sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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Flew into Charlotte Friday afternoon via NYC. No problems. Drove from there to Greenville, which is about 90 minutes from Charlotte. Had dinner at a cool restaurant called Bacon Brothers, which as you might guess is a place that is all about the pig. They also focus heavily on locally grown vegetables. Nice place with good food. If you like bacon, you will be happy here. They even put a strip of bacon into their bloody Marys.
In the morning, took some time to explore Greenville. It is a cool city. Lots of construction and development going on here. They have done a great job addressing blighted areas, building new buildings that fit in with the local small town, mostly brick, quite quaint architecture. Really like their Main Street area, which really is the Main Street of their downtown area. They have a lot of trees and shrubs even on Main Street, lots of nice little shops and restaurants, lots of foot traffic and activity. Lots of apartments and condos on the second floors of these buildings , which I am told are very popular among young people (not unlike Syracuse). This extends for many blocks surrounding the main drag, including a nice park with a scenic bridge overlooking a waterfall. Really impressive job of developing and retaining the central business area here. Syracuse has done some good things but could learn from some of the things going on here.
My group had breakfast at a restaurant downtown called the Tupelo Honey Cafe. Nice place, part of a smallish chain, good food. I am told the bloody marys are top notch here. Again, you can get one with a crisp strip of bacon in it. Solid.
Headed over to Clemson late in the morning. It is a short drive from Greenvillle...perhaps 50 minutes. Lots of lots of cars on the road flying Clemson flags. A number of the cars had a tiger tail sticking out of the trunk. Maybe I am mistaken on this but I would think having a tiger tail sticking out of your trunk implies that you don't like tigers and are openly showing your disdain for this fine animal by attempting to suffocate one in your trunk. Besides depriving your tiger of air, light and subjecting it to dangerous heat, you add insult to injury by slamming the door on it's tail.
I am not sure what to make of this. Is the Clemson tiger a kinky animal into S&M? Are these Clemson fans really Gamecock fans attempting to kill the Clemson Tigers in plain view of the enemy, acting as Clemson fans in a sick, double agent-like maneuver? Born and raised in the North, this behavior, along with grits, are mysteries I cannot pretend to know the answers to.
Once we got within about 10 miles of Clemson, everything became covered with a tiger paw print. Store fronts, cars, people, dogs, even the roads. You name it, there was at least one paw print on it. Thought the town was pretty nice. Not a lot going on, definitely a small town USA feel to it, with the strongest attachment to a university I have ever seen.
We got to the church where the board tailgate was being held with no problem. Nice location. I believe we had over 100 people attend. Great job by John, Mrs Crusty, CuseJuicy, Mrs CuseJuicy, jjreddog (sorry) and his wife and a number of others I am forgetting. I believe the crew cooked food for at least 5 straight hours. A nice mix of food was available including hamburgers, Hofman hot dogs and coneys, Gianelli sausages, pulled pork sliders and kielbasa. Lots of desserts, chips, all kinds of beer and soda and MrsCrusty did a great job making custom made SyracuseFan.com name tags that made it much easier for people to get to know each other. As always, it was great told see so many old friends, and wonderful to meet a lot of people on the board, many of them lurkers, for the first time.
Went for a walk about halfway through the tailgate to see what the Clemson tailgating experience is all about. They have a commercial area not far from the stadium that is much like Marshall Street, except maybe a bit bigger, I believe it is called College Ave. Nice. Walked up to the Esso Club, which appears to be the very definition of a college dive bar. A band was playing live, and almost as if it were scripted, they were playing "Sweet Home Alabama", perhaps the ultimate Southern rock song.
I didn't get invited to eat at any of the tailgates, but was welcomed by a number of Clemson fans, and encountered none of the open hatred and jealousy Syracuse fans see when they travel to Rutgers and UConn. Some of the tailgating setups were quite extraordinary. But by far the biggest thing I was struck with were the sheer numbers of Clemson fans tailgating. It seemed like every inch of open space somewhat near the stadium was covered with Tiger canopies, with food cooking and more food laid out on tables. Props to Clemson fans...you have the best tailgating scene I have ever seen, and it isn't even very close.
We eventually returned to the tailgate and enjoyed the scene for a while longer before heading off to the stadium an hour and 55 minutes before kickoff. It was really crowded near the stadium and we had some problems finding the elusive gate 20, but we eventually found our way to our seats. Security was low level, I was not scanned at all...they only appeared to have interest in people bringing bags into the stadium. We were assigned your typical visitor seats, upper deck, way up high, in a corner near a goal line. Had it been a day game, we would have been sitting in the sun. The upper deck at Memorial Stadium is unusually steep and a couple of unnamed Syracuse fans came close to creating a human snow ball that would have squished many an unknowing Tiger fan in the lower deck. Perhaps a Clemson fan 'roofied' our keg? Just some idle speculation on my part.
16.
As the tuba guy, I am obligated to provide that information. The rest of the Tiger band was similarly large, and I want to give them credit for sounding very good, and marching nicely as well. They formed the word Tigers at some point and their Orange Girl was very good and used batons with fire on their ends. Very commendable.
The band played God Bless America, the NA and the Clemson alma mater before the game. In addition, in a most unexpected development, the entire stadium was asked to recite the Pledge of Alliegence. Haven't seen that before. I think the last time I did that was in fourth grade...
Spent a little time checking out the food choices. Keep in mind we Syracusefan.comers were in Bob Ueker-like seats way up top. It is highly possible there were better options lower. But up high, it was the typical generic fare; hot dogs, jumbo hot dogs, nachos, peanuts, popcorn, etc. Prices were pretty reasonable. The bathroom was pretty low brow; old, stained porcelain urine troughs and standard sinks with cold ones-have-to-push-down-to-work faucets. But they were functional.
They had a big replay scoreboard in one end zone but the resolution wasn't top notch. Not much use when the replays of the controversial plays were shown. They had another smaller one in a corner too; again, not much help, at least for me. We were so high and far away from the field that I had a hard time reading uniform numbers, even with Syracuse wearing the one uniform shirt (all white) that features easily readable numbers.
Thought the Clemson fans were pretty loud. I would rate them a tad behind the FSU fans and certainly behind Syracuse fans in terms of their ability to make noise, but their large numbers made them formidable none-the-less. They appear to be surprised and dismayed by the noise our section made, which was exactly the reaction I, for one, was hoping for.
Let's talk about the game.
Thought our defense had a good game plan. We were again most of the time willing to give Clemson all the bubble screens they cared to run, lots of zone, rarely blitzed, tried to take away routes down the field, and depended on the base defense to stop their rushing attack. This approach, while not particularly innovative, was successful for most of the game, with Clemson only able to run the ball or throw it downfield late in the game, when they were clearly gassed.
Props to pretty much everyone on the defensive unit, with special props to Brandon Reddish, Cam Lynch and Dy Davis. And the whole DL, which for the most part manhandled a suspect Clemson offensive line. Stoudt was confused, threw into heavy coverage a number of times, and looked awful most of the game. Their best play most of the game was to have the slow footed, awkward Stoudt run for his life on broken pass plays.
I think Eskridge is playing with a chronic separated shoulder and a bad leg. Raymon has some kind of recurring injury issue as well. Despite this, they both seem to be playing pretty well. Franklin continues to make plays when given a chance.
Thought special teams was okay. Our return teams are not good this season. Desir is going to fair catch just about anything he can get to and doesn't have the athletic ability to do much damage on the rare occasions when he does elect to attempt to return a punt. Phillips appears to always choose a path to the short side of the field that leads nowhere. We held on another KO return last night. I think we have done this at least once a game this year and we have done this more than once a couple of times. It is bad enough we can't get a sniff of daylight returning a KO, but how can we still hold so often anyway? It has come to a point where this has to be addressed.
Cole Murphy made his first 2, including a 50 harder to take the lead, but missed his last attempt, which for all intents and purposes ended the game. Thought his KOs were fine. Riley Dixon somehow had a solid game, as he was clearly suffering from some kind of a problem, limping off the field and getting worked on, flat on his back, as soon as he got off the field. Hope he is going to be okay the rest of the season.
That leaves the offense, which is hard to write about without getting really negative. Clemson has an exceptional pass rush and a couple of solid cornerbacks. They have been solid everywhere really, but to me, they get their turnovers getting opponents to pass the ball and going after the QB. I expected Lester would try and minimize the risk of turnovers and feature a conservative, run oriented attack, going north-south whenever possible, to minimize the substantial advantage the Tiger defense had on the SU offense. Given how badly Tyler Murphy had gashed Clemson running the ball last week, I expected Tim to give AJ some chances to run the ball as well.
He did give AJ a number of chances to use his speed and get yards but Long does not have the speed, strength or agility to be a weapon running the ball, not against a defense as fast and athletic as Clemson's, at least not at this stage in his career. I think a big reason we ran leas than I and probably Lester wanted was because Clemson stacked the box against us, daring us to pass the ball. We had some success throwing it on short, quick routes, but AJ had an awful day throwing the ball. Clemson kept their DEs really wide too, which had the effect of limiting AJ's ability to run roll out plays, forcing him to pass from the pocket, where his lack of height handicaps him and passes are often deflected at the LOS. It looks to me as though AJ has a harder time finding receivers from the pocket and the pass rush was stronger when AJ passed from the pocket as well.
Further complicating matters, the Tigers appeared to focus on taking away Long's preferred sideline routes as well...overplaying those so when Long went there, there was little chance of getting a completion. And of course, CU DC Venables blitzed AJ a lot, in a variety of ways, and AJ regularly panicked and did something bad.
In short, Clemson took away Long's strengths, forced the SU offense to do things they were not comfortable doing, jumped short dump off routes, and out coached the SU staff. To be fair, Lester made some good calls and put players in a position to make big plays, but Clemson had better athletes on defense than SU, and could quickly close a gap, beat a player to a corner,etc., so when SU had an advantage, it was quickly minimized.
To sum the game up, when CU had a big advantage on offense, they had the athletes to take advantage and make a big play. That didn't happen when SU had similar advantages. We need more speed from our skilled position players...I think we are closing the gap with programs like Clenson but work still needs to be done.
And we really need experience at the QB position to have success against a stellar defense like Clemson has.
Props to the Clemson fans for supporting their team, being awesome stuff tailgating and being friendly too. All that hype about this place being a Mecca for tailgating is true. Despite the outcome, I had a great time during my visit and am already planning on going again in 2 years.
In the morning, took some time to explore Greenville. It is a cool city. Lots of construction and development going on here. They have done a great job addressing blighted areas, building new buildings that fit in with the local small town, mostly brick, quite quaint architecture. Really like their Main Street area, which really is the Main Street of their downtown area. They have a lot of trees and shrubs even on Main Street, lots of nice little shops and restaurants, lots of foot traffic and activity. Lots of apartments and condos on the second floors of these buildings , which I am told are very popular among young people (not unlike Syracuse). This extends for many blocks surrounding the main drag, including a nice park with a scenic bridge overlooking a waterfall. Really impressive job of developing and retaining the central business area here. Syracuse has done some good things but could learn from some of the things going on here.
My group had breakfast at a restaurant downtown called the Tupelo Honey Cafe. Nice place, part of a smallish chain, good food. I am told the bloody marys are top notch here. Again, you can get one with a crisp strip of bacon in it. Solid.
Headed over to Clemson late in the morning. It is a short drive from Greenvillle...perhaps 50 minutes. Lots of lots of cars on the road flying Clemson flags. A number of the cars had a tiger tail sticking out of the trunk. Maybe I am mistaken on this but I would think having a tiger tail sticking out of your trunk implies that you don't like tigers and are openly showing your disdain for this fine animal by attempting to suffocate one in your trunk. Besides depriving your tiger of air, light and subjecting it to dangerous heat, you add insult to injury by slamming the door on it's tail.
I am not sure what to make of this. Is the Clemson tiger a kinky animal into S&M? Are these Clemson fans really Gamecock fans attempting to kill the Clemson Tigers in plain view of the enemy, acting as Clemson fans in a sick, double agent-like maneuver? Born and raised in the North, this behavior, along with grits, are mysteries I cannot pretend to know the answers to.
Once we got within about 10 miles of Clemson, everything became covered with a tiger paw print. Store fronts, cars, people, dogs, even the roads. You name it, there was at least one paw print on it. Thought the town was pretty nice. Not a lot going on, definitely a small town USA feel to it, with the strongest attachment to a university I have ever seen.
We got to the church where the board tailgate was being held with no problem. Nice location. I believe we had over 100 people attend. Great job by John, Mrs Crusty, CuseJuicy, Mrs CuseJuicy, jjreddog (sorry) and his wife and a number of others I am forgetting. I believe the crew cooked food for at least 5 straight hours. A nice mix of food was available including hamburgers, Hofman hot dogs and coneys, Gianelli sausages, pulled pork sliders and kielbasa. Lots of desserts, chips, all kinds of beer and soda and MrsCrusty did a great job making custom made SyracuseFan.com name tags that made it much easier for people to get to know each other. As always, it was great told see so many old friends, and wonderful to meet a lot of people on the board, many of them lurkers, for the first time.
Went for a walk about halfway through the tailgate to see what the Clemson tailgating experience is all about. They have a commercial area not far from the stadium that is much like Marshall Street, except maybe a bit bigger, I believe it is called College Ave. Nice. Walked up to the Esso Club, which appears to be the very definition of a college dive bar. A band was playing live, and almost as if it were scripted, they were playing "Sweet Home Alabama", perhaps the ultimate Southern rock song.
I didn't get invited to eat at any of the tailgates, but was welcomed by a number of Clemson fans, and encountered none of the open hatred and jealousy Syracuse fans see when they travel to Rutgers and UConn. Some of the tailgating setups were quite extraordinary. But by far the biggest thing I was struck with were the sheer numbers of Clemson fans tailgating. It seemed like every inch of open space somewhat near the stadium was covered with Tiger canopies, with food cooking and more food laid out on tables. Props to Clemson fans...you have the best tailgating scene I have ever seen, and it isn't even very close.
We eventually returned to the tailgate and enjoyed the scene for a while longer before heading off to the stadium an hour and 55 minutes before kickoff. It was really crowded near the stadium and we had some problems finding the elusive gate 20, but we eventually found our way to our seats. Security was low level, I was not scanned at all...they only appeared to have interest in people bringing bags into the stadium. We were assigned your typical visitor seats, upper deck, way up high, in a corner near a goal line. Had it been a day game, we would have been sitting in the sun. The upper deck at Memorial Stadium is unusually steep and a couple of unnamed Syracuse fans came close to creating a human snow ball that would have squished many an unknowing Tiger fan in the lower deck. Perhaps a Clemson fan 'roofied' our keg? Just some idle speculation on my part.
16.
As the tuba guy, I am obligated to provide that information. The rest of the Tiger band was similarly large, and I want to give them credit for sounding very good, and marching nicely as well. They formed the word Tigers at some point and their Orange Girl was very good and used batons with fire on their ends. Very commendable.
The band played God Bless America, the NA and the Clemson alma mater before the game. In addition, in a most unexpected development, the entire stadium was asked to recite the Pledge of Alliegence. Haven't seen that before. I think the last time I did that was in fourth grade...
Spent a little time checking out the food choices. Keep in mind we Syracusefan.comers were in Bob Ueker-like seats way up top. It is highly possible there were better options lower. But up high, it was the typical generic fare; hot dogs, jumbo hot dogs, nachos, peanuts, popcorn, etc. Prices were pretty reasonable. The bathroom was pretty low brow; old, stained porcelain urine troughs and standard sinks with cold ones-have-to-push-down-to-work faucets. But they were functional.
They had a big replay scoreboard in one end zone but the resolution wasn't top notch. Not much use when the replays of the controversial plays were shown. They had another smaller one in a corner too; again, not much help, at least for me. We were so high and far away from the field that I had a hard time reading uniform numbers, even with Syracuse wearing the one uniform shirt (all white) that features easily readable numbers.
Thought the Clemson fans were pretty loud. I would rate them a tad behind the FSU fans and certainly behind Syracuse fans in terms of their ability to make noise, but their large numbers made them formidable none-the-less. They appear to be surprised and dismayed by the noise our section made, which was exactly the reaction I, for one, was hoping for.
Let's talk about the game.
Thought our defense had a good game plan. We were again most of the time willing to give Clemson all the bubble screens they cared to run, lots of zone, rarely blitzed, tried to take away routes down the field, and depended on the base defense to stop their rushing attack. This approach, while not particularly innovative, was successful for most of the game, with Clemson only able to run the ball or throw it downfield late in the game, when they were clearly gassed.
Props to pretty much everyone on the defensive unit, with special props to Brandon Reddish, Cam Lynch and Dy Davis. And the whole DL, which for the most part manhandled a suspect Clemson offensive line. Stoudt was confused, threw into heavy coverage a number of times, and looked awful most of the game. Their best play most of the game was to have the slow footed, awkward Stoudt run for his life on broken pass plays.
I think Eskridge is playing with a chronic separated shoulder and a bad leg. Raymon has some kind of recurring injury issue as well. Despite this, they both seem to be playing pretty well. Franklin continues to make plays when given a chance.
Thought special teams was okay. Our return teams are not good this season. Desir is going to fair catch just about anything he can get to and doesn't have the athletic ability to do much damage on the rare occasions when he does elect to attempt to return a punt. Phillips appears to always choose a path to the short side of the field that leads nowhere. We held on another KO return last night. I think we have done this at least once a game this year and we have done this more than once a couple of times. It is bad enough we can't get a sniff of daylight returning a KO, but how can we still hold so often anyway? It has come to a point where this has to be addressed.
Cole Murphy made his first 2, including a 50 harder to take the lead, but missed his last attempt, which for all intents and purposes ended the game. Thought his KOs were fine. Riley Dixon somehow had a solid game, as he was clearly suffering from some kind of a problem, limping off the field and getting worked on, flat on his back, as soon as he got off the field. Hope he is going to be okay the rest of the season.
That leaves the offense, which is hard to write about without getting really negative. Clemson has an exceptional pass rush and a couple of solid cornerbacks. They have been solid everywhere really, but to me, they get their turnovers getting opponents to pass the ball and going after the QB. I expected Lester would try and minimize the risk of turnovers and feature a conservative, run oriented attack, going north-south whenever possible, to minimize the substantial advantage the Tiger defense had on the SU offense. Given how badly Tyler Murphy had gashed Clemson running the ball last week, I expected Tim to give AJ some chances to run the ball as well.
He did give AJ a number of chances to use his speed and get yards but Long does not have the speed, strength or agility to be a weapon running the ball, not against a defense as fast and athletic as Clemson's, at least not at this stage in his career. I think a big reason we ran leas than I and probably Lester wanted was because Clemson stacked the box against us, daring us to pass the ball. We had some success throwing it on short, quick routes, but AJ had an awful day throwing the ball. Clemson kept their DEs really wide too, which had the effect of limiting AJ's ability to run roll out plays, forcing him to pass from the pocket, where his lack of height handicaps him and passes are often deflected at the LOS. It looks to me as though AJ has a harder time finding receivers from the pocket and the pass rush was stronger when AJ passed from the pocket as well.
Further complicating matters, the Tigers appeared to focus on taking away Long's preferred sideline routes as well...overplaying those so when Long went there, there was little chance of getting a completion. And of course, CU DC Venables blitzed AJ a lot, in a variety of ways, and AJ regularly panicked and did something bad.
In short, Clemson took away Long's strengths, forced the SU offense to do things they were not comfortable doing, jumped short dump off routes, and out coached the SU staff. To be fair, Lester made some good calls and put players in a position to make big plays, but Clemson had better athletes on defense than SU, and could quickly close a gap, beat a player to a corner,etc., so when SU had an advantage, it was quickly minimized.
To sum the game up, when CU had a big advantage on offense, they had the athletes to take advantage and make a big play. That didn't happen when SU had similar advantages. We need more speed from our skilled position players...I think we are closing the gap with programs like Clenson but work still needs to be done.
And we really need experience at the QB position to have success against a stellar defense like Clemson has.
Props to the Clemson fans for supporting their team, being awesome stuff tailgating and being friendly too. All that hype about this place being a Mecca for tailgating is true. Despite the outcome, I had a great time during my visit and am already planning on going again in 2 years.
