March 2008 - Posts
Former U.Va. baseball star Ryan Zimmerman made the Washington Nationals' first ballgame in their new park one to remember.
The third baseman, already fairly well-known for his heroics, hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th inning to give the Nationals a 3-2 victory over the Atlanta Braves.
Photo from espn.com courtesy of the Associated Press/Nick Wass
There's a lot of grief coming from people who are upset that the basketball season is finally over (and thus the "major") sports season is over for this school year.
Well, I just wanted to drop a reminder that we have a lot going on in the world of U.Va. sports still and some of it has to do with some very good programs (all rankings are national rankings):
- #1 Men's Tennis team. Undefeated on the season. #1 player in the country. #1 doubles team in the country. They take on Miami and Florida State this weekend in Charlottesville.
- #1 Men's Lacrosse team. Also undefeated on the season. Two of the top four scorers in the country are on our team, and we have potentially the two most exciting freshmen in the country in the Bratton twins. They have a big game at Maryland on Saturday.
- #4 Women's Lacrosse team. They've had a couple tough losses, but continue to play strong. They just beat JMU last night. They too have a big road ACC match this weekend with Duke.
- #15 Baseball team. They have some curious losses on the season and haven't been as dominant in the last couple weeks as they looked like they might be. But they've got a strong pitching staff and should be able to recover.
I realize this are the so-called non-revenue sports. But they are all exciting to watch, and they should all make us proud to be Cavalier fans.
It's bad to have one deadline looming.
It's worse to have two deadlines looming.
It's even worse still to have two deadlines looming on the same day in vastly different areas of your job description.
That has been my life for the last couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, 3pm, is the deadline. Hopefully I can get some sleep on Saturday because Caffeine is ruining my life right now.
I just got home from watching U.Va.'s painful loss to Bradley in the semi-finals of the CBI.
I can't believe I just watched Sean's last collegiate game... doesn't feel right.
At the same time, Sylven Landesberg is playing in the McDonald's All-American game.
Sean is now the past. Sylven is the future. Or so goes the party line tonight...
I think the folks on TheSabre's Women's Basketball Board are about to go postal on the NCAA and the referees for today's game.
The Hoos are down by 1 with just a couple minutes left. Hopefully they can pull it off in spite of everything else.
Update: The ladies couldn't quite pull it off, falling in overtime 88-85. Difficult ending to an otherwise impressive season.
I mentioned in a previous post that the U.Va. Men's Lacrosse team should be #1 in the country this week when the polls came out. I was so busy yesterday that I forgot to point out that, as expected, we were. The USILA poll actually made us the unanimous #1:
Rank Team Pts (1st) Prev.
1 Virginia (9-0) 260 (13) 2
2 Syracuse (5-1) 243 3
3 Duke (8-1) 230 1
4t Georgetown (4-2) 201 10
4t Maryland (6-2) 201 9
6 Cornell (5-1) 188 6t
7 Notre Dame (5-1) 184 5
8 Johns Hopkins (3-3) 173 6t
9 North Carolina (6-2) 161 4
10 Navy (8-1) 154 8
11 Drexel (7-1) 121 14
12 Hofstra (3-2) 97 15
13 UMBC (4-3) 95 13
14 Delaware (6-2) 84 16
15 Bucknell (5-2) 76 12
16 Army (5-2) 64 17
17 Princeton (2-3) 56 11
18 Loyola (4-3) 39 18
19 Penn (4-2) 27 NR
20 Denver (4-4) 23 20
I've been incredibly busy all morning so I didn't get to blog about the win last night. But here it is.
Sean Singletary scored 8 points in a span of about 26 seconds last night to take the Cavaliers from a 4 point deficit (70-74) to a 3 point lead 78-75. The whole series of plays - two free throws, a banked-in three pointer, a steal, a layup and one - was amazing. My boss had his jacket on ready to leave. And then all of a sudden, the crowd was going wild and Sean was pumping his fist and the Hoos were on their way to the Final Four of the CBI.
I would have rather the game be a little less of a contested match-up, but I'll take the win (and more Singletary at JPJ) however I can get it.
My tickets for tomorrow's game against Bradley are waiting in my inbox. I know nothing about Bradley, so I'm looking forward to some insightful analysis from TheSabre...
The 4-seeded Women's Basketball team crushed UCSB late last night, 86-52. The win in the first round of the Women's NCAA Tournament sets up a match-up with the 5 seed, ODU who beat Liberty earlier in the day. There was a similar margin in that game, with the Lady Monarchs taking the victory by 20, 82-62.
The unfortunate part for the Hoos is that ODU is the host (something that can't happen in the men's game as far as I know) of this region and while we're the higher seed, we'll be playing on their home court.
The interesting part is that Virginia has a chance to beat ODU twice in two days - the Men's team plays ODU tonight in the "Elite Eight" of the CBI tournament. Thankfully, that game is on our home floor and I'll be right there at center court to watch it.
A friend was asking me some questions about juicycampus.com for a project she's working on for a class at U.Va. I hadn't heard about it, so we were talking and the discussion lead us to streakthelawn.com (down now). In looking into that some more, I happened across cvillain.com. Very interesting. Quite entertaining.
I'm quite amused by the "we older people are better than those silly 20-somethings" attitude in the thread about streakthelawn.com shutting down. I guess one of these days I'll get that kind of attitude. Maybe when I hit 27.
It took overtime to do it, but the #2 U.Va. Men's Lacrosse team all but assured themselves the #1 ranking when the polls come out on Monday by defeating Johns Hopkins 13-12 today in front of a record crowd at Klockner Stadium.
The game remained close as neither team had a lead of more than 2 points at any time.
Too many players had solid games for me to really list. It was just an impressive performance against the defending national champions.
I am, however, a little worried about face-offs and our goalie. But as long as we keep finding ways to win.........
My bracket isn't busted yet, but Western Kentucky, Texas A&M and Marquette did not leave me happy after the first part of round 1 of the NCAA tournament.
UConn is currently losing and that will not make me happy either.
Seriously, its a very aptly named time of the year.
Update: UConn lost. Brackets bust all over the country.
Well, it certainly wasn't a big win.
And it certainly wasn't pretty.
And it certainly won't help Dave Leitao sleep any better tonight.
But the Hoos live to play another day, beating Richmond 66-64 at the John Paul Jones arena.
We now play ODU who defeated Rider today 68-65. The game is on Monday at 7pm, also at JPJ.
The third game of the day is also over, with Ohio defeating Brown 80-74.
Houston and Nevada are going at it right now, while Washington/Valparaiso, UTEP/Utah, Tulsa/Miami (Ohio) and Bradley/Cincinnati are all tomorrow.
The floor seats were nice, btw ;)
Less than 8 hours until we get to see Sean Singletary in JPJ again.
My floor seats are burning a hole in my pocket. I can't wait.
Just a tad surprising, but the #23 U.Va. Women's Basketball team has received a 4 seed in the women's NCAA tournament. That's a bit higher (I was expecting a 5 seed) but really awesome.
The best part is that they're in the East Regional, so they play their first two round games in Norfolk.
And good tickets too. Floor seats, directly across from the U.Va. bench.
Not bad for $10 each ;)
More Posts
Next page »