Monday: Icy roads
THE VHSL COULD BE SCRAMBLING IN RICHMOND THIS WEEK if snow hits the area. Plan B at this point is to finish some state tournament brackets on Sunday if games have to be pushed back because of travel issues for teams. Robert has more here.
Six Timesland teams are still alive: Salem’s boys and girls, Radford’s boys, Floyd County’s girls, Bassett’s girls and Parry McCluer’s boys.
THE ROAD CONTINUES TO BE A DANGEROUS PLACE FOR UVA, which falls at Boston College 53-52 after squandering an 11-point lead. “This loss stings as bad as anyone that we’ve had all season,” Joe Harris says. Doughty has the details here.
For what it’s worth, Joe Lunardi had the Cavaliers as a No. 10 seed heading into the weekend.
Virginia plays its final road game Thursday at Florida State before hosting Maryland on Sunday in the regular-season finale. The Hokies head to Duke on Tuesday before closing the season at Wake Forest on Sunday.
CARL EDWARDS SHAKES OFF A MISERABLE WEEKEND AT DAYTONA to win at Phoenix. Full results are here. Danica Patrick finishes 39th after blowing a tire and wrecking. The series heads to Las Vegas this weekend.
OTHER STUFF
-Andy’s soliciting Tech football questions for his offseason mailbag.
-Tech and UVa both are off to strong starts in baseball. The Hokies are 11-2 and the Cavaliers are 12-0. Hard to believe the conference season arrives Friday, with the Hokies hosting Georgia Tech and UVa hosting Maryland.
-The U.S. opens World Baseball Classic play against Mexico on Friday in Phoenix.
-Heat wins its 14th game in a row.
NAME THAT TUNE
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line the man come and take you away…
March 4, 2013 - 8:52 AM
Buffalo Springfield- For what it’s worth. Classic Stills song. Also on 4 way street on the CSNY album.
Danica finally back to normal and it took, one race?
Yet, she stll gets a blurb on the ESPN ticker- I guess they always do that for people who finished 39th and took a provisional start…..
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say Carl Edwards is attempting to shake off a miserable 2012 season, and not just the Daytona 500? The largely unreported story of 2012 by the lemming NASCAR-directed media was that Carl Edwards fluffed his post-Tony battle with a limp 2012. I see the knuckle draggers are celebrating Danica Patrick wrecking almost as much as Budweiser disputing the claims they water down their beer. Budweiser watered down their beer? Isn’t that redundant?
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Boston College should request next season that the ACC schedules them to follow Duke’s schedule one game later for everyone. They’d have a shot at winning the conference.
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The Miami Heat have won some games in a row. Cue the ‘analysts’ & fans with no cognizance of history to proclaim it ‘the greatest streak ever’. Lakers 33? I get interested in the NBA the first week of June. By the second week of June, I’m bored with them again.
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Huge surprise in college basketball – Dickie V echoed Coach K’s whining about post-upset rushing the court. Vitale said there’s just SOO much danger likely to occur. Especially when the favored team is surrounded by security guards like at UVa.
UVA went out and did exactly what they needed to avoid: lost to lowly BC. Will that completely undo their potential NCAA bid? Doubtful…but they don;t do themselves any favors by offsetting a big win with yet another bad loss. Boy do they bear resemblance to some past VT squads in that regard…now they have games against 2 more non-NCAA tournament teams, and losses to eithe rone of them only further damage their bid. My guess is they lose at FSU as well, but win at home against Maryland…and then need a weekend appearance in the ACC tournament to feel confident about their chances.
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Nice win for the Hokies. They now sit at 13/4 wins, which is right near what I thought going into the season. But how they got here has been difficult, seeing flashes of brilliance early, then the long slump, with signs of life showing finally…giving a glimmer of hope with the soon-to-be-Green-less squad. Green had another stout effort, and I’ll be interested to see where he gets drafted, because I think he could make a decent situational player for an NBA team (but I don’t think he’d be an every day starter).
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Watched a little bit of the race yesterday, but mainly had to spend the day working so I missed most of it. Saw that Danica wrecked…blown tire, and struggled in qualifying. So which was the fluke? Daytona, or yesterday?
CR,
I think Vitale and Greenberg go to the same barber (and not the jacknife barber mentioned in Cross Eyed Mary by Jethro Tull on the Aqualung album) who supplies them with insightful tips on NCAA hoops.
I tried to watch UVA/BC game and it was putting me to sleep, so I switched to watching Michigan State and Michigan play. Boy, that was a game! It went down to the wire and by a fluke steal did Michigan win.
UNC put on a thumping of FSU, so the Noles might be itching to take out their frustration on UVA.
The ACC tournament is going to be a good one.
So the fans at Duke have never rushed the floor before the opposing team could get to the locker room? Why does Coach K continue to demand that his team get what he would begrudingly give another? The longer this drags on the more he looks like a spoiled child.
This has been one interesting college hoops season. It was nice to see the Hokies hold on to win. If this game had come during January, they may have lost. Barksdale may have finally found his game. The biggest surprise of the weekend was the whooping that VCU laid on Butler. Holy crap! That game was over before halftime. The tournament is going to be a blast this year. although picking a bracket may be tough. I can’t wait!
The ACC need to man up, especially John Swoffie, and tell Coach K to shut the hell up. The ACC have reviewed the security plan and said everything went as it was supposed to do. Coach K constant whining have me wondering if he is a distant relative of Mr. Ed.
OJ, the Daytona 500 typically bears zero resemblance to the rest of the NASCAR results. If you go back and look at the past winners, you can travel well back in time and continually find guys who did virtually nothing the rest of the season. Of course, Five Time will disprove the rule, since he’s… well… Five Time.
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Patrick will probably end up in the middle of her two first results. My early guess would be a top twenty final finish and no more poles or wins. A couple of top tens or even top fives, though. You know, pretty much what we see from Dale Jr on an annual basis, along with the similar amount of media coverage. At least it will be a ‘purty face’ and maybe the Wranglers will be a little bit more snug. That will be a nice change of pace.
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Call me crazy (You’re crazy!), but I long for the days when we can hear about NASCAR, golf, NBA without being beaten down by the same name repeatedly in each sport.
I would bet that Danica will have a top-20 finish at Vegas this weekend. She’s a typical cup series newcomer who struggles at certain tracks, particularly the flatter ones. She placed top 10 in the Nationwide Series at Vegas last year and it suits her style more than Phoenix.
Looking ahead the next month, I predict a roller-coaster start to the season for her, strictly due to track types. She should do well at Vegas, then struggle at Bristol, rebound at Fontana (another 1.5 mile oval like Vegas), than struggle mightily in her first-ever race at Martinsville.
RP, good point on track dissimilarities. I’d predict that DP’s best finishes will be at the cookie cutter 1.5 mile tracks that the France family adores, and the bigger tracks. Michigan, Pocono, Daytona, Talledega, etc. Lets not forget the road courses, too. She’ll probably do well there while some of the good ole boys will always struggle.
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We can be pretty sure of the tracks where she’ll do poorly – anything under 1 mile, and also Darlington & Dover.
Bob H, did you even watch the race, or do you like hurling insults at Danica because it makes you feel good about yourself? What happened to Danica could have happened to any of the other drivers. In fact, it happened to her teammate Ryan Newman not once, but twice. The heat from the brakes was causing the beads on the right front tire to melt.
Well, great…the IT department’s continued problems with getting the site fixed ate a great comment.
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When on earth is this going to be completely resolved?
Jeffrey,
Uh, why did she have to take a provisional start then?
Not a Danica hater and not a Danicapologist either. When she does something, ON THE TRACK, that merits mention or receognition, I will have NP when (or IF) it comes.
Tell me who finished 8th at the Daytona 500 last year. Who finished 39th at Phoenix last year? So why is there a blurb about where she finished?
Danica, or any other driver, should be evaluated in on the track performance. Instead, like last week, we get the headline DANICA FINISHED 8TH!, with a caption underneath that some guy named Johnson actually won the race. GMAB, she is proof that looks don’t drive the car….
I’ll summarize what it was though…basically, I agreed with CR about 500 results. Numerous past winners (I’ll omit Bayne & McMurray since they’re young in their careers) like Michael Waltrip, Ward Burton, and Derrike Cope had, generally, unremarkable careers…a few wins outside of Daytona, but nothing all that great, (best for final standings were Burton a 9th, Waltrip 12th twice, and Cope’s best was a 15th).
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Waltrip won the 500 twice, and is best known for that, Napa, and exploding a car at Bristol. In 771 starts, he notched 4 wins, and 130 top-10′s, with 4 poles. Nothing all that great, honestly.
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Cope was even less remarkable during his stint at the top. 409 races, 2 wins, 32 top 10′s, 1 pole. Plus, he never did much of anything in the lower levels of Nascar either.
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Burton…I like the dude, but Jeff is the better driver. He ran 375 races, picking up 5 wins, 82 top 10′s, and 7 poles. Better than Cope or Waltrip, but nothing terribly memorable, other than his drawl.
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Two other drivers scored wins at the Daytona 500, but who were limited factors elsewhere for most of their careers: Sterling Marlin, and Ernie Irvan.
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Irvan actually had a pretty decent career…spanning 313 races, with 15 wins, 124 top-10′s, and 22 poles. But, we’ll never know what really could have been due to the head injury he suffered at Michigan in 1994, that really sidelined him, and came back to haunt him in another crash at Michigan 5 years later than ended his career.
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Sterling Marlin also had a pretty solid career, notching 10 wins, 216 top-10′s, and 11 poles in 748 races. He also finished third in points twice. He is also only one of 3 drivers to win back-to-back Daytona 500′s, which is a pretty nice claim to have. But, most people will remember him for making contact with Dale Earnhardt that sent him into the wall at Daytona, leading to his death.
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Now, that was significantly different than my original comment, but let’s see if this one goes through…
Danica is who she is. Nobody should be surprised. I would not even compare her to Dale Jr but maybe more like a Derrick Cope. I do not understand when people get upset when people criticiize Danica. She never earned her ride like everybody else. There are better female drivers that will not get a shot because they don’t have her looks. Now that really is somethinng to be upset about. Dale Jr. Is off to a good start this year the new car fits his driving style. UVA could be in trouble if the they lose to Florida State. I still think they need at least 21 wins to get in and 22 would make them a lock.
The type of racing at restrictor plate tracks has qualities that make it maddening, and exciting…in a manufactured manner. If you go there and have a car capable of staying with the pack, don’t get caught up in the big one, and don’t have any bad pit stop miscues, you can have a shot to win the race if you’re in the top 10 with a couple laps to go. As has been mentioned, contrast the driving stile for Daytona and Talladega with Martinsville, Bristol, Richmond, Dover, Charlotte, Darlington, etc…and that’s where the talented drivers tend to filter out, and shear luck becomes less of a factor.
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One thing I was not overly aware of though, since my following of Nascar has been on par with water polo and competitive eating, is the issue with Start & Park teams. It’s something I had never known about, until reading a little bit about Sunday’s race, and why Phil Parson’s #98 didn’t make the trek. Despite a payday of over $350 for McDowell’s 9th place finish, he said they alcked funds to race. Digging further, they’ve done a lot of Start & Parks through the years…basically working to get into the race, start it, park the car, and collect a decent payday for the effort. I then read more about it and found that several teams in all levels of Nascar racing are S&P teams, whose sole purpose is to collect prize money to help fund other cars within the same stable.
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I don’t like it. Sure, those teams that do this aren’t generally competing for wins anyway, but I think it’s abolsutely ridiculous that a team could bascially come together simply for qualifying a car, and collecting a paycheck, without making a concerted effort to run the race.
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How would it be eliminated? Well, Nascar could cut the payouts for drivers finishing worse than 35th, and shift that money to the top 25, for starters. They could also maybe penalize the payouts of the bottom finishers based on laps completed, with possibly placing an exception for if they suffered a race-ending wreck…rather than claiming something bogus like electrical or overheating, which is common.
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Or, perhaps they trim the field to 36 drivers. Nothing much gets lost. The S&P teams have a harder time making a tighter field, and several would likely cease operations. Competition on the track would be little impacted, but the practice would likely come to a close, or at least be severely curtailed.
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That’s my 2 cents anyway. I just don’t see how people with any competitive spirit could engage in it. I guess that’s why at least one driver refused to start a race because they were instructed to immediately park their car for the day after the green flag. It just seems completely against everything that competition and sports are made of. I mean, what if a football team were to take a knee on every play, just to run time off the clock every game so they could get the first draft pick? Ok, maybe a bad example since the Colts barely did better than that to get Andrew Luck, but hopefully you get my drift. It just stinks.
Shaun
Derrick Cope = 2 Nascar wins.
DP= ?
She is more like Loy Allen Jr…… But with better sponsorship and equipment.
A good betting pool is to guess how many laps Nemecek will actually run before having ‘engine problems’ or, my personal favorite, vibration in one of the wheels. Blaney and Bliss also make for good pools, but Nemecek is better because he varies his exit from race to race. Nemecek qualified on owner points in Phoenix. Right now, I’m picking 8 laps for him in Vegas.
Bob H, I have never seen you complain about the excessive publicity Dale Jr has gotten over the years. He’s been a non-factor for several more years than he was relevant. Yet, the media and his daddy’s fans have kept him at the top of the NASCAR mentions for over a decade.
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Let’s see, what would be the difference? Dale Jr, loved by the redneck Bud-swigging crowd, Danica hated by the very same ones… hmm… wonder why?
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I’m not a Danica fan, but then again, I’m not threatened by her mere presence as a ‘girl in a boy’s sport’ like some. The way I see it this year is – at least we might hear less about how ‘It’s Dale Jr’s year. Again. This time we mean it. Really…’
I’ll reserve judgement on Danica’s driving abilities until she’s had a couple seasons under her belt at the top level. But based on her performances in Indy and Nationwide, I have a hard time seeing her suddenly winning a bunch of races and becoming a title contender, considering she hasn’t been a serious contender to this point in her career.
Icy roads. Today`s tune could have been “Slip Slidin` Away”. Who was that? Paul Simon? Anyway, that`s what UVA hoop hopes might be if they lose to Florida State. Similar to Tech 2 years ago when we beat Duke and then lost 2 straight. Will the committee be “certifiably insane” this year too? I never minded Seth making that accusation. He was taking up for his team and players. Sure he could whine some but unfortunately he was not the wine and cheese guy Weaver wanted around. i believe that if UVA can avoid the snare trap and come out with a win Thursday, they might just make the NCAAs.
CR,
Little E isn’t a patch to his old man. I have never seen what the fuss was about him. As far as I am concerned he is one of 43 on the track and merits no other mention than if he does well. I apply the same standards to him that I do to DP.
I also don’t understand why they have a blurb about Tiger Woods either, and where he finishes. Assuming he makes the cut……
It is nice to see the VHSL has a plan in place – and simply not stick their head in the snow and ignore the possibilties.
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Love the debate about Danica and NASCAR. Right now NASCAR=Danica, just like the PGA=Tiger, and the NBA=LeBron. After last season, you could almost say MLB=Strasburg.
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At least NASCAR has switched from Dale, Jr, to Danica, and the NBA from MJ (although it has been a while) to LeBron, but I agree with CR’s comment way up top, it’d be nice to see a sport that is not dominated by one name in the media. Here is your basic ESPN Sportscenter lead – “Tiger Woods finished 36th in this weeks tournament, and, by the way, Joe Blow won by 4 strokes, and shot a 59 in the final round . . . . ”
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At the same time, Danica WILL win in NASCAR. She won’t be like 5-time, or Jeff Gordon, or Dale, Sr., or Richard Petty, but she will win. It will all come together for her, and she’ll get double digit wins, in her career.
#22 Bh, ahh, but the difference is that you’ve not been on here for the last several years posting about Dale Jr or Tiger getting too much hype. Yet, let a female rookie crash in her second race, and we see the Loy Allen Jr comparisons? Seriously? Your Freudian slip is showing…
CR,
Sorry, but Little E’s spot is reported by ESPN when he finsishes in one of the spots that they report. Not when he finishes 39th.
Tiger at least has won some stuff on the course to have had a following relating to the sport he is competing in. Little E has also won in Nascar.
DP? Nope, nothing accomplished on the track, whatsoever, to justify the attention.
But I do wonder that if since Edwards does a back flip if DP might do something MIa Hamm like to celebrate her fist win.
If ever such even doth occur……..
The only way to compare drivers in NASCAR is to take NASCAR’s resrictions off the cars and go back to the old days. Put a max HP restriction on the engines and let the crew chiefs do their magic. They all were talking great things about the gen6 car until Phoenix and guess what, nobody has the HP to pass. So now it’s down to qualifying and pit stops , wrecks (and cheating). Let them go at it like the old days when you could actually pull out and pass somebody. This have you got a buddy to go with you to pass is crap. Make the cars so they can race, then you’ll know who the best drivers are. Probably would be the same names but it would give the one driver teams a fairer shake. Now it’s whose got buddies and very inventive crew chiefs who don’t come cheap. Running like a choo-choo train till the end and then have them all go 3 and 4 wide for the big one isn’t racing.
Also let’s be real, Danica’s not going to get a real shake on the track for a while. The good ole boys don’t want her there but they have to accept the reality, attendance numbers have been up in the races she’s run. And NASCAR needed something to boost their numbers. As soon as she starts giving as much as she gets on the track respect will go up. I don’t care what anybody says, anyone who can drive formula I cars 220 MPH and stock cars 200 commands my respect. I doubt anyone here has the balls to run with her.
I hope Danica does well because I like looking at her a lot more looking at Junior or DW or name one. If that is a sexist remark, I say, hell yes! But, she seems to be holding her own, and time will tell how good she really is. However, I keep seeing how she was a Formula I driver. No, she wasn’t! Indy cars, yes!
Bob H, thanks for confirming what your other posts also made pretty obvious. It’s the whole ‘a female dares to enter our playground’ act that seems so egregious to you. As has been mentioned and you chose to ignore, Patrick is a rookie on the Sprint circuit. As you also wrongly deny, Dale Jr gets mentioned during races whether he is first of fifteenth. Tiger’s score is mentioned whether he’s leading or firing a four over par, as occurred yesterday.
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But to have a woman receive attention for daring to participate in the ultimate good ole boy sport? Oh, the horrors! What will ‘they’ do next? Stop people from flying the Confederate flag at races? The world’s just going down the tubes for the knuckle draggers isn’t it, Bob H?
Tom L, NASCAR’s numbers have been dropping so steadily for the last few years that their latest big hopes placed on the NextGen car seems to have blinded them to actual on-track testing to see how it would perform. The whole side drafting issue will prove to be significant, too.
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Too bad the France family was too eager to earn their 3rd & 4th billion, that they couldn’t leave a great sport alone instead of trying to overexpand it.
#17 – Bob H., it’s unfair to compare Danica to Derrick Cope or anyone else who had a lengthy career. She’s a rookie. Derrick Cope had his 2 wins (and 32 top 10′s) over the course of 409 races in 25 years. His biggest claim to fame may ultimately wind up being his daughters, one of whom may rival Danica in NASCAR one of these days, and IMHO is much better looking. At this point, Danica has 1 top 10 over 12 races in 2 years. It’s not a fair comparison.
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#16 Other John, the “start & parks” have been around for years. Most of those teams will “start & park” for a handful of races then choose a handful of races each year where they actually compete to win – usually a restrictor plate track or perhaps a short track like Bristol. It’s a bit of a necessary evil – any rule change to do away with it carries other unintended consequences. More than anything, the best way to get rid of the start & park teams is for the economy to improve so that more high-level teams will enter & stay in the sport — that all boils down to sponsorship.
Other drivers have gotten mentions for bad performances. Dale Jr.’s finish is always listed. And let’s not forget Dick Trickle — Keith Olbermann & Dan Patrick always mentioned his finishing place on The Big Show back in the day.
RP, thanks for bringing back the best name in sports of all time! Dick Trickle – that’s a name you just couldn’t make up, even with a lot of alcohol involved!