Day 2 of the weekend run down (day 1 here):

Good (and still not surprising): Men’s tennis trounces PSU to advance to Sweet 16. Yawn.

Bad (and surprising): Women’s LAX gets upset by Carolina in the first round of the NCAA tourney. Damn.

Good (and not-so-surprising): Men’s LAX squeaks by UMBC by one goal to advance to the second round.

Good (and bad that it’s so surprising): Baseball salvages the last game of its series with #2 UNC with a sixth inning rally to win 5-4. I think that’s the teams only win against a ranked opponent this year. Good and bad in one update!

OJ Mayo under scrutiny for accepting cash and gifts.

Wahoo Rick Carlisle returns to the coaching fraternity. A nice plug for his alma mater:

A native of upstate New York, Carlisle was the co-captain of the Virginia team that made the Final Four in 1984, the year after Ralph Sampson left. He was a first-round pick of the Boston Celtics and was a backup on their 1986 championship team.

Ah, the good ol’ days. Back when we had final four appearances and first-round draft picks. Anyway, congrats Ricky. Good luck dealing with Cubes, amigo.

I’ll keep updating this post all weekend as scores come in from our different spring endeavors.

– Bad: The baseball team continued proving that it doesn’t belong in the upper tier, losing yesterday and today to #2 Carolina.

– Bad: The softball team continued its not-so-good tradition of losing, bowing out of the ACC championships quite quickly with a 6-0 loss to UNC yesterday and a 5-3 loss to the Wreck today.

– Good, but not surprising: The tennis team blanked Fairleigh Dickinson 4-0 in the First Round of their NCAA tourney.

– Good: The women’s golf team keeps up their strong season:

Virginia freshman Joy Kim posted five birdies over her final nine holes at the NCAA East Regional to propel the Cavalier women’s golf team back to the NCAA Championships for the first time since 2005. Kim had one bogey during her final round to finish the day at 4-under 68. As a team Virginia shot 4-over 292 to finish the 54-hole tournament in fifth place at 34-over 898. The top eight teams from three regional sites advance to the national championships.

Women’s lax coach named … you guessed it … ACC Coach of the Year.

* I have no idea how Virginia stacks up against other schools when if comes to total ACC COYs this year. Just a hunch that we’re doing better than others, though there’s no easy way to prove it.

Charlie Weis, panned for blaming everyone but himself for last year’s mess, blasts Michigan because he predicts they will play the blame game next year.

Could be. If you want the complete rundown of the past, present, and future reasoning about why our conference is disrespected, J.P. empties the diaper pail. Here’s what the Coastal could smell like:

Even with the significant personnel losses, Virginia Tech will be the unanimous preseason choice to win the pathetic Coastal, whose laundry-list of problems include:

• Virginia: Whatever games spectacular defensive end Chris Long, the second overall pick in the draft, didn’t win by himself, quarterback Jameel Sewell did. Long’s gone and Sewell’s academically ineligible, as is end Jeffrey Fitzgerald and corner Chris Cook.

• Georgia Tech: Chan Gailey’s out, Paul Johnson’s in. Johnson’s option offense could work but he’s missing Tashard Choice, the ACC’s leading rusher.

• Miami: Randy Shannon went 5-7 in his first season, with an inexcusable 2-6 against the ACC (and one of those wins over Duke).

• UNC: The only program of the six who could be considered on the upswing but quarterback T.J. Yates missed spring practice and there’s still Tyler Hansbrough-sized holes on defense.

• Duke: Who’s still Duke, despite new coach David Cutcliffe. The same Duke that has won four games since 2004.

Of course, the good news is that, given all of Virginia’s problems, the Hoos could again take advantage of some sorry-ass ACC competition to win 8 games and make a run at the division crown again.

Groh tabs Coach Lineburg and his extensive ties to the Roanoke area to recruit in (and remove from) the Hokies backyard.

“This is my first blog of many this season.” – Ryan Zimmerman, in his kickoff post on his exquisitely simple new blog, now conveniently featured on our blog roll.

Well, the latest is that there’s nothing to report. He wants to return. The staff wants him to return. But they’re waiting on the paper work. Though I’m not sure I understand what Leitao means:

“I have no idea [when it will happen]. It’s not anything that I have any control over. Before anything happens, we have to get the paperwork,” said Leitao, reiterating a statement he has made since the season ended. “Everything’s that going to happen is based on the paperwork. We have to get that organized.”

Have to get what organized? What does that mean? Does that mean they need to wait on paperwork from the NCAA … or that they haven’t gotten around to submitting Tunji’s paperwork to the NCAA? God, I hope it’s not the latter.

No, the thought of the coaching staff not bothering to find some student manager to fill out a few lines is too inconceivable. It’s gotta be that they’re waiting NCAA. That’s what I’m going with until I see something that more than just suggests otherwise.

P-Hite floats a “radical” concept:

[H]ow about two divisions with the top four teams from each qualifying for the ACC Tournament? For those who argue the the current scheduling format is unbalanced and, thus, unfair, this solves that problem. Each team plays the other five in its division twice and the six teams in the other division once. Since you’re only competing against your divisional opponents for a berth in the ACC Tournament, all is fair.

It also eliminates that Thursday round in the ACC Tournament. As much as I love basketball, two days in a row of four games is a lot to take, especially when the first day is as bad as it was this season. Now, you go back to the traditional three-day tournament with eight teams that are, supposedly, quality teams.

The divisional format also makes the regular season, especially down the stretch, even more exciting because teams are fighting for a spot in the tournament, not just a seed in the tournament.

Pure, liquid craziness. Patrick acknowledges the problems with this format (which is why he’s floating it, not supporting it). The biggest problem, though, is that creating divisions like this doesn’t solve the fairness problem: if two teams in the same division have to play D*ke and UNC once each, it isn’t “fair” if one of them gets both at home while the other has to travel to Durham Hill twice.

The only reason for divisions is if there’s a need for an artificially created match-up of equals for a championship game. You know, for the television dollars. The same reason we suddenly need 18 conference basketball games.

… and I’m gonna get hired! Ricky boy inches closer to the Mavs job.

The ACC crime wave strikes even the former-stars-turned-administrators.

Nothing you didn’t know already: coming apart at the seams, yadda, yadda, yadda.

So, I’ve been kinda sorta following the whole reseating thing in its first couple rounds. Groups A and B have picked/are picking their spots in Scott this month, and as a Group C ticket holder (nope, no media pass for a little ol’ blogger) I’m not finding a need to follow things seat by seat. Rather, I’ve been watching on a daily basis, including reaction on the football board. From what I can tell from my oh-so-unscientific vantage point, it appears that people are generally happy so far. Not exactly surprising that the top donors are getting their top picks, of course, but at least there hasn’t been some sort of meltdown … yet.

Also, I called the ticket office this week to inquire about the Group C process. Our tickets get allocated by the ticket office in June, and given their self-imposed time crunch caused by this whole reseating scheme, they won’t be calling us to ascertain how we feel about potential seating moves as they did in previous years. So, if you typically used to wait for the ticket office to call you about your potential seats, don’t bother. You’ll likely just be getting a nice surprise in the mail.

And the real time seat selection website is a nice little touch. I wonder how much that thing set them back? A couple dozen Group B donors?

The fourth-seeded Hoos face off against UNC in the first round of the NCAA tourney on Sunday at 1 p.m. at Klockner. Virginia blasted the Heels in the regular season in the same place, 16-5, though now the stakes are much different — giving Carolina much more reason to be depressed should they get blasted again.

A nice national moment for perhaps the best Virginia team, and program, since the soccer juggernaut of the 90s. And a little context about their rocket-like rise:

Not long ago, the thought of a national title at Virginia might have been far-fetched. When Boland took over in 2001, the team was not ranked in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Top 75. Under his guidance, the program has earned top-eight seeds in the last five national tournaments.

Can we give Boland the ACC Coach of the Decade award and be done with it?

This time: women’s golf, and in her first season at Virginia, no less. If the ACC or UVa websites were useful in any way, shape, or form, I’d be able to quickly confirm whether the Hoos are getting more Coach of the Year awards than usual (or than other schools) recently. Of course, we’ll have to settle for my lazy, unconfirmed guess that UVa’s coaches are raking in hardware at a crazy ass pace.

A profile of Tight End U and Tom Santi over at this Colts blog. Money quote:

If you play tight end at Virginia, you must be an accomplished blocker. That’s something Santi brings to the table, something that perhaps makes him more valuable all-around than Jacob Tamme, drafted two rounds earlier. While Santi lined up at wide receiver on occasion at Virginia, he won’t stretch the field or wow you with his speed and athleticism like Tamme.

Instead, what you’ll get from Santi is a hard-nosed player who’s bright (he finished with a 3.35 GPA and was an ACC Academic All-American Selection), has tremendous size (6′4″, 248) and seems willing to do just about anything. During his freshman year, Virginia’s fullback went down with an injury. Santi played fullback for several games. He didn’t carry the ball, but contributed as a blocker and pass receiver. That means he’ll be a flexible guy for the Colts who can shift into H-back when needed and (I hope) give the team a boost in short-yardage and goaline situations.

Yeah, I’ve got a feeling Tommy was one of the steals in this draft. They’re already drooling over him in Indy.

P-Hite tallies up what Virginia’s baseball team needs to do, and needs to hope for, in order to secure a top seed in the conference tourney:

Virginia (13-11) could still edge Carolina for one of the top two spots with a miracle — the Cavs would have to sweep their final two ACC series and Carolina would have to lose all six of its remaining conference games — but we’ll assume that won’t happen, even though it doesn’t matter too much. Virginia is a lock to make the tournament, even if it drops the rest of its conference games. Georgia Tech (12-12) is close to a lock as well, with series left against Clemson and at Virginia.

Time to reconvene the Pipe Dream Committee?