HEY! You should do this football

UVA just got done refinishing the Lambeth Colonnade. If UVA Football wants to do something cool, they should hold an open practice here. Bring back the old timers, have a little fan party, and most importantly drum up the excitement for the program. It's not far from McCue, or parking, and it would be an awesome idea.

Wahooze Turns Four!

Wow.  It's been four years now.  Four years, and 820 posts.  I have impressed myself!

I want to thank Mike and Pierce and all of our loyal readers and followers. It continues to be great fun and a much-needed outlet for yours truly.  Thank you for reading.  From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Curtain Falls...

Required reading from Jeff White:

Curtain Falls on Remarkable Baseball Season

Roadblocked!

Great season, defying all expectations. Won 50, 22-8 in the conference, took eight out of the ten ACC weekend series, went 2-1 in Durham, earned a national seed, swept our regional to make a super regional appearance. Arguably the third-best season in the history of UVA Baseball. This weekend sucked, but let's have some perspective.

Meanwhile, it's clear our arms were just gassed at the end of the season. A bunch of freshmen and a senior seeing his first truly complete season at the college level. The staff just crashed this weekend. The bats went a little cold against some phenomenal relief pitching from the Bulldogs, and MSU just hit like crazy. With the state of the two teams when we met for this super regional, we were simply outclassed. That much was clear and apparent. Still doesn't diminish our great season.

I come away from the weekend knowing a few things:

1) I am now a die-hard Ole Miss fan. Those duck dynasty yokels from MSU were some of the scummiest fans I've ever encountered. Like Virginia Tech fans dipped in cornmeal batter and deep fried, served with a side of tator tots and buttcheese.

2) We are going to be nasty next year. Sick-McNasty. We'll miss Kyle Crockett, but with Whit and Artie back, along with the arrival of Connor Jones and the further development of the rising sophomores... just filthy. George Ragsdale is ready to replace Grags at 2nd, and Joey Mac in for King at 1st, we're ready to roll. Omaha or bust.

3) As much as I hated the MSU fans, I was impressed with the way they traveled en masse to invade Charlottesville. Considering to the amount of fans UVA brought to Durham, I'd say we are on our way to cultivating a nice core of baseball fans, but we're still pretty far away from the level of support some of these SEC teams draw. Call it a work in progress, I guess.

Anyway, great season. Sad to see it end today, but it was still a great season. GO HOOS!

Bring on football.

Scouting Mississippi State

If you aren't reading Streaking the Lawn, then you should be.

This week, STL put out a few really good pieces scouting our opponent in this weekend's best-of-three super regional matchup: The Mississippi State Baseball Bulldogs.

Scouting the Bulldogs' Offense:
Mississippi State's Offense

Scouting the Bulldogs' Pitching:

Mississippi State's Pitchers

Q&A with a Mississippi State Blogger:

Q&A with For Whom the Cowbell Tolls

Cliff's Notes:

• Mississippi State hitting is maybe slightly above average for the super regional level.
• Slugger Hunter Renfroe is 100% legit -- and went 13th overall to the Padres in yesterday's first round of the MLB Draft.
• The rest of their lineup is frankly pretty ordinary.  Renfroe is to be feared, the rest of the lineup is manageable.
• Overall, Mississippi State pitching is very, very good.
• Their bullpen, especially, is the bee's knees.
• The Bulldog starters can be a bit shaky, but long reliever Ross Mitchell is a beast.
• Closer Jonathan Holder is also a beast.

The book on beating Mississippi State is to mitigate the damage Renfroe can do by shutting down the rest of the lineup and keeping runners off the bases.  Get into their starters early and put runs on the board so their bullpen can't come in and dominate the game.  Force them to burn bullpen arms early in the weekend so that they run out of steam later in the series.

Wahooze Prediction:

We've seen teams this good a million times in the ACC this season, and we've beaten them all.  The Bulldogs are not bringing anything special to the table other than Renfroe, Mitchell, and Holder.  We have more offense, and better starting options on the mound.  We'll be productive 1-9, and force them to come back from early deficits in each of the games we play against them.  Hoos win close games on Saturday and Sunday to advance to Omaha.

Future ACC Football Schedules!

It's really nice to see no freaking Maryland on this map!

I don't like that we'll only be playing Clemson, Florida State, Wake, and NC State once every six (or seven, or eight) years, but overall I think the ACC Office did a decent job with this.  Anyway, nothing earth-shattering here, but it's cool to be in the know, so BITCH BE COOL.

GREENSBORO, N.C.--The Atlantic Coast Conference Tuesday released an equitable 12-year schedule for the rotating crossover conference opponents for its schools in football which begins this fall.

The rotating crossover opponent is the one ACC team that changes every year on each ACC teams’ football schedules. With the addition of Pitt and Syracuse to the ACC this fall, each ACC team will play all six divisional opponents annually, one primary crossover team from the opposite division which does not change, and one rotating team from the opposite division which does change.

The league previously announced a future home and away schedule for divisional opponents and for each school’s primary crossover team as well as each school’s rotating crossover for 2013. Today’s announcement completes the conference schedule for ACC teams from 2014 through the 2024 season.

The criteria used to develop the schedule includes the following:
1. Each ACC school will play eight conference games annually, four at home and four on the road.
2. Each ACC school will play three home divisional games and three on the road.
3. Each ACC school will play one home cross divisional game and one road cross divisional game. When schools will play their permanent crossover opponent at home, they will play their rotating crossover opponent on the road and vice versa.
4. Within each division, all teams will either play all of their primary crossover games at home or away in a given year with all of the rotating crossover opponents all played at home or away.
5. Each ACC school will play all of their rotating crossover opponents twice during the 12-year rotation, once at home and once on the road, but not consecutively.

The Visual

UVA Future Schedules

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – The Atlantic Coast Conference released Virginia football’s 12-year schedule for its rotating division crossover conference opponents on Tuesday.

The rotating division crossover opponent is the one ACC team that changes every year on each ACC teams’ football schedules. With the addition of Pitt and Syracuse to the ACC this fall, each ACC team will play all six divisional opponents annually, one primary crossover team from the opposite division which does not change, and one rotating team from the opposite division which does change.

The league previously announced a future home and away schedule for divisional opponents and primary division crossover teams, as well as each school’s rotating division crossover for 2013. Today’s announcement completes the conference schedule for ACC teams from 2014 through the 2024 season. Virginia’s tentative schedule for each season from 2014 through 2024 is listed below.

Virginia’s 2013 rotating crossover for 2013 is Clemson and its primary crossover team for 2013 is Maryland. Louisville will take Maryland’s place as UVa’s permanent Atlantic Division primary crossover opponent in 2014.

Virginia’s ACC division crossover schedule through 2024:

2013 Clemson
2014 at Florida State
2015 Syracuse
2016 at Wake Forest
2017 Boston College
2018 at NC State
2019 Florida State
2020 at Clemson
2021 Wake Forest
2022 at Syracuse
2023 NC State
2024 at Boston College

Baseball Q&A Update

Did the UVA Baseball team win this weekend?

Yes! The guys beat Army 2-1, after Army's starter threw 347 pitches. They then won two games against the Fightin' Phoenix of Elon 2-0 and 11-3.

Did they look good winning?

Of course.

Seriously though, the starting pitchers (Waddell, coming off a rough ACCT start, and Silverstein) and bullpen were instrumental in each victory, particularly the close games. Obviously, the Hoos will need more offense to make a deep CWS run, so thankfully they broke out the bats in the 3rd game yesterday.

Who will they play in the Super Regional?

We don't know yet. Central Arkansas and Mississippi State play today to decide who moves on to the next round.

Will UVA be hosting the Super Regional?

Yes! But it hasn't been announced if those games will be Fri-Sun or Sat-Mon. That should happen soon.

Are we going to win the Super Regional?

Well, it's at home and we'll certainly be favored. I think most Wahoo fans should be very optimistic, but obviously anything could happen and whichever team they play will be coming off some big wins in the regional round.

Did the Hokies win their first-ever hosted regional?

No, they lost. Hahaha.