Things haven’t worked out exactly as I predicted, but the regular season record and USCe predictions were pretty good.

South Carolina - Tigers romp over the in-state rival, and, despite the lame 7-5 record, Tiger Town is happy because we’re still better than Sakerlina.

Although it is a couple days belated, let me give thanks to Chris Smelley for being a one-man turnover machine.

The season is winding down but the winner is far from certain. AL Tiger and Bowman are tied at the top of the leaderboard. I’m pretty sure I can’t catch up, so you all are lucky that I’m somehow maintaining enough interest to keep posting updates and reminders.

The first game is 12:30 on Friday. Don’t forget to make your picks.

The Tigers and the Cocks will show down at noon…..again…..for what could be the most noon games in Clemson history. Expect one hell of an environment folks……..whatever.

In other news, it seems that there is a lot of debate (at least amongst the gnomes) on how to pronounce the interim coaches name. The pronunciations that I heard this past weekend range from D(aw)b(oh) Sw(ee)n(ee) to D(aa)b(oh) Sw(ih)nn(ee). I believe it to be the latter with a short a and short i, others tend to disagree. What say you?

And finally, I was asked this weekend if Dabo won out and won a bowl, would I be on board (OR ALL IN IF YOU WILL!!!) for Dabo being the head coach. I responded that i don’t think it matters who takes the reigns, it wouldn’t matter as there is not a Butch Davis/Les Miles/hidden talent out there this year who would take Clemson where the fickle fanbase wants to go in the allotted 4 years a coach usually gets. All in all, throw whoever you want to the fire, they aren’t going to get the job done.

And finally just for S’s and G’s

From Images

NOT

Here’s what you need to know about today: It’s fricken freezing here Mr. Bigglesworth.

It’s cold, and I’m not looking forward to being cryogenically frozen while sitting around on metal bleachers for 3 hours.

I am, however, looking forward to the warm liquid goo phase of defrosting.

That’s right. It’s me. I have clawed my way out of last place and am now 2 points ahead of Agent Orange. Bwahahahahaha.

This week’s first pick is due just before noon on Saturday.

I’ve seen in some articles blog posts that this edition of the Clemson men’s basketball team was actually counting free throw shooting as a strength. This is quite a deviation from recent history. But if last night’s shellacking of Wofford offers any indication, then the output from the charity stripe may very well be improved. Clemson was 16-18 on the night. That, folks, is 89% shooting. It doesn’t get much better than that.

While I’m in basketball mode (and I can’t believe I didn’t reach this point much earlier), let me wonder about how Raymond Sykes is going to step up this year. Last night he had “14 points, eight rebounds, two blocks and a steal.” The stats are not bad, but I’d like to see how he’s playing. Hopefully since he’s the starter now, he can be more settled and contribute positively.

Scout is reporting that Muschamp isn’t going anywhere.

Mack Brown, at his weekly press conference, announced today that defensive coordinator Will Muschamp has agreed to be the Head Coach in waiting.

The scenario is very akin to the coaching situation at Florida State where Jimbo Fisher has been announced as the heir apparent to Bobby Bowden.

The timeline for the succession plan is not known at this time. The new contract calls for Muschamp to earn $900,000 annually starting January 1, 2009.

Oh well. I’m not too worried about this.

I’ve compiled, as best I can (anyone got the defensive stats for Valdosta State for 2000? Or any national stats pre-2000?) a rough metric of the defenses Will Muschamp has been in charge of. As I had suspected, his defenses have been pretty good. Also as I suspected, the defenses were pretty good before and/or after he left. That doesn’t automatically mean he’s a bad defensive coordinator, but it does mean that is difficult to differentiate his performance from that of the people with which he surrounds himself.

I’ve highlighted where Muschamp was the DC.

At LSU, the defense got worse his first year before being very good for three years. But notice that it stayed very good for 3 more years after he was gone.

Auburn had a pretty good defense in the years before Will Muschamp arrived. In the two years he was there, it didn’t really improve.

And this year we see that the defense of Texas isn’t all the great and is positively middle of the pack.

Talk about a messed up conference. Wake Forest goes down to NC State and Boston College goes down to FSU and upends the ‘Noles on their homecoming! So now the Atlantic Division looks like this with division games remaining.
Boston College 2-1 Wake Forest, Maryland
Clemson 2-3 None
FSU 2-2 Maryland
Maryland 3-0 FSU, Boston College
NC State 1-4 None
Wake Forest 2-2 Boston College

So, Maryland holds the lead but within the last 2 games, Boston College could take over. FSU and Wake have an outside chance if BC beats Maryland and loses to Wake. That would put 4 teams at 3-2 and Clemson would still be out of it……AWESOME!!

On the coastal side, Miami’s win over VTech was HUGE and brought the field down to look like this:
Duke 1-2 VT, UNC
Georgia Tech 1-3 Miami
Miami 3-1 GT
UNC 2-2 Duke
Virginia 2-2 VTech
Virginia Tech 2-1 Duke, Virginia

Similar to the Atlantic Division, anyone could win this one. Miami and VTech are in the lead but VTech has 2 divisional games left. Multiple scenarios could get a few teams to 3-2 and most of those place UNC in the pole position with tie breakers. Who knows.

In the SEC….uhh Alabama and Florida. That is all. South Carolina……what?!! Geez, that was bad, but they have a better record than Clemson so really can’t say anything. And coaches will continue to drop like flies in that conference with Auburn, yes Auburn, will end up with one of the worst records in the conference at 2-7 (only Bama remains….I don’t see it happening).