Global warming be damned, Hell is freezing over. As evidence, I point out that the Tigers basketball team played a helluva a game en route to taking a one-point win over Georgia Tech. That propels them to 16-0 (2-0). And that makes them the lone undefeated D I-A team.

Let that sink in and consider the odds.

Infinity is a big number, isn’t it folks.

Here’s a link to the ClemsonTigers writeup. I watched on TV and I suggest you keep your eyes open for replays and highlights.

PS – the team was 19-26 (73.1%) from the charity stripe. It’s a good thing the team hit each of those 19.

The post semester fireworks begin. The folks at GT may, or may not, be upset to know that Reggie Ball and Kenny Scott will not be playing in the Gator Bowl against WVU. Not that the bowl is expecting many Jacket fans to make the trip for the second time in roughly a month, but now they are going in less a four year starting quarteback and a starting corner. Ball could be a big loss if he is having a good day. We all know those are guaranteed so I call this loss a wash for them. Losing Scott at corner will probably a bigger loss with WVU’s speed game and underrated pass attack when they need it. Watch the spread run a bit in the next day or two.

For Tiger fans, a bigger concern is upon us. Duane “Little John” Coleman is being help for simple doobie possession. He is the 4th leading tackler on the team with 81. This isn’t necessarily a surprise to this gnome, especially after some of the issues we had several years back and the fact this seems to pop up with most programs at some point every couple years. Sucks that it’s a higher profile play, during a time when there isn’t much to talk about other than Bowl Prognostications. This will be a chance for some freshman to get some serious PT against a team that will toss it around a bit in Nashville. Let’s hope it’s a positive preview of what we will be getting in the secondary season. Note to Duane: Good job dumbass. You got a second chance after being suspended in ’05, only to prove that is was a mistake to let you back on the squad. Way to be a senior leader!

According to this article out of JAX, the folks in the sometimes sunny part of Florida aren’t a bunch of happy campers. With the adjustments in the ACC bowl pecking order, The Gator Bowl went from the first, non BCS pick to second. After watching many years of college football with conference championship games, it is not uncommon to see power sways among the divisions. Often accompanying these sways is a much more attractive division runner up than the team who loses in the conference culmination, for the first selecting, non-BCS bowl. This was often the case in the SEC of the late ‘90’s with UT/UF power struggle atop the East and a several loss team coming out of the West. More recently this has been observed in the Big 12, with the South Division dominating. This year, we see it a bit closer to home in the ACC. The Atlantic Division featured four teams with 8 or more wins, while the Coastal only had two, with the non-division winner having a much larger fan draw association. To go along with the conundrum, the conference made the bright move of placing their conference championship game in the same town as one of the most likely bowl destinations of it’s losing team.

You see where I am going with the Wake Forest victory and Ga. Tech’s lack of traveling fan base. Now the bowl folks are ticked, and rightfully so. Meanwhile the Tigers get Swafford-ed (copyright pending) again.

With Va. Tech off the board to Atlanta and the bowl formerly known as the Peach, the Gator was left to pick from MD, BC, Clemson, and the Yellow Jackets. Ga Tech didn’t travel to the ACCCG, why would most make a return trip for the Gator, much less additional fans join in (other than available holiday travel time)? So the bowl hypothetically would be left to pick from BC, MD, or the Tigers. Then the caveat. Tech only had one conference loss. The Tiger’s had 3. In kicks the one loss difference clause, preventing a bowl from lifting a lower conference team to it’s bowl if there is more than game’s difference in their conference records.

As you may or may not have read, the Gator Bowl folks are seeing red. Fortunately for them, they have the WVU Mountaineers coming to town (this gnomes personal pick to have been the 12^th ACC team instead of BC). Their stadium will have plenty of Blue and Gold at least, meanwhile the best traveling team in the conference is sent to not so sunny Nashville to pick banjo’s with a UK team that is nothing more than a big let down game in an already disappointing season.

To sum it up, thanks for being the asses you are John Swafford and company. You made agreements with the bowls so you and they could both make money. Because you and your little buddies in the triangle couldn’t muster a berth, don’t go strong arming the bowls behind closed door that you made agreements while publicly promoting their ability to choose for themselves. Let them have their picks and collect your check otherwise those checks won’t be nearly as nice next time negotiations come around (in a year or so if not already).

In case you’ve been living under a rock or hiding beneath an umbrella for the last 24 hours, I’ll let you know that Wake Forest slogged its way to a 9-6 victory over Georgia Tech in rainy Jacksonville.

This game was boring to an extreme. The lack of excitement meant I was left alone with my thoughts, which I’ll try to replicate below.

I couldn’t believe that Wake and Georgia Tech were actually playing in a championship game. Take away all the extra signage, and the layperson would have had no clue that this was a game of significant importance. But not only was this particular game bad, the informed viewer realized that the two teams’ only particular trait is that they are good at not-losing.

I’m willing to put money on the table right now that Georgia Tech will be the surprise team of 2007. I don’t know who all leaves the team, but the departure of 9-for-29 Reggie Ball may be the best medicine the team could ingest.

That the game was between Wake and GT underscored the crappiness of the ACC this season as well as how bad Clemson screwed up by dropping 3 league games to teams that did not make it to the championship game.

And finally, could Alltel stadium have been any emptier? The extremely poor attendance could be attributable to a number of things: the schools playing or the weather, perhaps. But I’ll go on to say that I’m not a big fan of Jacksonville and that it just may be the case that no one else is either. Jax isn’t really far enough south to get the advantages of “Florida weather” and its otherwise not central to… well anything really. Now I don’t know that there are any cities which can draw a crowd regardless of teams, but it seems to me that Jacksonville is not that city.

I’ll finish with words borrowed (stolen?) from SMQ:

Congrats and all, good luck in Miami, but damn, this is hardly a champion to get excited about, in a league won by pure, grisly attrition.

The Gnomes Schedule has been updated and here are some near season end facts:

The ACC has recorded, according to my photoshop, 74 wins and 58 losses for the season.

If Wake wins this weekend against Maryland the ACCCG will be between two teams that Clemson had defeated in the season; Wake Forest and Georgia Tech. Wake will have one more divisional win than BC (plays Miami) so that would put them into the CG. THAT should piss the seniors off!!

If not for the VT blowout, Clemson would have had another woulda shoulda coulda season with the 1 point losses to BC and Maryland. The total points lost in the season adds to 19 points, and SHOULD STAY AT 19 TOO!!!

This has to be the first time since FSU entered the ACC as well as Miami that both teams have losing conference records. But, ya know the media says the ACC is down so that means everyone else just SUCKS. Thanks media.

Finally, it’s been fun keeping up with the schedule thanks for taking part. Not sure how to get a basketball schedule together as that would be HUGE but if I get enough requests I may be able to get something together. It’s been fun folks, now let’s cheer the Tigers on to one more dominating Senior 4-0 class over the Shamecocks.

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…
Read the rest of this entry »

Shoeless Works has put together another amazing video of not only the GT v Clemson game but the entire day leading up to the game. It also is reinforcement to the argument that James Davis and C.J. Spiller are superhuman in their abilities to burn everyone on the field while Gaines Adams is just an unfair advantage for the Tiger D line in that he swallows human opponents souls with every trip to the backfield.

Did everyone watch Gameday like the true Tiger fanbase should? If you did you saw the massive gathering of overe 7,000 Orange clad maniacs flooding Bowman field for the loudest Gameday presentation ever (which I am SURE that the shamecocks are set on beating). You also witnessed the creativity and weeklong preparation of the traditional Gameday signs in the crowd. I don’t know about you, but it seemed like there was an abundance of signs in the crowd. Everyone knew which commentator they were behind and when that guy would start talking the background would flood with signs. I witnessed multiple battles for sign positioning, the greatest being between Clemson fans and a lone Michigan fan with a big sign on a stick that left after abotu 30 minutes of harrassing. Unfortunately I did not put my sign on a stick so I had only my arms length to get on TV but that served it’s purpose as everyone around me were fighting for the higher ups with their “stick” signs”.

Now on to my story. As we approached the site my wifes friends called and directed us to their position which was located behind Herbstreit. We finally reached them and their signs, another stick sign. After about 45 minutes, the drinkers in the group decided to head back to the tailgate and left myself and my wifes friend with our signs to fend for ourselves. Every time that Herbie would come on I would be the directional guide for our friend to the ideal position to getting the sign on TV. This went on for an hour and we had been defeating the other stick signs in positioning successfully when the unimaginable happened. During a series while Herbie was talking an officer of the law started meandering through the crowd looking at the signs that people were holding. He was obviously being directed through his radio as he would listen for sign reference and turn and walk in a general direction. As he walked in front of me and the friend he halted, turned to us, looked up, looked at us, grabbed the stick that the sign was mounted to (which was a tent pole), and said “let go of the pole”.

Yeah, our gameday sign was confiscated by the cops, how ya like dem apples?! He wouldn’t even let my buddy keep his tent pole and yanked the sign while stating that it was a “dirty sign”. The guys around us who had begun to help direct the sign started booing as the cop trudged back through the crowd.

So that’s my gameday story. Oh yeah, the sign……you may have seen it ALOT and alot of Clemson people were probably commenting on the crassness of the sign and it’s meaning. All it said was “SHOCKEM TIGERS” with the infamous Shocker hand signal.

Now who saw it!!!