Tuesday News Reel

We now know what happened in Texas...(image courtesy EDSBS)

Basketball-Trevor Booker is 2nd in voting for the Coaches' All-ACC defense squad. He leads the conference in FG PCT., Rebs/game, 2nd in blocks/game and averaged a double-double in league play...the only guy who did. Does he deserve 1st Team All-ACC over someone else?

KC Rivers moved to 6th on the Career scoring list after the WF game.

Football
The spring football articles don't contain much that you can't figure out yourself.

Greg Wallace has a piece on the QB battle between Korn and Parker. Korn says similar things on TI and in other articles, confirming that he shouldn't have played vs. Duke, and I'm concerned by one statement, talking of the attitude of Bowden/Spence after his collarbone fracture.

"I guess the coaching staff that was here before coach Swinney just thought it was going to work its way out and everything was going to be fine. It was not something that was really taken seriously, and I kind of felt like I was really on my own just working on it."

Swinney has stopped referring to the depth chart as 1, 2, 3rd team and now wants to use the terms Attack, Swarm, and Pride for defense; orange, purple, pride for offense. In case you wondered, we are certainly not the first to give the 3 teams wierd names.

Dabo indicated that Spiller and Ford will not scrimmage at all this spring, because the track team is competing for the NCAAs. I don't like this at all. While I dont want a RB to take a lot of hits in the spring, and brittle Jacoby either, I do want them out there in it with everyone else. This team needs that leadership. Its not going to come from a new QB or any other WRs this season; it must come from Ford and Spiller.

That said, I hope they win some titles at the NCAAs. Jacoby has the #1 60m dash time in the nation.

Jon Richt has decided to transfer to a smaller school. We're still 4 deep at QB next fall with Boyd in, but he will almost certainly redshirt because of his knee.

Coach Swinney has not yet inked his contract, and is expected to soon. It'll be 800k annually. If he wins the ACC Title, it jumps to over 2 million. The difference now compared to Bowden is that Swinney forced Clemson to give assistants multi-year deals. Swinney has no buyout clause, but if Clemson fires him, he is still owed a year's salary. So....if Swinney wins 10 games next year, this contract will pretty much be null and you can expect him to get a new, much bigger deal.

I dont know WTF to think about this....

FSU fan accuses Swinney of bad recruiting practice

So in addition to crazy-ass women, we have sillyness among the ranks of fans at FSU, who have accused Dabo Swinney of unethical recruiting practices.

The guys at Block-C checked their email inbox before I did this morning, and have already responded to the article, which I totally agree with.

Another FSU blog site, ScalpEm, takes a less harsh tone against their fans, but essentially agrees.

Could such a thing have occured? Yes. When I logged onto Tardnet on the afternoon when the probation was announced, at least half the idiots thought that FSU was banned from ACC title appearances, bowl games, and would be killed by the loss of scholarships. Its quite conceivable that some moron, as in Billy-Bob-the-marketing-major who works in the film department, told some recruit that they'd get hit hard by probation. Very few people read the actual report....the same fucking idiots who accuse Coach Ford of ungodly things without reading or researching the NCAA reports on '82 and '89.

Did such a thing occur by one of our coaches? Its possible, but I seriously doubt it. If it did then I certainly do not believe its malicious. It wouldn't be Steele, since he was a former Bowden assistant who has said not one cross word in interviews given to Ard or anyone else I've seen while researching him. Tommy wouldn't have done it, and most of these guys are a carryover from his staff. Swinney has not given us one inkling of any maliciousness in anything, so I would never believe it is him. If youre waiting on an apology, don't hold your breath.

The article mentions an inside "source"....the same sources that everyone on TNet supposedly has. You heard about Steele a month before? So did I, from TNet. We just know, after years of reading the shit that gets posted there daily, to take it with a grain of salt and wait to see what happens.

The truth is, given that I actually did read the report, that you do deserve more punishment by the NCAA. However, since the NCAA is now a giant vagina, it doesnt surprise me that you did not.

Baseball loses 2 of 3, Basketball falls to WF

I'm not as enraged after this loss to WF as I was the last one. Last night we did well enough against Jeff Teague, and given that we've had problems stopping the other side's best scoring Guard, I'm a little encouraged that he didn't get the chances to run right up the lane on us last night. The AP recap of the game is here, with the full statistical comparison available here.

What stood out to me last night, and is shown in the statistics, is the lack of presence inside. Booker did well enough in the first half, but we were nonexistent in the paint during the 2nd, and that is what ultimately cost us the game. With 18pts and 10 Rebs, you'd think he had a great night, but he did not on defense. Rebounding has not been a problem for us this season, and even in most of our losses we still won the stat, but WF was better inside on defense and offense than us yesterday.

One other thing that stood out is our ball handling skills, or the spotty lack thereof. This has been a problem all season, and while the stats don't show a lot of turnovers on our part (thank God), I'm sure you noticed the sloppy passing (primarily the passes inside) and dribbling during the game which WF capitalized on.

9-7 in conference and a #5 seed in the ACC Tourney is not bad, and we're on the upper end of where I thought we'd finish in the preseason, but given how we played throughout most of this year its still disappointing. The losses to UVA and FSU at home...we won't forget those. But we did finish the regular season ranked #18.

Are we a Sweet 16 team? Given our RPI, which should still be around #20 when its updated, we should get a 4 or a dreaded 5 seed in the NCAAs.

The ACC Tourney starts Thursday in the GA Dome....which surprises me...Swofford did something that wasn't beneficial to UNC/Duke, can you believe it? I think it should always be in Greensboro. We play GT at 2:30 Thursday, and would face the Noles again in the 2nd if we win.

EDIT: Booker made 2nd team All-ACC, KC Rivers gets honorable mention.

Beisbol
Clemson lost 2-of-3 to #2 UNC over the weekend, choking away the 3rd game in the bottom of the 9th. Given that #1 LSU lost 2 games to Illinois over the weekend, I think UNC might be the new #1 in one of the polls when they are all released. Baseball America still has them at #2 however. Clemson drops to #22.

What I took away from the series was that our pitching just bit us in the rear, and UNC's vaunted staff didn't dominate us. Our bats did warm up with the weather some. We got behind saturday by walking in runs, and yesterday the bullpen couldn't hold it in the 9th. The report of the game yesterday doesn't show that Clemson had them with runners at 2nd and 3rd with the 1st base open, giving us the opportunity to walk the batter and set up a force at every base as well as the DP. Both those runners in scoring position were the tying and go-ahead, so walking the batter would not have mattered at all. The book says to walk the batter in this situation, but Jack chose not to put him on. Instead he got a hit and drove in one run, and two batters later they scored the winning run.

I lean towards the pitcher 99% of the time, and I wouldn't want to put anybody on intentionally, I believe you should make them hit....but I'm also not a manager. If your staff had walked in a shitload of runs the day before, I can see why you wouldn't want to chance it.

I give Jack Leggett more leeway than any other Clemson coach, because he's earned it, so I won't be like those on Tardnet who call for his head when we don't go undefeated. He took teams who weren't supposed to do shit to the CWS, and after our performance against UNC I'm confident we'll be at the ~45 win level again this year.

Futbaw
An article about Will Korn and whether he can establish himself, which includes the practice schedule.

5 Questions Clemson must answer for this coming season. Of course I've already mentioned all of them and if you pay attention to football, then you already know about them too. The Gamecock Propaganda Rag talks about 5 players whose destinies are crucial to this season's success.

Oh dear, are they praising our OL already? Then again, if they are not improved, I would like to skin Brad alive.

This past weekend was a Jr. Day, and if another commitment is coming, you'll hear about it in the next few days.

Another WR commitment comes in...

Daniel WR DeAndre Hopkins (6'2" 175), who TI lists as a future 4-star WR, committed on the Jr. Day weekend. A nice article about him is here.

From that article:

Since Hopkins burst on the varsity scene in the summer of 2007, he has 23 interceptions, 74 tackles and 41 catches for 810 yards and 12 TDs.

That has helped him receive football offers from Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Clemson, and South Carolina, not to mention a basketball offer from USC, and the Anderson Independent-Mail Player of the Year honor.

This gives us 3 WRs committed in the class, which is all we had planned to take for next season. He will likely be one of the top two players in S.C. next season, fighting Lattimore for that top spot. He is the nephew of Terry Smith, whose record Kelly broke this season. He also has had basketball offers from Florida, SC, and WF....so this kid is good at both (plays Guard). He could be moved to Free Safety as well.

Martavius Bryant will also likely be a 4-star commit.

-Even though Jamie Cumbie was slated to move to DE, the staff reconsidered and moved him back inside for the start of spring practice.

-The baseball team won at #2 UNC friday afternoon 5-4 in 10 innings, but dropped today's game 5-2. Game 3 is sunday at 1pm.

Clemson receives new commitment

Gaffney QB Joe Craig (6' 170, 4.32 40), recruited as a WR by Jeff Scott, committed this morning to the Tigers. He was receiving interest from UGA, SC, UCLA and Boise State so far but we were the first to offer. As I've said, Gaffney does not use him primarily at WR. Our offense was pathetic last season when he did not play QB. I don't see someone else taking the QB job away from him there in 2010 if he wants it, so Clemson fans should not be surprised if his WR stats are not very good.

No more click-click for Steve.

"We just felt like it was something that didn’t have much of a future for us....”

Like anything related to football at USuC.

The genius of David Hood bestows us with an article about the Staff's visit to Texas over the off-season. Don't let this make you think (like some on TardNet) that we're installing the Texas offense, we are not. Napier has said in the past in interviews that all they were doing was implementing a few concepts. Recall that the Zone Read play is something that Colt McCoy runs, but we have not seen much of since Dantzler. A few plays and pass pattern strategies are all that will change.

Clemson baseball travels to UNC this weekend for their first real ACC test. UNC is ranked #2/3 in the polls (there are always like 5-6 to pick from in baseball). Strelow talks about our hitting woes here, and we're facing one of the best pitching staffs in the country.

The rained out SC game will be made up April 7.

Pre-Spring Press conference

Just a few news and notes from the press conference and other sources.

Position movements and injuries:
DE Rennie Moore, who RS'd last year will move inside to DT, while Jamie Cumbie will move outside to DE. M. Goodman will be thrown into the mix at DE, and right now it appears he won't be redshirted. Dabo believes that Sapp will be ready by August.

Barry Humphries (C/G) nor Spencer Adams (S) will get full contact this spring, perhaps light contact at the end of camp.

Brandon Maye and Stanley Hunter will both get looks at Sam and Will, while Kavell Connor will likely move inside and battle Tig Willard (who had appendicitis last week) for Mike. Cooper is listed at Sam, but will crosstrain for Will. Steele is playing with the whole LB lineup to get a good fit for his system (which I'll go into later).

QB and Kicker are wide open, they are not naming a starter yet for either. Parker will be at practice and will miss two games at BC in baseball.

Dye and Clear will get their first look at X (SE). Brandon Ford at slot (A/Y), and Jaron Brown at any of the 3: X, A and Z (FL). I expect Dye to get an outside WR position (X or Z). B. Ford, M. Jones, those guys will almost assuredly get PT at a slot position. If Jaron Brown is as good as they say he is, X or Z is his spot. The fact that they are not moving Jacoby over outside is not a good thing in my opinion, as it probably means he's still going to get these damn quick slants and hitches instead of more vertical routes.

Other stuff of interest

Practice will be open on tuesday (7pm) and wednesday (2pm) in full gear, but wont be as long as in years past.
Danny Ford and Pat Dye will be speaking at the coaches clinic at the end of the month.

Jamie Harper is down to 220lbs, losing 18lbs.

Jacoby and CJ will not practice as much, due to track obligations. I dont support this decision. I understand that they are looking to evaluate the young guys, but Jacoby needs to be someone who can catch the ball 60 times, and he needs the practice. CJ needs the work as well. Repetition leads to execution, and if one thing is true of Clemson's offense, its that our execution sucks. One or two practices is fine, and I don't know how many they'll miss, but if its more then this is not a good thing.

If you've got $2000 to blow, here's something to do after Spring Practice is over. With "all-in" workouts and "all-in" bowl, this "All-In" shit is getting annoying. It could be worth it to get coached by Danny Ford on something though.

The baseball team's bats woke up against Asheville, 17-2. Former Gaffney pitcher Justin Surratt got the win....but why the starter came out with a huge lead in the 4th, I dont know. Stan Widmann has decided to hang it up, due to numerous injuries.

Basketball wins, baseball loses a tough one

Clemson looked good in the 2nd half, creating a drunk frenzy to wallop UVA 75-57 last night at Senior night at Littlejohn. Our turnovers dropped to 15, and 8 were steals. We're now guaranteed back-to-back winning conference records for the 2nd time in school history, and we have the most wins since 1989-90. Booker's big dunk early in the 2nd turned the game around. Larry Williams has a good article up on Senior K.C. Rivers, whose 91 wins in 4 years is a Clemson record.

Complete statsheet breakdown.

IF we beat Wake, and VT beats FSU, we have a bye in the first round of the ACC Tourney.

A Shoeless vid of Sykes' dunk is here.

Georgia Tech highlights are on youtube, and the UVA highlights are just below, both compiled by ShoelessCU.





Tiger baseball blew a no-hitter in the 9th and lost to Furman 4-2 in 14 innings. Nothing is more depressing for a baseball team than to lose one that you have in your hands, and it always seems that once the no-no is broken up, the shit immediately hits the fan.


We have UNC-Asheville this afternoon. Kyle Parker and Mike Freeman are a combined 5-for-39, and Parker is 0-for-15 lately. Bats will hopefully warm up as the weather does. Some want to blame Reginos or Leggett's small ball philosophy, but Jack has won enough to deserve the benefit of the doubt from us, unlike Tommy.