NORTHWESTERN COMMAND – In case you’ve been abroad for the last four months or so and been without your smart phone, it’s been a fortuitous offseason for Clemson.
Chad Morris did not leave the Anderson Regional Airport on a plane with the Texas Tech AD. That was big for Dabo Swinney.
Tajh Boyd fought the urge to turn pro after torching LSU even though Russell Wilson was proving QBs other than Drew Brees can succeed in the NFL when measured at south of 72 inches.
And it got better today.
COLUMBIA – To add a salt-and-lime juice mixture to the fresh wound that was a third straight regular-season series loss to South Carolina, the hurt that is Clemson’s 8-20 mark against the Gamecocks since 2007, a few rowdy South Carolina fans hung around to heckle Clemson and Jack Leggett as the Tigers conducted their postgame meeting just outside the third-base dugout at Carolina Stadium on Sunday. South Carolina fans let the Tigers know the recent history of the rivalry. Some voices were hoarse from screaming.
I’m guessing Leggett isn’t a prime candidate to become mayor in Columbia.
Some Twitter followers also wondered if Leggett might soon be hearing it from Clemson fans at Doug Kingsmore. Frustration is bubbling and it’s only magnified by South Carolina’s success on the CWS stage and its gem of a stadium.
CLEMSON – The Clemson-South Carolina baseball series is one of the more intense and underrated college rivalries in any sport. The series is so big Bill Murray showed up and briefly walked in the pressbox during the Game 1 of the series last year (Marzilli’s diving catch sealed that game). There’s a lot of passion, a lot of great players and teams to have played in this rivalry, and it renews at 6:30 tonight in Clemson.
The passion has given us classic moments like Ray Tanner’s bat-gate rant of 2011 (See the 3:31 mark where your’s truly sets the spark)
CLEMSON – As I wrote today in the Post & Courier, the game of college basketball is screeching to halt. A decade ago, in the 2002-03, season 135 Division I teams averaged at least 70 possessions per game. This season, 58 teams are averaging at least 70 possessions per game.
We’ve often seen a coach extend his arms with palms facing toward the court communicating to his players, non-verbally, to slow it down.
Why?
NORTHWESTERN COMMAND – In working on a story for tomorrow’s Post & Courier on college baseball’s facilities arms race, I surprised at what a relative value baseball facilities are compared to basketball arenas. I suppose 700-ton roofs are expensive.
I found the construction costs of new baseball parks in South Carolina interesting:
*The Myrtle Beach Pelicans’ park cost $12 million in 1999
*Flour Field was built in Greenville in 2006 for $15 million
