Pleased is actually an understatement. Three weeks in, I’m happier than I expected to be at this point in the season. A few thoughts:

I don’t like have close games against nobody competition (regardless of what league they won last season). However I do understand that there was a lot of new everything this year (QB, receivers, OC, etc) and that it’s good to save things for the real games.

Against Auburn, I would have liked for Clemson to dominate the entire game. Clearly. Nonetheless, it was nice to see the ACC Tigers take control of the game and maintain that control until the final whistle. It’s so much better than getting off to a quick lead early in the game only to see that lead get erased in the closing minutes of the game.

3-0 is good, but Clemson still has no wins in the ACC. In other words, the meaningful season has yet to begin. And by the way, I expect Death Valley will be rocking on Saturday. Unfortunately I won’t be around due to a wedding.

The ACC is expanding, again. Frankly I’d rather the ACC be a 9 or maybe 10 team league. I like being able to play everyone in the league each season. It seems to me that super-conference divisions will basically just be old-style conferences. In the end, it seems to me we’re just remixing and renaming things. Yawn. (side note:, I hope Texas gets screwed.) Not that I particularly care for Syracuse or Pitt (actually, Pitt? really?), but I think it best serves Clemson by having beatable competition than having to face-off week after week against world beaters. Said differently, FSU, Miami, and VT would probably be nobodies if they had each joined the SEC 20 years ago. Said a third way, the major conferences have plenty of teams with mediocre results; perhaps not the preferred destination for a school seeking to improve on a decade’s worth of mediocre results. Although I readily admit I have zero desire to see games in Pittsburgh or Syracuse.

Tonight’s opponent is NC State. The game is scheduled for 9PM. RAYCOM has the TV coverage, and Vegas says Clemson is favored by 7. I hope to God Clemson advances to Round 2.

Postgame Update

Dear Clemson Men’s Basketball Team,

Way to shit the fucking bed.

Twice!

In a row.

Congratulations. You should have been a #3 seed in the ACC tourney — way to take care of business against a bed-wetting Wake Forest team that ultimately got destroyed by a #12 seed — but you just lost the #11 seed. I’d tell you to not cross GO, and not to collect $200, but frankly I don’t think you could find GO even if it was located directly between your most recent embarrassing loss and the locker room.

• I dare to say it, but Clemson may be peaking at the right time. Last night the Tigers pulled away in the 2nd half to defeat Georgia Tech 91-80 in Littlejohn. The Tigers have won 5 of their last 6 and seem assured of a spot in the NCAA tourney. That’s the good news. The bad news is that 4 of those 5 wins came at home, and it may be that the late season strength is just a reflection of being scheduled well. This is also potentially bad news because the team may relax and lose intensity at just the wrong time now that the NCAA bid seems assured. It’s imperative for the Tigers to go to Winston-Salem on Sunday and put down Wake Forest giving Clemson a very respectable 10 wins in conference.
• Via Examiner.com, there’s a poor quality video of the NFL network’s official 40 runs at the combine. Despite the low-quality, it’s pretty interesting to see the results with Ford and Spiller taking 1st & 3rd places, respectively.
  

  There is some speculation that Spiller could end up being drafted by the Browns. That would likely re-unite him with James Davis. Chansi Stuckey is also with the Browns right now.

• Bleacher Report lays out the case the Michael Palmer should be getting more attention from the NFL than he is. Since Palmer became one of my favorite player’s last season, I would love to see him overcome the odds and make it in the NFL.

Road wins in the ACC can be nothing if not few and far between. So it is with no small amount of pleasure that I can say that Clemson beat a pretty good (20-8) Florida State team in Tallahassee.

[Trevor] Booker hit four straight free throws in the final 11 seconds and blocked a 3-point shot by the Seminoles’ Deividas Dulkys with 5 seconds left that could have tied it.

But it was the outside sniping of sophomore guard Andre Young from nearby Albany, Ga., that made the difference. His 3-point basket gave the Tigers a 49-47 lead with 30 seconds left.

Free throws? We won the game on free throws? It certainly looks like it. ESPN says Booker was 7-9 (78%) and the the team was 15-19 (79%). FSU was only 14-24 from the charity stripe.

Good win, Clemson!

• Clemson hosts 10-1 Western Carolina tonight at 7:30 PM. The CBS Sports preview notes that Clemson is 9-0 all time against the Catamounts. It should be a good game.
• Collegiate Baseball Newspaper released its preseason Top40. Clemson checks in at #16. Other notables include Virginia (#3), Georgia Tech (#6), Florida State (#7), Miami (#12) and North Carolina (#13). Such is life in the ACC baseball world: being a top-20 team means being a mediocre conference team.
• Kyle Parker’s future as a football player remains up in the air. As I’ve said before, I’d take the money and run if I were him. Fortunately for Clemson football fans, I’m sure most college athletes don’t think like me.

Outside the lines…

• Clemson is escalating it’s war on the squirrels. I’m not exactly sure what university the squirrels belong to, or even what sport they play, but I support this just war.

  Honestly though, they’re talking about trapping and euthanizing about 200 squirrels, and I’m wondering why they’re going to let anyone eat the goddamn things?

• Clemson’s Mayor Abernathy trots out his standard defense for everything he proposes, “If we only save one life, we’ve done our job.” No you haven’t, you dumb fuck! You’re job is not to intrude in everyone’s life to immeasurable levels to “save one life.” You don’t understand how much I hate this guy. I’d rather the mayorship be run by Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier.

  In this case the mayor is defending a proposed text messaging ban. Frankly, the fines for these things tend to be so miniscule, and the chances of being caught so small, that the bans are pretty much symbolic. But let me be very clear about one thing: STAY OFF YOUR GODDAMN PHONE IN ALL CAPACITIES WHEN YOU’RE DRIVING YOU FUCKING DIPSHITS!

  And stay off my lawn, too!

It has been decided: Clemson is going to play Kentucky in a rematch of the 2006 Music City Bowl in Nashville.

The silver lining about falling to such a lowly bowl is that the opponent should be more beatable. Unfortunately the opponent is still an SEC team, so I give Clemson about a 25% chance of winning this game on December 27th.

Wrote Greg Wallace last Sunday:

Dabo Swinney resisted the temptation.

It was right there, sitting on a verbal platter.

Sunday afternoon, a reporter asked Clemson’s first-year coach if he had anything to say to his critics, so vociferous three weeks ago following an ugly 24-21 loss at Maryland that dropped the Tigers to 2-3.

Here was his chance for an I-told-you-so, one he’d so richly earned…

Sorry. While Dabo is certainly to be credited for putting together back-to-back wins — one of those on the road against a top-10 team — he has not earned any “I-told-you-sos”. That is, unless, he was being told that he would never beat a good team. That’s a very specific criticism that I never heard.

A season had been pulled from the brink following Clemson’s stirring 40-37 overtime win at No. 8 Miami, the first road top-25 win in three years and matching the highest-ranked opponent the Tigers had ever beaten away from Death Valley.

Again, sorry. Despite the euphoria from Saturday’s win — a win which cannot be understated — this season is still on the brink. A single loss in any of the next 4 games pretty much sends the season over the cliff. Lose to Coastal and, yeah, I think it will be hard to say the critics didn’t have a point. Else, get past Coastal and lose a remaining ACC game. Well then there goes the ACCCG and the season, like so many in recent past, will be unacceptably mediocre. Every remaining game is must-win.

Swinney, however, demurred.

Good for him. At least he’s smart enough for not taking credit before he’s actually accomplished anything.

Clemson – It’s difficult to imagine that any Tiger fan wasn’t pleased with last week’s dominance of Wake Forest. That’s how a fan wants every game to look. Unfortunately, Dabo has yet to prove that he’s adept at starting, let alone extending, a winning streak. Plus, the situation from last week is largely unchanged. The season hinges on the impending game.

FSU – Holy cow! Not only did FSU orchestrate a remarkable comeback last night, but Bobby Bowden actually did not look dead. He actually shook his finger at some people and showed some emotion. (Although, at this point, the FSU coaching staff could be easily confused for a busload from the retirement village.)

A good FSU is an additional barrier between Clemson and the ACCCG. Nonetheless, it’s good to see Bobby Bowden showing some signs of life because, frankly, it’s sad to see him standing both helpless and hopefully on the sidelines.