A Comedy of Cavaliers

It has not been a good week for the University of Virginia. We have managed to embarrass ourselves in both football and basketball in a period of less than 7 days. Hard to do? Yes. But the Cavs were up for a challenge.

First of all, lets start with the more subtle humiliation. As we all know, National Signing Day was last Wednesday, where high school seniors let the country know where they would be playing football in the fall. According to Scout.com, UVA pulled in the 62^nd best class in the country. At first I felt like that was about right. In no way are we a perennial power or a recruiting juggernaut. Charlottesville doesn’t exactly have the buzz of a hot town that will lure top talent by itself, and Al Groh simply isn’t a silky smooth Saban-like schmoozer. Needless to say, I was not expecting a top 25 class. But then I started realizing how bad the 62^nd best recruiting class in the country really was.

First I wanted to see how we did compared to the other teams in the ACC. This was depressing to say the least. Five teams in our conference landed classes in the top 25: Miami (3), Florida State (5), Clemson (11), Virginia Tech (20), and Boston College (22). Great. Almost half the teams in the league have classes that kick the shit out of ours. But hey, I wasn’t expecting a top 25 class, so what can you do. The next four teams fell between 25-50. To be honest, this is where I felt UVA belonged, along side NC State, Carolina, Georgia Tech and Maryland. But no, UVA had the 10^th best class in the ACC, a full 10 spots behind the 9^th place Terps who came in at 52. The only two ACC teams that fared worse that UVA were Wake Forest and Dook. But we only beat Wake by 3 spots and the Devils by 8. Pathetic. Wake is one of the smallest schools in D1 with just over 3500 kids. We should be able to crush them on the recruiting path. And then there’s Dook, who was an astounding 6-45 under the recently fired Ted Roof, and somehow UVA managed to fall to their level. I don’t know what I would have done if the Dookies had pulled in a better class than us. But it is a fair statement that UVA and Duke have a similar level of talent coming in this fall. That’s a scary thought.

Taking this one step further, I thought about if we did this poorly in the ACC, how badly did we do compared against the rest of the BCS conference teams? There are 65 teams in the 6 BCS conferences (ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, Pac 10 and SEC). There were four teams ahead of UVA in the recruiting class rankings who aren’t in these conferences (Notre Dame, Southern Miss, BYU and Fresno State). That means that UVA ranked 58^th out of the 65 teams in BCS conferences. Think about that for a minute. Only seven teams, (seven!) had worse BCS classes than the Cavaliers. Only the traditional powerhouses of Indiana, Wake, Northwestern, Uconn, Duke, Vandy and Washington State had worse BCS classes than the Cavaliers. Cincinnati, Baylor, Iowa State, Syracuse and Stanford all did much better than UVA. Those teams suck nuts and we went 9-4 last year. To be out classed by those losers is ridiculous. It makes you wonder what the hell Groh and his staff are even doing on the road. You almost have to try and be that bad to be in the 12^th percentile (sorry 12.3 to be exact) of BCS recruiting classes.

To recap, UVA got the 62^nd best recruiting class in the nation. That is 10^th in the ACC. 58^th out of 65 BCS conference teams. 12.3 percentile. No recruits in the Top 150. No 5 star players. Only one 4 star player (Torrey Mack, a RB from CT). Horrendous.

One of the biggest problems the Cavaliers have had since I have been following the program is keeping Virginia talent in state and away from Tech. This simply isn’t happening and its killing Virginia football. Out of the 18 players UVA signed, only 4 were from the Commonwealth. Compare that to the Hokies, who got 24 of their 31 players from inside Virginia state lines. Tech signed five, count em five 4 star players from within Virginia while the Cavs got none. The Carolinas were an additional source of servature. Both North and South Cakalacky took three 4 star recruits each away from the Commonwealth and indirectly the Cavaliers. On top of all that, the only 5 star player in the whole state, QB E.J. Manuel (the 2^nd ranked QB nationally behind Terrelle Pryor) chose to head south to Florida State instead of staying home. UVA will never be a respectable football program when we get served so bad in our own back yard. It’s not like the talent isn’t there, it’s that we just can’t get any of it.

Shifting over to basketball, UVA managed to embarrass itself the very next night after National Singing Day, losing by 31 to Clemson at home in one of the most uninspired performances I have ever seen by the Cavaliers. Good thing it was televised nationally on ESPN2. It was absolutely pathetic. There was no hustle, no defense and no passion. It looked like nobody on the court with a UVA jersey gave a shit at all. I don’t care if a team loses games, but if a team gives up on a game or season and quits trying then I will stop watching. You can have no regrets if you play hard and lose. If you play half assed and lose it is one of the most infuriating things imaginable. The Clemson game epitomized this quitting attitude. We were out rebounded 35-27, committed 18 turnovers and allowed Clemson to shoot 16-26 from 3-point range. Most of those 3’s were uncontested. In short it became a massacre. Mike “Game Ruiner” Patrick was on the call, and even he was subdued because it was such an ass whooping. Soon the texts were flying into the Oceanliner decrying the awful state of play. This from Eroder:

This is horrendous

Next from Gutie:

I just turned to the Cavs game and within 30 seconds of me watching pett picks up a foul

Of course he did. What else would he do? And finally, these three barrages from Armstrong that epitomized the night.

Newsflash. We fucking blow

Really glad I turned down tickets to tonight’s game. I’m pretty sure I would have driven off the road on the way home.

I mean I’d rather have watched American Idol.

The Oceanliner would definitely rather have watched American Idol than watch my favorite team give up on a game and not try. The only worthwhile part of the game was a comment from crazy Bucky Waters, who was trying to explain that you can’t teach talent, but his analogy came out horribly wrong:

You know, a leopard can’t teach a house cat how to kill an antelope

Stunned silence. Even Mike Patrick was at a loss for a hyperbole at that one.

UVA continued its national embarrassment in losing to a terrible Wake team by 16 on Saturday on ABC. I did not watch this game, but the recap did not lend us any compliments.

All of these factors combined make it so crazy then at the performance the Hoos gave last night against Carolina. They played their absolute hearts out. Players diving for loose balls, jumping on the floor to force a jump ball, playing hard-nosed defense and never giving up against the 5^th ranked team in the country. It was truly a 180 in terms of effort level. I can only assume Leitao pushed the right buttons in practice and got the players to play with a little pride and nuts for once, and it showed. ESPN caught the mood exactly right in their recap:

The Tar Heels got all they could handle from the Cavaliers, who have lost 9 of 10 but played nothing like a team in a hopeless freefall.

That is pinpoint. We are in a hopeless freefall, but we damn sure didn’t play like it. If UVA had shown the same lackluster effort against Carolina that they did against Clemson, I probably wouldn’t have watched another Hoos game all season. It would be too frustrating. But they played with heart, and even though they dropped another close one, I believe they have a chance to win any game they play, however small that chance is. They had a 0% chance to win with the effort they showed against Clemson.

This 1-point loss was surprising on so many levels. It offered perhaps the most lopsided match up of the season in all of college basketball: Ryan Pettinella vs. Tyler Hansbrough. Again I go to texter nation to analyze this mismatch. From Gutie:

Pett will be fouled out in as many possessions as he is in the game

Eroder weighs in again:

Might see a quadruple double

Yawkdawg down in Colatown had this to say:

There should be a rule against it

Tyler was very blatant in his assessment:

0 points, 0 rebs and 5 fouls

Armstrong evoked a biblical analogy:

Goliath will win

So what proceeded to occur can only be described as a miracle. While guarding Hansbrough (who leads the ACC in free throw attempts per game at around 10), Pettinella only picked up 3 fouls in 22 minutes. This is astonishing. Pett made it to the 2:24 mark in the first half with no fouls, while starting the game and playing significant minutes. Truly hard to believe. Eminent Oceanliner friend and huge Carolina fan Carrington had an interesting prediction before the game. He mused that since the Tar Heels had racked up suck a huge discrepancy in free throw attempts against Clemson on Sunday (36-7), that the refs would curb fouls called against UVA in an attempt to show that they don’t bias Carolina on the charity stripe. I think its part of the reason, but certainly not the whole reason, that UNC only went to the line 12 times against the Hoos. This certainly helped out Pett’s performance, and I’m happy for the big man.

And of course, this segways perfectly into an update of the original Oceanliner feature on Pett’s season long battle between points and fouls. And let me tell you what, Pett was in trouble after the Clemson game. He managed a 4 foul, no point performance that left him at minus 10 for the season. Minus 10. That is really embarrassing. But as we all know, in the universe there is a yin and a yang. A balance if you will. That can only account for the 12 point, 11 rebound explosion Pettinella had against Wake on Saturday (with 4 fouls of course). That brought him back to minus 2 for the season. Of course against UNC he promptly added no points to his 3 foul performance, but at least he had 6 boards. So as we stand now, Pett is at 60 fouls and 55 points with 6 games left before the ACC tourney. This is going to be great folks. Godspeed Ryan, Godspeed.

Well, that’s it for this week folks. I hope everyone out there is doing well. The Oceanliner is going to enjoy this fabulous three-day weekend by doing absolutely nothing and loving every minute of it. If you have a date for Valentine’s Day, enjoy. If not, way to be such a loser. Until next time then, stay safe, keep it real and zip it up, and zip it out.