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 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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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 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.

…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.

Okay so two guys walk into a bar. One pitched in the playoffs and starts talking about how much he’s going to make in free agency this offseason. One talks about how he hopes to turn the corner next year and be an ace like starter. The bartender asks for their last 3 years stats (oh, just play along with me) so both say their stats. The playoff starter says he went 42-22 with a 3.48 ERA, 1.23 WHIP with 448 strikeouts in the last 3 years. The other player says he went 27-34 with a 4.15 ERA, 1.29 WHIP with 353 strikeouts in the same span.

The bartender, not the biggest baseball fan in the world, still can’t tell who they are. So he asks “how many home runs did you give up over those three years?” The playoff starter says “61″ while the other player says “82.” Then the bartender asks the players, “didn’t you lead the majors in home runs allowed this year?”

One of them says, “yes.”

Also I will have weekly MAAC Updates and some new road game articles at SienaSaintsBlog.com so check them out!