07 February 2008

THURSDAY NEWS AND VIRGINIA PREVIEW

NEWS


- The spring game for football has been tentatively set for April 12th. Wonder how Willy Korn's "shoulder injury" is healing up?

- The baseball season is set to begin on February 22nd at home with a weekend series against Mercer in Doug Kingsmore. 4PM Friday, 2 PM Saturday, and 1PM Sunday. Check out the remainder of the schedule here.

- The basketball team destroyed Boston College last Saturday, 78-56. Five Tigers scored in double figures and saw a strong defensive performance from Clemson's younger players including Terrence Oglesby, David Potter, and Raymond Sykes. Last year there were times that I worried we made a mistake recruiting the latter two but they have really turned it around. The stat column didn't show it for that game but they played with a lot of emotion and intensity. Box Score.

- CJ Spiller posted a national best time of 6.58 in the 60 m dash last Saturday at the Carolina Classic. He also beat out a few professional times in the 60m and it's the schools fourth fastest time for the 60m.

- Cliff Hammonds was named to the ESPN All-District Team. He is a senior with a 3.2 GPA. Impressive, but what's even more impressive is that he's a double major in architecture and psychology. Congratulations Cliff. But seriously, the only career I could see a former college athlete with superb grades and those two majors winding up as would be a Ghostbuster.

- The State has an interesting article about Clemson's recruiting of Jamie Harper and how the high school star almost changed his mind.

PREVIEW

Clemson (16-5, 4-3 ACC) @ Virginia (11-9, 1-6 ACC). Thursday, February 7th, 7:00 PM, ESPN2 HD, XM Radio Channel 190, WCCPFM 104.9 in the upstate (Live feed).


Line:
Clemson -3


The more you know: Clemson is 63.5% as a team on the year for free throws, but have gone 24/30 in the past two games. The Tigers also lost to UVA last year in Littlejohn in terrible fashion. Shitting the bed in the final minutes of the game, they allowed the Cavaliers to score 15 unanswered points and beat them.

Our take:

Willy Mac: At first glance I thought that this could be a great opportunity for a hiccup game but UVA really has been that bad this year. Granted that they've nearly beaten some good teams in the final seconds, they've also lost to some decent at best teams like Seton Hall and absolutely go pounded by Xavier. I think if we play smart and just make some of our free throws we should be fine and come away with a win. Considering injuries and players being banged up, we're playing some really good ball right now sub the loss to Miami. I just hope the refs actually call a clean game and not one like they did against Boston College and Wake Forest with all the holding and arm push-offs.

OP is tired of the no-calls for holding as mentioned briefly Monday night in his show.

Chili: Forthcoming.