On the heels of another riveting week of final exams (my first with both feet in the real world), here is the latest edition of the Five for Friday:
1. I’m a fan of this kind of baseball series coming out of the long exam layoff. This time has been spent a number of different ways in years past, but this may be my favorite.
Recently, the series have ranged from intriguing non-league opponents like Florida Gulf Coast (Chris Sale, anyone?) to key conference foes like Georgia Tech. But splitting the weekend between two teams seems like a good move.
The Tigers will play back-to-back games against James Madison on Friday and Saturday, then they will do the same against UNLV on Sunday in Greenville and back at home on Monday. The Dukes and Rebels will play on Saturday afternoon at Doug Kingsmore Stadium, giving them each three-game series.
This is a good chance to keep opponents fresh, give multiple teams a chance to experience big-time college baseball, and also for Clemson to hedge its bets in terms of profile. The theory goes like this: The more different out-of-conference opponents you play, the more likely those teams are highly regarded in terms of RPI. It just so happens UNLV is a top-30 team, so the strategy seems to have worked well.
2. Clemson needs to rediscover its post-exam magic of years past. Recent Tiger squads have enjoyed dominant stretches of play in May, after exams have come and gone.
From 2009-2011, the Tigers were a combined 33-8 (.805) after finals week. That included a mark of 18-6 (.750) in ACC games and an 18-4 (.818) record in home games. No doubt those stretches helped those teams posture themselves in anticipation of postseason play.
But the last two seasons have been a different story. Clemson has gone a combined 15-8 (.652) overall, with a 5-7 (.417) record in conference play. The Tigers have been 12-3 at Doug Kingsmore Stadium but just 3-5 away from home.
For Jack Leggett’s team to ensure its status as an NCAA Tournament team, it will need to perform more like the first group of teams, not the second.
3. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the Tigers are simply looking to improve postseason seeding. No, as the above discussion implies, inclusion in the field of 64 isn’t a foregone conclusion.
There are 31 automatic bids being awarded this season to conference champions, leaving 33 unclaimed spots for at-large teams. We know RPI isn’t everything, but Clemson currently sits at 49th overall, according to WarrenNolan.com. Assuming the top team in every conference gets the automatic bid—a dangerous assumption, indeed—the Tigers are ranked 35th among at-large teams in RPI.
To classify Clemson as a bubble team would be the only way to do it at this point. After all, if the committee picked the field by RPI today, the Tigers would be at home.
A more realistic approach probably has Clemson as a three-seed in someone else’s regional and among the final teams selected. That doesn’t give the team much margin for error down the stretch, especially considering nine of its 12 opponents are ranked outside the top 150.
4. The Clemson hoops staff is hoping the long-term benefit of K.J. McDaniels’ departure outweighs the short-term detriment. In fact, McDaniels’ draft declaration might have validated a recruiting pitch the staff has been utilizing since last summer.
That was when McDaniels’ stock began to soar at a Nike camp hosted by Lebron James and Kevin Durant. Brad Brownell and his assistants began to pound the pavement, taking the word to recruits that Clemson had a pro prospect in tow.
It’s not hard to imagine such a pitch enticing a prospect like Donte Grantham to sign on the dotted line. For all the work that will need to be done to handle a major absence next season, when McDaniels is drafted in the first round of the NBA Draft in June, opponents will no longer be able to negatively recruit against Brownell and Clemson on those grounds.
In the future, the choice McDaniels made to forego his senior season should allow Brownell to be able to walk into the living rooms of higher-level prospects. That could mean McDaniels is doing the program a service by leaping to the NBA.
5. The addition of a new quarterback this week serves only to alleviate depth concerns, nothing more. Much speculation always surrounds randomly-timed additions to any program, so David Olson’s transfer from Stanford has predictably provoked questions about the current standing of Clemson’s quarterback position.
Simply put, there is no change. Unless Olson comes in and picks up Chad Morris’ offense ridiculously quickly, he will likely sit no higher than third on the depth chart when the season opens at Georgia on August 30.
But his appearance on Clemson’s campus might allow Dabo Swinney and Morris to sleep a little easier knowing there is another safety valve in case catastrophe strikes Cole Stoudt or Deshaun Watson.
God Bless!
WQ