The men’s basketball team returned to its winning ways by dispatching the recent league-leaders, Boston College. The final tally was Clemson 74, BC 54.

I didn’t watch the game, but I already checked the box score. Clemson was 3-9 from the charity stripe but 9-18 from three point land.

So I think I’ve solved the team’s free throw problems. They’re too easy. Once there’s a challenge, the shooting will improve. Or, at least, the shooting is unlikely to get worse.

EDIT: I guess BC still leads the league with their 5-1 conference mark. I was looking at the number of losses.

The line for Saturday’s game is set at Clemson -6.

Clemson is 9-9 against the spread (there was no spread in the Charleston Southern game). The longest streak for Clemson against the spread this season is only 2 games. They’ve lost ATS the last two games.

Clemson is also favored as judged by the Sagarin predictor, while Clemson is also ranked higher in the Sportsline RPI by 31 spots.

Clemson’s future out-of-conference opponents are always up in the air, but at least we know which ACC teams we’ll play through 2015 (assuming the conference stays together).

2007 Clemson Football Scheduled Opponents (in no particular order)::
@Maryland
Wake
@ NC State
FSU
BC
@ Ga. Tech
@ Duke
Va. Tech
(OOC: Furman, UL-Monroe, some MAC team, SC)

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As I waded through some old bookmarks yesterday, I ran across the BC blog For Here Men Are Men. According to FHMAM, head coach Tom O’Brien just isn’t good enough. They want him fired and do not mince words about it. I guess I just have a hard time being too critical of a coach who, including this year, has four 9-win seasons among the last 6, as well as a 52-22 record for those seasons. That’s a 70.2 winning percentage.

FHMAM may get their wish though. Sort of. Stanford has a job opening and Tom O’Brien may be as eager to leave Boston as FHMAM is to get rid of him.

On the surface that would make sense for Stanford and for Tom O’Brien. But what the hell is Boston College going to do?

If O’Brien leaves, BC will have successfully chased off one of, if not THE, most successful coaches in their history. O’Brien will have left because of a lack of support from the college and the fans. College football isn’t the most important thing in that region, let alone the state. Hell, BC isn’t even the most important college in that city. I really don’t know who they expect to lure into such an attractive position.

But if that’s what BC wants, that’s really up to them. I suspect their odds of finding a better coach — especially for the long term — are quite slim. But in the words and spirit of Peter Gibbons, “I hope your firings go really well.”

PS – I have a hard time labeling Jim Grobe as a “great coach.” He’s certainly had a great year, and Coach-of-the-Year honors are deserved. But was he a “great coach” when he went 6-5 in 2001? Was he a “great coach” when he went 7-6 in 2002? How about 5-7 in 2003? Or 4-7 in 2004 and 2005? Time will tell, but he won’t get my very important seal of approval just yet.

Clemson’s caused us all enough misery over the last two weeks, so let’s look for joy in other people’s misery.

My misery: For weeks I’ve continued to say that Wake Forest was just a ragtag bunch of pretenders. Well those little bastards have done nothing but prove me wrong, wrong, wrong, and I feel like a giant retard for it. And in general my ability to correctly pick the winners of ACC games is roughly about 40% at this point. I made a prediction table after week 8. Based on that, this week’s picks are: Clemson over NCSU, BC over Duke, FSU over Wake, Maryland over Miami, and Georgia Tech over UNC.

Boston College: They were just about to ease into the Atlantic Division Drivers Seat until they got beat by that indefatigable Wake Forest team. Ask yourself this though, are a pair of losses to Virginia Tech and Maryland really worse than a single loss to Wake Forest. That’s a toss up right there.

The ACC Florida Teams: FSU and Miami are having a rough go of it this year. Each team is just 5-4. And thus far they both have losing records in conference.

Miami: Speaking of the U, they’ve got horrible, horrible fan support. A pretty good Virginia Tech team came to town last week and only 41,504 fans showed up at the Orange Bowl.

With all the regular season travels completed for the Tigers, everyone is glad that the team can stay home and play only in Death Valley. But just how important is playing at home? I decided to look into the numbers to see.

To keep things relevant, I looked at only the statistics since Tommy Bowden became coach

starting in the ’99 season. Since that time his teams have gone 36-12 at home, 19-20 on the road, and 1-0 at neutral sites during the regular season. That leaves the bowls as neutral site games, in which Bowden is 3-3. Road trips are clearly a 50-50 proposition.

For simplicity, I’ll leave out neutral site games.

In percentage form, the home winning percentage is 75, with the road being 48.7. So the chances of winning by playing at home are improved by about 54%.

However, with two important league games looming, I went ahead and took only league games into consideration. Here, Bowden is 20-10 at home, and 16-16 on the road. Compare that 66.7% home winning percentage to the 50% road winning percentage, and the team is only about 33% more likely to win any given league game at home.

There is some bad news to be added to this year’s 4-0 start at home. So far under Tommy Bowden, we’ve never had an undefeated home season. And through 7 full seasons, there have been only three 1 loss seasons. However if we consider only home conference games, there is a lone season where the team did not drop a conference game at home. That year was 2003.

So how does Clemson compare to other ACC teams under their current head coaches? Read on…
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BC upset by NC State.

That’s right boys and girls, the supposed bottom dwellers known as the eagles came into Raleigh for what most people thought to be an automatic win. The pack fought back like a cornered wolverine and won in Clemson vs. FSU heroics on an 8 second left in the game pass to the endzone. NC State kept Matt Ryans numbers low and one pass over 50%. I am not sure what to think of the Pack now, but obviously no one can take them lightly.

All I do know for sure is that is one loss for BC, one loss closer to Clemson getting to the ACCCG. Now someone go tell FSU that BC is one loss away from getting them into the runnings again and I think the end of the season will get very intense in the division.

Oh yeah…..with BC’s loss and Wake’s 4th win, Wake now leads the Atlantic division.  FSU, BC and Clemson tie on 2nd place after the Deacs.  Can….you….believe…..that!!

We’re now three games into the season and we are not totally devastated. The FAU game went as planned. The trip to Boston was heartbreaking. But Saturday’s triumph over Florida State provides solid footing for optimism. Of course extrapolation is a dangerous tool, especially as you move further away from your source data. Projecting 4 games into the future based on 3 games in the past falls in the ‘danger’ category. However, I just can’t help myself. Right now the glass is half 2/3rds full.

If there is a time for a letdown game, this is the time for it. Everyone remembers the Miami/Duke win/loss combo of 2004. There is no reason, however, why the FSU/UNC win/loss combo of 2006 should come into play. And let’s face it, the next 4 games are nothing compared to the last two. There’s no good reason why we shouldn’t be 6-1 when Georgia Tech comes to town. Why do I say that? There are four reasons: UNC, Louisiana Tech, Wake Forest, and Temple.

Certainly there is reason for concern. I won’t get into that here. Instead, this is just a brief reminder that these 4 teams just aren’t that good — or at least that’s how it looks right now.

UNC has played three home games, dropping two of them to Rutgers and Virginia Tech, and almost dropping the third to DI-AA Furman. Maybe their strength is playing on the road? Their offense isn’t statistically bad, but their rushing defense appears to be suspect.

La. Tech has only played two games: first getting killed by Nebraska then winning by 10 over DI-AA Nicholls State (who did only marginally worse against Nebraska). Like UNC, they have mediocre offensive stats, but their rushing defense is even worse, ranked at 106th nationally. They may be able to play A&M close next week, but that’s only because it is almost impossible to have confidence in Coach Fran’s team. Either way, they played patsy to Nebraska, then had to come from behind against patsy Nicholl’s State.

Wake Forest has stumbled along to a 3-0 start. Their rush defense may be good, but their offense lacks firepower. The near-loss to Duke has me questioning the team. What’s worse, is that their next two games look completely winnable as well. Despite the fawning man-love by the media for Ole Miss head coach Ed Orgeron, his team just doesn’t look good — they even got beat by Kentucky! After them, the Deacs face off against DI-AA Liberty. Wake is likely the toughest game on Liberty’s schedule this year. Still it is hard to gauge Wake since they don’t really play anyone.

Then there’s Temple. The Owls are averaging a DI-A worst 1 point per game. They’re also giving up more than 44 points per game, with each of the last two teams putting up 62.

We should win all these games by at least 20 points.
If we want to be considered among the best in the nation, we need to dominate the next four games.

The Hokies beat UNC in Chapel Hill by 25. La. Tech fell by 39 to Nebraska. Wake Forest almost lost to Duke who put up goose eggs against Richmond and Virginia Tech. Temple is just sad.

The early line against UNC has us favored by 16. Furman put up 42 against them. La. Tech and Temple have cupcake written all over them. And Wake? Well it’s time for us to smack the smirk off their faces.

Individually, none of the games looms very large. Collectively, they are 1/3 of our season and every bit as important as the games against Techs or South Carolina. This is the part of the season where we get to stretch our legs. And we’d better damn well do it.