Virginia Preview

Virginia vs. Clemson, 02/20, 4:00pm, Littlejohn

Virginia has come crashing back to earth after a flukish 5-2 start that saw them beating up on the likes of N.C State, UNC, and Miami. All in all, take away a home win over Georgia Tech and I suppose the home victory over UAB and Virginia has beaten bad teams while managing to lose to some bad teams in the process (Penn State, Auburn, Stanford). They have now lost four straight, the last a 69-50 stomping at the hands of Florida St. at home. On top of all this, it will be Virginia's fourth game in the last eight days. Virginia will likely come into Clemson demoralized and tired, which should make for a relatively easy seventh conference win for the Tigers.

That being said, our defensive strength should be largely ineffective against the Cavalier offense tomorrow afternoon. This year our defense has been powered almost exclusively by an ability to force turnovers, and the Cavs have been the tenth least likely team to turn the ball over in the country. On the other hand, the Cavs have not shot the ball well this season, particularly from inside the arc and they also do a poor job of getting on the offensive boards or getting to the FT line. They do shoot the ball well from the FT line; as such, Clemson would be well-advised to staunch their recent trend of sending teams to the line frequently over the course of a game.

The good news is Clemson's halfcourt defense should be able to at least keep the Cavalier offense in check without the typical batch of turnovers caused by pressure defense. Clemson has defended the three extremely well this season, which should blunt the best weapon Virginia has and look for them to play a little less aggressively inside to force Virginia to make their field goals instead of risking the foul.

Ultimately, though, Clemson will have to win this game with their offense. I think this will not be much of a problem. Virginia's strengths on defense come from limiting second-chance opportunities and keeping teams off the foul line; they struggle considerably in defending the shot, particularly the three. Clemson should more or less have its way inside and outside, although we shouldn't count on Jerai Grant adding ten points on clean-up duty.

As an interesting side note, Virginia has been the beneficiary of the best FT% against rate in the country. Teams are averaging less than 60% from the line when they play Virginia, suggesting that their defensive numbers are actually even worse than they appear and they still have more room for regression.

A well-played game by Clemson should result in a easy victory. I don't expect us to hold Virginia below 60 points, but look for us to push 75. GO TIGERS!!!

South Carolina Preview

Clemson vs. South Carolina, 11/28, 12:00pm, Williams-Brice Stadium

This will be pretty short, I'm still trying to shake the disappointment of the A&M game. I'll write some more about it later, but I think this is a stark reminder that the team is a work in progress.

Tigermax:

Check out this lede to the front page sports story in the State, 9/25:

The 28-year wait is over: South Carolina finally bagged its big-game trophy.

(If your really into schadenfreude, read some of the posted comments at the the story)

Yes, those were heady days for Gamecrock fans--a win over #4 Ole Miss and a near victory over Georgia (on the road) the week before. Combined with the early season struggles of Clemson, the night of 9/25 must have felt like something of a watershed moment: the signal of the ascendancy of Gamekook football in the state of South Carolina.

Flash forward to today. Clemson has won six straight, riding an improbably realistic Heisman campaign into the ACC Championship game. South Carolina is in yet another mid-season swoon, losing what, 4 straight? (I've lost track). Meanwhile, Ole Miss and Georgia have both logged spectacularly average SEC seasons while South Carolina has been stomped by SEC "luminaries" Arkansas and Tennessee. Hey, at least you beat Vanderbilt. Yes, you beat a 2-10 team by the score of 14-10 at home. The old Spurrier teams would have lost that game.

I'm not going to offer any deep insight into the 2009 annual South Carolina midseason collapse (trademarked). That's because its really quite simple: they were never that good to begin with. Lots of close wins and losses in the early season obscured how average a team they really were. In fact, FEI ranks them the #50 team in the country. To give some context, Virginia is ranked #42. Yes, the defense grades out a strong #18, but they are killed by a #75 offense and awful special teams. And before any Gamecocks start grousing, FEI does take into account strength of schedule. You see, it may be hard to own up to, but the SEC is in the middle of a down year.

To be clear, the SEC is probably still a better conference top to bottom than the ACC. FEI has had a slight ACC-slant that we've documented here over the season. But the gap isn't as large as some might think. The ACC has a lot of programs trending in the right direction while the SEC has a quite a few teams trending in the wrong direction.

Also to be clear, I think South Carolina has more talent on defense than Virginia. They lack talented depth, however, which is what keeps them from being a nationally-feared defense on the level of, let me just pick a random team here, I don't know: Clemson. Yeah, that's a good defense.

Clemson has some concerns. The white elephant in the room is the health of CJ Spiller. He's looked progressively worse over the last 3-4 weeks, and we could really use him to take advantage in the special teams game. Also, while the offense's performance against Virginia was encouraging, I anticipate South Carolina will be a bit more physical; they should be up to stopping the run at least in the early going.

If Clemson keeps the game close in the first half, I think they run away in the second half. The South Carolina defense is too thin, and their crappy kicking and coverage game coupled with Spurrier's oversized ego almost ensures Spiller and Ford deliver excellent field position. Hope you're ready for a breakout road performance, Richard Jackson.

Clemben:

I peaked at quite a few South Carolina games this season. I think they are a decent team. They are probably as talented, if not slightly more than last year's team USuCk team (last years team was hopelessly selfish and fractured in the locker room however, Spurrier really 'lost' that team). I think it really begins at QB for the shamecocks and Garcia. I am absolutely shocked that he hasnt been injured this year. I have seen him make a bunch of gutsy/stupid plays, hurling himself into the air. He is durable and has some moxie, other USC QB's had arms but would predictably and almost comically turn the ball over. Garcia's maturation has been notable.

Next Alshon Jeffery is really good. Watching out redshirt freshman WR's struggle and then watching true freshman Jeffery run routes and catch some great balls has been frustrating. If he goes to the real 'USC', where he was committed to up until the end, USuCk isnt close to the team they are on offense. I wont argue with a coot on this one, I hope he takes off to the NFL asap. This season we are fine with our secondary, although in the past couple of games we have been giving up a few too many chunk yardage plays. (haha, how did chunk yards get in the vernacular??) Few interceptions

Lastly I really like some of the defensive talent along the line that Skarelina has amassed. The health of Cliff Matthews is a big issue, Geathers is really developing and Ladi can be a beast. This will be a good barometer for how much our OLine has improved. You'll remember that last year we were able to push around their D-Line before running into trouble with a boy named Suh in the gator bowl.

So what will be the difference in this game. I think it will be a ten point game...and of course I think we will win. The LB's need to have a better game, would really like to land Justin Parker but that keeps getting more difficult. The game comes down to third down conversions. We have gotten much better throughout our winning streak in converting third downs. If we can demoralize WBrice prison early then the place will be empty by the fourth quarter. Remember when Spurrier gave up last year, conceded the game? Cant wait to see that again...6-6 and the independence bowl?? Now that is just one season away!! Clemson 27-17

Virginia Recap--Division Champs!

It's about time. I think this season proves one ridiculous over-generalization that sounds good when introducing a blogpost: take away Tommy Bowden's extreme tendency to err on the side of caution with something slightly more adventurous and we have ourselves a division champion. But it's important to remember that Tommy Bowden played an enormous role as the architect of this team, and to overlook him wouldn't be all that's right and fair. And since I'm in such great spirits, here it is: congratulations to you too, Tommy. May you find peace with the millions we bought out your contract with and thank you, thank you, for choosing to step aside while CJ Spiller still had a year of eligibility left.

To be clear, not tryin' to shortchange Swinney, Napier, Steele, and everyone else here--they did a fantastic job. The next two years will give us a better idea of the direction the program will take as Swinney starts to shape it according to his ideal...but for now we can rejoice that Swinney was able to do more with essentially the same talent as his predecessor, and that's great news that could lead to many happy days ahead for the team and its fans. And guys, I would really appreciate it if you can remove the 18-year weight I've been carrying around in two weeks by beating GT.

Now, the game...not the prettiest sight in the world, I'm glad we had things locked up or I would have been way too emotionally invested for a game against 3-7 Virginia. This is the second straight game we can attribute the ease of victory to to the offense. It wasn't perfect, the already much-maligned fourth down call and more glaringly the inability to put together a clock-killing drive in the fourth quarter stand out as negatives. I'm thinking the plan was to try and give Spiller as many yards as he could gather in the fourth quarter, but Virginia's defense isn't going to give up too many yards to our O-line when they know the run is coming. I'm not even sure this was even a good idea to begin with, Spiller is progressively getting less and less mobile each week. But I nitpick. When Kyle Parker hits his first 12 (?) passes, things are clicking and we're probably on our way to putting plenty of points on the board.

I have to sympathize with the defense quite a bit, Al Groh and Gregg Brandon threw the entire playbook at them in the first half (after the first drive). I'm not sure why Virginia slowed down in the second half, although they might simply have run out of unorthodox plays to run. What this game shows is that our defense is still most vulnerable to a strong running game between the tackles, the "trick" plays Virginia ran were all set up by strong running (part of that was the wildcat--as an aside, good to get a dose of it now 'cause we could be seeing it in a not-to-distant bowl game). A lot of this was enabled partly by overpursuit by Clemson LBs (again), not to mention some stupid penalties. Maye always seems to find a way to redeem himself, though, that helmet on the football-forcing-fumble was a thing of beauty.

That's enough. Its time to bask--we captured the Atlantic Division! And next week we extend our win streak to 7 games by throttling our "rival" downstate.

De-Fault

As Homer would say the two sweetest words in the english language. De-Fault! De-Fault!

What is going on at the half against Virginia?? Groh and his coaches are playing and play calling with nothing to lose. We can not defend the wildcat/mobile Qb for the life of us. I'm just sick...this wont get it done against USuCk or GT. Defense isnt getting penetration and is getting out schemed. That wheel route at the end was inexcusable.

Ron Cherry you've outdone yourself...I know you threw that intl grounding flag and then had to be talked out of it. A penalty for saluting the crowd?? What is this Communist Russia?

We are moving the ball well and putting up points other than that awful fourth down call on the early turnover. I like going for it on fourth but not on the roll out--Parker didnt know where he was going. But man, what a pass to Jacoby in the endzone...Can we retire the word trickeration??

Steele, lets make the adjustments and let CJ and all the seniors get in the game and go crazy...

Virginia Preview

Virginia vs. Clemson, 11/21, 3:30pm, Death Valley

Tigermax:

Clemson very well may have clinched the division before taking the field, I think UNC stands a pretty good chance of beating BC. I don't suspect this will affect Clemson too much, what with Senior Day and Motivator-in-chief Swinney firing up the team before the game. Virginia features an above average defense, but they also feature quite likely the league's worst offense. In a general sense, this reminds me of the Boston College game: tough defense, offense is a work-in-progress, largely conservative head coaching philosophy, and big players who play physically. Two key differences, though: BC sports a defense that matches anyone in the nation while Virginia's is merely excellent in the context of the league and Virginia's offense has played the same way BC played against us in every game of the season.

The only way I see us losing this Saturday is if the following three unlikelihoods were to inexplicably collide: 1) our offense reverts to pre-Maryland form in the face of a big, physical defense, 2) Richard Jackson still can't kick a thirty-five yard field goal, and 3) our defense puts up an utterly average effort similar to last Saturday. I can see one or two of the above possible happening, but not all three. I'm cautiously optimistic we'll be celebrating the first ACC division title in Clemson history come Saturday evening. (Just to keep things in perspective, though, the last time I was this confident was before the Maryland game.)

GO TIGERS!!!!

Clemben:

I personally want BC just to lose. Yeah, all that stuff about earning it is great, and the players should have that mentality but as a fan still recovering from ghosts of Bowden past--I am more than willing to go to the ACC Champs bc someone other than us (BC no less), lost. But I'm afraid we come out with almost too much intensity again and make some defensive mistakes. We really need to get this kicking thing squared away before USuck and GT. Virginia has some really good linebacker play so they will challenge KP with a new 3-4 look. Hopefully we can not turn the ball over.

Also I will be watching to see how the O line responds with Austin having a bad ankle. This is essentially the line we will have next year so hopefully Cloy can fill that void. Speaking of OLineman--we lost former 4 star recruit Kenneth Page who never really asserted himself after coming to Clemson with a bad shoulder and JK Jay is still dealing with an ailing back. I heard he needs another surgery which is never good. He really is a great person though so if you get a chance drop him a line of encouragement on his facebook or something. We need him to shore up Tackle depth and push the starters. Again, thank you David Smith for panning out.

Oh yeah, so Virginia...Tigers roll...

P.S. I told you North Carolina was overrated in bball. Too many white guys on the team...haha. Shaky guard play, no three point shooting. Relying on Ginyard's offensive production?? Ed Davis looking weak in the post...yep I told you so...Clemson has its best chance to take the ACC, umm...ever??

NC State Recap

Well, that should teach me to trust my instincts over the actual numbers. In my (admittedly weak) defense, I think the end result betrays the relative competitiveness of the game. If that Spiller non-fumble gets called the other way, the game probably ends up uncomfortably close. On the same note, Russell Wilson is a mighty fine-looking quarterback--if Tom O'Brien can resurrect his defense next year no one's going to look forward to playing these guys. As it was, we simply outscored 'em. Their kicking game didn't help much either. I'm wondering if Clemson doesn't see a net negative punt at some point before the end of the year (6 yards!).

Offense
Kyle Parker took another incremental step in the right direction today. Looked pretty tall in the pocket. Earlier in the year I rapped the coaching staff for not letting him be more mobile, not letting him make plays with his feet if a play looked like it had broken down. Now I think we're seeing what the coaching staff envisioned, in order to maximize Parker's main strength (his live arm) he needs to develop into more of a pure pocket passer who limits his runs to designated keeps. Its been a learning process, at times a painful one, but it might be coming together faster than if the coaches had just let Parker tuck the ball and run every time his first option was covered. Let's see how he handles the stiffer defenses coming in the next two weeks.

DrB hit it on the head a few days ago, one of the reasons for the offensive improvement is instead of throwing out a fresh set of faces every drive to see what sticks, we're now playing the same guys week in and week out. I think things like QB-WR "chemistry" are overrated a bit, but I have little reason to doubt the most talented and reliable guys are seeing the overwhelming majority of both snaps and ball touches. Ford and Dye (and to a lesser extent, Ashe) at WR, Palmer and Allen at TE, and of course the RBs.

Defense
Not sure if Chancellor and Butler still weren't 100%, but it seemed like the 2nd string CBs were seeing a lot of time. As a possible result, coverage wasn't exactly an abject disaster but definitely a large step down from previous weeks. Two counter-points: 1) after a rough first quarter, Wilson was on the rest of the game and 2) Jarvis Williams had a couple of highlight-reel catches (the rest of the recievers could have really helped his final statline if they had held onto the ball a few more times). Since a lot of defense in the secondary is reflexive, an accurate QB and disciplined, talented receiver are going to connect despite the best defensive efforts. Oh, and third point: ridiculous penalties.

Brandon Maye needs to rein himself in a bit, he's starting to make plays that stand out, but not in the good kind of way.

Not much else to say from my vantage point, except that we might want to consider recruiting a new kicker to replace Jackson after next year. 3/6 (?) on PAT attempts is not good for a kicker, small sample size notwithstanding. Seriously, I don't care if you've been sitting on the bench for 10 games, a random soccer player kicking for the local high school football team can manage 3/6.

Waiting for Thomas Austin news...

All in all, a solid game for the offense and an utterly average game from the defense when we've come to expect more. I think the big difference between this and the FSU game was we weren't constantly trying to give the game away for the first 2 and 1/2 quarters. One game, step, whatever you want to call it, away. Virginia brings a stronger defense than we've been playing recently. This should give us an idea of how well our offense has really come along...but our real defense needs to show up and provide support next week.

FEI Week 9; ACC Outlook Update

Whooosh! That was the sound of the ACC dropping like a rock in this weeks FEI rankings. GT is the lone top 10 survivor (#8), but it looks like the combination of VT losing, GT giving up crazy points to a terrible Vandy offense, and Miami barely getting by WF managed to drag the entire conference down. Clemson, despite playing a Division II team and which is not included in the ranking calculations, dropped from #13 to #15, probably stemming from the drop in strength of schedule. FSU is still ranked at #18, probably because FEI gives them the third best offense in the country. Clemson's 6th best defense is going to have to be on its toes. Luckily, FSU is also ranked #98 in defense.

Here's the updated ACC outlook for the Tigers. Virginia improves following their loss at home against Duke. But I saw enough from both teams in the FSU-NC state game to leave them untouched:
With Virginia moving into "Lock", the projected wins are probably closer to 2.5-3 at this point. Even so, if we manage a victory against FSU on Saturday I still won't be breathing easy until the Tigers beat the Wolfpack in Raleigh.

Reassessing Clemson's remaining ACC schedule

Last week, I went through Clemson's remaining schedule and based on their level of play at the time, I concluded Clemson was looking at a 6-6 or 5-7 overall finish. But, to essentially give myself some wiggle room to back out of that prediction, I ended the post with this:

Now, if somehow the coaching staff manages to straighten out some of the play-calling hijinks and we come out and with a strong performance driven by an improved offense to beat Wake, then the [schedule prediction] will need readjustment.

While I'm not naive enough to think we've fixed all the problems on offense, I'm happy to admit I was overly pessimistic in the last assessment. By my reckoning, we have now played 11 competitive quarters against average to below average defenses, and we've played competent offense in 6 of those (2 for GT, 1 for Maryland, and 3 for Wake). I'm sure that's not the level of consistency Napier and Swinney are looking for and while the 3 ridiculous quarters in Maryland are still a giant red flag, it means we should be able to put something resembling a productive offense on the field at least half of the time against middling defenses. The good news: none of our final four ACC opponents are particularly known for solid defenses, and some have been downright bad. The possible exception here is Virginia, but they've carved out some goodwill for Al Groh by beating the following teams: North Carolina (has struggled on offense this year), Indiana, and Maryland. I'm not buying it until I see them hold down Miami or Georgia Tech in the coming weeks.

Here's how I see it now:

Clemson finishes with between 2-4 wins, giving a 4-4 finish on the pessimistic side with a 6-2 finish on the optimistic side. The most likely scenario, however, is a 5-3 finish. Does this give us the division title? Probably not. Boston College has a very soft schedule (at Maryland, at Virginia, and home for North Carolina); I'd give them about 3:2 odds right now of winning out. Anyone else tired of BC and their illegitimate division titles?

Good Vibrations: For All Those Who Still Want To Believe

I havent been able to shake the utter disappointment from the Maryland game but I have found quiet hope and seen a glimmer of redemption in the simple fact that the Atlantic division is just awful this year. VT, GT, and Miami are superior teams right now--well lets hope GT is, and Virginia and Duke will beat someone in the Atlantic. So the point is that the winner of the Atlantic will assuredly have 2 losses but will more likely have three or four. So its going to be crowded and its going to come down to head to head records. Lets project two games into the future, shall we...

BC is the current front-runner--wait, the same BC we held to 50 yrds of offense and beat?? This is good for us bc BC plays/loses to VT this week and then plays NC State the next which is a toss-up. They will have at least two losses then, one of them to us!! We probably want State to win, bc the BC schedule then becomes the easiest of the remaining teams. NC the only remaining really tough game. So BC may have a 5-3 record in the conference 4-4 not out of the question.

Next threat is NC State--Tom O'Brien what is going on? They are 0-1 but a better team than they showed against Wake, probably the most dangerous team in terms of talent and coaching but lucky for us they have a tough schedule remaining--the play Duke this week and then BC the next but also have VT and NC. It would really help us if NC steps it up and can beat the majority of the Atlantic teams they play. I can easily see them being 5-3 or 4-4. Clemson needs to hold the tie breaker though.

Wake is very unpredictable. It seems to depend on the mood of Riley Skinner so I'm having a tough time placing them. They are 1-1 in conference and will play Maryland before playing us. If they beat Maryland we have to beat them but they do play Miami and GT which seem like two losses and an FSU team playing for Bowdens life so I think the losses will be there 5-3, 4-4.

Maryland is scary to me. They suck and we shouldnt have lost to them, but they have the weakest schedule in the division playing Duke and Virginia and then VT. Most teams are going to go 1-2 OOC but Maryland could go 2-1. We dont have the tie breaker so it feels more comfortable if they go 4-4, 5-3 spells doom. They play Wake and then Virginia so they could be 2-1 or 3-0 after next week.

Who would have thought we would be talking about FSU as the gutter dwellers of the pathetic Atlantic division. Things look even worse playing GT and at NC in the next two weeks. I dont think the 0-2 Noles are that bad a team but that loss to BC is mindbottling (thank you Will Ferrell), and I cant see them recovering to finish on top.

So there you have it. It looks like everyone is headed for 4-4 seasons. If Clemson can beat Wake, State, and FSU it can stand to lose to Miami and still come out on top. Unless Maryland gets crazy...

There is still hope Tiger fans and at least the defense is good. Can anyone imagine the absolute catastrophe this season would have been without CJ?? I mean its ugly enough already...

GT will make or break season

So it seems that after the first week its official--the ACC sucks again this year. I still say we are better than the Big Ten and rank third on the pecking order top to bottom but we are still in a down period for sure. This means that the two biggest games of the season are this Thursday and when we take on FSU.

If we can somehow get by Tech, which is not completely outside the realm of possibility, then the season looks not only doable but possibly magical. Yes my orange spectacles are on but just indulge me if you will. Our division looks bad--NC State wasnt special, Maryland got manhandled, Wake is down, and BC still doesnt have a QB. We will see how good FSU is tonight--it would be big if Miami gets the win. So really it comes down to who you play in the other division. GT will be good but I would rather play them than VT, and Virginia looked awful. We dont get to play another pathetic Duke team but we should get a pretty beat up Miami team.

My point is that with teams under-performing there will be parity and middling records. A win against GT puts us in the drivers seat and would create the buzz and momentum needed to build to a big enough let down (a Bowdenesque loss to an inferior team) to call it a true Clemson season. Yeah a loss wont break the season but it will send everyone back down to earth, a place we know all too well...

All I'm saying is that the crummy ACC could be all Dabo and company need this year, hopefully GT's young line isnt up to the task.

CLEMBENTIGERMAX POWER RANKINGS: TEAMS

First a word of preface--yes its a little late in the season but we've been meaning to do this for awhile. These arent the actual standings but how good the teams are doing currently and RPI rankings, SOS, my opinion, etc.

TEAM RANKINGS

1. North Carolina-Although not the unbeatable juggernaut they were at the beginning of the season-the core of Ellington, Hans, and Lawson is formidable-especially with Lawson more motivated to pick up his game as the end of the season looms.


2. Duke-No I dont want Duke to be this high but I cant justify putting FSU or Wake ahead of them. Somehow Coach K has been able to right the ship. Clemson exposed their lack of athleticism but that Coach K can still coach and, unfortunately, still star in credit card commercials. I still think there are too many white players, especially ones named Paulus, to have a chance at a deep NCAA run. Second round defeat sounds about right.
   


3. Florida State-After their solid defeat of Clemson I want to put them as number two but just cant do it after loosing to Duke. They are slightly ahead of an uneven Wake team and despite the loss are clicking down the stretch at the right time.


4. Wake Forest-Perhaps the most lottery talent on one team in the country. At times they are absolutely dominant but at other times cant figure out how to share the ball and play without passion. Too much selfish play. Granted they beat on FSU the first and only time they will play but losses to GT, NC State and a poor showing at Virginia and Maryland give me cause for concern.


5. Clemson-My Tigers just cant seem to get the ball in to T-Book. This team has been overachieving all year and has had a rocky week but its been a great ride. Still capable of beating any team in the league and perhaps the country when they are on. OP can flat out coach and hopefully makes the right adjustments down the stretch.
   
6. Boston College-Rice is the heart and soul of this team but they can lack consistency as evidenced by their loss to NC State. Must win against BC to secure NCAA bid and must find some scoring help to ease the burden on Rice. Its funny how a lot of these teams primary colors are the same...
   
7. Virginia Tech-This season has been a disappointing one for me and I'm sure for Hokies fans. After being shut out of the NCAA's last year and coach Greenberg wailing and moaning about it I think its safe to assume we will be hearing more of it. Bad ref work cost them at Duke and maybe even NC but they have to beat FSU and win some games in ACC tourney or its NIT city. Still this is a more talented team than their record indicates.
8. Maryland-Gary Williams should be commended for the job he has done with this team. Watching them almost beat a superior Wake squad is why I love college bball over the nba anyday. David 'churchballer' Neal and the Grevis man a team that is as much about heart as it is about skill.
   
9. Miami-Welcome to Miami, home of the most disappointing team in the ACC. Projected by some to finish third, with the loss to GT I think we can say that barring a massive run deep into the ACC tourney they have punched their NIT ticket. McClinton is still amazing and can still take over a game but this team just cant find any semblance of consistency.
10. NC State-Someone needs to give Coach Lowe a clue. He is the most awful coach in the ACC and his teams reflect it. State has picked it up here at the end of the year, beating BC and will give Miami a hard rub but its hard seeing how this team is going to rise out of mediocrity with Lowe at the helm.
11. Georgia Tech-I'm not sure I've ever seen a team do so little with so much talent. Paul Hewitt has been giving the aforementioned Coach Lowe a run for his money as the worst coach in the ACC this year. This team has the talent and potential but cant put it together and if it were not for the stellar recruiting class coming to GT, I would think that Hewitt's days would be numbered, regardless he is on a short leash heading into next year.
12. Virginia-The fact that Virginia is on the bottom of this list speaks to the relative strength of the ACC, top to bottom-perhaps the best conference in the country. This team is all about Landesberg, Chad Ford even has him going in the first round if he declares, but not much is surrounding him. If he goes the team is done for next year and I dont see Coach Leitao weathering the storm for much longer. There is some young talent here but it still needs a lot of developing.
    

VIRGINIA RECAP II

Clemson 72, Virginia 57

ClemBen outlined the ugly turn Clemson's chances for a first round bye took tonight. If I understand right (going off the 2007 rules here), if we end in a three way 10-6 tie, Clemson is the odd team out. The combined record of the ties teams against each other is compiled, leaving the following (assuming a Clemson win and a FSU win):

3) Wake Forest 2-1 (one win over Clemson, one over FSU-gives them the tiebreak for the #3 spot)
4) FSU 2-1 (two wins over Clemson, loss to FSU)
5) Clemson 1-3

Clemson has to beat WF and hope for a VT upset of FSU. Both of these seem pretty unlikely, so get ready for GT in the first round, FSU in the second. Yeah, FSU...there's the bad postseason matchup I was worried about.

Clemson had the game put away at the under 4:00 timeout, second half. Its good to get the win, but I honestly didn't see much that encouraged me. The first half was more of the same from Clemson, and a better shooting team would have been up by 12 at the break. Too sloppy with the ball, giving up open looks on defense, and unable to feed the post.

I did like how Purnell went man-to-man in the second-half, mixing things up a little. But I think the credit for tonight's victory has to go to the Cavaliers' meltdown, a few unforced turnovers resulting in some easy buckets for Clemson and they really unraveled.

One last chance for some serious adjustments as we go against WF on Sunday. Let's hope to see some focused play and some early different looks from Clemson's defense, or things could get ugly fast. One other thing to keep an eye on for the WF game: according to Tigernet, KC Rivers played the second half with an injured shoulder. Given his poor play in the last couple of games, I'm wondering if this hasn't been some festering issue for Rivers.

Virginia Post-Game Ramblings

Stats by StatSheet.com

It was good to finally play a decent half of basketball. Virginia is not that good of a team and this game shouldnt have been tied at the half. Their star Landesberg had an atrocious night but a win is a win and as we get set for a showdown against Wake. But it may not matter that much bc everything that would have helped us last night didnt happen.

A quick rundown:Duke beat FSU and Wake pulled it out against the Terps. Duke cant be caught now-if they had lost to FSU and NC, we pull ahead with a win against Wake bc we own the tiebreaker. Not going to happen so we need FSU to loose to Virginia Tech and we obviously have to beat Wake. Tough road to the ACC bye despite church baller Dave Neal's best efforts.

A few notes from last nights game.

• The above chart shows how many turnovers we are committing. We were yet again, another turnover factory in the first half. Hard to figure out how to correct it, our post players cant get position and our guards dont have the patience or presence to know when not to force it and pull it back and when to give T-Book the rock. I'm sure that OP has been stressing getting the ball inbounds but this leads to the younger guys (Tanner Smith, looking at you) forcing it too often. I loved an inside/outside play with Booker and Young that led to an open three from Young. If only TO could learn to do that...
• Sykes is left so wide open that I cant wait to have Milton Jennings not let defenses collapse the way they do.
• Potter fouls a whole lot. I know he is playing bigger men but he commits a lot of stupid fouls. Good to see OP give him a nice chat about it on the sideline.
• In the beginning of the second half OP went full court man to man, thought it was one of the reasons we went up big. Good to see we might be thinking about not living and dieing by the press. Dont get me wrong, love the press, but I love a diverse selection of pressures even better.
• Rivers needs to step it up and not throw the ball into the stands-Sykes made some truly awesome dunks and four straight FT's, quite a senior night...

VIRGINIA PREVIEW II

(littlejohn, 03/03, 7:00pm)

I don't have much to add to the first preview, except that Virginia has now clearly established itself as the second worst team in the league, lifting itself out of its titanic struggle with Georgia Tech (largely thanks to us...). Looking at the stats this is a game Clemson should win 9 times out of 10 (which gives us about a 1 in 100 chance of losing to Virginia twice in the same season). But at the same time, let's not kid ourselves here--this is the kind of game where stats don't tell the whole story.

The book is out on Clemson--on offense, get your best three-point shooters spotting up behind the three point line in transition after breaking the press, and on defense do everything you can to deny the entry pass into the post. Do that, and a lot of teams are going to give themselves a chance to win down the stretch. Virginia's a bad three point-shooting team, but that didn't stop them from putting up a plus-forty percentage performance against us before. Look for Sammy Zeglinski and even their big man Jamil Tucker to spot up, catch, and shoot after breaking the press.

If we trot out the same game plan, particularly defensive game plan, we have used in the last few weeks, there is a real possibility we lose this game. If we make some adjustments, hopefully we see a team that can win handily today and also put up a fight in the postseason. To be clear, I'm not sure what, if anything, can be done at this point, particularly on offense. Your backcourt can't just grow a few inches overnight. But please, please, maybe a little more focus on halfcourt defense at the occasional expense of the full-court press? Doesn't have to be much, just don't let them get comfortable shooting those threes...

GO TIGERS!!!

VIRGINIA RECAP

Virginia 85, Clemson 81 OT

Stats by StatSheet.com

(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.)

I had to wait a while before I could write this, force myself to calm down a bit from all the rage. I don't have any deep insights into this game, it was obviously a lackluster effort all around, particularly on defense. Clemson can't allow a poor shooting team like Virginia to shoot 54% from the floor. Normally I wouldn't put too much stock into a sub-30% 3-shooting team going 7-15, that's within the realm of believable statistical fluctuation, but I do think it points to a disturbing trend: Clemson's defensive efficiency has been incrementally dropping since ACC play began. Nothing drastic, but they've gone from around 10th in the nation to about 30th. As far as I can tell this can almost exclusively be attributed to giving up more threes. I haven't been watching closely enough to determine why this is happening, but I often wonder why teams don't pull up more often after breaking the press to shoot the open three--a pretty high percentage shot for a good shooter. Something to watch for in the coming games...

Of course this doesn't amount to an excuse for losing this game. Unfortunately, good teams have an all around poor outings and sometimes a bad team will plays its best game of the season at the same time. The extension of this is that over the course of a thirty game season even a top five team will inexplicably lose a game (Note: I do not think we are not a top five or ten team, I agree with ClemBen here--borderline top fifteen right now). Its not very satisfying reasoning, but odds were at the beginning of ACC play Clemson was gonna lose one or two they weren't supposed to lose.

The problem for Clemson is now the margin for error is essentially zero. We need to finish 10-6 to have a good chance at locking up a first round ACC bye, and with road games at FSU and Wake Forest (two bad matchups for Clemson) looming, we really have to win the other four games. The good news is we will be solid favorites in the other four games, the bad news is we will have short rest from here on out. The reality is we may need to steal one from FSU or WF to get to 10-6.

VIRGINIA PREVIEW

(02/09, 1:00pm, Charlottesville)

Virginia is unique in the ACC for its balanced mediocrity. Most teams have something to point to as being above average, even lowly Georgia Tech can point to a pretty decent defense. Right now Virginia is looking toward the future hoping that their young players have enough upside to get the team back into ACC contention. I don't usually buy the lack of experience argument, I tend to think raw talent and good coaching are a lot more important than experience. Even so, I have to admit ranking 319 of 344 in division I average player experience has to be a disadvantage, particularly in this conference.

On offense, Virginia does a reasonable job of avoiding turnovers and also crashes the offensive boards well. But this last stat can be misleading, if you are terrible at shooting the ball (effective field goal percentage rank in division 1: 294th), you naturally have more opportunities to snag an offensive board, thus inflating your offensive rebound percentage; calculated by the simple formula: OR%=(OR/(OR+DR)), where OR is number of offensive rebounds and DR is number of defensive rebounds. (Conversely, a team that shoots the ball extremely well will have less opportunities for offensive rebounds, a couple of poster teams over the last couple of years would be BYU and Arizona State). There is probably a way to adjust for this by considering the total shot differential between teams in a game, but this would have to be adjusted for rate of three point shooting, etc. and gets complicated fast. I haven't seen anyone making this kind of adjustment, at least not for college stats. My guess is it would result in only a small adjustment for a handful of teams, but Virginia very well could be affected.

One player to look out for on offense is freshman Sylven Landesberg, who is making a bid to replace Tyler Hansborough next year as the human ACC foul-drawing machine. He also hits his free throws at about an 85% clip, a big part of the team 74.4% mark.

At any rate, none of this compensates for Virginia's abysmal field goal percentage. And go ahead and cue the tape again--its going to be another Sykes/Booker/Grant blockfest: Virginia ranks 312 in the country in percentage of shots that get blocked.

On defense, Virginia is hovering around division I average in just about any stat category you can come up with (good for third-worst overall in the ACC). They are pretty bad at forcing steals and otherwise inducing turnovers, making Demontez Stitt quite happy, I'm sure.

Any areas of concern for Clemson? Well, Virginia is effectively pretty tall (34th in the nation), and we've noted Clemson's difficulties with tall teams. However, its important to realize there are two factors in Clemson's matchup of doom equation--effective height and good defense. Let's not forget, NC State is an extremely tall team, but they don't put it too much use on the defensive end, and Clemson handled them quite well.

Really, there is no reason for Clemson to lose this game. If Virginia completely reinvents itself with a renewed focus on defense and manages to...okay I'll stop. There's no reason** for Clemson to lose this game.



(**Unless, of course, the basketball lords of improbable statistical occurrence conspire to make our lives miserable by causing every call, every bounce to go the other way. But this is always possible in basketball no matter the opponent, remember Gardner-Webb beating Kentucky last year, or Harvard beating Boston College this year?)