)
I should add that two of those games in the "other" list look as run-of-the-mill as the others, but aren't; Hampton's win over Phoebus and Malvern's win over Haverford represent two very large rivalries in which this year's winner hadn't done so for quite a while. For Hampton I think it's six years and for Malvern it's about the same. Bravo to the UVA-bound winners.
Playoff situations are mostly lined up now. Pretty much everyone is going, except for those listed last week. Most are not favored even in their opening round games, though. Even some teams that are usually top dog types are lower seeds. Ocean Lakes, Landstown, and Bayside are all hitting the road. Hampton will host Green Run next weekend, an elimination game between Jamall Brown and Mark Hall with Hampton heavily favored. Meanwhile, DeMatha is also in the unfamiliar position of underdog; they'll face Gonzaga again (whom they've lost to two years running) with the winner probably getting whomped by undefeated Good Counsel. Kelvin Rainey's Stratford team is in the playoffs as well, but likely to bow out in the first round.
Matt Johns and CB South, and Kye Morgan with Franklin, are in a little better position to start the playoffs, but nowhere near the bracket favorite, either. However, there are some teams in strong position to win a state title. St. Joseph with Max Valles is the one-seed in a three-team bracket - like Virginia, New Jersey separates the private schools. They'll have a bye to face the winner of this week's game. Norfolk Christian is also the one-seed in their VISAA four-team bracket. Down in Georgia, Buford of course starts the playoffs next week as the heavy favorite. And Victory Christian has to wait a week to find out their playoff position, but it should be solid.
Four teams are still in the regular season: Malvern Prep, which as a private school is also separate from Pennsylvania's public system; Worcester Academy, as Massachusetts gets kind of a late start; and the two Richmond-area teams, Varina and Hermitage. Why in the hell Virginia operates that way, with the playoffs starting and some of its teams still in the regular season, is a mystery to me.
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It seems the better the football team does, the less I say anything about soccer. It didn't help that my inner soccer hooligan wanted to smash a pub window when I read that the men's team's only actual dependable scorer - Will Bates - tore his ACL a couple weeks ago. But with postseason brackets being lined up, maybe I should get a small word in here. The women are a regional 2 seed in the 64-team bracket and will start the tournament by hosting Long Island on Friday. And tomorrow, the men take on GUESS WHO Wake Forest as the ACC 4 seed. At this point I think it's written in the ACC bylaws that UVA shall play Wake Forest at all conceivable opportunities. That's cool as long as we win.
There are way too many impressive things from this weekend to list them one by one, so how about this: three more Hoos earned player of the week honors in the ACC, one of them being Austin Pasztor, which makes it three out of five starting offensive linemen (so far) that have done so this year.
Rodney McLeod's three picks made him a no-brainer for defensive back, but honestly, I only liked one and a half of them. Knock it down on fourth down, man! McLeod's second pick actually nearly cost the Hoos; two plays later, Rocco threw a pick that gave Maryland the ball at the edge of the red zone. If he'd have just knocked the ball to the ground, UVA gets the ball inside the 50 instead of their own 20, a 35-yard field position swing. The third pick was also on fourth down, but in a crowd so batting the ball might have been a risky play; hence, one and a half.
Let's dig into the extensive list of predictions this week.
- UVA running backs total at least 40 carries.
They had exactly 40, but I probably would've cheated a little and counted David Watford's carries too. Fortunately, I didn't need to. Once again, Bill Lazor leaned on the run.
- Jones and Parks total at least 30.
They had 36, which qualifies me to start off 2-for-2. Let me break off into story time here for a second: one thing I loved about growing up watching Michigan football was that Michigan always - always - had a workhorse running back they could rely on game in, game out to pile up the yardage. Generally a single hoss. There was Ricky Powers, Tyrone Wheatley, Touchdown Tim Biakabutuka, the A-Train, Anthony Thomas, Chris Perry, Mike Hart. Perry once toted the ball 51 times in a game. Running back is my favorite position on the field, and there's no fun quite like watching a dominant one do his thing.
UVA probably will never go with that strategy - in fact, the days of a single workhorse putting the team on his back like that are probably sliding slowly into oblivion - but what we're seeing now is close. No, nobody's going to average 26 carries a game the way Perry did, but the workload handed these backs is workhorse stuff all the same, and it's just a treat and a half to watch them do their thing. Plus, UVA is not Michigan and cannot click its heels together three times and make dominant running backs appear out of thin air; this platoon is a great thing for recruiting. Perry Jones has a terrific shot at getting to 1,000 yards; the fact that he can do so without hogging the depth chart allows Mike London to tell recruits that they can have their cake and eat it too. Playing time and stats are readily available regardless of the depth chart. Having a single workhorse is a lot of fun, but it turns your RB recruiting into QB-style recruiting where you can only attract a really good player once every three years or so. As long as there are this many carries to go around, UVA should be able to do very well for itself in picking up stars to carry the ball.
- All three backs exceed their season averages.
Jones did, but unfortunately for me here, Parks and Richardson did not. We saw much less of Clifton Richardson than usual and I just chalk that up to Perry Jones having a really good day.
- UVA piles up at least 200 yards on the ground.
And then some - we got to 220. Maryland's run defense was about as bad as advertised.
- Mike Rocco's season passing average after this game is over 7 yards per attempt.
Rocco had what I think anyone would say was his best game of the year. His only season high was in yardage (he's put together better completion percentages, passer ratings, etc.) but when it comes down to body of work, this was Rocco's best of his career. He looked like a seasoned vet and, for one game at least, shed the dreaded "game manager" label and progressed to controlling the game, not just managing it. And yes, his season average is boosted up to 7.22. Prior to the Miami game it was down at 6.52; yes, that three-quarters of a yard is a big deal. UVA's passing attack has jumped from 104th in the country to 73rd in just two games.
- Rocco has about 20 pass attempts for about 170 yards.
That is 8.5 yards per attempt. Actual stats: 36 attempts for 307 yards, which is about 8.53. I do not get credit for the prediction because UVA went to the pass almost twice as much as I expected, but let the record show that Rocco played about exactly as well as I expected him to. And look, Maryland's kinda crappy so don't let your expectations go overboard for when we play teams with defenses like FSU and VT, but averaging 8.53 yards an attempt would make you 11th in the country in that regard.
- In terms of average, C.J. Brown is Maryland's leading rusher.
Should I get credit for this one? Brown averaged 12 per carry because his day consisted of taking off for a 25-yarder and one carry for -1, which if I remember right was just a fumble that he fell on. I'll go ahead and say yes because it's plays exactly like that 25-yarder that I was afraid of here, and UVA bottled up Davin Meggett (a 42-yarder and then seven carries for 10 more) and Justus Pickett (didn't do anything much) which was basically what I figured would happen.
- If Brown is held to less than 20 yards rushing, UVA wins by at least two touchdowns.
Well, he wasn't, and we did. I'm gonna call this one void and not count it because the "if" wasn't met, and I'll count my blessings that it wasn't, because the reason it wasn't is that Randy Edsall did exactly what I didn't expect. Brown just wasn't even used as a rushing threat. That quarterback situation looks eerily like our Rocco/Watford platoon from pre-Miami times, right down to the coach claiming that Brown has certain skills they want to take advantage of, and then just running the same plays for both of them. Danny O'Brien isn't a bad quarterback, and Maryland would be well-advised to drop the platoon or figure out some better way to utilize it.
- Tight end Matt Furstenburg leads Maryland in both receptions and yardage.
He did not, and wasn't even close. Maryland's receivers were targeted extremely heavily, and I was gonna say they had a much better day than I expected, except that would've sounded silly after watching them drop O'Brien's throws like they were poisoned.
- Neither Maryland quarterback completes more than 50% of their passes.
Thanks partly to the aforementioned dropsies, this proved true. Well. OK, fine. Mostly true. Brown was 4-for-7. Whatever. The total tally was 20-of-43, which is what I'm gonna defer to here and give myself another point. O'Brien was probably accurate enough to make me miss this one, but his receivers let him down too much, and catching the ball is half the battle.
- Maryland passes for less than 150 yards.
OK, maybe I was a little overenthusiastic on how well UVA might shut down the Maryland passing game.
- Official attendance is less than 40,000.
37,401. It was neat how stocked full the visitor's section was and how spotty and barren was the rest of the joint. Reports from people who attended said that Maryland fans spent their energy berating Edsall, not the visiting fans, which was a welcome change from the usual College Park atmosphere. The profane jerk-asses don't tend to be the ones willing to sit in the cold watching a terrible team get killed; they'll wait for fair weather, both literally and figuratively.
Mike Rocco had his best week passing, and I had my best week predicting: tally them up and it's 7 for 11. That brings me to 29-for-70, which looks bad because of the 2 and the 7, but it's 41%. Getting both the outcome and the spread right gets me to 5-4 both ways. In case you're wondering, winning 55% of your bets would make you rich if you could do it consistently, so all hail the 5-4 record.
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A busy Senior Seasons week; not as many games going on, but, playoff brackets are getting set left and right. Here's how your boys did this week:
Victory Christian 58, Santa Fe Catholic 20: Demeitre Brim ran for 227 yards and three scores, and - here's the part you might be more interested in - intercepted a pass as well. Victory finishes the season 8-2 and district champions, and has a week off next week before the playoffs begin.
St. Joseph 37, Egg Harbor Township 0: Max Valles caught a touchdown pass. St. Joe's finishes unbeaten at 8-0, and their defense with Valles and one-time UVA recruit Kaiwan Lewis has allowed an average of two points a game.
Franklin 41, Ridge 3: Kye Morgan had four rushing touchdowns and 139 yards, then sat for the second half in a rout. Franklin finishes the season 6-2 and playoff-bound.
Central Bucks South 61, Central Bucks East 40: As you might expect in scoring 61 points, Matt Johns had a big day, with 291 yards passing and four touchdowns. CB South is 7-3 and also headed to the playoffs.
Landstown 34, Kempsville 0: Kyle Dockins had four receptions and 101 yards. Landstown is 8-2.
Ocean Lakes 21, Kellam 12: Eli Harold had five carries and five catches for a total of 158 yards and two touchdowns. Ocean Lakes is 8-2.
Varina 42, Hanover 3: Maurice Canady went apeshit on Hanover; he carried for 148 yards and three touchdowns, threw for another, and returned an interception 70 yards for yet another. Varina is 8-1.
DeMatha 21, Bishop McNamara 8 (Michael Moore; DeMatha is 6-3.)
Malvern Prep 17, Haverford School 14 (Michael Mooney; Malvern is 8-1.)
Brenham 28, Stratford 3 (Kelvin Rainey; Stratford is 6-4.)
Worcester Academy 28, Phillips Andover 6 (Canaan Severin; WA is 4-3.)
Hampton 13, Phoebus 10 (Jamall Brown; Hampton is 8-2.)
Green Run 30, Tallwood 0 (Mark Hall; Green Run is 5-5.)
Hermitage 51, Thomas Jefferson 0 (Andre Miles-Redmond; Hermitage is 9-0.)
I should add that two of those games in the "other" list look as run-of-the-mill as the others, but aren't; Hampton's win over Phoebus and Malvern's win over Haverford represent two very large rivalries in which this year's winner hadn't done so for quite a while. For Hampton I think it's six years and for Malvern it's about the same. Bravo to the UVA-bound winners.
Playoff situations are mostly lined up now. Pretty much everyone is going, except for those listed last week. Most are not favored even in their opening round games, though. Even some teams that are usually top dog types are lower seeds. Ocean Lakes, Landstown, and Bayside are all hitting the road. Hampton will host Green Run next weekend, an elimination game between Jamall Brown and Mark Hall with Hampton heavily favored. Meanwhile, DeMatha is also in the unfamiliar position of underdog; they'll face Gonzaga again (whom they've lost to two years running) with the winner probably getting whomped by undefeated Good Counsel. Kelvin Rainey's Stratford team is in the playoffs as well, but likely to bow out in the first round.
Matt Johns and CB South, and Kye Morgan with Franklin, are in a little better position to start the playoffs, but nowhere near the bracket favorite, either. However, there are some teams in strong position to win a state title. St. Joseph with Max Valles is the one-seed in a three-team bracket - like Virginia, New Jersey separates the private schools. They'll have a bye to face the winner of this week's game. Norfolk Christian is also the one-seed in their VISAA four-team bracket. Down in Georgia, Buford of course starts the playoffs next week as the heavy favorite. And Victory Christian has to wait a week to find out their playoff position, but it should be solid.
Four teams are still in the regular season: Malvern Prep, which as a private school is also separate from Pennsylvania's public system; Worcester Academy, as Massachusetts gets kind of a late start; and the two Richmond-area teams, Varina and Hermitage. Why in the hell Virginia operates that way, with the playoffs starting and some of its teams still in the regular season, is a mystery to me.
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It seems the better the football team does, the less I say anything about soccer. It didn't help that my inner soccer hooligan wanted to smash a pub window when I read that the men's team's only actual dependable scorer - Will Bates - tore his ACL a couple weeks ago. But with postseason brackets being lined up, maybe I should get a small word in here. The women are a regional 2 seed in the 64-team bracket and will start the tournament by hosting Long Island on Friday. And tomorrow, the men take on GUESS WHO Wake Forest as the ACC 4 seed. At this point I think it's written in the ACC bylaws that UVA shall play Wake Forest at all conceivable opportunities. That's cool as long as we win.
Friday, October 21, 2011
game preview: NC State
TV: ESPNUVA
History against the Pack: 21-33-1
Last matchup: NCSt. 29, UVA 24; 10/27/07; Raleigh
Last weekend: UVA 24, GT 21; NCSt. bye
Line: UVA by 5.5
Opposing blogs: Riddick & Reynolds, Backing the Pack
Injury report:
Virginia
OUT:
S Pablo Alvarez, DE Diamonte Bailey, S Darius Lee, LS Charlie Richards, WR E.J. Scott, WR Bobby Smith, DL Tyler Smith, WR Matt Snyder, S Joseph Williams
DOUBTFUL
OT Tim Cwalina, LS Michael Terrell
QUESTIONABLE
S Brian Oden
PROBABLE
OG Luke Bowanko, LB Henry Coley, DE Cam Johnson, TE Jake McGee, RB Clifton Richardson, QB Michael Rocco
NC State:
OUT
CB Jarvis Byrd, LB Sterling Lucas, RB Mustafa Greene, FB Taylor Gentry, DE Jake Kahut, DE Jeff Rieskamp, DT Thomas Teal, RB Curtis Underwood
DOUBTFUL
None
QUESTIONABLE
LB D.J. Green, DT J.R. Sweezy
PROBABLE
None
You want to know how to make a week last f-o-r-e-v-e-r? Put a big win at the beginning of it and a very winnable game at the end. Mix in the fact that a win on Saturday would put UVA one win from being bowl eligible and this week has been torture. This game is absolutely pivotal. Win it and a bowl game is imminent - and there aren't many motivators quite like playing for bowl eligibility. Lose it, and suddenly the postseason is in serious jeopardy.
-- UVA run game vs. NC State run defense
Top backs:
Perry Jones: 98 carries, 514 yards, 5.2 avg.
Kevin Parks: 67 carries, 368 yards, 5.5 avg.
UVA offense:
193 yards/game, 4.65 yards/attempt
37th of 120 (national), 4th of 12 (ACC)
NC State defense:
172.33 yards/game, 4.66 yards/attempt
88th of 120 (national), 9th of 12 (ACC)
Last week's story was run game, run game, run game. UVA raised some eyebrows by gashing Georgia Tech for way much yardage, and it wasn't done with smoke and mirrors. Pitchouts, runs off-tackle.... it was just basic offensive sets that worked and worked and never stopped working.
So? So that's the recipe again this week. NC State is practically playing with their backup defensive line (not to mention the questionable status of starting linebacker D.J. Green) and have been getting killed by opposing running backs week after week. Cincinnati ran up 240 yards, and I wouldn't hold that against the Pack (Cincy's run offense is excellent overall) but for the other teams that've also gashed them. Central Michigan's Paris Cotton has 296 yards on the season; 158 of them against NC State. How about South Alabama's Kendall Houston - 117 yards on 6.5 per carry? South Alabama! Do you have a kid in preschool? Congratulations - he's twice as old as the South Alabama football program!
NC State has, on their stat sheet, that ever-dangerous indicator of lousy defense: a safety leading the team in tackles. In fact, their two starting safeties are two of the top three. Middle linebacker Audie Cole is the other, and he's a good player, but he's not getting much help. I look for Bill Lazor to operate a game plan similar to last week's. The run-pass split was about 2-1; if things are going well, look for something similar here. With Clifton Richardson a little bit nicked up, there won't be a huge need to play him, so Jones and Parks will get the bulk of the work again; Jones will get 120 yards and Parks 80.
-- UVA pass offense vs. NC State pass defense
Quarterback:
Mike Rocco: 102/163, 62.6%; 1,150 yards, 3 TD, 8 INT; 7.06 yds/attempt
Top receivers:
Kris Burd: 31 rec., 403 yards, 0 TD
Perry Jones: 27 rec., 236 yards, 1 TD
UVA offense:
240.5 yards/game, 6.6 yards/attempt
81st of 120 (national), 10th of 12 (ACC)
NC State defense:
239.8 yards/game, 7.7 yards/attempt
95th of 120 (national), 11th of 12 (ACC)
Matt Snyder is out, maybe for the season, with a broken foot. That's the big news, inviting the question: who's the next man up? Tim Smith was the "or" with Snyder on the depth chart, so this is his chance. Or how about Colter Phillips, who has yet to catch a pass this year?
Whoever runs Snyder's routes will find a boom-or-bust defense awaiting them. NC State gives up a ton of yardage, but they've also picked off 12 passes; only three teams in the country have more. The primary culprit is cornerback David Amerson, who has six, and safety Brandan Bishop has three. That's not good news for a quarterback that's still feeling his way around the football field.
So, again - the ground game. Even though NC State's yardage numbers look lousy, I don't think the passing game will be used for much this week except to keep the run defense honest. Rocco will improve his yardage average again, but another INT at some point looks inevitable. With Amerson likely covering Burd, Tim Smith could have a breakout game, and I think I'll get crazy and call him for five catches, even with UVA keeping the passing game halfway under wraps.
-- NC State run offense vs. UVA run defense
Top backs:
James Washington: 92 carries, 409 yards, 4.4 avg.
Curtis Underwood, Jr.: 42 carries, 226 yards, 5.4 avg.
NC State offense:
116.17 yards/game, 3.43 yards/attempt
99th of 120 (national), 10th of 12 (ACC)
UVA defense:
142.33 yards/game, 3.86 yards/attempt
51st of 120 (national), 4th of 12 (ACC)
Let's be fair: NC State's run game isn't the complete disaster that it looks like. The Cincinnati game was totally the shittiest thing ever witnessed; State's leading rusher was Underwood, with 6 yards on 6 carries. All told, they went backwards 26 yards on the game. Take that game away and NC State is a middling attack, not the barely-top-100 suckfest that the numbers show.
On the flip side, Underwood - the guy with the team's best average - will miss the game. And the competition hasn't been too stiff. NC State gashed Georgia Tech, of course - who hasn't? - and there's Liberty and South Alabama and so on.
Underwood's absence means James Washington will carry the load with Tony Creecy spelling him. Break it down to its essence, and this is the reverse of last week's game. The test will be if UVA can stop NC State's running attack with minimal manpower effort. Neither back is a major home run threat; dependable, but not electric.
I don't expect us to do to the Pack what Cincy did, but if NC State wants to try and beat their head against a wall establishing the run, that should be fine with us. We're going to be a lot happier watching Mike Glennon handing off than throwing. I think Washington will get around 60 yards - let's say "under 75" - and ultimately the NC State running game will be a nonfactor either way. Not bad, not good, just sort of there.
-- NC State pass offense vs. UVA pass defense
Quarterback:
Mike Glennon: 124/193, 64.2%; 1,486 yds, 16 TD, 4 INT; 7.7 yds/attempt
Top receivers:
James Washington: 23 rec., 204 yards, 0 TD
T.J. Graham: 21 rec., 484 yards, 4 TD
NC State offense:
258.7 yards/game, 7.5 yards/attempt
51st of 120 (national), 8th of 12 (ACC)
UVA defense:
166.8 yards/game, 5.6 yards/attempt
10th of 120 (national), 1st of 12 (ACC)
If this game is going to be lost, this is where it'll happen. Mike Glennon is an accurate thrower and he really spreads the ball around. UVA won't be able to concentrate on shutting down any one player. T.J. Graham is a major speedster and a threat to go deep; he'll be a major challenge for Chase Minnifield. Washington is also to be watched out for in the passing game.
Glennon takes care of the ball and is possibly at his best in the red zone. NC State will not line up anyone that isn't a threat to score a touchdown, so our linebackers need to stay honest and not get suckered in on play-action. Part of the reason we did so well against GT was because the linebackers were allowed to basically forget about pass coverage. Southern Miss is a good approximation of the kind of thing that can happen. It's not the same style of attack, but they were able to do to us what NC State wants to do with their own passing attack.
I expect Glennon to rack up at least 250 yards here. That's about his average, and I think he'll go over it, despite the great-looking stats that our pass defense puts up. That said, I also think a lot of that will be out of necessity. James of R&R spoke of wanting to focus more on establishing the running game, but I expect the circumstances of the game will force them to air it out more in the second half. That could make for some scary moments, especially if T.J. Graham gets open deep, and limiting this kind of heart attack will make all the difference in the game if the defense is up to the task.
-- Outlook:
This week, I made a guest appearance on the Riddick & Reynolds podcast - you can check that out here and find out why I ain't ever goin' into a radio career** - and at least twice hammered home the following theme: stop fucking up after you do something good. We beat a ranked Miami last year and then never won again. We beat a top-five FSU team in 2005 and then laid a shit-egg the next week in Chapel Hill. This is not a Groh thing or a London thing, it's a UVA thing.... but it's up to London to fix it.
This preview has been written with the assumption that we will. NC State is a beat-up team with weaknesses that we've proven the ability to exploit. They have a dangerous quarterback, which makes them a dangerous team, and I've said on these pages and on the podcast too: this UVA team is not good enough to beat anyone with a B effort. This is the perfect opportunity to chase a few ghosts and take a big step toward an important goal.
**Like, have you ever heard Bill Simmons speak on a podcast or on the radio or something? There's a reason he's a writer and not an announcer. I'm no Bill Simmons with the pen, but I'm no Keith Jackson either.
-- Prediction summary:
- UVA owns the time of possession battle by about 34-26.
- If UVA wins the game, the run-pass split will be about 2-1 again.
- Perry Jones carries for about 120 yards and Kevin Parks carries for about 80.
- Clifton Richardson gets minimal or no carries as a precaution.
- Tim Smith catches at least five passes.
- James Washington carries for between 55 and 75 yards.
- Mike Glennon gets over 250 passing yards, the majority coming in the second half.
- Final score: UVA 29, NC State 21.
-- Rest of the ACC:
North Carolina @ Clemson, 12:00 (Clemson can put a chokehold on the Atlantic Division with a win.)
Wake Forest @ Duke, 12:30 (And believe it or not, Wake Forest can keep the pressure on with a win of their own. Yes, they still control their destiny.)
Boston College @ Virginia Tech, 3:00 (Oh God.)
Maryland @ Florida State, 3:30 (I don't root for FSU very often, but this is an annual exception.)
Georgia Tech @ Miami, 3:30 (This has the potential to make an ungodly mess of the Coastal race.)
Monday, October 17, 2011
weekend review
Here we are seven weeks into the season, and thanks to a rather unforeseen win over Georgia Tech, I'd like to welcome Heather Dinich into the club of believers. I'm not doing as well as I'd like in the game-by-games prediction department, so I'll make up for it by pointing out that I had UVA getting to the Military Bowl before a single football was ever kicked off. Protocol dictates that as a fan, I should overreact to everything that happens, good or bad, so here you go: if UVA brings an A game like that to every matchup the rest of the season, the Hoos will have accepted a bowl invite somewhere else long before the Military Bowl gets to choose. Sure, the score was very close, but the game really wasn't as close as three points, and I think most GT fans would probably tell you that. If you like, you may pretend the score was 31-14 - the latter number is what GT's previously explosive offense was held to, and the only thing stopping UVA from punching through with a touchdown on the game-clinching drive was the clock and a sense of fundamental non-dickitude.
Effectively speaking, that game reverses the negative effect on our bowl hopes that the Southern Miss loss inflicted. A few things are more favorable than I thought they'd be, a few things are less, but it all basically evens out, and now we're halfway into the schedule and right where I thought we needed to be in order to make a bowl game happen.
Between the Southern Miss game and this one, somewhere along the line I said there were four legitimately winnable games on the schedule, and we had to get three of them in order to be bowl eligible. Now we have to get two of them, and those happen to be the next four games. Here they are with an approximation of our chances of winning each:
NC State - 75% (the Pack really isn't very good.)
Miami - 25% (Miami doesn't suck, it's a Thursday game and they have the advantage of not having to mix travel preps in with game preps.)
Maryland - 50% (the tossup.)
Duke - 75% (Duke is still Duke.)
If you believe those numbers, then there's better than an 80% chance UVA is bowl-eligible at the end of this four-game stretch.
Naturally this comes with the caveat that we don't get two weeks of prep before each game, and that we have to bring our A game every week in order to win. NC State and Duke are bad teams, yes, but we're not so good we can beat anyone in this conference with a B effort.
A-games this week were brought by the following very long list of people:
-- First, Chase Minnifield and the UVA secondary for shutting down the passing game. Tevin Washington was 2-for-8 in large part because there was never anywhere to go with the ball. The fact that UVA was able to shut down GT's passing game with minimal manpower meant that Rodney McLeod could help out in run support, and he clearly made his presence felt with eight tackles. Awesome job done by Minnifield and the pass defense.
I said this in the game preview: "Let your best cornerback cover GT's one receiver and keep one safety disciplined and deep and you've taken away most of what they want to do." That's exactly what happened. David Teel said it much better: "Getting fooled by Georgia Tech’s triple option is a given. Play the Yellow Jackets and you can pretty much bank on a 300-yard ground gouging. The wild card is Georgia Tech’s passing. That’s what has separated merely good teams from the excellent in coach Paul Johnson’s four-year tenure." UVA was able to contain the ground game because they took away the air game.
-- The offensive line deserves a ton of credit for tearing through the GT defense like wet Kleenex, but the wide receivers also need to be mentioned for their blocking as well. Lots of rushing yardage came on the edges where the receivers were making holes happen.
-- Playcalling by Lazor was excellent. There were a few isolated situations I'd've been happier with something different, but the final play balance, minus kneel-downs and sacks, was about 2-to-1 in favor of running. We're a run-first team but that's more so than usual - GT had a weakness and Lazor pounded it til it broke. That's a hallmark of good teams - turning opponents' weaknesses into wins.
-- The running backs looked great too, and not just because of the holes they had. Given some space to work with, they each put their skills on display: Perry Jones's vision, Kevin Parks's balance, and Clifton Richardson's athleticism. Running back is my favorite position on the field to watch, and it looks like we got us some damn good ones.
So, given all that, how did I do on the predictions?
-- At least one UVA running back goes over 100 yards.
Perry Jones had 149.
-- The UVA ground game goes over 180 yards.
I almost ought to ding myself for pussing out - I considered saying 220. I backed way down. Right either way, though: 272 total. 282 if you remove sacks and kneels, for an average of 6.7 per carry.
-- Watford has about one-fourth of the total pass attempts, but still has fewer yards per attempt than Rocco.
Watford had almost exactly one-fourth of the total - he attempted 5 of the 19 passes thrown. And yes, he was much less effective than Rocco was, completing just one pass.
-- Orwin Smith or Roddy Jones rolls off at least one big run of at least 50 yards.
-- GT's running game generates between 350 and 400 yards.
The only really big plays Tech churned out were called back on illegal blocks. Blatantly illegal, in the case of the second one - when you see it happen live and don't have to look for it on replay, it's obvious. And on neither of those plays were Smith or Jones the ballcarrier.
In fact, those two combined for just nine carries all game - quarterback Tevin Washington had 26. And GT had 272 yards rushing - exactly the same as UVA, except they never kneeled, so truth be told, we outgained 'em. I did not expect that. I did call what needed to be done: "UVA should find ways to discourage the pitch on the option; the ideal result is for Tevin Washington to keep as much as possible." I just didn't expect us to be able to do it so well and so consistently. Mission accomplished, but predictions wrong.
-- Tevin Washington completes fewer than 50% of his passes.
He was an ouchful 2 of 8.
The relative success this week bumps me to 19-for-44 and gets me over the 40% mark. See what happens when we get to teams I recognize? Because I didn't have the proper amount of faith in my team, however, my punishment is to fall to 4-2 in outcome predictions. On the other hand, the lines for the game were mostly GT by 7 or 7.5, with a couple stranger ones going higher. I called GT by 7, therefore I'm giving myself that one against the spread, and going to 3-3 there.
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Time now for Senior Seasons. You should know the drill by now, and ohbytheway the G.P. South Blue Devils are officially going to the playoffs after a 3OT win last Friday. Maybe one day we can send someone to the I-A college ranks on a scholarship to some school besides Ohio State, wherein resides the one South Blue Devil on the scholarship rosters.
Victory Christian 53, Orlando Christian 32: Demeitre Brim ran for a 65-yard touchdown and passed for two more in a high-scoring rout. VCA is 5-2.
St. Joseph 70, Lower Cape May 0: Max Valles caught a 10 yard touchdown and had a 21-yard pick six as well. Also, have I mentioned that Valles is also St. Joe's kicker? Because he is. St. Joe's is 5-0.
Franklin 48, Bridgewater-Raritan 0: Completely unleashing Kye Morgan on a winless team would've been cruel, so he only carried eight times and sat the second half. He had 132 yards and a touchdown all the same. Franklin is 4-1.
Malvern Prep 48, Germantown Academy 0: Michael Mooney helped pave the way for 315 yards rushing for Malvern, which is 5-1.
Souderton 44, Central Bucks South 42: Matt Johns was 14 for 21 with 310(!) yards and at least two touchdowns in a shootout loss. Three of South's 2nd-half touchdown drives lasted a total of 57 seconds combined. CB South is 4-3.
Hampton 49, Warwick 0: Jamall Brown caught a pair of touchdowns, the only ones thrown by quarterback Jeremy Eubank. Hampton is 5-2.
Norfolk Christian 42, Portsmouth Christian 7: Wil Wahee took a punt 80 yards to the house to put a cherry on the scoring. NCS is 5-2.
Varina 54, Atlee 11: Maurice Canady's impressive stats: 7-for-13 passing, 212 yards, two touchdowns; 19 carries, 124 yards, two touchdowns. Over 30 yards per completion. He's getting used to this quarterback thing. Varina is 5-1.
DeMatha 13, St. John's 7 (Michael Moore - DeMatha is 4-2.)
Stratford 54, Spring Woods 13 (Kelvin Rainey - Stratford is 4-3.)
Salisbury 21 Worcester Academy 14 (Canaan Severin - WA is 3-1.)
Salem 35, Landstown 0 (Kyle Dockins - Landstown is 5-2.)
Green Run 43, Kempsville 6 (Mark Hall - Green Run is 3-4.)
Bayside 45, Tallwood 14 (Anthony Cooper - Bayside is 6-2.)
Hermitage 38, John Marshall 6 (Andre Miles-Redmond - Hermitage is 6-0.)
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I do have a small confession to make: I'm a little bit of a Neanderthal when it comes to technology. For example, I have a Twitter account which has never uttered a peep (except for one time when it got hacked - bastards) and which I use to follow the people worth following. Occasionally some little nugget of info shows up. Something like 90% of it is the basketball team being excited about it being Friday.
Well, we're taking steps to fix that around here. Baby steps. Sometime in the near future (like, probably tomorrow) you'll be able to hear my actual real voice as a guest on a podcast hosted by NC State blog Riddick and Reynolds. Also, I'm going to try something with this ol' Twitter account. I've never known exactly what I ought to use the sucker for, other than maybe a link every time I post but that seems lame, but I'm gonna try something this week and see if it's popular enough to keep doing. Every time I'm watching a game I think a whole bunch of things that I tell myself I'll put in Monday's post about it, but I never do. Since Twitter is a "micro-blogging" service, I will micro-blog some stream-of-consciousness crap while I'm watching. Follow @MaizeNBlueWahoo for my internal monologue during the game on Saturday. If I like how that turns out, I'll keep it up for certain other games too. Not all, but some. We'll see.
Effectively speaking, that game reverses the negative effect on our bowl hopes that the Southern Miss loss inflicted. A few things are more favorable than I thought they'd be, a few things are less, but it all basically evens out, and now we're halfway into the schedule and right where I thought we needed to be in order to make a bowl game happen.
Between the Southern Miss game and this one, somewhere along the line I said there were four legitimately winnable games on the schedule, and we had to get three of them in order to be bowl eligible. Now we have to get two of them, and those happen to be the next four games. Here they are with an approximation of our chances of winning each:
NC State - 75% (the Pack really isn't very good.)
Miami - 25% (Miami doesn't suck, it's a Thursday game and they have the advantage of not having to mix travel preps in with game preps.)
Maryland - 50% (the tossup.)
Duke - 75% (Duke is still Duke.)
If you believe those numbers, then there's better than an 80% chance UVA is bowl-eligible at the end of this four-game stretch.
Naturally this comes with the caveat that we don't get two weeks of prep before each game, and that we have to bring our A game every week in order to win. NC State and Duke are bad teams, yes, but we're not so good we can beat anyone in this conference with a B effort.
A-games this week were brought by the following very long list of people:
-- First, Chase Minnifield and the UVA secondary for shutting down the passing game. Tevin Washington was 2-for-8 in large part because there was never anywhere to go with the ball. The fact that UVA was able to shut down GT's passing game with minimal manpower meant that Rodney McLeod could help out in run support, and he clearly made his presence felt with eight tackles. Awesome job done by Minnifield and the pass defense.
I said this in the game preview: "Let your best cornerback cover GT's one receiver and keep one safety disciplined and deep and you've taken away most of what they want to do." That's exactly what happened. David Teel said it much better: "Getting fooled by Georgia Tech’s triple option is a given. Play the Yellow Jackets and you can pretty much bank on a 300-yard ground gouging. The wild card is Georgia Tech’s passing. That’s what has separated merely good teams from the excellent in coach Paul Johnson’s four-year tenure." UVA was able to contain the ground game because they took away the air game.
-- The offensive line deserves a ton of credit for tearing through the GT defense like wet Kleenex, but the wide receivers also need to be mentioned for their blocking as well. Lots of rushing yardage came on the edges where the receivers were making holes happen.
-- Playcalling by Lazor was excellent. There were a few isolated situations I'd've been happier with something different, but the final play balance, minus kneel-downs and sacks, was about 2-to-1 in favor of running. We're a run-first team but that's more so than usual - GT had a weakness and Lazor pounded it til it broke. That's a hallmark of good teams - turning opponents' weaknesses into wins.
-- The running backs looked great too, and not just because of the holes they had. Given some space to work with, they each put their skills on display: Perry Jones's vision, Kevin Parks's balance, and Clifton Richardson's athleticism. Running back is my favorite position on the field to watch, and it looks like we got us some damn good ones.
So, given all that, how did I do on the predictions?
-- At least one UVA running back goes over 100 yards.
Perry Jones had 149.
-- The UVA ground game goes over 180 yards.
I almost ought to ding myself for pussing out - I considered saying 220. I backed way down. Right either way, though: 272 total. 282 if you remove sacks and kneels, for an average of 6.7 per carry.
-- Watford has about one-fourth of the total pass attempts, but still has fewer yards per attempt than Rocco.
Watford had almost exactly one-fourth of the total - he attempted 5 of the 19 passes thrown. And yes, he was much less effective than Rocco was, completing just one pass.
-- Orwin Smith or Roddy Jones rolls off at least one big run of at least 50 yards.
-- GT's running game generates between 350 and 400 yards.
The only really big plays Tech churned out were called back on illegal blocks. Blatantly illegal, in the case of the second one - when you see it happen live and don't have to look for it on replay, it's obvious. And on neither of those plays were Smith or Jones the ballcarrier.
In fact, those two combined for just nine carries all game - quarterback Tevin Washington had 26. And GT had 272 yards rushing - exactly the same as UVA, except they never kneeled, so truth be told, we outgained 'em. I did not expect that. I did call what needed to be done: "UVA should find ways to discourage the pitch on the option; the ideal result is for Tevin Washington to keep as much as possible." I just didn't expect us to be able to do it so well and so consistently. Mission accomplished, but predictions wrong.
-- Tevin Washington completes fewer than 50% of his passes.
He was an ouchful 2 of 8.
The relative success this week bumps me to 19-for-44 and gets me over the 40% mark. See what happens when we get to teams I recognize? Because I didn't have the proper amount of faith in my team, however, my punishment is to fall to 4-2 in outcome predictions. On the other hand, the lines for the game were mostly GT by 7 or 7.5, with a couple stranger ones going higher. I called GT by 7, therefore I'm giving myself that one against the spread, and going to 3-3 there.
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Time now for Senior Seasons. You should know the drill by now, and ohbytheway the G.P. South Blue Devils are officially going to the playoffs after a 3OT win last Friday. Maybe one day we can send someone to the I-A college ranks on a scholarship to some school besides Ohio State, wherein resides the one South Blue Devil on the scholarship rosters.
Victory Christian 53, Orlando Christian 32: Demeitre Brim ran for a 65-yard touchdown and passed for two more in a high-scoring rout. VCA is 5-2.
St. Joseph 70, Lower Cape May 0: Max Valles caught a 10 yard touchdown and had a 21-yard pick six as well. Also, have I mentioned that Valles is also St. Joe's kicker? Because he is. St. Joe's is 5-0.
Franklin 48, Bridgewater-Raritan 0: Completely unleashing Kye Morgan on a winless team would've been cruel, so he only carried eight times and sat the second half. He had 132 yards and a touchdown all the same. Franklin is 4-1.
Malvern Prep 48, Germantown Academy 0: Michael Mooney helped pave the way for 315 yards rushing for Malvern, which is 5-1.
Souderton 44, Central Bucks South 42: Matt Johns was 14 for 21 with 310(!) yards and at least two touchdowns in a shootout loss. Three of South's 2nd-half touchdown drives lasted a total of 57 seconds combined. CB South is 4-3.
Hampton 49, Warwick 0: Jamall Brown caught a pair of touchdowns, the only ones thrown by quarterback Jeremy Eubank. Hampton is 5-2.
Norfolk Christian 42, Portsmouth Christian 7: Wil Wahee took a punt 80 yards to the house to put a cherry on the scoring. NCS is 5-2.
Varina 54, Atlee 11: Maurice Canady's impressive stats: 7-for-13 passing, 212 yards, two touchdowns; 19 carries, 124 yards, two touchdowns. Over 30 yards per completion. He's getting used to this quarterback thing. Varina is 5-1.
DeMatha 13, St. John's 7 (Michael Moore - DeMatha is 4-2.)
Stratford 54, Spring Woods 13 (Kelvin Rainey - Stratford is 4-3.)
Salisbury 21 Worcester Academy 14 (Canaan Severin - WA is 3-1.)
Salem 35, Landstown 0 (Kyle Dockins - Landstown is 5-2.)
Green Run 43, Kempsville 6 (Mark Hall - Green Run is 3-4.)
Bayside 45, Tallwood 14 (Anthony Cooper - Bayside is 6-2.)
Hermitage 38, John Marshall 6 (Andre Miles-Redmond - Hermitage is 6-0.)
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I do have a small confession to make: I'm a little bit of a Neanderthal when it comes to technology. For example, I have a Twitter account which has never uttered a peep (except for one time when it got hacked - bastards) and which I use to follow the people worth following. Occasionally some little nugget of info shows up. Something like 90% of it is the basketball team being excited about it being Friday.
Well, we're taking steps to fix that around here. Baby steps. Sometime in the near future (like, probably tomorrow) you'll be able to hear my actual real voice as a guest on a podcast hosted by NC State blog Riddick and Reynolds. Also, I'm going to try something with this ol' Twitter account. I've never known exactly what I ought to use the sucker for, other than maybe a link every time I post but that seems lame, but I'm gonna try something this week and see if it's popular enough to keep doing. Every time I'm watching a game I think a whole bunch of things that I tell myself I'll put in Monday's post about it, but I never do. Since Twitter is a "micro-blogging" service, I will micro-blog some stream-of-consciousness crap while I'm watching. Follow @MaizeNBlueWahoo for my internal monologue during the game on Saturday. If I like how that turns out, I'll keep it up for certain other games too. Not all, but some. We'll see.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
weekend review
I'm going to try and write this post with more of my attention on the TV where the Tigers are trying to get a leg up on the Evil Empire, so kindly forgive any possible spelling errors.
UVA is 3-2 with a win over Idaho, but you wouldn't know it by reading message boards. Fans ain't happy, and rightly so in general when you go to overtime against Somalia State. Special teams miscues stood out, but another question might be, why was Idaho allowed to more than double their season sack total in getting to Mike Rocco three times? (Hint: the answer is not "Rocco is immobile." On the first one, for example, Luke Bowanko whiffed his block so badly we might as well have had 10 men on the field.) Three drives were killed by third-down sacks.
Let's ease your mind a little about a few things. Even though the game was won by a point in OT, it wasn't as bad an overall product as it looked:
- The defense allowed just six points throughout regulation - Idaho's only touchdowns came off the blocked punt and in OT when given field position at the 25.
- The offense generated almost 500 yards. Perry Jones and Clifton Richardson combined to average better than 5.6 yards a carry and Mike Rocco averaged a perfectly decent 8 yards per pass and 12 per completion, both numbers improvements on his averages.
Truthfully, we should be taking a measure of encouragement from this game. Idaho is an inferior opponent, and for the most part, the two primary facets of the game dominated them. The only reasons this game wasn't something like a 28-6 blowout was the special teams miscues and an occasional ill-timed flub on offense.
Well, and one more reason: Mike London's continued insistence on platooning his quarterbacks. This rotation was OK when the opponent was William & Mary or the first three quarters' worth of Indiana. I can understand thinking there's a decent chance David Watford could eventually overtake Rocco as the starter and wanting to give him meaningful game experience. It is starting to be not OK as we go into the season where other teams are developing cohesion and we are not. At his best, Watford's passing is a minimal dropoff from Rocco's, and his running plus that makes playing him worth it. But Watford is a true freshman, and thus is bringing to the field all the inconsistencies of that label. Watford has completed half his passes, has an abysmal 99.8 passer rating, and is averaging 4.8 yards per attempt.
To put that last number in perspective, our top three running backs are averaging 5.2 yards a carry among them. We are better off handing the ball to a running back than having Watford pass it. This is because A) he is much less consistently accurate than Rocco and B) he doesn't have a different playbook, just a smaller one. B is because of A. We have, I think, four legitimately winnable games left on the ACC schedule plus one anything-goes rivalry game. Therefore if your rebuttal to this stuff is that Watford has more potential, and needs to gain experience now that the season is a waste, so he can be better in the future when he takes over, it is respectfully requested that you shut your cakehole. I have no patience for people who give up on the season when we have a winning record and still have goals well within reach.
This week is the dreaded Bye Week, and Georgia Tech is on the other side of it. Last year in Atlanta, GT made a little history in rushing 74 times for 477 yards, the most they'd ever piled up in an ACC game. Not fun. One reason I suspect that Paul Johnson went after Al Groh for his defensive coordinator is that Groh was consistently able to find the answer to Johnson's unique triple-option. On the other hand, another thing Groh's teams consistently did was to lay a shit-egg after the bye week and in the first week of the season. The more time we had to prepare, the worse we looked. Jim Reid has shown a tendency to be baffled by funny-stuff offenses that don't drop back in five-step drops like sporting gentlemen, so let's see if this coaching staff is better at bye-week preparation than the last. Last year the bye week was wasted on VMI, so this is the first real test of that.
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Prediction summary for this game. One thing's for sure: I already know I'm doing better than last week's goose egg.
- Kevin Parks gets fewer carries than both Perry Jones and Clifton Richardson.
Parks sat completely, so obviously this turned out right. Even if he could maybe have gone, it was probably a wise choice - this gives Parks three whole weeks between games to rest that ankle.
- The UVA run game stays near its average of 4.5 ypc.
Not gonna give myself this one; taking away Rocco's sacks and scrambles, the run game did better than five per carry. Almost 5.3 if you take away the one 9-yard loss by Darius Jennings.
- Mike Rocco will still get the lion's share of snaps if healthy; if for some reason he can't go, Ross Metheny will at least get significant snaps.
Yes, although London inexplicably went to Watford almost exclusively after the fourth quarter. Had he not done so I submit that there's a decent chance the game would not have gone to OT; the offense stalled under Watford.
- Assuming Rocco plays, he will deliver noticeable improvement on his passer rating and completion percentage, and pass for 250+ yards.
Rocco's passer rating before the game was about 109, and his completion percentage was 62%. His passer rating for this game was 144.9 and he completed two-thirds of his passes. So even though he was 11 yards shy of "250+", I'm marking myself down for a big ol' yes. Why? Because I'm still peeved about not giving him the chances he should've gotten to win the game, that's why. Overall, this was a much better passing performance than he's been averaging this year, so the spirit of this one is pretty much met.
- Idaho will not record a sack.
I failed to foresee a sudden, inexplicable, and untimely suckfest by the offensive line. Idaho had three.
- Idaho will have no running plays over 15 yards.
One damn Princeton McCarty run of 20 yards kiboshed this prediction.
- The UVA defense will hold Idaho to less than 100 yards total rushing.
One hundred and three. Dammit.
Three for seven, but let the record show I came pretty damn close on a couple more. Total this season is now 15-for-38, a dismal 39%. I'm 4-1 in predicting the outcomes, though, but just 2-3 ATS. Hoping to get better now that we're entering the ACC season and looking at teams I'm familiar with - keep in mind I predicted a final score of 30-17 against UNC, and the final was just two points off.
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We get a quick recruiting board update this week with a couple of items:
- Removed OT Adam Bisnowaty from red (committed to Pitt.)
- Moved ATH Cyrus Jones from yellow to green.
It's not exactly that I think our chances of landing Jones are "good," but they're better than they used to be, and the board's color scheme is supposed to be an indicator of "who you should watch for" as much as "chances of landing this guy." It's worth keeping an eye on Jones, more so than him sitting in yellow would indicate.
Landing Jones would be a huge, huge coup considering who's after him, but it'd be like icing on a cake that's already been frosted twice. There's only so much WR playing time to go around. If I had to pick one more recruit on that board to add to the class, it'd be the true defensive tackle Korren Kirven, but if I had to pick one actual realistic chance to add, I think I'd actually pick Mike Tyson. We could use a little more WR-to-DB and DB-to-LB flexibility. But truth be told, I'd be happy with this class exactly as it is.
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Speaking of this senior class, let's see how they did in their contests this week. I need to add that the mighty GP South Blue Devils won again last Friday to go to 5-1, which sets up a showdown with Port Huron this week. A win clinches a share of the division title for either team, and if South wins, they'll clinch a playoff spot as well. A lot riding on this week's game.
Now for the recruits:
Buford 59, Decatur 13: C.J. Moore ran a fumble in for one of Buford's eight touchdowns.
St. Joseph 34, Holy Spirit 7: Max Valles had a sack in St. Joe's big rivalry win. St. Joe's is undefeated at 3-0.
Franklin 41, Montgomery 0: Kye Morgan ran for 88 yards and a score, and broke the school's all-time rushing record in the process, so many congrats to him. Franklin is 3-1.
Ocean Lakes 18, Salem 14: Eli Harold ran for 73 yards and 2 touchdowns and "led a stout defensive effort" with Ocean Lakes rallying in a weather-suspended game. Ocean Lakes is 4-1.
Landstown 27, Bayside 21: Kyle Dockins and Anthony Cooper each caught a touchdown for their respective teams; Dockins' was a 67-yarder. Landstown is 4-1, Bayside is 3-2.
Varina 48, Lee-Davis 12: Maurice Canady averaged 35.8(!!!) yards per carry - six totes, 215 yards, three touchdowns, and threw for another score for good measure. He's still at quarterback, which went much better this week than it did last week. Varina is 3-1.
Victory Christian 0, Agape Christian 0** (Demeitre Brim - VCA is 2-2-1 - I think.)
DeMatha 24, Bishop O'Connell 6 (Michael Moore - DeMatha is 3-1.)
Kings Park 47, Eastport South Manor 16 (Sean Karl.)
Central Bucks South 45, Central Bucks West 14 (Matt Johns - CB South is 3-2.)
Stratford 51, Northbrook 0 (Kelvin Rainey - Stratford is 2-3.)
Worcester Academy 40, Northfield Mt. Hermon 6 (Canaan Severin - WA is 2-0.)
Hampton 56, Denbigh 7 (Jamall Brown - Hampton is 3-2.)
Norfolk Christian 27, Bishop Sullivan 3 (Moore, Nixon, Wahee, Wynn - NCS is 3-2.)
Hermitage 36, Douglas Freeman 0 (Andre Miles-Redmond - Hermitage is 4-0.)
Last week:
Coffee 49, Wayne County 28 (Greyson Lambert - Wayne County is 1-2-1.)
**If this isn't some kind of Internet screwup. It raises the eyebrows, I know.
Annnnnndddd THE TIGERS WIN. With that, I'm out, and so, I hope, are the Yankees, tomorrow.
UVA is 3-2 with a win over Idaho, but you wouldn't know it by reading message boards. Fans ain't happy, and rightly so in general when you go to overtime against Somalia State. Special teams miscues stood out, but another question might be, why was Idaho allowed to more than double their season sack total in getting to Mike Rocco three times? (Hint: the answer is not "Rocco is immobile." On the first one, for example, Luke Bowanko whiffed his block so badly we might as well have had 10 men on the field.) Three drives were killed by third-down sacks.
Let's ease your mind a little about a few things. Even though the game was won by a point in OT, it wasn't as bad an overall product as it looked:
- The defense allowed just six points throughout regulation - Idaho's only touchdowns came off the blocked punt and in OT when given field position at the 25.
- The offense generated almost 500 yards. Perry Jones and Clifton Richardson combined to average better than 5.6 yards a carry and Mike Rocco averaged a perfectly decent 8 yards per pass and 12 per completion, both numbers improvements on his averages.
Truthfully, we should be taking a measure of encouragement from this game. Idaho is an inferior opponent, and for the most part, the two primary facets of the game dominated them. The only reasons this game wasn't something like a 28-6 blowout was the special teams miscues and an occasional ill-timed flub on offense.
Well, and one more reason: Mike London's continued insistence on platooning his quarterbacks. This rotation was OK when the opponent was William & Mary or the first three quarters' worth of Indiana. I can understand thinking there's a decent chance David Watford could eventually overtake Rocco as the starter and wanting to give him meaningful game experience. It is starting to be not OK as we go into the season where other teams are developing cohesion and we are not. At his best, Watford's passing is a minimal dropoff from Rocco's, and his running plus that makes playing him worth it. But Watford is a true freshman, and thus is bringing to the field all the inconsistencies of that label. Watford has completed half his passes, has an abysmal 99.8 passer rating, and is averaging 4.8 yards per attempt.
To put that last number in perspective, our top three running backs are averaging 5.2 yards a carry among them. We are better off handing the ball to a running back than having Watford pass it. This is because A) he is much less consistently accurate than Rocco and B) he doesn't have a different playbook, just a smaller one. B is because of A. We have, I think, four legitimately winnable games left on the ACC schedule plus one anything-goes rivalry game. Therefore if your rebuttal to this stuff is that Watford has more potential, and needs to gain experience now that the season is a waste, so he can be better in the future when he takes over, it is respectfully requested that you shut your cakehole. I have no patience for people who give up on the season when we have a winning record and still have goals well within reach.
This week is the dreaded Bye Week, and Georgia Tech is on the other side of it. Last year in Atlanta, GT made a little history in rushing 74 times for 477 yards, the most they'd ever piled up in an ACC game. Not fun. One reason I suspect that Paul Johnson went after Al Groh for his defensive coordinator is that Groh was consistently able to find the answer to Johnson's unique triple-option. On the other hand, another thing Groh's teams consistently did was to lay a shit-egg after the bye week and in the first week of the season. The more time we had to prepare, the worse we looked. Jim Reid has shown a tendency to be baffled by funny-stuff offenses that don't drop back in five-step drops like sporting gentlemen, so let's see if this coaching staff is better at bye-week preparation than the last. Last year the bye week was wasted on VMI, so this is the first real test of that.
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Prediction summary for this game. One thing's for sure: I already know I'm doing better than last week's goose egg.
- Kevin Parks gets fewer carries than both Perry Jones and Clifton Richardson.
Parks sat completely, so obviously this turned out right. Even if he could maybe have gone, it was probably a wise choice - this gives Parks three whole weeks between games to rest that ankle.
- The UVA run game stays near its average of 4.5 ypc.
Not gonna give myself this one; taking away Rocco's sacks and scrambles, the run game did better than five per carry. Almost 5.3 if you take away the one 9-yard loss by Darius Jennings.
- Mike Rocco will still get the lion's share of snaps if healthy; if for some reason he can't go, Ross Metheny will at least get significant snaps.
Yes, although London inexplicably went to Watford almost exclusively after the fourth quarter. Had he not done so I submit that there's a decent chance the game would not have gone to OT; the offense stalled under Watford.
- Assuming Rocco plays, he will deliver noticeable improvement on his passer rating and completion percentage, and pass for 250+ yards.
Rocco's passer rating before the game was about 109, and his completion percentage was 62%. His passer rating for this game was 144.9 and he completed two-thirds of his passes. So even though he was 11 yards shy of "250+", I'm marking myself down for a big ol' yes. Why? Because I'm still peeved about not giving him the chances he should've gotten to win the game, that's why. Overall, this was a much better passing performance than he's been averaging this year, so the spirit of this one is pretty much met.
- Idaho will not record a sack.
I failed to foresee a sudden, inexplicable, and untimely suckfest by the offensive line. Idaho had three.
- Idaho will have no running plays over 15 yards.
One damn Princeton McCarty run of 20 yards kiboshed this prediction.
- The UVA defense will hold Idaho to less than 100 yards total rushing.
One hundred and three. Dammit.
Three for seven, but let the record show I came pretty damn close on a couple more. Total this season is now 15-for-38, a dismal 39%. I'm 4-1 in predicting the outcomes, though, but just 2-3 ATS. Hoping to get better now that we're entering the ACC season and looking at teams I'm familiar with - keep in mind I predicted a final score of 30-17 against UNC, and the final was just two points off.
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We get a quick recruiting board update this week with a couple of items:
- Removed OT Adam Bisnowaty from red (committed to Pitt.)
- Moved ATH Cyrus Jones from yellow to green.
It's not exactly that I think our chances of landing Jones are "good," but they're better than they used to be, and the board's color scheme is supposed to be an indicator of "who you should watch for" as much as "chances of landing this guy." It's worth keeping an eye on Jones, more so than him sitting in yellow would indicate.
Landing Jones would be a huge, huge coup considering who's after him, but it'd be like icing on a cake that's already been frosted twice. There's only so much WR playing time to go around. If I had to pick one more recruit on that board to add to the class, it'd be the true defensive tackle Korren Kirven, but if I had to pick one actual realistic chance to add, I think I'd actually pick Mike Tyson. We could use a little more WR-to-DB and DB-to-LB flexibility. But truth be told, I'd be happy with this class exactly as it is.
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Speaking of this senior class, let's see how they did in their contests this week. I need to add that the mighty GP South Blue Devils won again last Friday to go to 5-1, which sets up a showdown with Port Huron this week. A win clinches a share of the division title for either team, and if South wins, they'll clinch a playoff spot as well. A lot riding on this week's game.
Now for the recruits:
Buford 59, Decatur 13: C.J. Moore ran a fumble in for one of Buford's eight touchdowns.
St. Joseph 34, Holy Spirit 7: Max Valles had a sack in St. Joe's big rivalry win. St. Joe's is undefeated at 3-0.
Franklin 41, Montgomery 0: Kye Morgan ran for 88 yards and a score, and broke the school's all-time rushing record in the process, so many congrats to him. Franklin is 3-1.
Ocean Lakes 18, Salem 14: Eli Harold ran for 73 yards and 2 touchdowns and "led a stout defensive effort" with Ocean Lakes rallying in a weather-suspended game. Ocean Lakes is 4-1.
Landstown 27, Bayside 21: Kyle Dockins and Anthony Cooper each caught a touchdown for their respective teams; Dockins' was a 67-yarder. Landstown is 4-1, Bayside is 3-2.
Varina 48, Lee-Davis 12: Maurice Canady averaged 35.8(!!!) yards per carry - six totes, 215 yards, three touchdowns, and threw for another score for good measure. He's still at quarterback, which went much better this week than it did last week. Varina is 3-1.
Victory Christian 0, Agape Christian 0** (Demeitre Brim - VCA is 2-2-1 - I think.)
DeMatha 24, Bishop O'Connell 6 (Michael Moore - DeMatha is 3-1.)
Kings Park 47, Eastport South Manor 16 (Sean Karl.)
Central Bucks South 45, Central Bucks West 14 (Matt Johns - CB South is 3-2.)
Stratford 51, Northbrook 0 (Kelvin Rainey - Stratford is 2-3.)
Worcester Academy 40, Northfield Mt. Hermon 6 (Canaan Severin - WA is 2-0.)
Hampton 56, Denbigh 7 (Jamall Brown - Hampton is 3-2.)
Norfolk Christian 27, Bishop Sullivan 3 (Moore, Nixon, Wahee, Wynn - NCS is 3-2.)
Hermitage 36, Douglas Freeman 0 (Andre Miles-Redmond - Hermitage is 4-0.)
Last week:
Coffee 49, Wayne County 28 (Greyson Lambert - Wayne County is 1-2-1.)
**If this isn't some kind of Internet screwup. It raises the eyebrows, I know.
Annnnnndddd THE TIGERS WIN. With that, I'm out, and so, I hope, are the Yankees, tomorrow.
Friday, September 30, 2011
game preview: Idaho
TV: ESPN3
History against the Vandals: 0-0
Last matchup: N/A
Last week: USM 30, UVA 24; Fresno St. 48, UI 24
Line: Virginia by 16.5
Opposing blogs: none
Injury report: N/A
This game is kind of my poster child for why I want to play nine games in the ACC. Do we really need a random WAC-snack game? Are the fans going to show up for this one? (I'm guessing not.) Of course, it's also the poster child for the opposition in that argument: yes we need a WAC-snack so we can get ourselves bowl-eligible, cause it's not gonna happen if we replace Idaho with Clemson. (No, probably not, but maybe Wake Forest instead.)
Anyway, if you ask me this is pretty much the most completely random matchup I've ever seen in 11 years of following UVA. At least it's an improvement over a home-and-home with UTSA. I mean, who does that?
-- UVA run offense vs. Idaho run defense
Top backs:
Perry Jones: 59 carries, 255 yards, 4.3 avg.
Kevin Parks: 50 carries, 282 yards, 5.6 avg.
UVA offense:
181.25 yards/game, 4.5 yards/attempt
43rd of 120 (national), 5th of 12 (ACC)
Idaho defense:
124.5 yards/games, 3.56 yards/attempt
46th of 120 (national), 4th of 8 (WAC)
The big question of the week is Kevin Parks and his ankle. After four games we're starting to get enough of a look at the offense to be able to say that Parks is the most effective back in the ground game. The workload split has been about 2-2-1 between Parks, Perry Jones, and Clifton Richardson; Jones is solid with good vision and excellent skills as a receiver, but the other two bring physical talents that Jones does not.
For their part, Idaho's run defense should be given more respect than the name "Idaho" commands. The Vandals got killed by Texas A&M but it wasn't the fault of the run defenders, as they held A&M's workhorse back Cyrus Gray to 3.5 yards a carry. Gray got to 101 yards but he needed almost 30 carries to do it. The secret to Idaho's success is the back seven. The defensive line doesn't get involved in playmaking much; the safeties are brought up in run support, and they and the linebackers are relied upon to get the stops. Middle linebacker Tre'Shawn Robinson leads the team in TFL and is tied with safety Gary Harris for the lead in tackles. The top four tacklers are the safeties and two linebackers.
It's hard keeping Parks off the field, but I'd like to see it this week. With a lesser opponent and then a bye week, this'd be a decent chance to get Parks good and healthy for the ACC long haul. Let's go ahead and predict that Parks and Richardson swap places in that 2-2-1 workload split, and Parks gets the fewest carries of the three. But Texas A&M has a very solid rushing offense that Idaho was able to control. We don't have a very wrinkly running game and this isn't really a question of line vs. line, so I don't expect to get much better results than the 4.5 ypa we've been getting.
-- UVA pass offense vs. Idaho pass defense
Quarterback:
Mike Rocco: 74/119, 62.2%; 792 yards, 1 TD, 7 INT; 6.66 yds/attempt
Top receivers:
Kris Burd: 22 catches, 250 yards, 0 TD
Perry Jones: 17 catches, 158 yards, 0 TD
UVA offense:
243.3 yards/game, 6.4 yards/attempt
91st of 120 (national), 11th of 12 (ACC)
Idaho defense:
301.8 yards/game, 8.3 yards/attempt
106th of 120 (national), 8th of 8 (WAC)
(sigh) is it quarterback controversy time already? It is, brought on in part by the soreness in Mike Rocco's midsection after taking one too many shots to the gut. Rocco is still the most efficient mover of the offense, though.
Unfortunately, this is the part of the offense that has regressed somewhat as the season goes on. The run game here is strength vs. strength; this is weakness vs. weakness. A huge part of the reason Idaho has been bad is because the pass defense has been terrible. There is no such thing as a pass rush; Idaho has only recorded two sacks all season. Teams are averaging over 8 yards an attempt and 300 yards a game. Nobody other than crappy I-AA opponent North Dakota has had any trouble moving the ball through the air.
So this is a perfect opportunity to get somebody on track, whether it's Rocco or David Watford or even Ross Metheny. As long as Rocco is healthy, I expect it'll be him, and the quarterback workload will continue as before. Precedent says that London has a much slower trigger finger on pulling quarterbacks than Groh did. The question is: how effective can he be? I will guess at pretty decent. Accuracy has not been Rocco's problem. He shouldn't be under any pressure on Saturday - expect no sacks especially with the short passing game that Bill Lazor has favored this year - and in general, his bad interceptions have come as the result of pressure.
If Rocco doesn't play, I think Ross Metheny will and will get plenty of reps. I don't expect the entire game to be handed over to Watford. But as I said, Rocco plays if healthy - or even healthy-ish - and he'll improve on his completion percentage (which is already solid) and his passer rating (which is dismally low) and go for 250+ yards.
-- Idaho run offense vs. UVA run defense
Top backs:
Ryan Bass: 29 carries, 117 yards, 4.0 avg.
Princeton McCarty: 28 carries, 109 yards, 3.9 avg.
Idaho offense:
67.25 yards/game, 2.4 yards/attempt
117th of 120 (national), 8th of 8 (WAC)
UVA defense:
119.75 yards/game, 3.5 yards/attempt
44th of 120 (national), 5th of 12 (ACC)
Part of the reason for the horrible rushing numbers that Idaho displays is that they're also worst in their conference at allowing sacks, but let's not sugarcoat things - this is a garbage running game. Idaho operates out of the pistol, which is designed to be a running formation, but it's not getting things done. The Vandals run the ball only about 42% of the time; you'd think that'd be from playing from (way) behind all the time (I did), but they also passed much more than ran in their 30-point win over UND. (Then again, if you're confused about Idaho's offensive philosophy, you're not alone; so are their fans. One man's conclusion: "It keeps a low profile so as not to offend anyone.")
So it really just goes back to ineffectiveness. Idaho stayed away from the run last year as well, racking up less than a quarter of their total yards on the ground. They had four new starters on the line last year and just weren't good there. As long as the defense can figure out the pistol formation (it's designed to keep you from figuring out which side the run is going to) they should give UVA fans a little bit of a warm and fuzzy about their abilities. Idaho's longest running play from scrimmage is 22 yards; I think not only do we silence the big-play bug for this week (nothing over 15 yards will be my call) I think we'll also see the defense hold the Vandals to less than 100 yards total on the ground. If Bowling Green can do that, we can do that.
-- Idaho pass offense vs. UVA pass defense
Quarterback:
Brian Reader: 85/149, 57%; 842 yards, 8 TD, 1 INT; 5.65 yds/attempt
Top receivers:
Mike Scott: 26 catches, 328 yards, 1 TD
Armauni Johnson: 14 catches, 192 yards, 2 TD
Idaho offense:
226.3 yards/games, 5.8 yards/attempt
101st of 120 (national), 7th of 8 (WAC)
UVA defense:
196 yards/game, 6.0 yards/attempt
27th of 120 (national), 2nd of 12 (ACC)
If Idaho doesn't move the ball on the ground, they must do so through the air, right? A little. Brian Reader isn't a strong-armed quarterback - in fact, he's very like Rocco only with better taking care of the ball. Idaho only gets about five and a half yards per attempt out of him because he only completes 57% of his passes, but this is where the focus of the Vandal offense will be.
Reader's favorite target is without a doubt Mike Scott, a waterbug type who can scoot. Scott's longest play this year is 51 yards; that was not Reader who delivered that ball, however. Armauni Johnson is a big guy at 6'3", and between them they have almost half of Reader's completions. Johnson will be targeted in the end zone should Idaho find itself approaching hallowed ground. Because of the size differential, I think the coaches will prefer that Chase Minnifield cover Johnson while Demetrious Nicholson takes Scott, even though Scott is clearly the go-to receiver.
Reader's been on his butt a lot, though, having been sacked 12 times; this puts Idaho in the bottom 20 in the country. Southern Miss's refusal to stand up and play offense like gentlemen meant the UVA defensive line had trouble getting to Austin Davis; we may see something similar this week with Idaho working out of the pistol, although probably not to the extent that USM did. If Idaho plays football like men do, and not all this hustling up to the line and then getting the playcall, UVA could finally have an opponent it can make a target out of, which is why I worry that they won't.
Regardless, though, UVA has been effective against the pass. This is the game right here. If our relatively strong pass defense can nullify Idaho's passing attack, then the only thing for our offense to determine is whether or not we cover the spread. Reader brings efficiency but not much big-play potential, which is exactly the kind of offense we're happy to face.
Outlook:
Before the season it was widely considered that this would likely be the worst opponent we'd face all year. William & Mary has sucked more than expected - only beating VMI by 17 is not impressive - but when you're playing patsy to MAC teams and getting cuffed around by Bowling Green in your own building, the fact that you're not the worst opponent on someone's schedule is not your own fault. It would be a Very Bad Upset to lose here, because this is the last Bowl Eligibility Special of the season. Idaho's offense is largely one-dimensional and their defense is totally ill-equipped to take advantage of the UVA offense's biggest weakness. This sets up well to go into the break on a high note.
Prediction summary:
- Kevin Parks gets fewer carries than both Perry Jones and Clifton Richardson.
- The UVA run game stays near its average of 4.5 ypc.
- Mike Rocco will still get the lion's share of snaps if healthy; if for some reason he can't go, Ross Metheny will at least get significant snaps.
- Assuming Rocco plays, he will deliver noticeable improvement on his passer rating and completion percentage, and pass for 250+ yards.
- Idaho will not record a sack.
- Idaho will have no running plays over 15 yards.
- The UVA defense will hold Idaho to less than 100 yards total rushing.
- Final score: UVA 35, Idaho 13.
Rest of the ACC:
Wake Forest @ Boston College, 12:30 - Time to find out if it's for real that BC sucks.
Maryland vs. Towson, 3:30 - Please don't embarrass the ACC this week, Maryland. Or do, actually. I don't care.
Georgia Tech @ NC State, 3:30 - GT's offense is crushing weaklings and NC State's defense is banged up all to hell.
Miami vs. Bethune-Cookman, 3:30 - Wuteva.
Clemson @ Virginia Tech, 6:00 - This is the marquee game of the week; isn't 6:00 usually the time of day that you play, like, VMI?
Duke @ Florida International, 7:00 - Duke at Florida International?
North Carolina @ East Carolina, 8:00 - UNC meant to schedule the South version but got mixed up.
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