VT vs. Clemson, 6 PM on ESPN. Be afraid be very afraid. Of course GT must come first, but you can’t say that this gnome didn’t see it coming. The revenge game from Clemson’s dismantling at Blacksburg on the fateful Thursday night will be reciprocated in a Death Valley showdown that you can guarantee will match the GT blowout crowd performance from last year. ESPN probably had this one penciled in the books after the Tigers took out FSU at the beginning of the season. Never the less, the Hokies had better get their A-game on for a night in the Valley, cause these fans have a Miami like ear shattering pain to lay on the hokie O when they come in after embarassing our team from last year. Karma, aint it a bitch.

DAMNIT!! This is making it really hard to think about GT now…….CRAP!

Forget you ever read this post and return to your Tommy Bowden shrines.

This is the motto that the team has adopted for the season. How long until this becomes completely useless? Does it become completely useless or a season long motivator? How many athletic gray T’s with the motto screen printed on it will the stores sell this season? I personally think that we should screen print “Remember VT 24-7″ for a motivator. What else was such a turning point for the Tigers? Give em something to be bitter about. What do you think?

Like last year, I have done my best to roundup all the competing post-spring/pre-season rankings.

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Both go out to our conference partners, Virginia Tech, in this time of crisis. Please remember them as you go through the next few days. It was only a few days until finals, summer break and graduation and now 31 young lives (as of this posting) have been taken, all due to one student who couldn’t handle the pressure anymore. I would say more about losing lives in their prime and what it does to families, but I feel that everyone should recognize and deal with this their own way, as a nation dealing with school shootings and as a conference partner who will need support in many ways. Continue to show the conference why Clemson has always been recognized for its passionate fans.

• The baseball team had gained some momentum before the Hurricanes came to town. That momentum is now gone, as the ‘Canes took the first and the third games of the series. Sunday’s Game 3 score was 7-6.
• The 8th ranked women’s tennis team went to Chapel Hill and kicked some baby blue ass this weekend. The #13 Tar Heels lost 6-1.
• Men’s tennis, on the other hand, lost on Friday to #2 Virginia 5-2. And they also lost to Virginia Tech 4-3. The lesson to be learned is that people from Clemson just don’t belong in Virginia.
• The bad news continues on into the world of men’s golf. The team finished 10th at the Administaff ASU Invitational. Coastal was first, UNC was 2nd. USCe finished 4th. The team did finish 8 shots better than 15th place USC-Aiken.

And for the golf team alumni at the Shell Houston Open:

• Lucas Glover missed the cut.
• J. Byrd earned $66,660 by finishing tied for 19th at -8.
• Matt Hendrix had three solid and one “oh my god what happened” rounds en route to winning $34,100 and finishing at -5.
• Charles Warren fared less well, but still made the cut. He finished tied for 66th at 2 over. His check was for $11,300.
• Finally, DJ Trahan finished all alone in the 8th spot. He was 10-under for the weekend and 11-under for the tournament. That performance was worth $170,500.

It may be worth noting that the 5 golfers above combined to win $282,500. I’m fairly certain they won more in a weekend that all the Gnomes make combined in a year. Which all goes to show that the time spent in the classroom would have been better spent harassing the cart girl.

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.

I saw the 17-10 final score of Virginia Tech’s win at Miami over the weekend. I even looked up the attendance at the Orange Bowl.

I just assumed that to score 17 points VT would have shown some kind of offensive compentency. Not quite.

Their offense at Miami was pretty much as bad as Clemson’s at Virginia Tech. Let’s compare.

Sean Glennon was 5 of 19 (26%) for 86 yards, 1 interception and 0 touchdowns.
Will Proctor was 11 of 28 (39%) for 86 yards, 1 interception and 0 touchdowns.

VaTech ran the ball 40 times, gained 99, lost 46, and netted 53, or 1.3 yds/rush.
Clemson ran the ball 28 times, gained 86, lost 6, and netted 80, or 2.9 yds/rush.

To be kinda fair, VT did lose 13 yards killing the clock at the end of the game.

VaTech had 3 penalties for 15 yards.
Clemson had 1 penalty for 5 yards.

VaTech had 5 three-and-outs and 8 punts.
Clemson had 8 three-and-outs and 10 punts.

VaTech was 3 of 14 on 3rd down (21%).
Clemson was 4 of 16 on 3rd down (25%).

VaTech won the battle of turnovers 3-1.
Clemson lost the battle of turnovers 2-1.

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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