February 2008 - Posts
I know I'm risking jinxing us here, but there are 5 main sports that I follow in the spring - Men's and Women's Lacrosse, Men's Tennis and Baseball.
This year so far, these teams have combined for a 24-0 record:
- Men's Tennis: 13-0 (1-0 ACC; National Team Indoors Champions)
- Men's Lacrosse: 3-0
- Women's Lacrosse: 2-0 (1-0 ACC)
- Baseball: 6-0
I know its still early (for everyone but Tennis) but that's pretty impressive and really shows the strengths of our spring sports. You can toss in the fact that the Women's Swimming and Diving just won an ACC Championship this past weekend and the Men's S&D team looks poised for a potential Championship as well (though its pretty early).
This is one of those times I love being a Wahoo.
So far weather has affected me in these ways:
- Basketball game @ GT was rained out (Seriously?).
- Van Halen concert that i wasn't going to was canceled.
- I have to pack some warmer clothes.
In other words, it hasn't impacted me all that much. Which is saying something considering the forecast was for inches of snow/sleet/ice/freezing rain/whatever over the last day or so.
I think there was some precip before I was awake this morning. But it was almost all gone when I woke up. I love the weather...
Sharnee Zoll set the all-time ACC assists record last night during U.Va.'s 83-71 win over Clemson.
We all knew that the record was going to be broken this year (she crept up on it very quickly) but it was nice that it happened at JPJ rather than @Duke this weekend or some other venue.
The crowd gave Zoll a well-deserved standing ovation when she set the record and again when she left the game at the end after Virginia had sealed the victory. I love that she's not only a terrific player, but also a great person. No better person I could think of to break Dawn Staley's record.
Oh, and the ladies just keep on winning too. Aisha Mohammed is looking more and more like an All-American, scoring 26 points during the game, while Monica Wright and Lyndra Littles both dropped 19 on the Tigers.
The women are now 20-7 overall and 8-3 in the ACC with 3 games remaining. I can definitely see the girls going 2-1 over the last 3 games, but hopefully they can pull off the upset over Duke this weekend in Durham and be able to claim a very solid 3 seed in the ACC Tournament. That would be a very impressive feat given the low expectations for this team when the season began.
Go Hoos!
Scott Guthrie just posted info about beta 1 of Silverlight 2.0, a release I've really been looking forward to.
Now if only I could get my hands on the actual bits, his tutorial might be a little more fun!
As a longtime fan of John Grisham, I was pleased to read a quick article on him in CNN.
I have read every one of his books except the non-legal/political ones, and I own all but 2 of his books (excluding the aforementioned non-legal/political ones). Since he lives in Charlottesville and his office is a mere 3 or 4 blocks from mine, I've taken an even more keen interest in his work.
I think their description of his writing is good. He's a good storyteller. But Thoreau he is not.
Still no official word from U.Va. on the hiring of Bob Pruett, but the more I read about his hire, the more I like it.
Pruett was a head coach for Groveton and Gar-Field High Schools, both in Northern Virginia before he moved on to being a coach at varying levels of the college game.
Between that and the recruiting of Virginia he would have done as a head coach in W.Va., it would make sense to me that he would still have some ties to the local high schools. He may not be able to replace London completely as a recruiter, but this hire is just making more and more sense to me.
Way to go, Groh.
There's nothing official yet, but according to the Daily Progress, former Marshall Head Coach Bob Pruett will return from retirement to lead the Cavalier defense.
Some quick facts I've gleaned in the hour or so since I learned of this:
- He was the head coach at Marshall from 1996-2004.
- 6 MAC titles
- 1 Division I-AA National Title
- 5 bowl victories in 7 appearances
- Coached several NFL stars
- Randy Moss
- Chad Pennington
- Byron Leftwich
- Former assistant coach (looks like Defensive Back and Defensive Coordinator) under Al Groh at Wake Forest
- Former Defensive Coordinator at Florida under Steve Spurrier
- He's been seen on the sidelines at UVA home games a few times since he retired in 2004
That sounds like a pretty good pedigree to me.
More thoughts as they come to me.
A bit of a childish title, but I had the pleasure of voting in my first presidential primary yesterday. I won't reveal who I voted for (or even which primary I voted in). But it was an experience nonetheless. Kind of nice for Virginia to matter in at least one of the two parties' decisions.
The results were kind of what I was expecting. I think. Obama dominated Clinton in Virginia (DC and Maryland as well) and McCain beat out Huckabee in a bit more of a contested race than most expected.
For the record, my voting experience was flawless. In and out in 5 minutes. Machines are easy (my retort to the people who complained about them: "if there's only one moving part on the machine... move the one moving part!"). And I got a sticker.
We lost to the #5 team in the country last night by 1 point.
We were winning at one point and we were never down by more than 8 (I believe) in the 2nd half.
Perhaps this is a pivot game, where we start to see the team pull together for a nice ACC Tourney run and a run through the NITs.
My two favorite moments from the game:
- Lars entering the game to an almost standing ovation from the crowd
- Jeff Jones hitting a 3 pointer (along with two other solid buckets).
It was still a loss, but there is some sunlight peeking through those clouds...
The original timewaster I've used: Desktop Tower Defense
The newer one: Flash Element TD
One very positive thing that came out of the Month from Hell was the emergence of the Virginia Women's Basketball program.
The ladies have rather quietly put together a 5-1 start to the ACC season, with the only loss being to a very talented and highly ranked Maryland program in a game which the Lady Cavs lead most of the way. In all, they've won 10 of their last 11 games, including impressive road wins (@Miami, @FSU) and a nice home blowout or two (NCSU by 25 and Morehead State by 45).
Their remaining schedule is still very rough, including games against Duke and UNC and a rematch against Maryland (this Friday), but they really seem to be coming together as a team in a way we didn't see last year.
The credit for this resurgence must be spread around the court and the bench.
- Undeniably, Aisha Mohammed's presence inside makes a huge difference in the team's abilities compared with last year. She is a force to be reckoned with and appears to be getting better as she goes long.
- Sharnee Zoll has been a team leader it seems for 10 years. But she's finally a senior this year and is doing a remarkable job in her PG role. She's not far from breaking the UVA career assists record and I think she will likely pull that off.
- Lyndra Littles and Monica Wright are two very athletically talented young women. They score from everywhere on the floor and provide Zoll with lots of options as she tries to break the record.
- Debbie Ryan has this team playing together, playing with heart and playing with aggression. Its a different team from last year, no doubt, and I have to think that the coach has something to do with that.
The game this Friday against Maryland will be interesting, but I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how the ladies do. An upset here or there in their remaining schedule and we could be looking at a 4 seed on selection day.
A week into February and I don't think I've quite gotten over January. January was not a good month.
From the problems with the football team (falling apart at the last minute to Texas Tech, academic casualties, Mike London leaving for UofR, a lowly-ranked recruiting class (though that's a subject I'll touch on later)) to the basketball team's woes (injuries have plagued the team, from the 1 to the 5 and lead to a terrible showing in ACC play after much promise to start the year) to some personal problems (I don't get into that here) - January was just not good.
For all of those reasons and a few more (mostly work-related) I have not blogged in nearly a month. I doubt many people noticed ;)
But I'm back.
I'll be attending the Clemson game at U.Va. tonight and hopefully I'll have something positive to report back from that.
I'm also headed up to the UVA Men's Lacrosse scrimmage @ Georgetown this weekend, which should be pretty entertaining. I saw the first half of our 10-6 scrimmage win over Navy last weekend and I'm looking forward to a slightly more polished team this weekend (the Bratton twins deserve a post of their own, which I'm sure I'll get to eventually).
On a non-sports note, the democratic primaries on Super Tuesday appeared to not really solve anything, so Virginia's primary on Tuesday looks a bit more important now than it once did. I'll probably be blogging about that in the near future as well.
Anyways, lots to come. It feels good to be back.