Most Important Day of the Year

March 1st marks the first spring training ballgame to be played by the beloved Cleveland Indians. Jake Westbrook will toe the rubber for the Tribe against Woody Williams and his Houston Astros.

Prediction for the game. Thanks to the fact that Woody Williams is obviously a square (6 feet, 200 lbs, 40 yrs. old, same letter as both initials) he obviously is not athletic enough to win this game; therefore, the Tribe will be victorious. You heard it first here.

Of course I will probably predict the Tribe to win every game, but not for reasons such as “good baseball playing” or “better statistics” because those are silly reasons. No, here at Double Wahoo we will rise above the fray, stray from the status quo, and give a multitude of reasons why the Tribe will win ballgames, most of them having nothing to do with baseball.

Revenge

Big game this week for the Cavaliers (10-4 ACC) as they are currently tied atop the ACC standings and are playing host tomorrow night to in-state rival Virginia Tech. UVA has played more consistently this season than Tech, but both have their share of bad out of conference losses and bad in-conference losses, UVA’s coming at the hands of the Hokies 84-57 in Blacksburg. Now the Hokies are in town at the brand new JPJ, a place where UVA has not lost in conference, and lost only once since it’s opening. It’s senior night for the Hoos, they’re looking to revenge a bad loss, and first place in the conference is on the line.

J.R. Reynolds and Jason Cain are the only two seniors left from their incoming class. That is good news for the Cavaliers as these two should play a big role in the Cavalier’s success in this game. Reynolds’ contributions are obvious: he needs to score and he needs to create. Cain is one of those mystery men. He doesn’t have a huge frame, his major recruitable attribute was his “athleticism”, and there are flashes of that when he drives the lane from the wing and slams home a winner, but the rest of the time he seems tentative and almost as though he’s not paying attention to what’s going on. The Cavs run the motion offense, and that requires the big men to handle the ball on the perimeter so that the smaller guys can go running around screens set up by other big guys. This means that Cain’s decision making abilities are tested often. Unfortunately, I don’t think he passes the ball that well, and the Cavs never seem to convert baskets off of his touches. So maybe he’ll bring rebounding. Good thought, and at the beginning of the season Cain was doing just that, pulling down double-digit boards every time you turned your head. As the season wears on and the talent level increases as we play deeper and deeper in the ACC, Cain just does not seem to be as effective as we need him to be. Hopefully that will change in this game, as he needs to make the Hokies respect his inside abilities in order to open up the outside for SS and JR, the main problem in the shelaking earlier this year.

The Cavs will definitely be looking for revenge. SS does not like losing, and neither does Leitao, especially not to an in-state rival, by a huge margin. Who cares if that team is playing good basketball and is currently tied atop the league while boasting wins AT Duke and a season sweep of Carolina. That doesn’t matter, the Hoos want to win.  After the GT game, Reynolds was quoted as saying, “now we can focus on the big game. I just want to beat them. Really beat them” or something to that effect.

Not to mention the rivalry implications, or the fact that it’s the final home game for two of the Hoos, UVA could remain tied for first place in the ACC with one game to go should they be victorious. Granted, unless the TarHeels lose to Georgia Tech or Duke in their final two games, UVA would lose the tie-breaker, but a tie for first is just that. Huge accomplishment for a team picked to finish 8th in the league.

Tech is not without its hurdles or motivations either. They have showed glimmers of being unstoppable, with Dowdell certainly doing a mean bit of scoring. Gordon is a nice compliment to Dowdell, and they have a real energy guy in Deron Washington. This guy torched the Cavs in the earlier meeting, and was 1 rebound away from a double double in the first half. If I were Leitao, I would put Will Harris, the highly touted freshman on him and match it up athlete for athlete. Harris has a better chance of containing Washington than Cain or any of the slower big guys. The other option is Diane, but I think that’s who was covering in Blacksburg and that didn’t work out. Washington is a lot like a former Hoo, Adam Hall. Not necessarily the most gifted shooter on the court, nor is he their best inside presence. He’s a wing player, but he’s a big wing player with great leaping ability which gives him the chance to fire up his team and his home crowd with a big dunk.

Another key to the game is inside. I can only guess that Lars Mikalauskas is hampered with an injury because he hasn’t been seeing as much of the court recently, and he’s our only offensive threat inside. Without that, throwing the ball inside to Pettinella, Soroye, or Cain results in the deer in headlights syndrome and either results in a quick pass back outside, or a turnover. The Cavs needs someone to legitimize the post, otherwise the Hokies will go with the same game plan from the last game. Run a modified 3-2 zone that ends up looking like a 4-1 zone, with everybody hovering around the perimeter, and then collapsing on any drive. I’m not sure if the Cavs weren’t seeing well that day, or if the Hokies are just that fast, but it seemed as though 4-5 guys could converge on the lane thoroughly clogging that option, and the driving Cavalier couldn’t find anybody open on the perimeter either. Kudos to the Hokies for a well played game in Blacksburg that was extremely demoralizing as a fan. Here’s hoping that the more even schedule will help the Hoos this go around as entering the last meeting, the Hokies had not played in a week and were coming off of a bad loss. This time around the Hokies should be fat and happy with their smothering of Miami at home, and they played Saturday like the Cavs.

Ok, that’s enough about basketball. In reality I’m trying to delay learning more about renal and gastro-intestinal physiology, so I had better get back to that. Go Hoos.

Ramblin’ Wrecked

The Ramblin’ Wreck of Georgia Tech came into town today, and was dispatched of 75-69. That score belies the competition of the game, or actually lack thereof. The final minute was a hard fought battle, and the rest of the game was filled with dominance from one team or the other and a long period of stalemate.

Virginia came out strong and gained a 22-6 advantage approximately half way through the first period. GT then turned around and put together a heck of a run stimulated by their full court press to lead by 4 at half. The second half was mostly even. UVA would hit a three or two, get a couple runs, but Georgia Tech was pounding the glass and pounding it inside to Dickey. Their point guard is 6′5″, that’s how tall this team is. The Cavs point guard on the other hand is 6′ on a great day. But, what matters is the score, and SS scored 24 points while his back court mate scored 25, thus the tandem scored 65.3% of the teams points. No other Cavalier scored in double digits, but they got solid play form the supporting cast.

And now to analyze the pros and cons:

Pros:

• We won
• Singletary and Reynolds played all but three minutes of the game
• We showed some resiliency
• We won without a dominant “third scorer”
• We beat a much taller, much more polished inside team

Cons:

• We had to come from behind because we let a 16 point lead just piddle away. Foolish mistakes and getting out hustled
• If we hadn’t corrected back to man-to-man defense when we did (~3 minutes to go) we wouldn’t have won. GT just had a man planted at the free-throw line and was eating us up all day because our center had to flash out to deny that man his shot, thereby leaving open the entire lane. Easy lay-ups all day for the gold and black
• We have no inside scoring presence. We ran one designed play for the guy in the paint to score and that was a lay-up by Joseph. The other “points in the paint” were drives and offensive rebounds including one HUGE one by Soroye with the game tied at 69.
• That’s enough. Who cares how you win them, we’re winning them. That was our 10th ACC win and I bet that hasn’t happened since ‘95 and before then not since Sampson.

So it may not have been the prettiest win, but a win none the less. That means that if UVA can revenge their loss earlier this season to Tech we would go undefeated at home through ACC play, and that is the first step to becoming a perennial contender: defend home court.

I would have posted a picture of Reynolds or Singletary doing something awesome, but ESPN has chosen to only show pictures of GT players doing awesome things, and the virginiasports site shows pictures in flash slideshows now, probably because they’re sick of people stealing them…

Avatar?

The editors of DoubleWahoo would like to thank the editors of Bachmannalia.wordpress.com for creating an avatar that embodies the doubleness of this editor’s wahooiness (two words can be made up at once). Now the editor wonders how to get this wonderful blogging site to insert that avatar and to stop telling me that a WordPress tip is to put my picture next to my comments and posts by uploading an avatar. It has been loaded, leave me alone.

Correction on Peralta

The editors did not mean to give the impression that Peralta had a great year at the plate last year. The point of the previous post is that Peralta’s main appeal is as a power-hitting shortstop (relative to the norm at his position). This is only a benefit if he can play a decent shortstop. Now, his lack of vision caused a decline in BOTH areas last year. He did not put up tremendous numbers at the plate and frankly looked lost most of the time in the field, allowing balls to slide under his glove, or simply being nowhere to be found on a seemingly manageable ball hit to his side of the field.

The hope is that the vision has corrected his fielding back into the “average” range, and will also benefit his hitting so that he doesn’t look like a little-leaguer as soon as a MLB pitcher throws him anything except a fastball.

Lasik eye surgery

Not to be confused with Lasix, a powerful diuretic (makes you pee), Lasik eye surgery basically shaves away some of your cornea, thereby altering the depth that light must travel. This will function similar to glasses and contacts by changing the focal point of light, hopefully landing it closer onto the retina to improve vision. While bulking up a little bit on this procedure I found it hilarious that they use the same equipment (microkeratome) to cut a small flap in your cornea as they use to prepare slides for histological examination. The difference being of course, those slides are prepared from preserved tissue. Little tid-bit.

So why, one might ask, would the powers that be at Double Wahoo care one lick about Lasik surgery. For one thing, the editors have horrible vision and hope one day to benefit from this surgery. On the other hand, it was revealed today that Jhonny Peralta (no, not a mis-spelling, an awesome spelling) had a Lasik procedure performed this offseason. That is a very interesting fact, considering that Peralta has been much maligned for his play last year at a position traditionally considered the captain of the infield; shortstop. Jhonny’s problem is he’ll always make a team because he puts up tremendous offensive numbers compared to other shortstops; however, he needs to play at least respectable defense otherwise there is no benefit. In order to put up those good numbers, Jhonny bulked up a little bit and grew 2 inches. In a game so dependent upon coordination, this can cause problems. Another KEY component of coordination is vision. Apparently the Indian’s shortstop and number three hitter to start the season was lacking this as well.

While I’m glad Jhonny has corrected his vision, it makes me wonder how he was allowed to get away with being vision-less for the season. According to Peralta, he didn’t like the way that contacts felt, so he didn’t wear them. Only during the final two weeks of the season did he suck it up. Makes you wonder, when a professional athelete won’t wear contacts, and will allow his statistics to suffer because of it. Just makes you go, “huh?” Ah well, hopefully that’s the stupidest thing Jhonnny Peralta ever does, and he returns to having a big bat for a shortstop and playing adequate enough defense to allow that big bat to shine.

Best in Beard

This weekend brought with it several fantastic events. Most importantly of all it featured the beard feast; a celebration of all things man expressed through facial growth. The timing of this event being immediately following Valentine’s Day is no accident. The founders were very wise in their calendar exploits as the beard also provides warmth during the harsh Virginia winter. This years feast was held a little earlier in the fortnight (usual feast date is February 28th or March 1st), but in order to see a basketball game along with a feast, this date was the best.

First things first: I am the best in beard champion for 2007. This was my first bearding award in my six years as a participant and it felt great. I received my wife beater with pride, and took my shot of Vlady like a man. It was a touching moment. My beard may not have been as awesome as this guys, but I was proud of my effort nonetheless.

This weekend also held a basketball game for the Cavs: a 73-70 victory over the Seminoles of Florida State. Despite 30 points from Al Thornton, the Seminoles never lead after their first basket. UVA suffered some shooting droughts, but pulled it out in the end behind 19 from Sean Singletary, and 17 each from JR Reynolds and Adrian Joseph. AJ provided the needed third scorer, Soroye was what we hoped again, a raw athletic talent who it seems is starting to figure out how to muscle up and get some boards (9). The most impressive player of the day to me, and take this with a grain of salt as I was in row Z third from the top, was Will Harris. A 6′6 230 lb. freshman who really manned up on defense against Al Thornton. While Thornton did wind up scoring 30 points, by my sight, most of it came against Jason Cain. Harris played great defense, staying in front of Thornton and not being thrown by his athletic moves to the hoop. Harris also provided a little pop inside, grabbing weakside rebounds and going up strong. He did muff a break away oppurtunity, but he is a freshman. The upside is huge, he’s very athletic, and you can’t teach a body like his. Exciting for the future.

In other ACC basketball news, Virginia Tech got blown out of the water at NCState. They allowed the Wolfpack to shoot something like 71% from the field, and 11-15 from 3 point land en route to a 25 point blowout. Boston College also lost two games this week, to the other tobacco road powerhouses, so now UVA finds themselves in a tie atop the ACC with UNC. That is huge. We also locked up a winning record for the season, our first in ACC play since the 2000-2001 season, also our last trip to the dance. Leitao is doing a terrific job so far, and if we can continue improving as he has us going, I’m excited about at least having a chance at the dance every season. That is a huge leap from the Gillen days.

That’s all from the weekend. I’ve decided I’m getting TiVO, and I saw a hip replacement today. All cool things.

Keith Foulke

He shares my name, but that doesn’t mean I automatically understand everything he does, such as retiring before the seasons starts, even after signing with a new team in the offseason. I understand that he probably wasn’t feeling great when he signed the contract, but assumed that he would feel better when the season rolled around. And maybe he was completely honest about his health to the Indians, and Shapiro was willing to take a flyer on him hoping to get a discount. A $5 million a salary says not much of a discount was given, although the heavy performance incentives say that the Indians were at least wary.

Regardless, I guess I’m just mad because now we have to rely on Joe Borowski, who is extremely injury-plagued, not in the way that Travis Hafner keeps getting beaned, but in the way that he has had a broken wrist, shoulder trouble, and is 35 years old. That is an old arm to rely on. Granted, last season he had 36 saves, but in his career he only totals 80. That means that last season is either a new trend, or it is an outlier.

So now it comes time to hope that some of the young guns can step into roles that have been opened for them. Fernando Cabrera could be dominant if he can maintain his control. Jason Davis throws the ball hard just too straight sometimes, and Matt Miller needs to stay off of the DL. Anyway, we’ll see these questions answered as the season begins and you can catch all of the hot Tribe action right here.

First Post

Welcome to my blog. The DoubleWahoo is actually something I stole from my brother, since we both went to The University of Virginia and are both avid fans of the Cleveland Indians. UVA uses the chant “wah-hoo-wah” as part of its victory song, “The Good ‘Ole Song.” This yell was then shortened to Wahoo, and a fish of the same name caught on as the unofficial mascot because of its propensity to drink copious amounts (of water) in order to enlarge its profile before a fight.

The second wahoo comes from Chief Wahoo, the mascot of the Cleveland Indians. While the mascot is probably offensive, it never seems to garner as much criticism as the Seminoles of Florida State, and other schools or teams with Indian logos. To the Tribes’ credit, they are slowly using the scripted I logo to phase out Chief Wahoo, but they will still undoubtedly be referred to as the Tribe. So, I like sports, and I will write about them alot no doubt. I’ll also write some of my expeditions in medical school probably, and other random things that cross my mind.