Posted by Willy Mac

Ahh, the first Clemson basketball post on DFIG. Expect many more of these as the season goes on. At the first sign of a downfall (probably in middle or late February), expect to see me jump off the bandwagon and do a barrel roll so as to avoid being skinned up too badly by the untamed earth. Until then, enjoy.

Last night, Clemson didn’t let the ACC down in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge by crushing Minnesota’s bones and making eggnog out of their innards beating them by a score of 90 – 68. This bumps our squad up to an 8-0 record for the year and another great start to the season. Let’s just hope James Mays can stay in school and OP can keep it together.

An impressive bullet point in the game was that our bench outscored their bench 40 – 5. Another very impressive note is that K.C. Rivers came off the bench and rattled off 22 points draining five shots from beyond the arc and going a prefect 5-5 in free throws. I’m so glad that K.C. is showing signs of life and I hope he keeps it up when we go into conference play. The sophomore is really starting to stand out and could help fill the gap and step up next year to take the place of Vernon Hamilton.

K.C. Rivers… Mere mortal or 3-point machine???

Something the Tiger’s do need to step up is the field goal percentage. Last night we only had 46.5% shooting from the field. Our free throw percentage did seem to be improved at 66.7% but both of those numbers are terrible if we want to have a good season in conference this year. To counter this point, the Tigers created 24… yes, count em again… 24 turnovers. I don’t know if that’s just our awesome defense or Minnesota’s terrible offense. It’s still early though and pending we don’t lose to South Carolina or a very good Wofford team, we could hope to be the proud owners of a perfect record going into conference play.

The next game on the schedule is at South Carolina this Sunday at 1pm EST which you should be able to catch on FSN. After that we have Wofford at home next Tuesday at 7:30pm EST. If you’re in the area, you should try and catch it seeing as our home attendance this year in basketball is comparable to that of attendance at a Wake Forest… or even worse… Duke football game.

Let’s just hope for once we don’t get out hopes up. A friend on The Rant (whose handle happens to be “PissedOffMoFo”) told me “Dan Scott will tell us that Clemson’s basketball team is poised to do something special this season. And when they trip and fall, we’ll be told that our expectations are too high and how dare anyone expect a team to win.” My response to this: “EXACTLY. F*ck the homers and f*ck Dan Scott and his big ol’ cheeseburger belly. He’s too fat to even be on radio… which is sad. His show gets interupted by his throat fat putting a slow strangle-hold on his trachea causing him to breathe every so heavily.”

“This is Dan Scott…. *gaaaasp* And you’re listening to… *gasp* Cruise Control here on the Drive… *gaasp* *gulp* *lick* 104.9…. (Takes a large bite out of double quarter pounder.”

To get that mental image of Dan Scott’s morbidly obese, tomato shaped body out of your head, I would like to state that I am very appreciative that the Rally Cats decided to go with a cowgirl theme at the Appalachian State game last week.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it many more times to come… Thank god for Rally Cats.

Posted by Block-C Staff

From the Charleston Post & Courier today,

“The Gator Bowl has agreed to select Georgia Tech over Clemson if the Yellow Jackets lose Saturday’s Atlantic Coast Conference title game in Jacksonville, Fla.Mike Hartley, chairman of the Gator Bowl’s selection committee, said the bowl and the ACC have resolved a dispute over contrasting interpretations of a new “one-loss rule” the conference applies to its bowl-selection process.

The rule would bar the Gator from taking Clemson (8-4, 5-3) over Georgia Tech (9-3, 7-1) because the Yellow Jackets have two more ACC wins. The Gator Bowl Association strongly sought an exemption to the rule because it didn’t want the loser of the ACC title game to end up back at Alltel Stadium for the Jan. 1 bowl.”

Earlier this week it looked as if Clemson to the Gator Bowl to possibly play Texas or West Virginia was nearly a done deal. The Gator didn’t want Tech because their fans don’t travel well, especially if they’ve just been to the stadium a month before for the ACCCG. The ACC has come to an agreement with the Gator that they will buy any unsold tickets from Georgia Tech’s allotment if Tech loses the ACCCG and misses out an Orange Bowl bid. This leaves Clemson fans having to root for Tech versus the Deacs on Saturday. I’m a big fan of Jim Grobe. The guy is a class act and I was one of the few people on Tigernet picking them to do well this year (I said 2nd in the division, sue me.). It sucks to root for the Jackets, but the alternative is to have Clemson go back to the Champs Sports Bowl, to the Music City Bowl, or to the Car Care bowl.

Before the rabid fans start spouting off about the ACC conspiring to screw Clemson over, stop and look at the facts. A league must protects its members, and if you’re a Georgia Tech administrator and you hear this talk about the Gator dropping you from a bowl you are contractually obligated to be in, you are sure as hell going to turn to the league directors for help. Clearly an agreement was reached to keep an ACC team in the Gator Bowl, and we know that the league has crappy enough bowl tie-ins as it is and can’t afford poor relations with another one. At 8-4, I don’t think Clemson deserves a shot at the Gator, but dread the thought of watching a matchup with Navy in the Meineke Car Care Bowl.

So Clemson fans, break out your pocket protectors and English-Gujarati phrasebook to converse with your fellow Jacket fans and root for the Engineers on Saturday. If you need a ticket to the game, there’s a guy outside Alltel Stadium wearing a ACC Commish jacket and sporting a Lego man haircut who’s got some tickets he needs to unload.

Posted by Chili

When I took over a certain student organization at Clemson, a good friend of mine gave me an important book. Good to Great by Jim Collins is an important analysis of what makes great companies excel and why some companies never reach the top of the mountain. The business principals exuded in the book can be applied to anything; a small company, a university club, a fraternity or sorority, even a football team. While some Clemson fans take a fascist view of fandom, “Real fans don’t question their coaches,” as one of the faithful stated, others are openly questioning Bowden’s ability to lead Clemson to an ACC title and beyond. While the primary question is clearly Bowden’s leadership aptitude, some fans would like to instead question one’s qualifications for even beginning to ponder the coaching ability of Tommy Bowden.

Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living,” and I think this goes not just for introspection but for honest questioning of authority and political dissent. Simply stated, you and I have the right to question our coaches for the same reasons we should question our government: they ultimately rely on our financial support, if left unchecked they’ll ultimately become corrupt, and it’s just our goddamned God-given right. I don’t have to be a politician to know our politicians are f*cking up and I don’t have to be a coach to know our coaches are f*cking up all the same.

Now that I’ve dispelled the absolutely ignorant notion that “real fans” shouldn’t question their coaches, let’s take a structured look at Bowden and staff and how they stack up using Jim Collins’s Good to Great diagnostic tool. Collins states that building a great organization is a process of four stages consisting of two principles each.

Stage 1: Disciplined People

Level 5 Leadership: Collins states that a Level 5 Leader is “ambitious, foremost for the cause, displaying a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will”

Tommy: At the start of his Clemson campaign, Tommy was known for his ambition, certainly not his humility. While I don’t feel a coach needs to necessarily be humble to succeed (See: Spurrier, Steven Orr), and that any lack of humility should be earned through championships, I’d like to see a coach not have to be humbled by nearly being fired for ineptitude like Tommy was in 2003. I can’t say for sure whether Tommy has the professional will to reach greatness, he has stated more than once that he wants to be out of coaching at 60, and at the pace he’s going we’ll have just enough facilities to satisfy him by the time he retires.

First Who… Then What: Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off, the right people in the right seats, and only then do you figure out where the hell the bus is going.

Tommy: Rich Rodriguez was the right guy, but we couldn’t help but lose him to his alma mater, that’s understandable. Tommy has shuffled through numerous OCs and DCs in his tenure. While I feel Koening is the right guy in the right seat, I think Spence is best getting the Rosa Parks treatment or getting the f*ck off the bus altogether. Currently we have no special teams coach, and considering 2 out of our 4 losses this season can be attributed at least partially to special teams woes, I’d say this is a poor example of personnel management. That’s one big seat that’s sitting empty. I’d also like to see better development of our quarterbacks after the Proctor conundrum. Sure Korn is the second coming, but he’ll still need to hone his skills.

Stage 2: Disciplined Thought

Confront The Brutal Facts: “Retain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties” and “confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Tommy: Tommy confronted his current reality and demanded, and got, top notch facilities. He claimed that we couldn’t recruit with the big boys without them. Recent recruiting classes have proven him right in most people’s opinion. I think he’s done well in this facet of leadership, but at the same time how one frames the brutal facts of one’s current reality is important too. This edges into excuse-making territory. All week prior to the USC loss this year we heard sound bites about how our 66% winning percentage versus our rival was bound to begin to even out sometime. True or not, that’s not what a coach needs to be saying prior to a matchup with a big rival. Also, nobody wants to hear the word ‘parity’ thrown around by Bowden as an excuse for losing anymore.

The Hedgehog Concept: “the Hedgehog Concept is an operating model that reflects understanding of three intersecting circles: what you can be the best in the world at, what you are deeply passionate about, and what best drives your economic resource engine.”

Tommy: Without a doubt, winning is what best drives his “economic resource engine.” While maybe he is in the business because he got help from daddy, I’d like to think he has a deep passion for coaching. Clearly he can’t and won’t be best in the world at it. Here we encounter a problem. His best, which to this point has been 8ish wins a season, may just not be good enough.

Stage 3: Disciplined Action

Culture Of Discipline: Described as “disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and take disciplined action,” an environment where people don’t have jobs; they have responsibilities.

Tommy: Who has the responsibility for special teams? Who is the dedicated QB coach? Wouldn’t halftime adjustments, clock management, and playcalling fall under disciplined actions? Clemson definitely needs a lot of work here.

The Flywheel: There’s no magic bullet to success, no one act to achieve greatness, instead Collins likens the pursuit more to “relentlessly pushing a giant heavy flywheel in one direction” until it finally moves the way you want it.

Tommy: Facilities, recruiting, and winning are the big building blocks to success here. Two are taken care of, and with 8 wins a pop, the flywheel is ever so slowly creaking along. More wins will get it really rolling.

Stage 4: Building Greatness To Last

Clock Building, Not Time Telling: Build an organization to last through future leaders instead of building it all around oneself.

Tommy: Having not exactly reached “greatness,” I don’t feel that this one applies. Also it is a rare occasion that a coach sets up a program to be successful under a series of successors. Building greatness around a single coach is the name of the game.

Preserve The Core And Stimulate Progress: Preserve the barrier between “what we stand for” (which should never change) and “how we do things” (which should never stop changing).

Tommy: I think we know what he stands for: a fairly solid program with competitive facilities that graduates players and recruits kids who generally keep out of trouble. I’d like to see the bar for “what we stand for” set a little higher, i.e. competing for the ACC title yearly. Once Tommy figures out how to do that we can assess whether the ways we achieve that need tweaking.

Summary: Core deficiencies in personnel create a rotten foundation for disciplined thought and action. There’s no one stage where Bowden has excelled. Much like his record, he’s proven to be just above average in what it takes to go from good to great. Next season, I feel, is his make-or-break year. 10 wins or bust, Tommy, no more excuses. The facilities are here, the recruits are here, now the coaching needs to step up and match pace.

Posted by Willy Mac

Chili has officially pulled away. What is interesting is that the fight for the rest of the field has gotten interesting seeing as Lola is letting herself go. Can she hold on??? The season is 14 weeks, not just 12 and a half.

Last Week’s Results
South Carolina @ #24 Clemson – South Carolina
#16 Georgia Tech @ Georgia – Georgia
#4 Florida @ Florida State – Florida
#6 Notre Dame @ #3 The REAL USC – USC
#20 Wake Forest @ Maryland – Wake Forest
North Carolina @ Duke – North Carolina
Texas A&M @ #11 Texas (Friday @ Noon, ABC) – Texas A&M
#9 LSU @ #5 Arkansas (Friday @ 2:30, CBS) – LSU
#18 Boston College @ Miami (Thursday @ 7:30, ESPN) – Miami
DIV 1-AA: Furman @ Montana State (Sunday) – Montana State

On the week
1 Brad -3
T2 Chili -4
T2 NoleCC -4
4 Willy Mac -5
T5 Sambo -6
T5 Fishtacos -6
7 Lola -7

Overall
1 Chili -33
2 Lola -45
3 Brad -47
4 Willy Mac -49

Prepping for next year
1 NoleCC – Looks to be a formidable opponent for next year.
T2 Fishtacos – Rough week.
T2 Sambo – Rough week as well.
4 Uttles – Where on earth have you been???

This weeks games are as follows
Army @ Navy
#13 Rutgers @ #15 West Virginia
#8 Arkansas vs. #4 Florida (SEC Title)
#16 Wake Forest vs. #23 Georgia Tech (ACC Title)
#19 Nebraska vs. #8 Oklahoma (Big 12 Title)
#2 USC @ UCLA
Oregon State @ #24 Hawaii
Conneticut @ #6 Louisville
Stanford @ # 21 California
Div 1-AA: Montana State @ Appalachian State

Get your picks in by noon (EST) on Saturday.

Chili’s Picks:
Navy
WVU
Florida
WF
OU
USC
Hawaii
Louisville
Cal
App State

Willy Mac’s Picks
Army @ Navy – Navy
#13 Rutgers @ #15 West Virginia – West Virginia
#8 Arkansas vs. #4 Florida (SEC Title) – Arkansas
#16 Wake Forest vs. #23 Georgia Tech (ACC Title) – Wake Forest
#19 Nebraska vs. #8 Oklahoma (Big 12 Title) – Oklahoma
#2 USC @ UCLA – USC
Oregon State @ #24 Hawaii – Oregon
Conneticut @ #6 Louisville – Louisville
Stanford @ # 21 California – California
Div 1-AA: Montana State @ Appalachian State – App State

Posted by Chili

I’m not surprised by the outcome of Saturday’s game, but I am incredibly disappointed. Fire Bowden? Keep Bowden? Personnel changes? It was clear from the game that, while SC has formidable talent, we have more. We got outcoached and it wouldn’t have taken a great coach to coach over the heads of our staff, but Sakerlina just happened to have one. (Not to mention a couple of flubbed calls that would’ve given Clemson the ball. Twice.)
I don’t have a lot of commentary on the game right now, so maybe the faithful readers can add some of their own. Leave your thoughts in the comments section of this post and I’ll put them on the front page. For now, here’s a writeup from that fishwrap The State.