Due to our head coach having family things to attend to, I was given the task of coaching our team. It was a great opportunity. I had some head coaching experience, but that was at the JV high school level. At that level, all I did was have two set plays and make sure the guys played hard and gave great effort on defense. That was good enough to go 30-1 over two years. I bring up that record just to bring attention to a very funny story. In my first year I was 14 or 15 and 0 and with only 19 games in the season and no post season. Of course, the goal was to finish undefeated. Every game I had worn my Clemson ring and every game had ended with a victory. The morning of this 15th or 16th game I could not find my ring. It had disappeared. I had to give up the search so I wasn’t late for school. I called my sister to continue the search and she could not find it.
We wound up losing our first game of the year. In an unrelated topic it was the only game I have ever coached with a female ref. Anyway, the ring was found the next day in my underwear drawer. Wore it for our last five or six wins and all the way through the next undefeated season. To review, coaching with the ring 30-0, without 0-1.
I, of course, wore the ring this weekend and sadly to say the ring is no longer undefeated. The ring actually took one on the chin the first night. Happily, this year’s team has taken my personality, due of course to recruiting and our focus in practice. Meaning we play very hard, we are fairly tough, and we get after people on defense. So we held a college basketball team to 63 points in a 40 minute game. Pathetically we still lost by 17. That is right. 46 points in a college basketball game. 17% from 3 and 55% from the FT line will usually mean defeat. At one point they went on an 8 to 0 run and since I hate using timeouts and want my team to play through tough times, especially early in the year, I had not called a timeout. Then another turnover happened and I was contemplating a timeout when I see a ref staring at me braced to call one. I’ve never seen a ref more sure a coach was about to call timeout. It was funny and sad at the same time. With that kind of peer pressure, I had to call one.
Maybe we played poorly because I had our team dressed in black since we were the first team listed on the schedule. The host coach says, “You are on the home bench.” I say, Huh?” Apparently on the sheet it said the home team was listed first. I say, “Who puts the home team first?” I’ve never heard of the home team first. Thankfully we didn’t leave the whites at the hotel room and changed real quick. I doubt this change in plans affected the team, but you always think about these things as a coach. If it did affect our team, they are way too mentally weak.
So we move on to the 2nd night. Walk into the gym and the team that beat us by 17 is now losing by 15. And the team beating them by 15 got beat by the team we are about to play by 40. If you do all that transitive math, we look like 72 point underdogs. Thankfully, our opponent does that same math in their heads and is completely not ready to play, because if they were, they are one of the best junior college teams in the southeast. In a game never separated by more than six points ends with a 65 to 63 loss. At one point I was warned by the refs and we then got three straight calls.
It was fun, but winning games at the college level is a good bit tougher than JV. Duh!! In JV, we just wore the other team down with our press and eventually shot layups off of turnovers. In college you have to make some jump shots. Which we did not do the first night and did do the second night. As usual most games come down to who hits shots.
Tangent 1
Oh yeah, there is a Clemson game this weekend. No need for a whole lot of analysis. Clemson has more speed and talent. They are at home and 16 point favorites. None of this matters if they turn the ball over or their defense continues to play undisciplined. That said, I think the Tigers spent the last two weeks pissed off and focused on improving and getting healthy. A healthy Andre Ellington means a better rusher, a hopefully non-fumbler, and much better blitz pick up. Not that I am ever close to right but here goes.
Clemson 41 Wake 23
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