That’s right Tiger fans, we are into the double digits after today in the wait to satisfy our Death Valley Addictions. 100 days until the Tigers run down the hill in the first game of the season. A night game against Florida State to open the season, I can’t wait. I believe that the past two times that the Tigers had big night games in the Valley that it lived up to its name as the Tigers demolished the “unstoppable” Yellow Jackets last year and recorded itself in the record books as the loudest stadium in the nation against Miami the previous year. Bring in the factor of the insatiable fanbase waiting for the first time for the Orange Bowl March to blare out of the band and you can guarantee that this will be another game to remember. I am already seeing Shoeless highlight reels in my head while listening to the radio and grinning ear to ear in pavlovian response to Tiger Rag or any mention of Clemson Football. Some people would call it a problem, Clemson faithfull call it a passion. Bring on September 3rd and the weekend that will lead to it as that is what I am looking forward to this entire summer!!!

Fifty percent free throw shooting and no points in the last 4 minutes. Translation, Clemson blows a 5 point lead with 4:07 left en route to losing 67-66.

Really, the first 36 or 38 minutes of the game weren’t too painful. In fact, they were pretty fun to watch. Unfortunately the shit hit the fan with about 10 seconds left.

Clemson had just forced a Florida State turnover as the shot clock wound down with about 21 seconds left and grabbed the last possession in a game tied at 66… Well it should have been the last possession. With 8 seconds left a loss of focus lead to dribbling the ball off a foot and into an over-and-back violation.

Florida State took a time out. Coming off the time out, the Noles got the ball to their ace who drove, lost his footing, and had his lame duck shot easily blocked. And he got a foul charged against, if I overheard the arena loudspeaker correctly, the Clemson “phantom player.” One made free-throw later and it was all done.

Adios NCAAs. Buenos dias NIT!

With the tournament looming, and the team’s NCAA aspirations hanging in the balance, I find myself right where I want to be: pessimistic to the point of not caring. Ever since the disaster against Virginia, I’ve been in a pretty bad mood. Things got worse with the lose to a miserable Wake Forest team. Things have improved though. The Tigers beat Miami and a ranked Virginia Tech team on the road. Plus after taking the league lead, Virginia got beat by the same sad Wake Forest team. Schadenfreude? You betcha.

Moving on, tomorrow the team plays Florida State at noon. Clemson is 21-9, FSU is 19-11, and both teams went 7-9 in conference play. Two of Clemson’s wins were against Florida State. Clemson tends to be ranked a bit higher by the computers, and Vegas favors them by 1.5.

In my view, there are two burning questions that have to be answered.
1.) Does Clemson have enough luck to win in what is almost a home game for Florida State?
2.) Is it worth skipping work tomorrow to watch the game on TV?

There’s no good way to predict the answer to #1. So I did what any rational person would do. I flipped a coin; heads=yes. Two flips led to 2 tails. You heard it here first.

The 2nd question isn’t as easy as it sounds. Watching the team lose is more painful than work. And as demonstrated by the coin flip, it’s going to be painful. Going back to the coin, it says to skip work.

And thus it is decided.

Thanks to NC State blog Section Six for serving up this gem of officiating negligence.

Section Six has been on the link list for a while. I like their statistical analysis of games, which you typically don’t find in a box score or anywhere else.

Also recently added are Tar Heel Fan and ScalpEm. Both are worth checking out for getting a non-Clemson perspective of sports in the ACC.

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)

Read the rest of this entry »

The ride continues. The much anticipated kickoff to ACC play has begun and the Tigers pulled it off with 6.5 seconds left on the clock. The Tigers surrounded by hostile Seminole fans lead the game for all but 2min 40 seconds, 2 minutes of that was during the opening of the game before the tigers tied it up 2-2. The Noles would not have the upper hand until they put up two free throws to go ahead with 2:20 left in the game. From there it got interesting. Bottom line, game tied 66-66, CU had to put the ball inbounds opposite court and score to win the game and they had 6.5 seconds to pull it off. A Hammonds layup after a cross court inbound pass with 2.5 seconds left in the game pulled off the first ACC win of the season. This is one for the books, excellent job gentlemen, excellent job. A few game stats for your reading enjoyment:

CU Point leaders:
Hamilton – 19
Rivers – 16
Mays – 14

Field Goals 30-63 (48%)
3-pt Goals 6-23(26%)
Freebies 2-5 (40%)
Rebounds 32 (15 of 17) (rebounding machine!)
25pts from turnovers

Next up, Georgia Tech (11-3). Game will be on Saturday at 4:00 in Little John.

Palms says Clemson by 4.5. Stratosphere has us by 6. The over/under is 43. As always, you can check all the line movements at VegasInsider.

You may now return to speculating about the coaching career of Steve Spurrier.

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.