Weekend Diamond Reports

Yes everyone, I am alive. I didn't die or get brutally injured. I was just finishing up my finals. Major thanks to Bird for keeping things going. Now on to the important stuff.

Softball:

The GT Softball team finished up a rain shortened series with a 2-game sweep over Maryland in College Park on Saturday. The wins solidify the #1 seed for the ACC Tournament and they will face Virginia starting May 8th in Raleigh.
Note: It's a single elimination tournament so it's literally "Win or Go Home. Go Jackets!

Here is how dominant our softball team has been this year:

Georgia Tech now concludes the regular season having won 13 straight league games and was victorious in all seven ACC series' in 2009 and 10 in a row dating back to last year. Overall, the Yellow Jackets have won 14 of their last 17 games heading into the postseason.

Baseball:

It was a warm-up weekend for the baseball team as the Jackets swept Presbyterian. Sunday was an unleashing of runs as the final score was 23-2. Biggest scare came on Saturday when we needed Jeff Rowland to hit the walk-off home run.

The weekend brought a few changes to the ACC as not everyone played teams like Presbyterian. FSU swept Virginia Tech and took complete control of the Atlantic Divison. The Seminoles have now won 12 in a row and they come to Atlanta this upcoming weekend to end the conference season and to solidify seedings for the tournament. Coastal leader North Carolina has the weekend off.

Current ACC Standings:

ATLANTIC DIVISION
School	Conference	Pct.	Overall	Pct.
Florida State	18-7-0	.720	33-12-0	.733
Clemson	16-11-0	.593	32-16-0	.667
Boston College	12-13-0	.480	29-19-0	.604
NC State	8-16-0	.333	22-26-0	.458
Maryland	7-20-0	.259	23-26-0	.469
Wake Forest	6-18-0	.250	21-24-0	.467
COASTAL DIVISION
School	Conference	Pct.	Overall	Pct.
North Carolina	16-7-0	.696	35-11-0	.761
Georgia Tech	14-7-1	.659	31-11-1	.733
Virginia	13-8-1	.614	35-9-1	.789
Miami	15-12-0	.556	31-16-0	.660
Duke	12-12-0	.500	29-17-0	.630
Virginia Tech	10-16-0	.385	27-20-0	.57

Once again, it's gonna be a huge upcoming weekend.....

I heart intrastate football

Sorry about lack of postings today. Dane/Winfield are cuddling after completing their final finals and I was in Charlotte for a Hazmat Conference.

On to the interesting news today. Tech is slated to play Georgia Southern in 2015. That's a helluva long way away, which leads me to believe it'll give GSU time to reach I-A status as Coach Hatcher has indicated he'd like to be the guy to take GSU to that level. We'll see.

I personally will love to see this game. I've followed the Eagles since my cousin's 5 years in Statesboro. We'd trade tickets every other year for the GT-uga game and the GSU-Furman game. I've seen epic duals between Chaz Williams and Ingle Martin, Jayson Foster dominate some I-AA bitches, and some incredible triple option football under Mike Sewak. And I was pretty pissed off at VanGorder for doggin' the Eagles after one crappy season. So, like I said, I've been waiting for this game.

Once again, sorry for the shortage of Friday postings. I may post some this weekend between golf, Cinco de Mayo parties, and watching the NBA playoffs. Expect more Winfield/Dane postings since they don't have jobs/school now.

Falcons GM comments on drafting Walker

Here are some quotes from the ajc about Vance Walker and why the Falcons drafted him with the seventh pick:

We saw a guy who has some versatility to him. He has some natural leverage ability about him, to be able to hold the point. But also combines that with some upfield ability. He can be a one-gap guy which is very important in Mike Smith’s scheme and his scheme going forward... Vance was another top notch leader in his program.

Vance Walker is gonna play for the Falcons. It's kinda ridiculous how low our guys were drafted this draft and generally how underrated all Tech players are coming out of college (e.g. Dawan Landry, James Butler, Key Fox, Daryl Smith, etc.).
Also, Pat Swilling was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Indiana. Swilling was the twelfth Jacket to be selected into the CFB Hall of Fame and the most recent since Randy Rhino's induction in 2002. Swilling was on the infamous "Black Watch Defense" of Bill Curry's coaching stint. The best defensive players got black GT's and black stripes for their helmets. Pretty cool motivation tool, if you ask me.

Mario and Hawks stop Wade and Heat

Gotta love seeing guys get their shot at the pro level. And the Hawks' game last night was a great oppurtunity to watch Mario West come off the bench against a good Miami team and the superstar Dwyane Wade. Rio played a solid 11 minutes mostly in the second half as the Hawks cruised. And if you haven't watched a game of the NBA playoffs, I'd highly recommend you watch D-Wade's performance in the next (possible) couple of games. The guy is playing the best individual basketball in the playoffs, to me.

Also of note, Jahi is signing a free agent contract with the 49ers. Good luck to him and the other three seniors who have not yet found free agent contracts.

Any thoughts on the simplicities of life or your reflections on the galactic chaos surrounding us are welcome.

ACC Coaches sophomore slump or jump

I like to look at numbers to draw conclusions. I was thinking about the term "sophomore slump" and wanted to pull some coaches' stats out for predictions of CPJ's second year. So here's the most recent 2-year tenured coaches' freshman/sophomore records at all 12 ACC gigs:

It's nice to know that on average most coaches got better in their second years. That makes sense. In fact, only four of twelve coaches didn't improve in their sophomores seasons: Roof, Amato, Gailey, and Bunting. Amato needed P. Rivers, Bunting was terrible, Roof was at Duke, and Gailey was Gailey. Otherwise, I think the numbers are pretty interesting. It would be totally cool if CPJ followed the trend and won 0.83 more games next year and lost 0.25 less games. That's a +1.08 net. I'll take a 10 win season any day.

George P. Burdell adds to his resume

I guess fighting in WWII, graduating from Tech AND Harvard, and almost being the 2001 TIME Person of the Year were not enough for the old man. He is now working as a Production Assistant at South Park Studios!

Last I heard from George, he was lost and wandering the grounds of Alumni Stadium this past September....

Do you have absolutely no idea what is going on? Click here to learn just a sliver about the man. All other George P. Burdell stories welcome below.

2010 Draft Predictors

SI.com's Andrew Perloff predicts Jon Dwyer as the first runningback taken in the 2010 draft.

Onlinesportsfanatic.com has a poll for voting of best runningback in 2010 Draft Class including Jon Dwyer, C.J. Spiller, Jahvid Best, Joe McKnight, or other.

Collegefootballnews.com has their top 250 NFL prospects listed for 2010 and Jon Dwyer is listed at #25.

Worries, predictions, etc. are welcome.