RotoSavants Writing continues here. Once this MAAC Tournament ends I’m going to definately jump into a ton of mock drafts in order to get ready for the year. One of my gripes is that in the drafts, the rankings are gerenally influenced from last year. The guys that helped you last year might, and probably won’t, help you this year. Sometimes I’ll fall into the crutch of drafting a guy that helped me last year. Guys like Garrett Jones I will not touch this year but, then again, I might still take a flier on Chris B. Young who burned me severely last year.

I did a bunch of writing over the weekend at SienaSaintsBlog.com as well as a BracketBuster recap on RushTheCourt.net.

Ryan Restivo is the RTC correspondent for the CAA and an occasional contributor.

That’s the line I like. I also have a piece on RotoSavants for today which is now part of the YardBarker network! Troy Patterson, who doesn’t need my personal compliments, does a great job running the site as it will start to see the steady increase of pre-draft day hits and he writes as great stuff at The Hardball Times too.

I wrote a piece about position battles at RotoSavants. I’ve been diving back into draft prep again so I have been keeping a closer eye towards projections and depth charts as we get closer to spring training.

I also have coverage of the BracketBuster game between Siena and Butler over at SienaSaintsBlog.com from the past week which includes an interview and a scouting report on Butler’s best player.

Meanwhile, now is the time I’ll break down the CAA results and write my RushTheCourt piece for the week on the Colonial Athletic Association. Including all of the postseason tournaments, I wouldn’t be surprised if 5 teams reach postseason play for the conference.

I wrote a piece on the past week’s play at RushTheCourt for the Colonial Athletic Association as the race closes tighter and tighter. I also did some digging through the schedule and found that George Mason benefitted a lot from playing very weak opponents throughout the seven game win streak. Also changed the format up a little bit and it is worth checking out.

On SienaSaintsBlog we have done more video and are getting more and more hits. Siena came out in their alternate gold’s for the first time this year, I believe, and came out firing in last Friday’s win over Iona.

More here:

I opened a league on RotoSavants and it filled in 19 hours.

So I wrote some recaps, previews and Bracketbuster pieces on SienaSaintsBlog.com over the weekend. Siena beat St. Peter’s on the road in a tough game and then wiped the floor with Marist.

The Siena-Butler collision course? Is it possible? Butler was 37-3 at home heading into the week, when I did the research on potential games. It is official now and we knew about it at the time so we could break it at the right time. ESPN embargoes the information for going into a release from schools/sites/anything which I find ironical because there was an embargo ESPN broke once in 2007 but I digress.

My weekly CAA piece for RushTheCourt came out Monday. George Mason is atop the league at 10-1 but I would say there are five teams that could win the automatic bid and I’m not counting Drexel who has been very good as of late. Also it’s my opinion that Benny Moss at UNC Wilmington shouldn’t have been fired. Unless he committed a major NCAA violation or a crime, there are no real benefits to firing your head coach in season in college basketball.

My CAA piece was mentioned on the ESPN.com College Basketball Nation Blog. Cool!

Rush The Court checks in on the Colonial, where George Mason, Old Dominion, and Northeastern have all crowded the top of the standings.

Also my RotoSavants piece last week was: I hate drafting Derek Jeter. I think Jeter is going to hit that age, soon enough, where the production won’t help. If you add a position move, which is almost inevitable, to the outfield then how much of a great fantasy player is he? I like the new design of RotoSavants.com and everyone should check it out!

I did my weekly for RotoSavants. This time I broke down catching situations that I’m not happy at. I like Jesus Flores of the Nats and I hope he is healthy and doesn’t get hurt by the veteran presence of Ivan Rodriguez.

My weekly CAA piece went up on RushTheCourt. Old Dominion, Northeastern and George Mason are all tied for first and this week there will be a lot of good games, especially on Saturday.

Over at SienaSaintsBlog, we’re continuing the video push. We got this video up about 2 hours after the game in HD quality of Ubiles, a little obstructed, but hitting a three and the crowd goes crazy. I like our videos for their natural sound quality and even our player interview sound quality has been getting a lot better.

Oh yeah and our video is going very well so far. So much that the Times Union blog acquired video from Thursday’s Siena Time Warner broadcast.

Weekly RushTheCourt piece on the CAA came out Monday. What to look forward to this week?

Wed 1/20

William & Mary @ VCU

VCU is coming on strong in conference so far, winning three straight by double digits, and should challenge the Tribe. For William & Mary this will be a trial by fire to see if they are deserving of being one of the top four in the CAA.

Sat 1/23

VCU @ Northeastern

There will be TV for Comcast viewers and a few others, so do not miss this afternoon matchup. There’s a chance Northeastern will be going for an 11-game win streak to tie their 1987 record.

Old Dominion @ William & Mary

A tough week ends at home where the Tribe get the Monarchs in a huge matchup. Entering the week, the Tribe rank 9^th in offensive efficiency, the Monarchs rank 10^th in defensive efficiency.

In my weekly RotoSavants piece, I say I’m not a fan of David Ortiz. Some of the staff might disagree but I think Ortiz is definately on a downhill slope and the real sleeper if he doesn’t perform I think is playing time. The Red Sox have built a quality bench, with the potential of a frustrated Mike Lowell on it, the Red Sox could platoon Ortiz soon.

SienaSaintsBlog did a ton of video and stories at Fairfield on Saturday and will continue to do so. We got a bunch of cool videos and will be sharing them at http://youtube.com/sienasaintsblogvideo. We also met a nice guy from the College Hoops Journal who sat next to us and was doing a story on Siena. His story is here and he used, with permission of course, two of Matt’s photos from Saturday.

I’m going to have pieces on RotoSavants every Thursday. This past Thursday was the Nationals closer situation where the Nats signed Matt Capps and have a lot of relievers behind him if he falters. One guy I like? Tyler Clippard. Even if he regresses I think he might have some value in deep leagues.

Monday’s are also my CAA weekly for Rush The Court. I think if you had to look at all four 4-1 teams, I’d put them in the order of Old Dominion, Northeastern, William & Mary and George Mason. Mason is really young and they need to win on the road (lost last two road games by 20+). I got to watch both Hofstra @ Old Dominion and UNC Wilmington @ George Mason. First impressions? Hofstra could not get to the basket in their offense but that might have more to do with Old Dominon’s defense. UNC Wilmington had a lot of good plays but they just turned the ball over every chance they got. Mason is a good team but they are extremely young and will have a great shot at the conference tournament in March.

I’m reading my own writing. I did an interview with Steve Amedio of Keepin’ Track of the MAAC and it’s really good stuff. My brother Matt has put forth a great long term plan for SienaSaintsBlog.com and we hope you check out everything we have to offer for the rest of the basketball season!

I also wrote an Expensive in 2010 column on Brian Fuentes for RotoSavants:

Fuentes led the league with 48 saves last year, but that is more a factor of the LA Angels of Anaheim getting into save situations. Fuentes pitched less than an inning in 9 of his 48 saves.

I’m trying out the new Google Chrome now. My brother Matt says he loves it and I am starting to like it too. I have used 4 browsers in the past: Mozilla’s Firefox, Camino and Apple’s Safari other than Google Chrome. I’m finding Chrome to be a very good experience and performing really well so far. It is still a Beta for Macs though but it has done everything I’ve asked of it so far in a few days.

I’m working on the draft kit project as well, mostly updating all the player movement that happened at those Winter Meetings in Indianapolis. A lot of players moved which makes for some fun time in Excel.

This one site is probably getting more than it asked for by writing that Baseball Prospectus Jumps The Shark. He brings up an interesting argument which made me think of a comparison. He must think that it is like Saturday Night Live in the old days, which had so much more talent, and move today where it pretty much is unwatchable.

Today I started what will be an offseason session on Roto Savants, writing a counterargument to players who will be expensive next year, I started with Mark Buehrle.

…every year since 2003 Buehrle has given up over a hit per inning pitched (his H/9 over 9.1 every year). Since the White Sox won the World Series in 2005: Buehrle has pitched to a 4.05 ERA, given up 107 home runs and has a mediocre strikeout to walk rate of 2.41.

I also wrote an Around the MAAC piece for Siena Saints Blog about the rest of the MAAC’s Thanksgiving weekend. Akron beat Niagara Sunday by scoring only 2 points less in the second half (57) than Marist was able to score in a game (59) on Saturday.