While 2008 was a damn good year for me given our family’s new addition, it was a rough one for Virginia athletics. So, here’s hoping for a great ’09 for everyone in Wahoo Nation, especially our student athletes.

Speaking of which, let’s be safe and smart out there tonight, Hoos. I don’t want to see Virginia starting to bank Fulmer Cup points on day one.

Sylven Landesberg wins the Sylven Landesberg ACC Rookie of the Week award for the fourth time.

This is starting to be a trend, no?

Mississippi State yesterday announced the hiring of Matt Balis, who’ll be reunited with the SEC school’s new football coach, Dan Mullen. They worked together at Utah and then at Florida before Balis left in the spring of 2007 to become U.Va.’s strength coach for football.

At Virginia, Balis replaced Evan Marcus, who left after four seasons to run the Atlanta Falcons’ strength-and-conditioning program. Marcus now is the Miami Dolphins’ strength coach.

Marcus was the second strength coach to work for Groh at U.Va. The first was Tony Decker, who abruptly resigned before the 2002 season. Decker now is the head strength coach for Temple’s football team.

Now, Evan’s move can certainly be called a promotion, and I guess we can be fine with Balis wanting to be reunited with his old boss. But this revolving door needs to stop — Groh needs to find someone who is both good and likely to stick around. It’s tough to build continuity in this department, which players depend on for a long-term rebuilding and maintaining of their bodies, when the head guy keeps leaving.

Miami axes offensive coordinator Patrick Nix after bungling clock management at Emerald Bowl and generally failing to marry his wide-open philosophy with Coach Randy Shannon’s not-so-wide-open philosophy.

Perhaps a little silver lining for Virginia in finishing with 5 wins? Not making a bowl gave Al Groh a bit of a head start in the dash for new assistants.

The women’s basketball team — long suffering in what many (including myself) thought to be the twilight of Debbie Ryan’s career — is having quite a rebound year. Currently #15 in the nation, the lady Hoos just won their own Cavalier Classic by polishing off traditional powerhouse Louisiana Tech. Right now, the Hoos are 11-2, including an historic win over Tennessee. Fueled by the scoring of Monica Wright, Ariana Moorer, and Lyndra Littles, we should have at least one Wahoo basketball team in the post-season this year. And it’s time that we (including myself) start paying more attention to them.

Lacrosse Magazine ranks the men at #1 and the women at #4. (Hat-tip Tim).

First off, a big tip of the cap to Calvin Baker. He’s been maligned on this blog and the boards for his teen-wolf style play (minus the scoring), and I and others have advocated that Leitao give his minutes to the younger guys. Scoring the game winning shot as part of his 13 points is a nice bit of redemption, not to mention the 5 boards, and hopefully this contribution is a sign of things to come. I’d still like him to get those turnovers down, but if he keeps winning games and chipping in double figures (plus his half-dozen rebounds) then I’ll quit complaining.

As always, Sylven Landesberg is the truth. He led all scorers with 26 points, chipped in 5 boards and 6 assists, and did this in 41 grueling minutes. Is this guy really a first-year? Someone check his high school transcript, because him playing like this in his first ACC game ever is pretty impressive.

Also, nice to see Mustafa Farrakan starting to break out a bit — scored 12 points in 16 minutes in a supporting role, which would be the second game in a row were he scored double digits. That’s a nice (and surprising) contribution. If Mu can also grow into a scorer, the team will have some needed line-up flexibility.

Honorable mention: Jamil Tucker, for sending the game into overtime with a three in the waning seconds as part of his double digits off the bench. Sammy Zeglinski, who is developing into a damn fine point guard right before our eyes, and last night he looked confident as the floor general. Mike Scott, who also played well down-low with a double-double (11 points and 10 rebounds) and looks able to assert himself more when others play center. Speaking of which, Asane Sene didn’t fill up the stats, but it seemed like his shot-blocking presence affected the Georgia Tech offense in the paint.

Well, well, well …

Another strong performance from freshman Sylven Landesberg, a gut-it-out finish, and several big shots from several different players helped the Virginia men’s basketball team pull out an 88-84 overtime victory at Georgia Tech on Sunday. Among those big shots was a tough lay-up in the final seconds of OT from Calvin Baker, who delivered the game-winner in Atlanta for the second straight season….

Baker’s go-ahead lay-up came shortly after GT tied the game at 86 off of a Landesberg turnover. The Hoos quickly inbounded the ball to Baker with 15 seconds to play and he blew the ball up the court and into the left side of the lane before slithering through some Yellow Jacket defenders for the decisive bucket. Mike Scott, who had 11 points and 10 rebounds, capped the victory with a defensive rebound and two free throws in the final 2 seconds.

Could there be something here? A road ACC win was certainly something few of us expected. And for one brief moment, Virginia is tied for the conference lead while undefeated in ACC play. Could there really be something here? We’ll see, but let’s enjoy this win and the possibilities way down the road if trends continue without getting too ahead of ourselves.

Taking potshots at the ACC’s bowl performance from a Virginia blog is a bit unfair — sorta like someone who can’t ski making fun of people falling down on the bunny slope. But I guess a UVa blogger doesn’t have much else to do right now, so here it goes.

Don’t get me wrong — a 2-2 record at this point isn’t so bad. But one win was against Navy, while the two loses were heartbreaking loses that could’ve easily been part of a 4-0 trend. While I appreciate subtle arguments about why the ACC isn’t so bad, losing high profile nationally televised games to other BCS conference teams like this is exactly what leads others to question the ACC’s strength. Until the conference teams start beating their out-of-conference peers in the regular season and post season, the “ACC is weak” talk will continue, fair or not.

And since that kind of talk hurts the conference when it comes to getting recruits and negotiating tee-vee contracts, the ACC needs to start thinking outside the box when it comes to improving its standing in the eyes of the sports world. For starters, lock down a permanent, never-to-change place for the conference championship game in a stadium that ACC fans will fill up (i.e., Charlotte). Start an ACC Channel to bolster the conference’s media presence. Take a hard look at all of the conference’s rules on eligibility, transfers, etc. to see which might be hurting the ACC’s competitiveness.

Expansion was a bold move that was supposed to be a miracle cure for the ACC. Unfortunately, poaching the best teams from one of the weakest conferences didn’t do so much for the conference’s perceived strength. It’s time to move on to the next phase: stop the post-expansion timidity and take some bold steps to fix the conference’s image.

Question of the day: Should we be honored that by practicing choking away a game against Virginia in the regular season, Carolina was able to perfect such a feat for their bowl game?