I let out a gut wrenching scream when Tajh let go of the ball and it sailed smoothly into the GT players hands, Watkins standing wide open on the goal-line. That was the visceral manifestation of a lost national championship. It was the sound of a lost national championship. I've never made that sound before in my life--I'm sure neighbors contemplated calling the cops. Having had a couple of days to reflect, however, it also marks the first time in my adult life that I have ever had a 'real' conviction that Clemson could be national champions. In the moment its awful but at least you can honestly say that you felt like a national championship was within your grasp. It has been an amazing ride and hopefully we still make it to the Orange Bowl.
On the less cheery side that has to be one of the most frustrating games I have ever watched. How hard is it to stop a QB running behind a dive back. Is it mobile QB's and pitches now? The fumbles killed momentum. The fourth and 1 conversion by GT was deflating after starting with 3 and outs. On offense we had drops on hot routes, receivers getting jammed at the line, and players coming up short on third downs. Our LB play was atrocious and the secondary didn't help them out at all. Hill just flat out dropped a TD and got that other huge reception. PJ basically said that they were running away from Brandon Thompson--why not instruct him to simply blow up the center every play. Stick Lateek right behind him and let him run around crazy headhunting for the QB. It would have been better than watching Christian out of position and blocked consistently (he is not having the year I thought he would after that nice Int. against FSU) or Hawkins six yards away from the line of scrimmage and just waiting, asking, pleading for an O-Lineman to block him and take him out of the play.
I think we are scared or unable to deal with cut blocking. We don't know how to shed a block to save our lives and its not pretty. I know everyone is calling for Steele's head but our problem wasn't really schematic. What is on the heads of the defensive coaches are safeties taking ugly angles to the ball, and the poor fundamentals of our LB's (which is Steele's coaching position), oh and the ever-present poor tackling. The LB play needs to improve in the next year or I will start to question our defensive coaching but Steele and company still have my vote. I love Coach Brooks and Coach Cheese but am worried about our depth moving forward. All of these guys have been in the system awhile though so hopefully the ship can be righted for next season. (haha...did you hear that--righted from an 8-1 record!! You would have called me crazy if I said that before the season)
One thing to note though is that we are not a good road team so far. VT was awesome but you saw some nerves and Maryland was ridiculous. I think this is something to pay attention to when we roll into Columbia. Dabo looked really tense at the beginning of the game too, didn't seem like his usual confident self (to be expected when you go down to GT). We were really choking though--the return of Cat man knuckle kick, the Hopkins drop/Allen drops, the high Boyd throws, and making a marginal QB look like superman all felt like last season. But still when Rashard Hall intercepted the pass and got it to the five yard line I felt like we could do it. Then the yell/banshee scream...
At least I don't have to be jealous of USC and Alshon Jeffrey. Watkins catches passes in-stride like no other receiver I have ever seen...He still is working on becoming other-worldly in jump balls (right now he is just superhuman) but he is an absolute treat to watch. I would watch him if I wasn't a Clemson fan. One day I will write an 'Ode to the National Championship Lost' but for now I will stop rambling.
Showing posts with label Dwayne Wade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dwayne Wade. Show all posts
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Sunday, 17 January 2010
NC State Recap or Thoughts on In-game Collapses
I'm going to do these recaps as often as possible during the ACC season, similar to what I was doing last year...
I don't have a lot of time, so straight to the chart:
(Chart from Statsheet. I can't find win probability charts, but this is pretty close. I assume they are using Bill James' formula to calculate safe leads, but I might be wrong.)
All in all, I thought it was a fairly standard outing this season by the Tigers. We're going to hear a lot about how this was a "tale of two halves" or whatever, but the nature of Clemson's game (particularly this year) is such that when the pressure is working, the defense looks great; but when Clemson starts looking tired, the other team makes adjustments, puts in someone who can handle the ball better, or starts getting a few bounces/calls to go their way they are going to put points on the board. UNC could never make the adjustments and we stomped them for two halves. Duke almost never had a problem and they stomped us for two halves. No one's going to accuse Sidney Lowe of being a coaching genius, but limiting turnover machine Javier Gonzalez to 10 minutes of playing time (well below his season average of ~27 minutes) isn't the work of guy who doesn't understand the situation. All of this raises a bit of a red flag: while the pressure defense probably hasn't been better since the days of Hammonds and Mays, the half-court defense (while perhaps a little better than last year), isn't enough to keep even offensively-challenged teams like NC State from scoring.
It's good to keep in mind, however, that the nature of Purnell's (and by extension, Clemson's) brand of basketball is inherently pretty volatile, a number of different factors like referee style of officiating ("calling it close" or "letting them play"), the level of fatigue for Clemson or the opponent, a series of missed calls, etc. can have a dramatic impact on the overall effectiveness of the defense. This can leave the team look like a polished, overwhelming machine at one point in time and totally clueless the next--and I think this is heightened somewhat this year because we lack a really solid half-court defense to fall back on. The prototypical game which I refer people to is the Villanova game in round 1 of the 2008 tournament. We came out and absolutely flustered Villanova's pair of excellent but inexperienced guards (Scottie Reynolds and Corey Fisher, I believe), building a quick lead in the first ten minutes of the game--and it looked like we could do no wrong. Then the guards remembered that they were pretty good, stopped throwing the ball away, and cut the lead in half by the break. Then in the second half, it looked like Clemson could do nothing right while giving up 48 points en route to a 6-point loss. The key: Reynolds and Fisher shredding through the pressure defense.
Anyways, I've wandered off topic here but I guess I needed to justify my statement above: this did feel like a standard Clemson outing. Ever wonder why Clemson struggles to "close out games" or "finish strong"? The preceding paragraph seems like a reasonable explanation--mull it over for a while. I don't by the lack of leadership argument; a coach couldn't design a better leader than T. Booker. This reasoning also explains how Clemson manages furious finishes from time to time. Remember the Butler game? Remember how tired Butler looked early on in the second half? The same players allegedly lacking a leader managed a thrilling comeback. Remember last year's allegedly dysfunctional squad pulling off an improbable comeback at Virginia Tech? Maryland two years ago? This may be a bit preemptive, but if someone wants to complain about Clemson's failures to "seal the deal", can we at least get some acknowledgement of their ability to unexpectedly storm back to victory? And then maybe we can start seeing the two outcomes as sides of the same coin. Clemson plays a volatile style of basketball, sometimes it works for us, sometimes against us, and sometimes we have just enough in the tank to overcome home-court advantage plus three points.
***Lastly, unrelated to the above, I wanted to comment on Stitt's status. I'm not the biggest Stitt fan, I'm on the record as saying that Young is more than capable of filling most of the roles he plays for the team. But that doesn't change the fact that losing Stitt for any extended period of time is a big blow. No one on the team can replace Stitt's explosive first step and his ability to penetrate and cause problems for the defense. It also seems like he's been cut loose a little over the last three games, and the results have been pretty good. Unfortunately, he's also got a growing injury history. He's got a little bit of Dwayne Wade in him that way--penetration guy with little regard for his body and a litany of nagging injuries hampering his play. Unfortunately, Stitt's injury sounds pretty serious--not a pulled muscle or something. There's also the issue of how healthy he is when he finally comes back. If you watched the team closely last year, Stitt never seemed the same after coming back from a pre-ACC season injury. I'm not going to jump to any conclusions here, but obviously keeping the game close against in Atlanta on Tuesday just became a lot more difficult. I'll try to comment more when we get news of the severity of the injury.
I don't have a lot of time, so straight to the chart:
(Chart from Statsheet. I can't find win probability charts, but this is pretty close. I assume they are using Bill James' formula to calculate safe leads, but I might be wrong.)
All in all, I thought it was a fairly standard outing this season by the Tigers. We're going to hear a lot about how this was a "tale of two halves" or whatever, but the nature of Clemson's game (particularly this year) is such that when the pressure is working, the defense looks great; but when Clemson starts looking tired, the other team makes adjustments, puts in someone who can handle the ball better, or starts getting a few bounces/calls to go their way they are going to put points on the board. UNC could never make the adjustments and we stomped them for two halves. Duke almost never had a problem and they stomped us for two halves. No one's going to accuse Sidney Lowe of being a coaching genius, but limiting turnover machine Javier Gonzalez to 10 minutes of playing time (well below his season average of ~27 minutes) isn't the work of guy who doesn't understand the situation. All of this raises a bit of a red flag: while the pressure defense probably hasn't been better since the days of Hammonds and Mays, the half-court defense (while perhaps a little better than last year), isn't enough to keep even offensively-challenged teams like NC State from scoring.
It's good to keep in mind, however, that the nature of Purnell's (and by extension, Clemson's) brand of basketball is inherently pretty volatile, a number of different factors like referee style of officiating ("calling it close" or "letting them play"), the level of fatigue for Clemson or the opponent, a series of missed calls, etc. can have a dramatic impact on the overall effectiveness of the defense. This can leave the team look like a polished, overwhelming machine at one point in time and totally clueless the next--and I think this is heightened somewhat this year because we lack a really solid half-court defense to fall back on. The prototypical game which I refer people to is the Villanova game in round 1 of the 2008 tournament. We came out and absolutely flustered Villanova's pair of excellent but inexperienced guards (Scottie Reynolds and Corey Fisher, I believe), building a quick lead in the first ten minutes of the game--and it looked like we could do no wrong. Then the guards remembered that they were pretty good, stopped throwing the ball away, and cut the lead in half by the break. Then in the second half, it looked like Clemson could do nothing right while giving up 48 points en route to a 6-point loss. The key: Reynolds and Fisher shredding through the pressure defense.
Anyways, I've wandered off topic here but I guess I needed to justify my statement above: this did feel like a standard Clemson outing. Ever wonder why Clemson struggles to "close out games" or "finish strong"? The preceding paragraph seems like a reasonable explanation--mull it over for a while. I don't by the lack of leadership argument; a coach couldn't design a better leader than T. Booker. This reasoning also explains how Clemson manages furious finishes from time to time. Remember the Butler game? Remember how tired Butler looked early on in the second half? The same players allegedly lacking a leader managed a thrilling comeback. Remember last year's allegedly dysfunctional squad pulling off an improbable comeback at Virginia Tech? Maryland two years ago? This may be a bit preemptive, but if someone wants to complain about Clemson's failures to "seal the deal", can we at least get some acknowledgement of their ability to unexpectedly storm back to victory? And then maybe we can start seeing the two outcomes as sides of the same coin. Clemson plays a volatile style of basketball, sometimes it works for us, sometimes against us, and sometimes we have just enough in the tank to overcome home-court advantage plus three points.
***Lastly, unrelated to the above, I wanted to comment on Stitt's status. I'm not the biggest Stitt fan, I'm on the record as saying that Young is more than capable of filling most of the roles he plays for the team. But that doesn't change the fact that losing Stitt for any extended period of time is a big blow. No one on the team can replace Stitt's explosive first step and his ability to penetrate and cause problems for the defense. It also seems like he's been cut loose a little over the last three games, and the results have been pretty good. Unfortunately, he's also got a growing injury history. He's got a little bit of Dwayne Wade in him that way--penetration guy with little regard for his body and a litany of nagging injuries hampering his play. Unfortunately, Stitt's injury sounds pretty serious--not a pulled muscle or something. There's also the issue of how healthy he is when he finally comes back. If you watched the team closely last year, Stitt never seemed the same after coming back from a pre-ACC season injury. I'm not going to jump to any conclusions here, but obviously keeping the game close against in Atlanta on Tuesday just became a lot more difficult. I'll try to comment more when we get news of the severity of the injury.
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