ow than its likely going to get. And they are at career stages out of step for a team at the outset of a full-blown rebuild.The White Sox are well positioned to deal. Their primary veterans are good

NICEVILLE, Fla. -- Providence got physical with No, 7 Virginia and scored 52 points, the most anyone has had this season against the nations top-ranked defense. It wasnt enough.Virginia beat the Friars 63-52 to win the Emerald Coast Classic on Saturday night.Virginias very, very fundamentally sound, Providence coach Ed Cooley said. They know each others strengths, weaknesses -- very, very disciplined team. One of the most disciplined teams that weve played against in a long time. ... They are going to be hell for somebody to beat.London Perrantes, selected the tournaments most valuable player, and Darius Thompson scored 11 points each to lead the Cavaliers.Virginia (6-0) had been giving up only 39.2 points per game.Providence (4-2) topped the 51 that UNC Greensboro scored against the Cavaliers, but had trouble penetrating the tight defense that denies post touches and forces contested jumpers.Mamadi Diakite added 10 points for Virginia.Jalen Lindsey led Providence with 18 points. Rodney Bullock added 16, but that was short of his 20.4 average.They are physical, really physical, offensively and defensively, Perrantes said about the Friars.He said the rough play, though, will only help the Cavaliers prepare for other tough opponents that will be coming up.Cooley also had some high praise for Perrantes, saying he may be the most poised player Ive seen in college basketball in a long, long, long time.Virginia coach Tony Bennett credited the Cavaliers balance for getting them through some challenging moments in the game including a 9-0 Providence run to start the second half that cut Virginias lead to five points.Its not who we play, its how we play, Bennett said. We played pretty solid, but we had a lapse that could be very costly.BIG PICTUREVirginia: Bolstered by strong performances from bench players Marial Shayok, the team scoring leader averaging 11.2 points going into Saturdays game, and freshman Kyle Guy, the Cavaliers have shown little affect from the graduation of four players from last seasons 29-win team.Providence: Losing to a highly touted Virginia team does nothing to take the luster off a strong early season showing. That includes a dramatic come-from-behind 60-51 victory over previously undefeated Memphis in the Emerald Coast semifinals.POLL IMPLICATIONSAfter breezing through four relatively weak opponents to open the season, Virginia did the same in its first major challenge, beating the Big Tens Iowa 74-41 in the semifinals Friday. Taking down Providence from the Big East can only enhance the Cavaliers chances of moving up from their No. 7 ranking if any of the teams ahead of them stumble.UP NEXT:Providence: The Friars host New Hampshire on Wednesday.Virginia: Host Ohio State in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge on Wednesday. Vapormax Run Utility Black . Marincin has played in two NHL games so far this season with two penalty minutes. The 21-year-old has three goals, four assists and a plus-5 rating in 24 games with the American Hockey Leagues Oklahoma City Barons this season. Nike Vapormax Plus Wholesale .5 million, one-year contract on Friday. Hawkins, who turns 41 in December, will compete with Rex Brothers for the closers role at spring training. http://www.airvapormaxwholesale.com/vapormax-run-utility.html . Didier Drogba gave away the penalty that put Senegal one goal away from a major upset, but the veteran striker will get another chance -- probably his last -- at the World Cup after Salomon Kalous injury-time strike sealed the Ivorians place in Brazil next year. Vapormax Sandals For Sale .ca NHL Power Rankings for the second straight week, ahead of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Colorado Avalanche. Vapormax Moc 2 Sale .com) - Christian Ponder will get another chance to prove himself for the Minnesota Vikings, with head coach Leslie Frazier announcing Wednesday that the struggling quarterback will start this weekends game against the Green Bay Packers. If you were looking southward from downtown Chicago when reports hit that Chris Sale had been traded to the Boston Red Sox, you would have noticed that Guaranteed Rate Field was shrouded in a light fog. That might be a pathetic fallacy, but the vision seems appropriate for the current state of the Chicago White Sox.It has been a rough few months for the White Sox. A torrid start to the 2016 season put Chicago six games up in the American League Central, a lead that disappeared in less than three weeks and never came back. They finished 16? games behind the Cleveland Indians and missed the postseason for the eighth straight season. The only times the White Sox drew any real national attention were both strange controversies in which Sale was involved -- first when veteran Adam LaRoche retired over his sons clubhouse access during spring training, with Sale calling out executive VP Kenny Williams, and then during the season, when Sale lost his mind and cut up a bunch of throwback jerseys.And this all quietly unfolded in a city where the north-side Cubs became the biggest story in sports. The White Sox have long been second-class citizens in their own metropolitan area despite a fan base that is fervently loyal and, even now, largely immune to the happenings in Wrigleyville. But as they say, the proof is in the pudding. According to Forbes, the White Sox were working with $100 million less in revenue than the Cubs in 2015, a chasm that has almost certainly widened since then. The last bit of bragging rights the White Sox owned -- their 2005 championship -- has been erased by the Cubs World Series win.With the Cubbie-blue shadow looming larger than ever over the White Sox, does that make this the best or the worst time to rebuild? In most ways, it probably doesnt matter. While the franchises vie for a certain overlap in local media coverage, their respective fan bases dont seem to intersect as much as youd think, considering the ballparks are only about nine miles from each other. White Sox fans dont tend to judge their team against the Cubs, especially those who have sworn to never set foot inside Wrigley Field.The Sale trade doesnt represent a full-on rebuild by general manager Rick Hahn, but it sends a hard-to-ignore signal that one is underway. At 27, Sale is one of the best and most durable starting pitchers in baseball. His contract, according to the Cots Contracts, will pay him $38 million over the next three seasons. Thats ridiculously team-friendly. Simply put, he was one of the most valuable trade assets in baseball.Hahn could have held onto Sale, allowing the pitcher to continue anchoring Chicagos rotation at a bargain price. But to what end? The White Soxs best players -- such as Sale, Jose Quintana, Todd Frazier, Jose Abreu and Melky Cabrera -- are in the middle of or nearing the end of their career primes. The players with the most upside -- shortstop Tim Anderson and starter Carlos Rodon -- are too few in number. The White Soxs minus-29 run differential last season was a four-year high. It just wasnt working.For far too long -- well before Hahn took over as chief decision-maker from Kenny Williams -- the White Sox have focused on patching up their big league roster at the expense of building up their minor league system. The last, big patch-work push came before the 2015 season, when the Sox doled out around $128 million in contracts for Cabrera, Zach Duke, David Robertson and LaRoche. That accomplished nothing, so before last season, the Sox traded three prospects to the Dodgers in a three-way deal with the Reds that brought back veteran third baseman Todd Frazier.The end result? Continuing their string of second-division finishes.Worse, the White Sox have been neither fish nor fowl: The lack of player development has left the organization thin, and the lack of an elite revenue stream leaves the White Sox battling for second-tier free agents with far too much downside risk.This left the White Sox at a crosssroads entering the winter meetings:Door No.dddddddddddd 1: Should they keep throwing money at their problems, hoping to catch lightning in the bottle? It wasnt the longest of shots, after all, because at the very least, they could hope for a good starting rotation.Door No. 2: They could finally bite the bullet and attempt to put together a more sustainable model.With the trade of Sale, the White Sox seem to have finally set off in the right direction. Door No. 2 it is.Keith Laws last full set of organization rankings had the White Sox at No. 22. According to Baseball America, the White Sox havent ranked in the top 10 since 2002. They havent been in the top half of the majors in Baseball Americas rankings in a decade, and the past five years have been brutal: 27th, 30th, 29th, 24th, 30th and 23rd.Prospect rankings arent everything. However, the current economic realities of baseball and the structures in place under the current and recently-agreed-to collective bargaining agreements have put scouting and development at the forefront of most front office strategies. The Yankees are doing it. The Dodgers are doing it. The Royals and the Cubs have converted recent lofty draft rankings into World Series titles. But the White Sox didnt even need to look at those trends or those teams. They only needed to look at their own history.In 2001, the White Sox were Baseball Americas top team in the preseason prospect rankings. While a lot of the players who populated the top rungs of that list (such as?Joe Borchard and Jon Rauch) didnt pan out, that overall commitment to player development was a big part of the Soxs title in 2005, in terms of homegrown products on the roster (Joe Crede, Aaron Rowand, Mark Buehrle) and prospects dealt for veteran pieces.Now the White Sox seem pointed toward replicating that process, beginning with the crucial first step theyve skipped over for years: establishing a solid base of prospects. They seem to be off to a great start with the Sale trade. With the acquisition of Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech and Luis A. Basabe, along with the selections of catcher Zack Collins and pitchers Alec Hansen and Zack Burdi in the draft back in June, there is a lot more upside in the organization than there was before the season. But its only a start.Now that Sale is gone, the other impactful veterans on the roster make even less sense. Eaton, 27, is a solid hitter and excellent defender at a time when several contenders need a center fielder. Quintana, also 27, is kind of Sale-lite on both the production and consistency fronts and has a similarly team-friendly contract. Abreu, Frazier and Cabrera will all be in or past their age-30 seasons in 2017, which means their value is higher right now than its likely going to get. And they are at career stages out of step for a team at the outset of a full-blown rebuild.The White Sox are well positioned to deal. Their primary veterans are good players on reasonable contracts. This isnt a blue-light-special situation -- Hahn should find multiple suitors for each veteran, and he can always stand pat if the right offers dont come in. He can deal this winter, or hold out until the trade deadline. However, if he doesnt pull the trigger on anything, suddenly the Sale trade starts to look like an odd, half-done attempt at going the prospect route. That outcome would be a surprise, especially since the thin free-agent class this winter means its a good time to dive into the sellers trade market.Up until the moment Hahn said yes to the Red Sox, that fog around The G (formerly the Cell) really did seem like a metaphor. With that one phone call, the White Sox are no longer a team running in place. But dealing Sale was just the first step, and for the White Sox to end up where they want to go, the next steps will be the most important theyve taken in years. ' ' '