Weekend News reel

As you may know, the first Junior day of the 2010 recruiting cycle was this past weekend. TI has been reviewing a few of the juniors who visited and getting their opinions. I won't bore with details of each one, but there are several 4/5 star caliber athletes at the skill positions who have Clemson right up there in the mix.

Our 2nd commitment came from LB Jake Nicolopoulos from TL Hanna (6'2" 220) just yesterday, when he was given his offer from Fat Brad. He grew up a Clemson fan and was clearly waiting for the offer. The staff believes he is going to turn into a true MLB (like Shuey) and fits into the new scheme that uses LBs in a more traditional role. Star ratings wont be out for a while longer, but he's likely in the 3-4 star range. Being an early commit might knock him down a little in the ratings though. His other confirmed offers right now were from Cal and Kentucky.

Throughout all the articles on this weekend's visits, you hear Charlie Harbison's name come up very often.
Bryce Brown's agent is now under investigation by the NCAA. SURPRISE!

Spurlid's staff will cost the yardbirds $2 million....all for consistent 7 wins.

Basketball
We face a tough ACC road test this weekend at #25 FSU. Hopefully we can play with intensity for the full game and pull this one out, but I'm not very hopeful for this one. Remember we choked away the last game against them because we couldn't play inside defense at all.

10-6 in conference would be awesome to see (we're 8-5), and hopefully get us a BYE in the ACC Tourney, but right now I'm begrudgingly looking at 9-7 with this game and @ Wake coming up next weekend (UVA next tuesday at home in between). 8-8 or 9-7 is what I thought we'd be preseason, so its not a huge disappointment to me as it looks like we'll get the NCAA nod either way it turns out. Our RPI is too strong (13 right now).


Beisbol
Sat. Home vs. South Carolina, 2:00 PM
Sun. Away vs. South Carolina, 1:30 PM

Sakerlina pretty much lost their whole team to the MLB Draft, and the home & home weekend series we have with them this weekend should be a Clemson sweep. If we get beat twice, we have problems. Sakerlina has won 4 straight in baseball over us and we need to pull Ben out this weekend. We started out 4-0 last year before playing them, and losing both games sent us on a tailspin for pretty much the whole season.

A deal to move one of the CU/SC games to Greenville for next season is almost final. It looks like we'll be shrinking from 4 to 3 games too, which sucks. Let's drop Wofford and pick up the Cluckers please.

Next weekend we go to #2/3 UNC, a huge early road series. We have one of the tougher schedules in the country this year (by design) and this team needs the confidence boost. Clemson will not have a week where they do not play a team currently ranked in the one Top 25 poll until May, after this weekend.

Stan Widmann will likely be held in reserve roles for awhile, as he still struggles with some injuries to his shoulder that were aggravated last week. 3B John Hinson is gone for the year it seems (bulging disk).