Monday, January 26, 2009
Recruiting News
Last week Kendall Kelly rated his visit to Clemson a "10", but he was at LSU this weekend and says "Its probably the best one I've been on. Just everything that went into it." When asked if LSU was in the lead, he said we're (CU, Bama, LSU) "all about medium now." He went on to say that he might visit Tenn. or Auburn next weekend. He plans to announce on signing day. LSU already has a large group of WRs in this class.
Tajh Boyd is planning to announce his decision tomorrow afternoon. Based on his father's comments, I'd say we currently have the best shot at landing him, but his dad did say that he doesnt know who Tajh will pick. He points out the family atmosphere at Clemson as positives, and the general sense (of many Clemson fans) of not knowing what will happen with the offense under Swinney and Napier as negatives. He spent nearly an hour on the phone with Dabo sunday, and Napier/Pearman are to be in VA today to meet him. Just cross your fingers.
OL J. Schofield reaffirmed his commitment to Tennessee this weekend, but hopefully Kirkpatrick will consider us for a visit this weekend. We still have a good shot with Tim Simon, see yesterday's blog for the link.
Napier was interviewd by The State here, and basically says the same things he said in his TI interview, but more focused on recruiting here.
Official visits for this weekend, as of Monday:
Blake Burgess-OL-6'4" 260-no star rating
Tyler Felt-OG-6'4" 252-no star rating, Shrine Bowl long-snapper
Darrell Smith-TE-2 stars, teammate of K. Kelly and Dre Kirkpatrick
Donny McElveen-QB-2 stars, Summerville QB
and a few kickers, none of which will get an offer, but I'm not covering kickers.
Kirkpatrick would be the best, but we wont know til mid-week.
Tajh Boyd is planning to announce his decision tomorrow afternoon. Based on his father's comments, I'd say we currently have the best shot at landing him, but his dad did say that he doesnt know who Tajh will pick. He points out the family atmosphere at Clemson as positives, and the general sense (of many Clemson fans) of not knowing what will happen with the offense under Swinney and Napier as negatives. He spent nearly an hour on the phone with Dabo sunday, and Napier/Pearman are to be in VA today to meet him. Just cross your fingers.
OL J. Schofield reaffirmed his commitment to Tennessee this weekend, but hopefully Kirkpatrick will consider us for a visit this weekend. We still have a good shot with Tim Simon, see yesterday's blog for the link.
Napier was interviewd by The State here, and basically says the same things he said in his TI interview, but more focused on recruiting here.
Official visits for this weekend, as of Monday:
Blake Burgess-OL-6'4" 260-no star rating
Tyler Felt-OG-6'4" 252-no star rating, Shrine Bowl long-snapper
Darrell Smith-TE-2 stars, teammate of K. Kelly and Dre Kirkpatrick
Donny McElveen-QB-2 stars, Summerville QB
and a few kickers, none of which will get an offer, but I'm not covering kickers.
Kirkpatrick would be the best, but we wont know til mid-week.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Swinney interviewed
Dabo and Brad went to Aiken this weekend to talk to students about academics, not football. He was interviewed by the Aiken Standard here. Its a pretty basic, short interview.
AS: I know you can't speak on specifics (per NCAA rules), but how has recruiting gone so far?
DS: Recruiting is going well. We are going to finish with a strong, strong finish. It is not going to be a very big class, because we only had 17 scholarship seniors, but we will probably sign 17 to 19 kids and it is going to be a great class. I am excited about my first group.
This is a couple more than Napier has been quoted on. He went on to say the QB job is an open competition (which of course he should), we're going to have problems at safety, and the team is going back to work on fundamentals and the basics this spring (not a new offense).
James Davis was also interviewed by Scout just before the game yesterday.
An alabama blog talks about Clemson making efforts to steal Tim Simon away from the state, and Ole Piss.
An AJC article about the Clemson-GT game tonight is here.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Oh well....another day.
A look into how clueless our players were last night is right here. If your starting power forward does not know what UNC is doing, then that says alot about the team's preparation for the game. That forces me to put the loss squarely on Oliver Purnell. Here's a thought Trevor, if you want the ball, go to the basket with aggression when you touch it. If we cannot play tough inside, we are not going to beat good teams.
I am not calling for OP's head, because I think he's a good coach, and I have not forgotten the days of Clifford or Shyatt, but I wasn't happy with the halftime adjustments vs. WF, and wasnt last night either. We just have to improve in transition, and our ball-handling of our guards must improve. We have GT coming up, and cannot afford a letdown now.
Football
RubtheRock has a two-part interview with Levon Kirkland that's fairly interesting, check it out.
SmartFootball has an explanation of a zone-blitz that Clemson fans are going to see alot of this year with Steele calling the defense. We're going to go through some defensive strategies this offseason, since I have a copy of Saban's LSU defensive playbook.
Recruiting
We realistically have a shot with 4 players: Tajh Boyd, Kendall Kelly, Tim Simon, and J. Schofield. Sam Montgomery, who the hell knows. Napier has mentioned that they will not be offering fallbacks, but I still think they'd offer Roderic Blunt. I think our best shot is with Kelly.
Dabo has his in-home contact with Boyd friday, and he is the last of the HC's to make their in-home visit (NCAA rules allow only one in-home from the HC). Tressel and Bellotti have already been in, and his parents did not accompany him to Oregon. I think its between us and Ohio State. Either way he'll have to RS a year, and then could be playing behind Korn/Parker or T. Pryor.
Schofield's parents love Swinney and Scott, but Tennessee is a childhood favorite of his, and he visits UT this weekend. It is his 2nd and final official. After his Clemson visit he did think we were even (he rated it an "8"), so theres hope.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Clemson @ UNC
Well theres not much point in previewing it, we all know the 0-for-53 record exists, and it may or may not piss you off. Some people don't care and/or are just resigned to losing tonight. I know that it is possible, since I was on the floor the day that we beat #1 UNC @ home (vs. Vanilla Ice), on the same day that Dale Earnhardt died.
We never got the press for it, all of about 2 minutes thanks to the Daytona crash, but we will if we do it tonight.
I don't buy into the 13.5 point line, there is no way would I put this one over 10, more like 6-8.
Plyler and Strelow have written previews, and there are others, but I think Strelow has it on the money. The book is out on Booker and Sykes, and if they don't step up inside, or at least have success passing back out to the open shooters and setting screens on the perimeter, we're not going to win. Conversely, our defense showed its weakness in transition, which has been the case for as long as I can remember for Clemson, to tell you the truth. The best teams are always great in transition, and we're not there yet, but things can happen.
What you can expect:
-Booker will foul out. My hope is that he hammers Hansbrough on every foul. They'll call it anyway, so he might as well. He has to play with authority and to the utmost level he can.
-Hansbrough will get alot of tickytack stuff from the referees, and likely end up with at least 10 FT attempts. Of course, he will never commit more than 2 fouls and never commit traveling, because he is the anointed one. There will be numerous stories about his parents, and at least 3 shots of them on TV.
-Clemson will choke at the FT line when we have a chance to win, but we won't get many foul calls and likely won't have 20 shots at the line. UNC will have at least 25.
-The 0-for-53 streak will be mentioned at least 5 times, more if the lead is large late.
-Dicky V will say "baby" at least 25 times. I suggest you take a shot for each one.
Go Tigers.
We never got the press for it, all of about 2 minutes thanks to the Daytona crash, but we will if we do it tonight.
I don't buy into the 13.5 point line, there is no way would I put this one over 10, more like 6-8.
Plyler and Strelow have written previews, and there are others, but I think Strelow has it on the money. The book is out on Booker and Sykes, and if they don't step up inside, or at least have success passing back out to the open shooters and setting screens on the perimeter, we're not going to win. Conversely, our defense showed its weakness in transition, which has been the case for as long as I can remember for Clemson, to tell you the truth. The best teams are always great in transition, and we're not there yet, but things can happen.
What you can expect:
-Booker will foul out. My hope is that he hammers Hansbrough on every foul. They'll call it anyway, so he might as well. He has to play with authority and to the utmost level he can.
-Hansbrough will get alot of tickytack stuff from the referees, and likely end up with at least 10 FT attempts. Of course, he will never commit more than 2 fouls and never commit traveling, because he is the anointed one. There will be numerous stories about his parents, and at least 3 shots of them on TV.
-Clemson will choke at the FT line when we have a chance to win, but we won't get many foul calls and likely won't have 20 shots at the line. UNC will have at least 25.
-The 0-for-53 streak will be mentioned at least 5 times, more if the lead is large late.
-Dicky V will say "baby" at least 25 times. I suggest you take a shot for each one.
Go Tigers.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Monday News
Basketball
McFarland hit in the bleachers.....it looks to me like he just ran right into the stands, and the guy grabbed him to protect himself, then McFarland got ticked.
Ron Morris wrote a nice article about the WF game, a definite deviation for him from his usual bomb-throwing tactics.
According to Tim Bourret, the noise level reached 110db in Littlejohn during the game when we got close in the 2nd half. It reached 112 at one point in the last top 5 matchup versus WF in 1997, before we got screwed on the foul at the end.
This week, the Coaches Poll still has us at #9. WF is the new #1, which they deserve.
Now we've just got to get the Chapel Hill monkey off our backs wednesday night.
Baseball
Rivals has Clemson rated #20, and a good FREE article is posted here, previewing the season.
Recruiting
-Corey Addison, a SC committed Safety was in Clemson this weekend, but appears to be still headed to SC.
-Jonathan Scott, another Safety who visited the weekend previously, committed to West Virginia. Together, the two losses hurt Clemson, as we need at least 2 safeties in this class.
-Tajh Boyd rated his visit a "8.5-9" and said he thoroughly enjoyed it, Ohio State and Oregon have already recieved visits, and we're in his top 3.
-Kendall Kelly rated his visit a "10" and said that "Its special up there", his pickup would be huge. Clemson needs a second WR commit in this class. He still is planning to visit LSU and has visited Alabama.
-WR Jamal Patterson and RB Mike Gillislee were scheduled visits for this weekend, but have pulled off. That article also mentions DB Justin Green, OT Jerquari Schofield, and QB D. McElveen. McElveen will be here if Clemson offers.
-Committed LB Quandon Christian visited NC State, and didnt rule out the possibility of switching commitments, yet still says he's committed to Clemson.
Football
Ron West has accepted the Co-DC job at Tulsa, per CUTigers.
Steele and Napier have had recent interviews that have shed some light on their philosophies for next year. I'll give a brief synopsis of each:
Steele: Base will be a 4-3, man pressure when necessary, but wont look much different from what VK has done, and he's trying to use the same terminology with his new playbook.
He hasn't decided whether to coach from the press box or not. D. McDaniel will move to SS.
Napier: The staff is going to visit Oklahoma and Texas during the offseason (Dabo has said so as well), where they'll just look at some concepts. Oklahoma's offense uses the Brad Scott hurry-up-and-wait concept alot, and we might see some of that this year. Expect them to study Texas' usage of Colt McCoy as a running threat, but we are not installing the AirRaid+Power-like scheme of OU, nor the Texas offense, just a few concepts. Otherwise, the offense will still be two-TE, multiple power system, with no-huddle. Zone Read plays will return to the offense next season, after being absent since the Dantzler days. He ran an I-formation offense with PA at Furman, but the I is not one of the things they intend to reinstate, unfortunately.
The Zone Read:
McFarland hit in the bleachers.....it looks to me like he just ran right into the stands, and the guy grabbed him to protect himself, then McFarland got ticked.
Ron Morris wrote a nice article about the WF game, a definite deviation for him from his usual bomb-throwing tactics.
That also is how long it has been since Clemson was considered a serious threat in ACC basketball circles. The difference is that Clemson now appears to be built more for the long haul.
The Tigers were not up to the challenge Saturday against what might be the best team in the land. Even in the loss, though, Clemson showed signs of being an outstanding team. It battled from 14 points down in the second half to within a point. At times, it forced Wake Forest into the kind of hectic pace that favors Clemson.
According to Tim Bourret, the noise level reached 110db in Littlejohn during the game when we got close in the 2nd half. It reached 112 at one point in the last top 5 matchup versus WF in 1997, before we got screwed on the foul at the end.
This week, the Coaches Poll still has us at #9. WF is the new #1, which they deserve.
Now we've just got to get the Chapel Hill monkey off our backs wednesday night.
Baseball
Rivals has Clemson rated #20, and a good FREE article is posted here, previewing the season.
Recruiting
-Corey Addison, a SC committed Safety was in Clemson this weekend, but appears to be still headed to SC.
-Jonathan Scott, another Safety who visited the weekend previously, committed to West Virginia. Together, the two losses hurt Clemson, as we need at least 2 safeties in this class.
-Tajh Boyd rated his visit a "8.5-9" and said he thoroughly enjoyed it, Ohio State and Oregon have already recieved visits, and we're in his top 3.
-Kendall Kelly rated his visit a "10" and said that "Its special up there", his pickup would be huge. Clemson needs a second WR commit in this class. He still is planning to visit LSU and has visited Alabama.
-WR Jamal Patterson and RB Mike Gillislee were scheduled visits for this weekend, but have pulled off. That article also mentions DB Justin Green, OT Jerquari Schofield, and QB D. McElveen. McElveen will be here if Clemson offers.
-Committed LB Quandon Christian visited NC State, and didnt rule out the possibility of switching commitments, yet still says he's committed to Clemson.
Football
Ron West has accepted the Co-DC job at Tulsa, per CUTigers.
Steele and Napier have had recent interviews that have shed some light on their philosophies for next year. I'll give a brief synopsis of each:
Steele: Base will be a 4-3, man pressure when necessary, but wont look much different from what VK has done, and he's trying to use the same terminology with his new playbook.
"I love to pressure. I love to create bad plays for offenses with pressure. It's got a lot of pressure in it. It's got a lot of fire-zone pressure in it. We'll man up when we need to, and then all-out blitz and deny the ball on down and distances that predicate that."
He hasn't decided whether to coach from the press box or not. D. McDaniel will move to SS.
Napier: The staff is going to visit Oklahoma and Texas during the offseason (Dabo has said so as well), where they'll just look at some concepts. Oklahoma's offense uses the Brad Scott hurry-up-and-wait concept alot, and we might see some of that this year. Expect them to study Texas' usage of Colt McCoy as a running threat, but we are not installing the AirRaid+Power-like scheme of OU, nor the Texas offense, just a few concepts. Otherwise, the offense will still be two-TE, multiple power system, with no-huddle. Zone Read plays will return to the offense next season, after being absent since the Dantzler days. He ran an I-formation offense with PA at Furman, but the I is not one of the things they intend to reinstate, unfortunately.
The Zone Read:
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Clemson falls to WF 78-68
Well by now, everyone knows we lost, and Larry Williams gives his views on it here. I was more pissed off about it earlier, but WF is the better team, and we're just not at their level quite yet. We're better than we played, but thats got to be proven on the court against top teams, and we haven't yet.
Early on, neither team shot well, and Oglesby was essentially the offense at the beginning, but like OP said in the LW article, we got out of our plan. OP didnt help by sticking to full-court the entire game either, in my opinion. WF was playing outstanding defensively, especially in the paint, but were too quick and generally sloppy as well, and Clemson never took advantage of it in the 1st half, when we were down 32-27.
Clemson didnt seem to adjust to the transition game at all. Purnell apparently elected to remain in full-court press, while WF cut us to pieces in the transition passing because we were never getting down court quick enough to stop them. When we did, backdoor cuts ate us up several times, and our poor presence inside never stopped the post baskets.
I believe Purnell should've gone to a half-court press at halftime, but he stuck with it. Give WF credit for beating us at our own game.
Our offense lacked rhythm the entire game. Bad a 3pt shooting, bad inside, OK in transition (offensively)...
If one player can be singled out for playing badly, its Raymond Sykes. Could you please work on your layup skills? I can't recall more shots popped back up to the basket in a game, and not gone in. Sykes is usually OK at defense, but not today, nor Booker.
I realize WF was all over us inside, but our inability to go to the post with authority (Booker too) was pitiful, and we never looked to pass back out to a shooter when they were coming open which would've forced WF to pull people off and not be as aggressive in their press. K.C. Rivers should not be playing at the low post.
Early on, neither team shot well, and Oglesby was essentially the offense at the beginning, but like OP said in the LW article, we got out of our plan. OP didnt help by sticking to full-court the entire game either, in my opinion. WF was playing outstanding defensively, especially in the paint, but were too quick and generally sloppy as well, and Clemson never took advantage of it in the 1st half, when we were down 32-27.
Clemson didnt seem to adjust to the transition game at all. Purnell apparently elected to remain in full-court press, while WF cut us to pieces in the transition passing because we were never getting down court quick enough to stop them. When we did, backdoor cuts ate us up several times, and our poor presence inside never stopped the post baskets.
I believe Purnell should've gone to a half-court press at halftime, but he stuck with it. Give WF credit for beating us at our own game.
Our offense lacked rhythm the entire game. Bad a 3pt shooting, bad inside, OK in transition (offensively)...
If one player can be singled out for playing badly, its Raymond Sykes. Could you please work on your layup skills? I can't recall more shots popped back up to the basket in a game, and not gone in. Sykes is usually OK at defense, but not today, nor Booker.
I realize WF was all over us inside, but our inability to go to the post with authority (Booker too) was pitiful, and we never looked to pass back out to a shooter when they were coming open which would've forced WF to pull people off and not be as aggressive in their press. K.C. Rivers should not be playing at the low post.
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