game preview: VMI

Date/Time: Saturday, September 21; 3:30

TV: ESPN3

Record against the Keydets: 56-23-3

Last meeting: UVA 48, VMI 7; 9/25/10, Charlottesville

Last weekend: UVA bye; North Greenville 37, VMI 24

Line: UVA by 44

Injury report: N/A

Chances are, everything you need to know about VMI, you learned from the box score of the North Greenville game.  VMI is typically a lousy team for obvious recruiting-obstacles reasons, but even so they've generally been able to beat the D-II opponents their schedulers put in front of them.  Losing to one - getting creamed by one, actually - is the sort of inauspicious omen that says "this team might not win again all year."  But the games are played for a reason, and UVA is not in any position to take any opponent lightly, even a frosty cupcake like VMI.

-- UVA run offense vs. VMI run defense

Top backs:
Kevin Parks: 39 carries, 125 yards, 3.2 ypc, 1 TD
Taquan Mizzell: 13 carries, 30 yards, 2.3 ypc, 0 TDs

UVA offense:
116.5 yards/game, 2.88 yards/attempt
113th of 125 (national); 13th of 14 (ACC)

VMI defense:
206.3 yards/game, 5.16 yards/attempt
85th of 114 (national); 5th of 6 (Big South)

I have to admit, I'm a little surprised at how much the run game thus far has leaned on Kevin Parks.  I mean, Parks is a solid back, if he's ever given an inch of running room, which he has not, but I did think more work would've been handed to Khalek Shepherd and Taquan Mizzell by now.  But by their powers combined they have barely half the carries Parks does.

Not that they've shown they deserve a ton of work.  Mizzell hasn't gotten much room to maneuver either, and has done nothing spectacular in his nine carries.  Shepherd has one big run for 45 yards and has otherwise been equally bottled up.  Parks's 3.2 yards a carry - which is an awfully disappointing number - lead the team, minus the big Shepherd run.

VMI is another 3-4 team, but one with a horribly undersized defensive front.  Nose tackle Joe Nelson - a redshirt freshman - is 265 pounds.  The ends are smaller.  Regardless of what stunts and whatever else the VMI defense tries to run, the matchup against Morgan Moses will be patently unfair, and if UVA can't completely own the line of scrimmage then we are going to have issues all year long.

I would expect some redshirts to be burned along the O-line.  Yes, people hate seeing that, but if they're in the two-deep they gotta play, and the depth we have doesn't allow us the luxury of sitting the freshmen out.  Moses can't play every snap all season long.  In fact, those who stick around for the fourth quarter will get a UVA fan's first glimpse at four brand-new linemen: Olanrewaju, Smith, Matteo, and Mooney.

You have to assume that Parks won't be asked to be a workhorse, either.  My guess is that Shepherd and Mizzell will combine to easily surpass Parks's total carries, and Kye Morgan probably gets some burn, too.  This should be a successful day on the ground.  If it's not, you might be better off spending the season in a drunken haze.

-- UVA pass offense vs. VMI pass defense

Quarterback:
David Watford: 47/73, 64.4%; 275 yards, 1 TD, 4 INTs; 3.77 yards/attempt

Top receivers:
Jake McGee: 11 rec., 62 yards, 0 TDs
Darius Jennings: 10 rec., 60 yards, 1 TD

UVA offense:
144.0 yards/game, 3.6 yards/attempt
125th of 125 (national), 14th of 14 (ACC)

VMI defense:
304.0 yards/game, 7.7 yards/attempt
105th of 114 (national), 6th of 6 (Big South)

Yes, those are some truly shit numbers we've put up there.  I think the coaches realize it, too; it is decidedly not an effective pass offense when your QB hits on almost two-thirds of his passes and has such a truly poor per-attempt average.  They've talked about opening it up some this week.

On the flip side, though, those VMI numbers are even worse.  They don't look that bad, but remember: not just one, but two of their games are against D-II competition (and they needed a last-minute goal-line stand to beat one of those teams), and the only reason the numbers aren't worse is because North Greenville eased off the gas.  At cornerback, VMI starts a redshirt freshman (the entire depth chart abounds with freshmen) and a 5'9" junior.  Watford will double his passing yards for the season if the coaches let him throw enough.  25 passes would about do it.

-- VMI run offense vs. UVA run defense

Top backs:
Derrick Ziglar: 34 carries, 191 yards, 5.6 ypc, 1 TD
Deon Watts: 20 carries, 47 yards, 2.3 ypc, 0 TD

VMI offense:
68.3 yards/game, 2.9 yards/attempt
108th of 114 (national), 6th of 6 (Big South)

UVA defense:
268.5 yards/game, 5.77 yards/attempt
114th of 125 (national), 14th of 14 (ACC)

These numbers are not quite fair because Oregon.  This game should help fix them.  VMI has actually had some success on the ground, mainly when they hand off to Derrick Ziglar.  Deon Watts appears to have been replaced on the depth chart due to lack of production.  VMI's horrible numbers actually stem from their pitiful pass protection.

That said, there is no depth on the VMI O-line.  They do have a pair of massive, 325-pound tackles, but the backup right tackle is 6'2, 260.  So is Will Lucas, the starting center.  Just from that matchup alone, Brent Urban and the rest of the gang at DT should have a field day.  Ziglar has some talent - he's a bowling-ball style back who measures in at 5'9", 230 - but as eminent a rush defense as Richmond held him to 26 yards.  Ziglar's build is rare in D-II, but the Hoos should be able to contain him without much trouble.

-- VMI pass offense vs. UVA pass defense

Quarterback:
Eric Kordenbrock: 68/109, 62.4%; 818 yards, 6 TDs, 3 INTs; 7.5 yards/attempt

Top receivers:
Derrick Ziglar: 13 rec., 164 yards, 1 TD
James Rogers: 9 rec., 105 yards, 1 TD

VMI offense:
272.7 yards/game, 7.5 yards/attempt
25th of 114 (national), 1st of 6 (Big South)

UVA defense:
191.0 yards/game, 5.5 yards/attempt
24th of 125 (national), 6th of 14 (ACC)

Largely out of necessity, VMI has thrown the ball a ton this season, especially against North Greenville; Eric Kordenbrock had 47 throws in that game.  Kordenbrock isn't a bad quarterback as I-AA signal-callers go, but he's also a big, tall statue (6'4", 220) with zilch running ability, which contributes to the poor pass protection he's been getting.

As mentioned, VMI's tackles are huge, so in the pass-rush department, I'd expect Jake Snyder to have a quiet day; Eli Harold off the edge could be interesting, though.  If those big guys can handle his speed, maybe Kordenbrock won't get killed on the blind side.  If not, it'll be an all-day kinda thing for Harold.  Urban is also going to have some fun going up against VMI's undersized interior; it's likely he'll have to be double teamed because putting his height against VMI's lack of it will result in plenty of swatted passes.  Lucky for VMI their QB is tall, but their passing game is also oriented largely to the middle of the field.  The leading receivers are RB Ziglar and slot receiver James Rogers, and tight end Mario Thompson is heavily involved, too.

The one matchup issue UVA might have is 6'5" outside receiver Sam Patterson.  But if he were fast, one, he'd average a lot more than 10.8 yards a catch, way at the bottom of that list for VMI, and two, he'd be playing I-A football.

Our secondary is going to have an athleticism advantage because every unit should have an athleticism advantage, but I'd say it's that pass rush that should make life miserable for VMI.  The DTs could well have a turkey shoot out there, and Harold has the potential to be a major X factor.

-- Favorability ratings

I had some trouble with these, because, look, things like our pass offense have really sucked so far.  But VMI is so .... bad.  This is still a new thing, so, still in need of calibration if you will, but let's try:

UVA run offense: 10
UVA pass offense: 9.5
UVA run defense: 10
UVA pass defense: 10

Average: 9.86

-- Outlook

It's hard to write one of these things without sounding arrogantly dismissive.  But VMI did lose to a D-II team.  The difference between D-II (36 scholarships) and I-AA (63) is much greater than that between I-AA and I-A (85).  And this wasn't just one bad game.  VMI struggled to beat Glenville State - a bad D-II team! - and was totally uncompetitive against Richmond.  They could neither move the ball nor stop Richmond, on a crappy rainy day, against the quarterback that came in third in the same QB competition where David Watford came in second in 2011 (as a true freshman.)  This is a worse VMI team than the one that lost 48-7 to a bad UVA team in 2010.  There's no reason at all this should be competitive.

-- Prediction summary:

-- Mizzell and Shepherd combine for at least five more carries than Parks.

-- Watford averages 10 yards per attempt, enough to double his seasonal passing yards if allowed to throw 28 times.

-- At least five new redshirts are burned, two on the O-line.

-- Defensive tackles account for at least two sacks.

-- So does Eli Harold.

-- Urban bats down at least two passes.

Final score: UVA 59, VMI 0

-- Rest of the ACC:

Clemson 26, NC State 14  - Thu. - Probably closer than it should've been, which could be a storm cloud for Clemson, but their defense was excellent.

North Carolina @ Georgia Tech - 12:00 - A big Coastal matchup that would take place later in the season if the ACC schedulers were smart.  I mean, at least in October.

Virginia Tech vs. Marshall - 12:00 - Tech's quest continues to find a defense they can move the ball against.

Wake Forest @ Army - 12:00 - Not remotely a guaranteed ACC win.

Pittsburgh @ Duke - 12:30 - Could already be a Bowl Eligibility Bowl.

Syracuse vs. Tulane - 12:30 - Second part of the epic ACC-CUSA matchups this week.

Maryland vs. West Virginia - 3:30 - A big chance to learn something about Maryland.

Florida State vs. Bethune-Cookman - 6:00 - Wildcats to the slaughter.

Miami vs. Savannah State - 7:00 - Likewise.

season preview: Boston College

This is an earlier start than I usually get for basketball season previews, but then, when I finish we tend to be halfway through the conference season anyway, so let's get kicking while we wait for our bowl fate to be sorted out.  Besides, I've got a lot planned for when we finally learn our opponent.  These will come sporadically til I'm done.  As always, the goal is to make FOV readers the best-informed of any UVA fans on the ACC competition.

Boston College Eagles

Media prediction: 12th

Last season:

Record: 21-13 (9-7) - ACC 5th seed
Postseason: NIT second round
KenPom: 68th of 345

Returning scoring: 10.8%
Returning rebounding: 11.5%
Returning assists: 11.4%

2010-11 All-ACC:

1st team: G Reggie Jackson
2nd team: none
3rd team: F Joe Trapani
HM: none
Rookie: none
Defensive: none

(Italics indicate departed player.)

Starting lineup:

PG: Patrick Heckmann (Fr.)
SG: Gabe Moton (So.)
G: Matt Humphrey (Jr.)
F: Ryan Anderson (Fr.)
C: K.C. Caudill (Fr.)

Bench:

C Dennis Clifford (Fr.)
G John Cahill (Sr.)
G Jordan Daniels (Fr.)
F Eddie Odio (Fr.)
G Lonnie Jackson (Fr.)
G Danny Rubin (So.)

Coach: Steve Donahue (2nd season)

ACC schedule:

Twice: Georgia Tech, Miami, NC State, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest
Once: Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia

Attention anyone who thinks their previous coach left the cupboard bare: He did not.  Not when compared to what Al Skinner did to Boston College basketball.  This ought to be a Building A Program-type show on TV; I'd watch.  The storyline is bizarre and fascinating: when Steve Donahue took over, he found a roster completely loaded with mostly seniors, a few juniors - and not one single freshman or sophomore.  If he had done nothing in between being hired and starting the season, that's what his roster would have been.  In what has to be considered second-degree criminal negligence, Skinner did not sign anyone in the recruiting class of '09; this means that the only junior on the roster is a transfer.  The only sophomores are those hastily recruited by Donahue after finding his entire '10 recruiting class also nonexistent; those that were there bolted shortly after Skinner's firing.  Any seniors are either walk-ons or useless, or both.

Here is BC's regular lineup, in PPG order, by their class:

Freshman
Junior transfer from Oregon
Freshman
Freshman
Walk-on who joined last year
Freshman
Freshman
Sophomore
Freshman
Freshman
Sophomore

That is disastrous.  Only two of those guys - the sophomores, Danny Rubin and Gabe Moton, played any meaningful minutes last year (they are the aforementioned hastily-recruited class of '10 members) and Rubin's minutes dwindled to near-nothing by the end.  It's a wonder their game tape doesn't look like the AND1 streetball highlight tape reject clips, and a credit to their coaching that they can actually defeat Division I competition besides.

This team is a mess of epic proportions.  They can barely score and cannot defend.  In the KenPom standings, they are one notch above Florida-Gulf Coast and just below Troy, Charleston Southern, and Fordham.  Forget the ACC; Boston College is an average America East Conference team (made up of such standouts as Maine and New Hampshire) and a perfect geographical fit, too, come to think of it.  Boston College 2011-2012 is a fascinating, absurd, bizarre train wreck of an outfit, and it's the fault of nobody currently involved.  (Maybe the AD.)  Al Skinner has set the new standard for leaving behind bare cupboards, a feat surpassed only by SMU football circa 1988.

So, what to make of this roster that we've never seen?  Small sample size caveats apply to every player evaluation from here on out, since they've played all of six games and I haven't seen any of them.  The highest-rated and most-sought recruit in their freshman class was Ryan Anderson, a skinny beanpole who plays forward and who is one of just two players to start all six games so far.  Anderson is the team's leading rebounder, and that seems likely to continue.  He's kind of a stretch-the-floor four who shoots threes, albeit not especially well.  Patrick Heckmann was also recruited by several teams, Michigan among them, out of the German semi-pro leagues.  He's the team's leading scorer despite being outshot almost 2-to-1 so far by the inefficient Matt Humphrey, who transferred in from Oregon.  BC is still working on a big man rotation between K.C. Caudill and Dennis Clifford; Clifford measures in at seven feet but Caudill is a whopping 280 pounds.  Caudill chose BC over offers from Northwestern, Harvard, and Penn, so there's brains to go with the brawn; however, he's a more recent addition to the rotation.

Obviously that rotation is still shaking out.  This time last year, Danny Rubin looked like a real find - he was in the starting lineup and hitting threes with efficiency and aplomb, but played his way completely out of the rotation by year's end and has struggled to crack it again.  Steve Donahue has a lot of work to do, obviously, and settling on a rotation is priority #1 right now.

If Boston College had an average ACC schedule, I'd call 'em a contender to pull a Detroit Lions and go 0-16 in the conference.  I don't even know when that last happened.  Wake Forest came close and went 1-15 last year and that's as close as anyone's come in ages.  If anyone can do it, it's this BC team.  But they happen to have the cushiest schedule in the conference (that doesn't include themselves.)  UNC, Duke, FSU, UVA, Clemson - all one-time opponents.  Virginia Tech, and maybe Miami, are the only NCAA tournament contenders that they play twice.  They get two shots at GT and Wake, the other two likely ACC bottom-dwellers.  It's really a waste of a good schedule.  BC has already been smoked by Holy Cross and needed OT to beat UC-Riverside - further ugly OOC losses are probably in their future, and then BC fans will probably concern themselves entirely with hockey once the ACC schedule begins in earnest.  There is zero chance of this team playing a single postseason game past the first round of the ACC tournament, and we can only hope things start improving in later years of the Donahue era.  Fortunately, nobody will ever judge him on this one.

**********************************************

I have to blab for a bit about last night's Michigan game, which - well, the truth of it is that Michigan was probably dealing with a little post-Maui fatigue, and it was probably no accident that the big Virginia run came in the second half.  The other truth of it is that the selection committee won't care a whit.  Consider the TCU game erased when it comes down to whether or not UVA should be a tournament team.  As long as Michigan takes care of business from here on out and has even a middling result in Big Ten play (likely the toughest conference top-to-bottom this year, and by the way I have no doubt they will) then this win will stand out like a nice shiny diamond.

UVA fans will be astonished to learn how much of a free-throw disparity there was; we had a 22-7 attempt advantage at the stripe.  I looked it up and that hasn't happened since 1871.  Chalk it up to the frontcourt advantage - UVA did an absolutely terrific job of nullifying Michigan's better guards with the pack-line defense as Michigan often resorted to playing into UVA's hands by waiting out the shot clock, and at the same time UVA also did a great job of controlling the interior on offense.  Mike Scott couldn't be guarded by one person.  At all.  The amazing thing is that Assane Sene didn't score at all and we didn't even need him to; Scott was a one-man matchup nightmare and completely controlled everything Michigan did down low.  I cannot wait to unleash this fucker on the ACC because every time I watch a UVA basketball game I have to shake my head to remind myself he's on our side.  I thought Travis Watson was pretty awesome but guys like Mike Scott don't come around but once a decade if that.

I have to also mention Malcolm Brogdon for quietly having a terrific game.  Very quietly.  I was completely surprised to look at the box score and see he had 16 points on 5-of-7 shooting.  I particularly enjoyed the sequence in the second half when Brogdon bricked a three, a teammate got the offensive board and passed to an open Brogdon and he didn't hesitate in shooting again and knocking it down on the second chance.  Confidence: dude haz it.

I thoroughly enjoyed that game but I'm also surprised to be saying this: I'm glad it's over.  It was so weird watching, say, Joe Harris knock down a three and going "yes!....kinda."  Michigan's Jordan Morgan found a wide-open lane once for an Air Jordan slam and I said "hey, now that was cool.  Wait, no it wasn't.  What the shit was that kind of defense?"  It's very weird.  I expect the two teams will meet in lacrosse at some point in the next couple years and that'll be even stranger.

Other news bits:

-- In the least surprising attrition news ever, Michael Strauss will transfer and appears to be headed to a localish I-AA program.  This fulfulls my prophecy from like last year that the third quarterback in the race between Rocco, Metheny, and Strauss will leave the program; there's not much reason to sit in fourth place (including David Watford) with even more quarterbacks set to come in next year.

In a long-overdue move, I've updated the depth chart; since Strauss has already left the team and wasn't even on the sidelines for the Tech game, I've already deleted his entry.  From a roster-management standpoint, that means the 2012 recruiting class puts us either three or four spots over the limit of 85.  (I'm not completely sure of the status of Drequan Hoskey - I don't know if he's on track scholarship or not and if he is, he's a counter toward 85.  Someone clarify.)  Anyway, between guys who'll likely prep in the recruiting class, non-invites for a fifth year, and the usual attrition, this is a "problem" that'll take care of itself.  UVA is not Alabama.

-- In a decision that is entirely correct, Mike London is the ACC Coach of the Year.  Clemson Clemsoning the end of the season cemented that one, because Dabo Swinney was the only other logical competitor.  If UNC had done better, Everett Withers would've been in the running.  I figured London would eventually win a COY award as long as he produced a winning season at some point; this is because the media was never going to expect us to do well until we actually did.  Awarding him the COY is their way of saying "we weren't wrong at the beginning of the year, it's just that London is that good of a coach."  Congratulations, Coach, now never win another one because if you don't it means we were continually good without dipping into the below-.500 nether regions.

-- "ACC Officiating Reaches All Levels."  OH GOD NO.  There's a reason I like to use a #GoodOldACCRefs hashtag on Twitster.  If your local high school referee calls pass interference on someone who has two hands on the ball and none on the receiver, now you know why.

some stuff

Stuff goin' on - let's do a little catching up on it.

- Hat tip to Gobbler Country on this one; you can see a screenshot of the new football uniforms in action here. Screenshot because it's from NCAA '11. Picture #14 is what you want. There's only one problem: they messed them up. The players in the screenshot are wearing the NFL-style socks that disappeared along with most of the rest of Groh's additions to the look. (You have to admit, it probably looks better that way because there's hardly anything on the uniforms to break up all that white.) There's also no ACC patch, even though the rest of the depicted ACC teams have them. (Nutjob conspiracy theorists, you now have your flimsy ammunition: Big Ten teams wear no conference patch.) And I can't tell if there's an orange outline on the numbers, but if there's supposed to be, it's nowhere as distinguishable as it is on the real thing.

I still say this new look will be a lot better if we keep the white-on-white and blue-on-blue to a bare minimum.

- All-ACC baseball teams are out and the Hoos are very well represented. As you'd expect from the regular-season champion, no school has more players named than UVA does; seven in all with three on the first team (Arico, Gosselin, and ACCy Young winner Danny Hultzen) and four on the second team (Morey, Parker, Werman, and Cannon.)

- This has nothing at all to do with UVA athletics, but please oh please oh please let this guy's middle name be Maury.

- Speaking of baseball, the ACC tournament got off on the right foot for UVA with a 6-4 win over Boston College this afternoon. A game that was a little closer than we'd have liked to see means that top long reliever Tyler Wilson is now used up til Saturday and won't be available tomorrow. That puts a little more pressure on Morey to go a long way. However. Florida State lost to Miami today as well, so in all but the most unlikely of scenarios (that being BC winning both the rest of their games) UVA will have to beat Miami to play on Sunday. The flip side is that beating FSU tomorrow might not be absolutely necessary.

In fact, the strong possibility exists that it'll be totally meaningless. The early game tomorrow is Miami/BC. If Miami wins, the FSU game won't mean anything and the Miami game will determine the championship. Why? Say we lose to FSU but then beat Miami. Then we're 2-1, Miami is 2-1, and Florida State is either 2-1 (with a win over BC on Friday) or 1-2 (with a loss.) Either way, the tiebreakers break in our favor. If I were Brian O'Connor, I'd have both Morey and Kline (or Neal Davis) get ready and wait for the result of the early game before choosing a starter. Being able to save Morey for a possible Sunday game would be big. Reason not to: If he pitches on Sunday he won't be available for early NCAA regional games. Still, it's a strong consideration.

- Recruiting board update! It was getting a little old. It's also getting a little long. The evaluation period just finished up, and the coaches aimed the offer cannon out of state at players they were getting their first good looks at. Not a lot of players come off the board during this time, because they're getting flooded with offers and aren't narrowing things down yet. And they're taking SATs and ACTs and final exams, so campus visits are at a minimum. When the summer camp circuit and visit circuit fires up, that's when players will start knocking schools off their lists or make their commitments. So here are the updates - many more additions than removals:

- LB Daquan Romero (committed to UNC) and QB Gary Nova (Pitt) are the only removals.

- DT Vincent Croce is added to blue. Originally I figured his offer list was just entirely too big to even bother adding him, but what do you know, he has UVA in a top 3.

- TE Darius Redman, LB Nick Menocal, DEs Zach Wood and Stephon Sanders, and CB Blake Countess are added to yellow. All were beneficiaries of the offer gun. Menocal attends school in Florida with 2010 signee Pablo Alvarez.

- WR Tacoi Sumler is added to red. Sumler's offer list is divided into Volumes I, II, and III, it's that big, so we're not getting him, but he's a former teammate of early enrollee Michael Strauss, so hey, why not.

- Moved WR Dominique Terrell from yellow to red.

- Moved WR Daniel Adams from yellow to blue.

the recruit: Michael Strauss

It's been so long since I've gotten to do one of these, I almost forgot I was supposed to.

Name: Michael Strauss
Position: QB
Hometown: Miami, FL
School: Gulliver Prep
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 200

ESPN: 76, #73 QB
Rivals: 5.6, three stars, #42 pro-style QB
Scout: two stars, #114 QB

When Tyler Brosius walked off the scene in October, it was scramble time. We have only three scholarship quarterbacks returning next year, and it might be more like two and a half because Riko Smalls was practicing with the receivers for a while there. So this is sort of what I meant when I said, once upon a time as our recruiting ground to a screeching halt, that it wasn't going to be about the names we've been following and the commits were going to have to come from guys not yet on the radar screen. Which, if you let it, is a nice way of saying we're cleaning up the scraps.

Now, if you're a star-watcher, Strauss has about as many of them as you can expect at this stage of the game. If you prefer to check out the offers, he's got that one from Alabama which is interesting considering they already have Philip Sims in the fold. You sort of have to wonder just how committable that offer was - Nick Saban can be kind of an offer cannon. But it's better than none at all.

Me, I don't trust that Alabama offer. Not even sure he ever received it in writing. So the real list is more like the assortment of non-BCS mud-dwellers that offered: schools like Akron, Western Michigan, FIU, and the school he decommitted from in order to commit here, Tulane. That's about standard for the guys surrounding him on the ranking list.

Strauss's arm doesn't look like the strongest in the world. He looks like he's giving it all he's got just to get it 40 yards downfield. This might account for why a lot of SEC schools took their looks in the spring and didn't offer. That said: 71% completion percentage, yo. That's as a junior. That's nothing to sneeze at. For a high school quarterback looking to play D-IA football, 60% is kind of a baseline expectation, but 70% is where you really take notice. Even system quarterbacks like at Houston or Texas Tech don't get that high unless they're good system quarterbacks. You remember Andrew Hendrix? Four-star type that we recruited hard and that ended up at Notre Dame? 61% as a junior. Give me a choice between an accurate quarterback and a strong-armed one and I'll take the former all day.

Also, there's this: Strauss is already as big as any scholarship QB we'll have next year. And if he gets his way, he'll enroll early and be right there with everyone else, learning the same offense at the same time as our other quarterbacks. (When fans complain that the UVA administration doesn't properly support the football team, this is exactly what they mean. Strauss shouldn't have to ask. Check to see if he meets the requirements and if the answer is yes, for Welsh's sake let him in. Unfortunately we don't have any requirements outside of "enroll in the fall.")

Personally, I'd rather not have Strauss on the field next year - if a true freshman comes in and beats out a fifth-year senior (that'd be Verica) for the job, a long, long season is in order. And not long as in "we still get to play a game in December or January." I like Strauss's accuracy and I like his brains. (When a kid lists, early on, Duke and Vandy among the favorites and eventually commits to Tulane, brains are involved.) Best-case in my mind is to redshirt Strauss and then put him, Metheny, and Smalls in a steel cage match in 2011 for the starting job. If Strauss is allowed to enroll early, there's no reason being a year behind Metheny should be an obstacle.

other stuff that's going on

The obvious problem with a coaching turnover is that it blots out everything else. Pretty much literally everything. I mean, there's a national championship being decided in soccer. So let's see what the hell's going on there.

We find ourselves in Cary, NC for the College Cup; a much less impressive-sounding destination than Foxborough or Omaha, but no less meaningful. To put this in a little perspective for Cavaliers fans drowning in misery over our historically crappy revenue sports, the three "secondary" men's sports (not quite as high-profile as basketball and football but on a tier above the Olympic sports like cross country or wrestling) all ended up in the championship destination of their respective sport in this calendar year. Lacrosse and soccer - Final Fours both, and the baseball team was in the CWS, finishing fifth. UNC has soccer and baseball going for them, but no other school can claim three. Not even if you include hockey, which sadly we don't participate in. This would be an explanation for why we're currently leading the Director's Cup (!) except that that's only fall sports - the baseball and lacrosse were last year. Just wait til it adds the soccer results (women didn't do too badly either) and the reaming we're about to unleash on the rest of the world in the swimming pool.

(Swimming being the Olympic sport I actively care about, you should know that that particular season is well underway, and the men and women both administered beatings to Poly and Kentucky - the latter having finished 17th in the men's nationals last year to our 9th. And we suffered two very close dual meet losses to Florida - 5th and 7th at nationals, if you're wondering. Both the men's and women's teams derived the bulk of their points at the ACCs and nationals last year from non-seniors and are poised for another outstanding season.)

Anyway, soccer. Jeff White and numerous others already mentioned the insane shutout streak that the team is currently riding, so I don't feel jinxy about pointing out that still nobody's scored on us since October 17th. I wish I could find the actual number that is the shutout streak record for a goalie, but all I can remember is that it's likely we'd have to go into next season before Diego Restrepo can beat it. Still, we're currently over 1,000 minutes of goal-free soccer. This is not a place I imagined we'd be at the beginning of the season when it seemed like we were the ones not scoring ever, but who's complaining?

Also, the only reason the Final Four isn't four ACC teams is because 1) the team that isn't ACC is 23-0-0 and 2) they didn't put any ACC teams in that quarter of the bracket anyway. Instead they forced the ACC to beat up on itself, and we obliged, handing a whooping-stick in the form of a 3-0 thrashing to defending national champion (ugh) Maryland. Up next is Wake Forest. Excellent team. No crazy Cinderellas in this Final Four. I'm wary, as we never seem to be able to beat them without some kind of major-league drama. Twice in a row now we've seen them in the ACC tournament and twice in a row we've had to deal with double overtime. They'll be out for blood, what with all the close, close losses they've suffered at our hands lately. But they have to score on us to beat us.

I was going to follow up with some basketball, but I'll save that for later. Plenty of time for that, now that the team is on final exams break. But we do have some football odds and ends.

First, a recruiting board update. Exciting, no? That would be because commitment #13 is on there, and it's a quarterback. Woo. Update is as follows:

- Added QB Michael Strauss to orange.

- On that note, moved QBs David Olson and Hutson Mason to red. We are still a touch thin at quarterback, having only four scholarship ones on the roster next year. Assuming Riko Smalls is, in fact, a quarterback. So we might take another one, or, I think equally likely, wait til next year.

- Moved DT Johnathan Hankins to red; once he got that Michigan offer, it was basically over for us.

So, where we stand in the big picture: we have 12 graduating seniors and 13 verbals, which puts us one over. I think. If I have my scholarship numbers right. No matter though; we still don't know about which fifth-year seniors won't be asked back. I think that number would be no higher than three; if that many, the players we give the watch to would probably be Matt Leemhuis, Isaac Cain, and Staton Jobe. Also take into account the ever-present likelihood of some attrition over the offseason, and I think we will take anywhere from 2-4 more commitments. If we can get as many as four. I think it's likely to be a really slow couple of months before Signing Day. Never fear; the 2011 board will show up just about a month from now.

Now here's something we hope you'll really like. This is fun. The university doesn't usually like to come out with this stuff this far in advance. Normally we have to wait until pretty much everyone else has found out theirs before we get to learn ours, and then we only get to learn the upcoming season. What the hell am I talking about? Out-of-conference opponents! Jeff White lays it all bare until 2015. This would be about as close as you get to official confirmation that that deal which was supposed to give us four free home games from MAC opponents is a dead donkey. Frickin' MAC weasels. With that knowledge in hand, it sort of annoys me that a MAC opponent (that we probably had to pay for) is coming to town, but at least it's as big a patsy as they have to offer.

Anyway, here, I'll spoil the surprise and type it all out. This isn't in any order, so don't go thinking one game comes after the other just cause I (or White) put it down that way:

2010: @USC, vs. Eastern Michigan, vs. Richmond, vs. VMI
2011: @Indiana, vs. Idaho, vs. William & Mary, vs. Southern Miss
2012: @TCU, vs. Penn State, vs. Richmond
2013: @Penn State
2014: vs. Richmond, vs. UCLA
2015: @UCLA, vs. William & Mary

Thoughts in bullet form:

- Next year's schedule is the least enticing I've ever seen. Two I-AA teams means we have to win seven to go to a bowl. But a poster on CavsCorner had a sentiment I'm stealing: better 6-6 and no bowl than 5-7 and no bowl. What, you really had "bowl game" on your 2010 to-do list after this fiasco? It would take a massive, massive improvement.

- Idaho? Huh. That might be the most random opponent I've ever seen.

- Hey, cool, UCLA! That's the kind of opponent I want to see plenty of on the schedule. USC is interesting and all but would be a lot more so if we weren't chopped dog meat to them. But a BCS opponent is always enticing, and more so when they're a team sort of on our historical level. I liked having teams like Wisconsin and South Carolina on the schedule a few years back.

- Would be nice to not play so many I-AA teams.

Closing thought for the day: Mike London has established a pace of one verbal commitment per day on the job. This is a fun trend and I want to see it continued. Forever.