UGA beats us in baseball, and coming for Purnell

All signs point towards UGA offering Purnell or Miami's Haith a job, upping the ante to $2 million per annum. Recall that contract discussions have been underway all year for a possible raise. Purnell spurned Bama and LSU before, so I don't see much reason to take a job an hour away and force him to sell that lakehouse. Haith, however, would be wise to get out of Miami for a better job, and "they say" he wants out.

EDIT: this article came out this afternoon, saying OP isnt interested.

Justin Sarratt again pitched 8 solid innings (3H, 1R, 12Ks), but Matt Vaughn blew the lead in the 9th and we lost 4-2 last night to #1 (in some polls) Jawja, sweeping the midweek home&home set after beating us 6-5 in Athens tuesday, and breaking our 9 game home win streak. Sarratt threw 117 pitches and it was the right choice to take him out at that point, but as usual Jack can't get a solid closer (its pretty hard for most college teams to get one, but us especially) and we blew it in the end. Clemson stranded 17 runners in the two games, so we are still just playing too tight. Notice we outhit them in both games.

“It’s just bad because Justin Sarratt pitched one heck of a game,” Vaughn said. “He deserved better than that.”

Vaughn is trying to come back from a pair of minor off-season shoulder surgeries and said his velocity is down slightly. But he pointed to his location as Wednesday’s main culprit.

“There are no excuses for the way I threw tonight,” he said. “I feel good enough to win every time out…I wasn’t locating my pitches. I’m a guy, I go in there and locate my pitches, and tonight I didn’t do it. There’s no excuse for that.”

Wednesday was the latest in a series of late-inning or one-run losses for Clemson. The Tigers also lost ACC series at Florida State and North Carolina with ninth-inning meltdowns, and Leggett said that can’t continue.

“We’ve lost too many one-run games,” he said. “The kids have been playing hard, battling. We’ve had trouble finishing things off and we need to find the right combination there.”

I think I'd have to try Deese as a closer, maybe Cruz. We've got to find something. It's starting to feel like watching the Braves play guess-who-closes the game and loses it today.

Steele and Harbison are excited about the defense's potential this year, and Dabo's interview with reporters yesterday pointed out the offense's problems on 3rd down as a result. As I've pointed out before, the Saban philosophy calls for zone on 1st and 2nd down, and blitzing mainly on 3rd downs.

"Chris Chancellor made some big plays in critical situations today. Byron Maxwell made a huge play in a critical situation and came back and made another one," he said. "DeAndre (McDaniel) made two or three critical plays, so you've got the guys that should be making them starting to make them," he said.

Rising junior strong-side backer Scotty Cooper was given kudos by the coordinator for his continued good works, as well as Jeremy Campbell, who Steele said has continued to make improvement.

Sadat Chambers, a senior safety, who's attempting to fight off younger, more talented players, was branded by Steele as somewhat of a surprise in workouts to date.

Yet another article on Rendrick Taylor's injuries and struggles, and how he's expected to do something this year, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Encouraging words from Dalton Freeman about the OL's play:

The only thing Freeman had to adjust to last year was being in the two-point stance instead of the three.

“When I first got here it was a little different and it was starting to grow on me, but at the same time we got blown off the ball a lot and that was because we could not have our weight forward,” Freeman said. “That was kind of a Coach (Rob) Spence thing because we were very zone oriented.

“Now we are lining up and we are hitting the defense in the mouth. It felt like it gave us a lot more advantage because our weight was forward and we could just go straight off the ball.”

The Tigers started incorporating the three-point stance back in its blocking schemes when Swinney became the interim coach and started calling the plays last October. As a result, the team showed some improvement in the running game, but it was hard to change everything up halfway into the season.

Now Clemson is almost exclusively in the three-point stance and Freeman says he can already tell what a difference it is making in the running game and in everyone’s attitude.

Good riddance to all that zone blocking shit.

Danny Ford was at spring practice yesterday, maybe the presence of God improved things a little.