Thursday, August 16, 2007
Men’s tennis tops Doughty rankings
Women’s basketball drops to bottom five
Doug Doughty
Doug Doughty's UVa Insider is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Thursdays in season.
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I can’t say where Randy King is going with his first Virginia Tech Insider of the year, but you can bet that football will be the topic.
This column generally focuses on football and men’s basketball, but the first UVa Insider of 2006 was devoted to a rating of the Cavaliers’ athletic programs and that’s where we’re going again this year.
Last year, they were called the Doughty rankings, but you notice that the “r” is lower case. They certainly weren’t official and some people would say they aren’t particularly astute.
The question I asked several football players on Sunday was, “Where is this program right now.” That’s the basis for these ratings – not necessarily what the team did last year, not necessarily what it’s going to do this year, but where it stands.
With last year’s ratings in parentheses, here are this year’s ratings:
1. MEN’S TENNIS (3) – Coach Brian Boland hasn’t won a national championship yet, but the Cavaliers couldn’t be much closer. They were eliminated by eventual national champion Georgia in Athens, Ga., this spring, and boasted the individual singles champion in Somdev Devvarman, who will be returning. Three ACC titles in four years (four consecutive regular-season titles) isn’t too shabby for a program targeted as Tier 4 in 2001.
(At this point, it is worth revisiting the report submitted to the UVa Board of Visitors in 2001 that had UVa’s programs broken into four tiers. Tier 1 programs were to be fully funded, Tier 2 teams were to receive substantial if not full funded, Tier 3 teams were to receive limited grants and Tier 4 scholarships would be based solely on need.
2. MEN’S LACROSSE (1) – Dom Starsia’s teams throw in a klunker every now and then and 2007, with a first-round NCAA home loss to Delaware was one of them, but how do you argue with three NCAA titles in eight years? Plus, the Cavaliers are welcoming the nation’s top recruiting class.
3. BASEBALL (4) – Another former Tier 4 sport, if you can believe that. The season ended on a sour note when the Cavaliers again failed to make the second weekend of the NCAA playoffs, especially when they were looking at hosting a Super Regional. Injuries played a big part in that; besides, Oregon State then went on to repeat as NCAA champion. With openings at LSU, Notre Dame and Florida in the past two years, keeping Brian O’Connor has been huge.
4. WOMEN’S LACROSSE (10) – Julie Myers’ team has had a few clunkers of its own, but the women did win an ACC title last year – one of only three for the UVa program – and reached the NCAA championship game, where they gave defending champion Northwestern a battle before losing 15-13. It was UVa’s fourth final in five years.
5. MEN’S SOCCER (12) – Way too low last year, given the Cavaliers’ 10 trips to the NCAA Tournament in George Gelnovatch’s 12 seasons as coach. Virginia last year made its first trip to the final four (College Cup) since 1997 and continues its involvement with the top prospects in the country.
6. WOMEN’S ROWING (13) – Second-place finish at NCAA regatta showed that failure to make the championships in 2006 was just a blip on the radar screen. Cavs also finished second in 2005 and followed that up with the nation’s top recruiting class. Like men’s tennis, women’s rowing probably has an NCAA title in its future.
7. MEN’S BASKETBALL (8) – The program’s first NCAA appearance in six years was huge, as was the decision by two-time All-ACC selection Sean Singletary to return for his final season. Still, before passing final judgment, you’d like to have a better read on Leitao as a recruiter. Loss of Patrick Patterson was predictable; however, UVa needs to get to a place where it can keep the Ed Davises in state.
8. SWIMMING (5) – Fail to win an ACC men’s championship for the first time in nine years and you drop to the second five? This is some tough competition. It’s a wonder that coach Mark Bernardino was able to put together a streak without decent diving facilities. A 16th-place finish in the NCAAs was worth big Directors’ Cup points but the women (39th) need to get better.
9. WOMEN’S SOCCER (2) – Huge drop from 2006 despite two NCAA Tournament wins, but this program appears to be stagnating, given its quarterfinal loss to Wake Forest in the ACC Tournament. An ACC title in 2004 was a major breakthrough in light of North Carolina’s decades-long domination; maybe that lifted expectations too high.
10. CROSS COUNTRY (11) – Men failed to repeat 2006 ACC title but both men’s and women’s teams finished 14th in the NCAAs after matching third-place finishes in the ACC. Men’s and women’s teams had not both qualified for the NCAAs in the same year until 2005.
11. FIELD HOCKEY (Bottom five) – What a difference a new coach can make! All it took was one game for the Cavaliers to end a 20-game ACC losing streak as they upended No. 4 North Carolina in the ACC opener. Under national coach of the year Michele Madison, the Cavaliers got as high as No. 7 in the rankings and reached the second round of the NCAA playoffs.
12. FOOTBALL (9) – The Cavaliers have the potential to win seven or eight games this season, which would be a good improvement on last year’s 5-7 record but the promise of a 9-5 season is 2002 has not been approached since. Virginia has gotten some impressive prospects from out of state but is not going to thrive without in-state talent.
13. WOMEN’S TENNIS (6) – Need to see a little more from this program, which brought in the nation’s top recruiting class last year but struggled with freshmen in key roles. Trip to the second round of the NCAA Tournament represented decent progress in coach Marc Guilbeau’s second year.
14. WOMEN’S GOLF (7) – Departure of Lauren Mielbrecht and injury to Jennie Arseneault placed a major burden on senior Leah Wigger. Cavaliers finished ninth in the NCAA regionals, where only eight teams advanced to the championships, and now deal with the graduation of Wigger and retirement of coach Jan Mann. New coach Kim Lewellen will be followed from East Carolina by NCAA qualifier Lene Krog.
15. VOLLEYBALL (Bottom five) – The Cavaliers need some recognition after going 23-8 and finishing second in the ACC. They hoped for an NCAA Tournament berth, which would have been their first since 1999, but only regular-season champion Duke got a bid and there is no ACC Volleyball tournament. Sixteen conference victories was an all-time high.
BOTTOM FIVE
WRESTLING (Bottom five) – This could be the next field hockey, a program ready to jump out of the bottom five after a top-10 recruiting year. Cavs weren’t as good this year (2-3 ACC) under new coach Steve Garland as they were under ousted predecessor Lenny Bernstein, who had a 4-1 conference record in his final year.
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL (14) – Cavaliers would have won 20 games if they had won at Wisconsin in the women’s NIT, but this program has done – and can do – so much more. Virginia has made the women’s NCAA Tournament only once in the past four seasons and failed to sign any of the seven in-state players who were ranked among the nation’s top 100.
TRACK AND FIELD (Bottom five) – If Virginia Tech can win women’s indoor and outdoor championships, Virginia ought to do better than sixth. The UVa men were 47th at the NCAA meet, while the women failed to score.
MEN’S GOLF (Bottom five) – The Cavaliers finished ninth out of 11 teams in the ACC Tournament and haven’t been as good in three years under Bowen Sargent as they were under predecessor Mike Moraghan, a personal favorite I must confess. On top of everything else, sophomore Daniel Kefale was arrested on drug charges after the season.
SOFTBALL (Bottom five) – Alumna Eileen Schmidt takes over the worst of UVa’s athletic programs (17-39 overall, 1-20 ACC). The Cavaliers’ failure to recruit Angela Tincher probably cost two UVa head coaches their jobs; you think they’d have enough sense to recruit Abbie Rexrode out of the same James River program that produced Tincher.
