Pop Quiz!

In an attempt to allow Wahooze Nation to get to know the newest Wahooze writer a little bit better, Kendall prepared these questions for me to answer.  Hopefully, this drills down into the heart of my UVa fanship and my credentials for this gig.

I generally dislike  quizzes and school in general
but this sounds like fun

Question #1 -- Pick one: 2011 Virginia Football goes 6-6 or 7-5 in the regular season and makes it to a bowl game, <OR> 2011-12 Virginia Basketball wins enough to be on the NCAA Tournament bubble and makes it in as a 9-seed.  Assume they are mutually exclusive, and the one you don't pick has a losing season.  Explain why you made the choice you made.

                Football. Easily. I think football is further away and more in need of a goodish season. While I think basketball has a much better shot of that happening I think we are still a year away. That being said I forsee us being a bubble team and hopefully winning the NIT. I think that usually sets you up for a big run the next season and provides some good experience for the guys. I think the new kids we’re bringing in sets us up for success in 2012-2013 season. That to me is TB’s make or break season.

                Football on the other hand needs a good season. They need some progress to point to. Otherwise Coach London is attempting to sell a gilded pile of fessus to recruits who if they have half a brain (or a guess a stick for this metaphor) can figure that out. A winning record and Bowl Game shows progress and gives everyone a little confidence moving forward. Also that would probably put us in the Military Bowl at RFK which means we could all go. That’d be sweet. Anyways I think London can sell progress and point to a bowl game in that way. And things are only going to get better. I think basketball can deal with a losing season just based on how stacked the ACC is going to be and hopefully the athletic department can be patient, but I also think both of these things are going to happen. Football just needs it a lot more.

Question #2 -- If you had to bet your life's earnings on the "success" of one of our two coaches of the big-time revenue sports, who would you bet on, Mike London or Tony Bennett?  Why?  How would you define "success" for each of those two coaches?

He's just got a moxie about him...

                Mike London. I think most of college football success lies in recruiting. I always go right to Randy Shannon at Miami when people ask me about Coach London. When Shannon first came in he reinstituted the “State of Miami” at the U and locked down the top class in the country by recruiting local kids and not the national riffraff that Coker had brought in. London to me is doing the same thing. If you look at Tech it’s an unfortunate perfect example of winning with homegrown talent. I think Coach London can go into the hotbeds of football talent in this state and compete and beat Tech and whoever else comes in for anyone. He also seems to be doing well in the DC area which is good news for us but bad news for Coach Edsall at Maryland who already has enough trouble keeping Penn State out of the city. If Coach London can put down roots in the DC area that will be a gold mine and he can build a winning program just recruiting DC, Bad News, and Richmond. Oh and he can Coach ‘em up too.

                I’m still a little skeptical of Coach Bennett’s system in the ACC to be honest with you. Granted he’s been playing with the Chernobyl nuclear fallout survivors from the Leitao era. I saw flashes from this year and we still haven’t seen the offense run with a point guard (sorry Jontel) but this is the big year for me. I think we will take steps forward but I really want to see how we match up with UNC. They are always going to be our measuring stick and I am very confident we are going to lose both games to them this year but I want to see how. If the team can manage to keep it in a slow half-court game and impose their will and UNC just beats us then I will be sold. But if UNC gets out and runs and makes us look like a bunch of fat kids who only ever play horse on a basketball court, then we need to rethink this. I love what TB is doing recruiting wise and I think the system can work. I just need proof that it will.

Question #3 -- Virginia Baseball has made two College World Series appearances out of the last three years, but has come home without a national championship.  In your opinion, what is missing from the program and impeding its ascension to that lofty goal?

Baum Stadium at Arkansas hold 10,000+ fans. They didn't
even make the CWS...

                Boom right in my wheelhouse. Expectations. They need to blow Davenport up and make it equal to the level of expectation of the team. Until the team feels like it’s a big time program playing in a big time stadium they won’t have big time success, or at least the expectations of it. Right now I still think there’s a happy to be here attitude and not an expectation of greatness every season. Coach O’Connor has built a program worthy of those expectations and it’s time the administration ponies up and builds a park.  Screw those temporary green bleachers, all that says is we think we’re going to have temporary success. Pay everyone on the coaching staff and put permanent expansion in Davenport and say we’re in it for the long haul. We have everything else to make a kid want to come here let’s build the stadium and bring in the best of the best. Here’s the plan:

Permanent bleachers down both lines. The whole way down. Dig into the earth on the left field line. You can tuck the bullpens underneath the bleachers. I can design it for you. Get it done. Sitting on hills is stupid and muddy and no one wants your damn kids running around anyway. That adds 1000 permanent seats at least. Also wrap it around the outfield. I would be fine with those green bleachers for a little but to be honest with you that is my favorite place to sit. Make those a real set too. There’s enough of a height decline under those bleachers to put a nice concession stand out there or maybe some offices or a hitting tunnel. Baseball is one of your money sports get them out of UHall.

Once this is done it’ll show everyone UVA means business on the Diamond. We’ve already proven we’ll come out to the park and this will help keep a consistent winner on the field. Otherwise when the Nationals come knocking on Coach O’Connor’s door in a few years (bold prediction for you) he’s going to bolt and the program is going to go with him. Open your wallet Craig and give them what they’ve earned.

Question #4 -- Just in general, what are your feelings about Virginia Lacrosse?

I have a strong disdain for bros. And yes
these are actual players.

                I know very little about the actual sport of lacrosse. I know there is a lot of scoring and a lot of hitting. These are two of my favorite aspects of sports. However off the field I know that UVA Lacrosse is full of a lot of douchebaggery, which drives me insane. I don’t know how such a badass sport got associated with such dickheads but it is unbelievably annoying. I lived across the street from one of the Lacrosse houses my third year and they were constantly being loud and irritating blasting their mind numbing country music crap at all hours of the night. I understand your father makes a ton of money and you really don’t need this degree because you’re probably going to be handed some absurd job after college regardless of how you do in your bullshit sociology major classes but could you please fake it a little more for those of us that support you and actually need to study and do well in school so we can do well in life. Alright that’s enough.

                My best friend in high school played lacrosse so I have watched a lot of it and I know UVA is very good at it. However until this season they always seemed to be chokers to me, never able to get past Duke when it counted. I really wish they had gotten to go through them this season but I’ll take the national championship regardless.

Question #5 -- List, in order, your top five favorite Universirty of Virginia athletes of all time.  Explain why you picked each of those five.

5.            Lars Mikalauskas- I’ve always had a soft spot for doughy Eastern Europeans. Lars didn’t end up playing while I was here but he did go nuts for 16 points against Miami while I was there. He always thoroughly confused me as a basketball player because of that weird shoulder thing that it looked like the medical staff ghetto-rigged out of a shoulder brace and some surgical tubing. He always played hard even though he was getting screamed at in a language I assume he didn’t understand much of, which may have made it easier come to think of it.

4.            Jimmy Howell- I made a point in my last article on WahooWatch that Jimmy should get the jersey for this season. How often is it (and I guess how depressing is it) that your punter is your most consistent performer for 4 years. But think about it. Jimmy always gives you good punts with one shanker at a somewhat critical time. I guess he’s had a lot of practice based on the ineptitude of the football team’s offense over the last few seasons but he is consistently one of our best offensive players. God we suck I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence. Seeing Jimmy around Grounds I keep thinking he plays QB. The kid is huge. And his bag says number 8, which before I memorized everyone on the team confused me immensely. But hey at least he’s not 97…Tech…but that’s a different rant.

3.            Isaac Cain- Isaac is one of my best friends so he had to make this list. He also laid that dude out on the opening kick of the Tech game last year which was AWESOME. I remember watching that game with my parents and before they even showed the replay I knew exactly who had done it. I’m really going to miss watching him out there this year. It was great being able to know someone on the field, even if it was usually for penalties. By the way that cut block against USC is still a legal play.

2.            Danny Hultzen- My high school coach refers to Danny as “the player I wish you were.” And while that is incredibly demoralizing, but not at all out of character for him, it is also 100% accurate. If I could have my kids look up to anyone playing baseball it would be him. The kid is easily, EASILY the best player we’ve ever had and was humble the whole way through. I think if they would have let him he would have played first base the whole season. That’s a commitment from a star that is so rare these days that you can’t help but admire it.

1.            Chris Long- Genuine fear. I would want nothing to do with playing us if Chris was on the team. I was at the 48-0 football “game” at the Orange Bowl in 07 where I saw every garbage lineman we had on Miami try and contain him. It’s nice that it only took 3 of them. I’m sure Nate Collins and Jeffery Fitzgerald were quite disappointed to only have single blocks with a fake chip from Javarris James or Graig Cooper all night. That man was so good and so dominant and is a once in a generation type of player that even before I went or even rooted for UVA I would stop and watch just to see him dismantle players.  Absolutely incredible and it looks like the NFL is about to heed notice too.

Question #6 -- UVA or UVa?  Why?

 UVA. I grew up in the land of federal government acronyms. It just looks better to me. My dad worked at NAVFAC, I went to school across the street from DARPA, my neighbors worked for the IRS, I had to deal with the TSA, NSA, and DHS on the metro. It’s just easier and looks better to me.

Accurate

Question #7 -- One of my all-time favorite posts from the two year history of writing Wahooze was AD for a Day.  What would you change about my list?  If you had to add two or three things to the list, what would you add?

I would put the kibosh on the minor league team. I think UVA baseball is easily enough.  And college baseball is a better product than crappy Single-A. Also I would be down for the radio. I love sports talk radio and we really need to have a purely UVA focused station with people from UVA running it, sorry Mark Moses, get outta town (I think that’s a funny insert.)

I would add the following things:

1.            Building on your point of academic tracks for athletes we need a massive overhaul of the tutoring department. If the administration is going to emphasize the academic prestige and standards of the University for recruiting then they also need to help those athletes when they get in. Athlete tutor is one of the most high paying and coveted student jobs at Miami, and that is the way it should be at UVA too. We have the some of the smartest kids in the WORLD at this school you’re telling me no one can make sure the football team knows what happens when you put an aluminum can near a candle? And yes that was a question on my roommates physics 104 FINAL, you want to piss off an engineer show us that shit.

2.            Blow up Davenport. I made this point above but I think the baseball team has earned a nice facelift. You will sell the place out if they stay good and they will stay good if you upgrade the facilities.

You're telling me Temple has more Billboards than us?

3.            Get UVA sports big in NOVA. I mean billboards on highways and segments on radio stations. There are a ton of people up there that went here it won’t be hard. I’m tired of turning on ESPN 980 at home and only hearing about Maryland. Lay down some roots and let’s get that done. Someone get Coach London a weekly segment with Doc Walker and the John Thompson Show. Boom. There’s your start.

4.            WahooWagon. This is a stupid bus idea I have that I think could work. We have that big setra now. Why not use it to bring people into the games. It would help with parking and help with marketing. I’ll use NOVA again but you could park cars in the Pentagon parking lot and have us at UTS come get you and bring you down for the games. That drive to CVille isn’t bad from all over the state but most people don’t realize that. Get butts in the seats and fans throughout the state and the program will grow in popularity which will do nothing but help with recruiting and getting us some money for that bubble.

5.            Buy UTS more Setras. Just do it. They look a lot better than rolling up in Abbott Trailways buses.               

Question #8 -- Is Virginia a football school or a basketball school?  Explain.

                Currently? Neither, but I think both are coming. Historically basketball. Easily. However I do think we are going to have a problem getting out of the academic shadow. Vanderbilt has good sports teams from time to time, so does Baylor and Stanford, but those will always be academic schools first. I think UVA is that school for the ACC, maybe with Wake also. It’s going to take sustained success in either sport to shake off that reputation and become known as a university for either of those sports. For now we’re a strong academic school that is great at weird sports like swimming and baseball because those kids all leave UVA with a degree and do big things with it and can kick back more money for that program than a person from say I don’t know, Tech can. That’s what we’re seen as, but a change could be brewing