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.

Looks like Clemson fans made quite the impression on BeanTown on the last road game (thanks TigerPundit). So much that they want to emulate the Orange nation in attempts at attracting bowl sponsors and the likes. That’s pretty awesome, I need to snag some 2’s before I head to Winston Salem I guess.

Once again the Tigers went into OT with the Eagles of BC and once again the result was an L in the column.

Deep Breaths……Ok I got yelled at, as usual by the wife last night for my, ahem, exuberance towards the Tigers inability to score in OT from the 2! As I only got to watch the 4th quarter on TV and had to listen to the other 3 on the radio I didn’t get the full flavor of the game. From what I heard and gathered it seemed that Clemson basically beat themselves.

I have not seen the box score yet but preliminary stats have Clemson demolishing the Eagles on possession. Proctor put in one hell of a showing for his ACC opener with over 300 yards passing (190 or so to Stuckey) and from what I heard they were varied in speed and distance so that is comforting. He did overthrow some receivers and bobbled a few snaps, but I think that his nerves are suring up. The running game did not factor in as much as I had hoped and from what I heard all week from the media and Spence in terms of controlling the clock but they did rack up around 200 yards. Spillers miracle run was actually ruled as a pass so add those 82 yards to rushing as it was a 5 yard pass and that’s a pretty good day. The O-Line got some retribution from last year with their performance but I think that having a mobile QB like Proctor helped out. The only question I have on the O is what killed us last year: Red Zone. I know James scampered in on one, but when you can’t close the deal from the 2 with 3 running backs in the backfield, I believe that there are still some issues.

The defense, oh the defense….. To say that the absence of Waters and Billie is not evident is an understatement. The defense lacked focus and leadership as the core was continuously picked apart. The youth and inexperience was taken advantage of as the secondary seemed lost at times and even had a true freshman directing a veteran as to his blown coverage. The D did just enough to not keep Clemson in the game but to keep BC from running away with it. I think that the LB corp will gradually find their nitch as Clay and the boys are settling in for the long haul. The problem I have is the pass protection and the short routes across the middle that Clemson has let up on in the past two weeks. FAU worked a 7 yard sideline hitch down the field enough times and BC had multiple third down conversions of under 10 yards. I am not sure what the solution is here but I have faith that Koenning will get his players settled into their positions after the shake up and solidify the D.

Finally, the culprit, Special Teams…..or lack thereof. First let me say that I am beyond glad that we had punt protection. If we had the same protection as last year you could probably have tacked on a few blocked punts on top of the horrendous coverage. When Chason replaces Dean for kickoffs you know that the secondary is struggling. I am not sure what was wrong with Dean but he did not play up to his normal “clutch” self. Not one of his kickoffs went into the endzone….not even an inch. Jad is usually trying for three points from the tee so it was very discomforting when he kept kicking inside the ten. Then the ball keeps landing in what seemed to be BC’s Jacoby Ford, Smith’s hands. That boy tore the coverage team UP!! Something like 190 yards in return yards alone with an average starting position of their 47 yard line?!?! The return was bad enough but everyone saw it coming with a performance like that. If it wasn’t for Jacoby Ford’s speed in the last quarter, Smith would have broken off another TD return. This aspect of the game was the obvious culprit. If not for the poor coverage the Eagles would have started, at least, on their own 20 or around that area with ¾ of the field instead of ½ to cover. Jad will recover, he is a rock on the team and his performance dictates field position for the D. The coverage is another story. Maybe that whole, no punting the previous game came and bit us in the ass but something needs to be done. Was it formation, missed assignments or were the Eagles just that good on the return?

In the end the Tigers put together one heck of a gameplan. By the numbers, the Tigers more than held their own and defeated the Eagles…….on paper. After getting ahead early the Tigers could not keep the momentum and let BC pick away at the lead. Clemson played a respectable game against a valid opponent, the only problem was that they didn’t follow through. The good news is that the Tigers had tons of learning opportunities in the game and have a bunch of film to review before their trip to Tally. Now let’s hope that this game was the kick in the pants they usually get around game 6 and go 5 and out to end the season strong. If the Tigers can go into Tally and pull off a win, the ‘Noles know who is the only one in between them and the division: BC and play them later in the season after both teams can only get better. So come on Tigers, learn everything you can and get it together for the turn around in Doak!

What has the baseball team been up to in the two weeks since taking the series against South Carolina?

It took the first game against a good Georgia Tech team in Atlanta, 7-6. Tech then proceeded to show that they were a very good team by putting up 12 runs and winning by 9. Thank you Sir, may I have another? Why yes, yes indeed. Sunday they elevated their performance by putting 22 runs on the board. Yeah, that stings.

What do you do after getting drubbed by a conference rival? Why you give up two mid week games to Winthrop and Furman. That there’s quite a little losing streak.

But when you’re down, it’s always a good time to visit bottom-dwelling Boston College at intimidating Shea Field.

Well the bleeding slowed down, with Clemson taking the Friday night game 6-3 before splitting a Saturday double-header 2-3 and 4-1.

There goes our chances to take the division and maybe the conference championship.

Wrong.

Over the same two weeks, previously leading Florida State self-destructed as well. They dropped 2 to Miami and 1 to Florida before getting swept at home by that Georgia Tech (13-8) team who’s now leading the Boyd’s pseudo-RPI (Clemson is 2nd in the rankings, but has the same rating as Tech with Rice just behind in 3rd.) Meanwhile Miami (12-9) also dropped 2 to Virginia (13-8) at Coral Gables.

All this means that Clemson (12-6) is tied atop the division with Wake Forest (14-7). FSU and NC State are right behind, each at 13-8 in conference.

From here on out, Clemson hosts Wofford tonight and Virginia Tech (3-18) for a series over the weekend. After a week off for finals, the team travels to Duke (6-15) for a Sunday-Monday-Tuesday series. The Tigers end the season with 7 home games against FSU, College of Charleston, and Wake Forest.

Having 3 of the last 4 series at home is definitely a good thing. This team on the road scares me. Sure we swept Miami, but we’ve also been swept twice now (edit: What was I thinking? We’ve only be swept on the road once. Apparently the two losses to GT seemed like 3 because of all the runs scored.). This may be ok for the regular season, but getting beyond that is going to be tough. Let’s hope that Leggett has the team’s head in the right place from here on out.

Ok, time for a hot dog, some spare ribs, and a tall cool Budweiser.