Although the wheels nearly fell off the bus in the final few seconds, the basketball team was able to swallow down what would have been a huge choke and beat a very skilled and scrappy Air Force team. “We’re just trying to drive ESPN’s ratings up,” Purnell joked afterwards. I believe that our boys showed more heart and desire to win a game last night since losing to Duke in Cameron earlier this year. O.P. commented, “All of our guys made big plays down the stretch to hold them off…I thought we really showed some mental toughness and the desire to win this thing.” What really made me beam was that we actually had some smart fouls and weren’t afraid to be rough when Air Force tried to stick us with picks and double screens. The refs did let a lot of things fly, mainly the elbows we were throwing and the moving picks that Tim Anderson kept making, although to give him credit, he did a great job getting away with them.

K.C. Rivers tallied 19 points including a few very clutch free throws in the final minutes to keep the Tigers in a comfortable lead. He also shot the three like we were used to seeing him shoot it. Trevor Booker also added 13 points, but wasn’t as impressive as he usually was, but did show tremendous power inside and made some great passes. I was disappointed when he turned the ball over after accidentally breaking a piece of his elbow off into Nick Welch’s face. Cliff Hammonds and his funky “elbow sticks out like a turd in a punch bowl” shot racked up 11 points and made some lights out threes along with Rivers. Although he did terrible with his free throw attempts, Vernon Hamilton played all out and gave a very good effort for our team. James Mays continues to play like he’s in a church league and we definitely don’t need that in Madison Square Garden.

I didn’t like the announcers one bit. First of all, they did the ol’ “Clemzin” thing again. Secondly, one of the announcers couldn’t pronounce a “-ice” or “s” sound without it sounding like “-sh”. I know that’s trivial, but it really got annoying after the first hour. Lastly, it was damn obvious who they wanted to win. That was definitely not Clemson. Ok, yeah, they did the cutesy steal the towel boys mop and help wipe up thing, and the obligatory senior player breaks his face in what could be his last game as a collegiate player and makes a “heroic” comeback, but c’mon. Their acting performance throughout the entire game was impeccable. Especially during the last few minutes when Vernon Hamilton was just posting up and barely touched Matt McCraw and the guy did a somersault on his own then got up as if Vernon had just clotheslined him Hulk Hogan style. I know it’s great that they’re in a service academy and I respect them for making the decision to commit part of their time after college graduation to serving our country, but I don’t need to hear about it through the entire game. And I don’t appreciate the fact that the announcers kinda made the Tigers out to be the bad guys of the game.

The last thing I’d like to touch on is that Oliver Purnell has had trouble controlling game tempo and calling time outs at appropriate times all season and he finally pegged it in this game. Not only did we control the tempo for the majority of the game, but I believe we led the entire time if memory serves me correctly, even having our lead extended to 13 in the second half.

I would like to congratulate Air Force coach Jeff Bzdelik (had to check it like six times) for three things. First, for having an impossible last name. Secondly, for looking like a human genome experiment between Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney. And lastly, for turning around what has to have been one of the worst basketball programs in the NCAA for the past two or three decades.

Our guys will face West Virginia this Thursday at 7pm. Let’s just hope we can show up for just one more game and once again solidify that the State of South Carolina is the home of average basketball (excluding Winthrop).

Dumb Shit on TigerNet: Volume 15

Lack of dumb posts is certainly not the reason for the length of time it’s taken me to gather my latest batch of duds from TigerNet. The delay has more to do with just how exhausting it is to peruse the site sometimes, the fact that I don’t want to run the bit into the ground (maybe too late), and hell, I just didn’t feel like it.

The morning of the ACC tourney opened with such hope. The cadence count on TigerNet, as I’ve said before, is just the dumbest, most jingoistic, hacky, pointwhorish thing you can do. At least sometimes they are aborted like this one.

Clemson was pretty much jobbed at the end of the FSU game, about everyone agrees on that.

Did you think that was going to be funny? Do all the guys at the truck stop guffaw at old lines like that? Spit their biscuits and gravy up? Drop their meth spoons and shit their Dickies?

It was so hilarious the first time; why not roll it out again?

JCarsonCUTigers just ripped off your witty and original line.

Apparently the Reverend Al Sharpton posts under the handle 629tiger.

This guy doesn’t believe in an ACC conspiracy… oh wait, he does, he’s just thinks it’s even craftier than the most nutjob of Loose Change fans on TigerNet.

Sometimes you see a post so incoherent and rambling that you just sort of stare at the screen with your mouth hanging open. This is one of those.

The anger starts to set in from the FSU loss. Clemson fans, as all fans do, get creative with their denigration of the officials.

Here’s another buttfucking-centric post.

Ass all over the place.

Of course you can always go over their head and blame the entire National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Or you can be a complete dumbfuck and go and shit on a player who has done nothing but give four years of his life to your sports team. I’m not saying you can’t criticize the players (see Proctor, Will) but take it easy.

I don’t even know if this guy is mad. Maybe he just knows that caps lock is cruise control for cool.

A Sakerlina fan attempts to show solidarity with the dumber of our fans. Should we really flee from our conference because we can’t make the NCAA Tournament like they did 30+ years ago? Don’t be a dope.

Maybe a little odd, but I pretty much agree with both sentiments.

At least this guy is honest. I saw posts from this same guy saying he didn’t think McRoberts would be drafted at all (he’ll go late first round, but if you don’t think he’s going to be drafted at all you really don’t know basketball from a fuckin hole in the ground) and another post amazed that the clock doesn’t start on an inbound pass until someone inbounds touches the ball… durrrr…

Hey, let’s run a metaphor into the ground.

I AM SUPERFAN. DARE YOU CHALLENGE MY SUPREMACY? Baseball fan? Shit. I sleep in the batting cages. I get high off the smell of pine tar. I once made love to a catcher’s mitt. Not a metaphor. An actual catcher’s mitt. Dude was pissed. It was the middle of a game. Seriously. Fan? Gimmie a break.

I am shocked – SHOCKED – that a Division 1 football program would dare recruit a player of ill repute just because he held great athletic prowess!

Perhaps not proof that ‘recruiting gurus’ are retards, but definitely proof that they have poor grammar. Oh, nevermind, he’s just a UGA fan. It’s pretty admirable for a leghumper, actually.

News

Clemson defeated Syracuse 74-70, sending the Tigers to NYC to play in Madison Square Garden and assuring a Palmetto state team reaches the NIT Final Four three years in a row. Littlejohn was home to a raucous crowd of 10,000, a fantastic attendance number for a game played during Spring Break. Congrats Tiger Basketball team.

Tubby Smith left the University of Kentucky today to dart off to Minnesota. Tubby had four years left on his contract, and coached for 10 solid years, though he never echoed the success he had in winning the NCAA tourney in 1998 with Rick Pitino’s players. I don’t know who UK will go after next, but it is a huge job sure to attract top coaches who don’t mind rabid Kentucky mountain men breathing down their neck. I’ve heard Wildcat fans mention greasers Pitino and Donovan, along with bagman Thad Matta.

Josh McRoberts announced today that he’ll enter the NBA Draft. His stock has dropped since last year when he was projected as a lottery pick. This year he’ll be late first round, early second round material and will go the way of Duke early defectors like William Avery and Shavlik Randolph. NBADraft.net projects him 18th to the 76ers, which would make sense since fellow Dukie Billy King is GM over dere and they took a chance on another lanky white Devil; Shav.

UNC’s Butch Davis is undergoing chemotherapy for a growth discovered on his gums. Here’s to a speedy recovery.

Recommendations

It’s just me this week, and I’ll focus on some of my favorite websites not involving hardcore pornography.

ACC Basketblog - This blog covers, as impartially as possible, the world of ACC basketball. They do a great job spreading info out on every team in the league and do cover other sports during their respective seasons. The comments section gets as lively as any blog I’ve seen, and most commenters know their stuff, except for some random WVU mouthbreather who’s attached himself to the site. If you want the lowdown on the best league in basketball, check these guys out.

The Rant - Sports & other stuff, uncensored. I love this place even though it is populated largely by UGA fans. There are boards for most D1 teams, your standard non-sports boards, eyecandy boards, and games to bet on each week with virtual cash. Not to mention dozens of fun flash games. It’s a tremendous alternative to Tigernet, CUTigers.com, or any other board policed by those who take themselves way to seriously. It’s sort of Willy Mac’s and my postgame hangout. Please, fellow Clemson fans, join up, even the numbers against the leg humpers.

Okay, now for some non-sports sites.

EZTV - This is the torrent site for television shows. Shows are posted immediately after airing and sometimes earlier, and you usually get a choice of HD or SD flavors. Pick up some episodes of Rome if you don’t get HBO (if you did, you’d watch it, right??), or The Riches, a show about Irish Travelers those of us who’ve been through the North Augusta area are familiar with starring witty cross dresser Eddie Izzard. If you download a reality show I won’t be your friend.

Hacking NetFlix - I like NetFlix, but this guy loves it. He’ll clean out your ears with his NetFlix queue tips. (sorry) Enough to write a whole blog about the site itself, the company’s policies on everything from vacations to damaged discs, and of course the heated battle between NetFlix and the evil Blockbuster empire. This site introduced me to FlixQueue, a program for managing your NetFlix queue from your desktop that is far more convenient than using the site itself.

Engadget - I love gadgets and this site is the source for all the latest gear news. With the consumer electronics show CeBIT going on now in Germany, this is the first place to find out about the new bone-conducting phone/PDA/MP3 player you’ve gotta have.

That’s all I’ve got for this week.