The Citadel at Clemson, to be played in Clemson, South Carolina, at Memorial Stadium/Frank Howard Field, with kickoff at noon ET on Saturday, November 23. The game will be streamed on ESPN3.com, with play-by-play from Jim Barbar, analysis by John Bunting, and reporting from the sidelines by Angela Mallen.
The game can be heard on radio via the thirteen affiliates of The Citadel Sports Network. Danny Reed (the “Voice of the Bulldogs”) will call the action alongside analyst Josh Baker, with Lee Glaze roaming the sidelines.
WQNT-1450 AM [audio link], originating in Charleston, will be the flagship station for the network; the station will have a two-hour pregame show. It is also possible to listen to the game via a smartphone, using a TuneIn Radio application.
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Links of interest:
Kevin Higgins on the SoCon media teleconference
ACC teleconference (Dabo Swinney is the first coach on the line); here is the transcript
Dabo Swinney press conference — Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Brent Venables talks defense — Part 1, Part 2
Clemson’s players are not believed to be aliens
Apparently really fast 6’5″, 200 lb. receivers are uncommon
It’s a big game for the Tigers, so despite injury Tajh Boyd will play
Gerald Dixon talks about Dabo Swinney
An in-depth review of Clemson’s game against Georgia Tech, play-by-play
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Saturday will be Military Appreciation Day at Clemson, and the school (as usual) is going to put on quite a show. The festivities will feature a halftime performance by the Summerall Guards.
It will also be a “Purple Out”, with fans encouraged to wear purple for the game. From above, the stadium is going to look like a giant bruise.
One note on the “Purple Out”: students will be wearing purple t-shirts (and trying to stay warm). However, the original t-shirt design won’t be used:
All full-time Clemson students attending the game will receive a free Purple Out T-shirt, but it won’t include a Purple Heart symbol as originally planned. That design, chosen from more than 30 student submissions in a campuswide contest, didn’t meet licensing guidelines of the U.S. Army. Proceeds from sales of the redesigned shirt will still benefit campus ROTC units and the Student Veterans Association.
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I’m not sure which team Clemson is playing next week, but Dabo Swinney was asked during his on-campus press conference if the Tigers had time to “peek ahead” to that game. Swinney was fairly emphatic:
We don’t have time to peek ahead…regardless of who we play…the objective is the win the football game…I can remember in 1992 I was a senior at Alabama and The Citadel beat Arkansas.
The reason I remember that is because [Alabama] played Arkansas the next week…it was chaos in Arkansas, and we went to Little Rock to play them…I will never forget that.
I didn’t even know who The Citadel was in 1992. Probably, literally the first time I had heard of The Citadel was because they beat Arkansas…
You better be ready each and every week…’cause if you’re not…you get beat. I don’t care who you play, what sport it is, what level it is, how much of a discrepancy it is, you get beat.
Incidentally, Swinney’s memory wasn’t perfect. Alabama actually played Arkansas two weeks after the Razorbacks lost to The Citadel. It was the first time Arkansas had returned to play a game in The Natural State after the dismissal of Jack Crowe, however.
Arkansas actually played at South Carolina the week after losing to the Bulldogs. Joe Kines led the Hogs to a 45-7 shellacking of the Gamecocks. (Dabo and his Crimson Tide beat Arkansas 38-11 the following Saturday.)
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The Citadel has defeated Clemson on the gridiron in no fewer than five South Carolina towns. It’s possible no other opponent has lost to the Bulldogs at so many different locations.
The military college has wins over Clemson in Clemson (when the town was called “Calhoun”), Charleston (at the original Johnson Hagood Stadium), Anderson, Orangeburg, and Florence.
This Saturday, look for the Bulldogs to use a similar strategy to that employed in The Citadel’s 1931 victory over the Tigers in Florence:
The Citadel Bulldogs arose here today, whipped out a finely-timed, incisive and unanticipated running attack, to win their annual game with Clemson at the Pee Dee Fair, 6-0. In no previous game this season had the Cadets shown such power, speed, and brilliant elusiveness in advancing the ball…
A good, big bunch of men these Tigers were, too, but they were so much putty in the hands of a Citadel team that had a great day…
Local hero Edwin McIntosh scored the game-winning TD for the Bulldogs that afternoon. Another offensive star was “‘Leaping Larkin’ Jennings, the Columbia Comet”.
The defensive player most responsible for keeping the Tigers out of the end zone was “man-mountain, gargantuan” Delmar Rivers, also known as “Big Boy”.
Other tidbits about that game:
– The Citadel kicked off to start both halves.
– Despite that, Clemson only ran 46 offensive plays during the game, a statistic which would undoubtedly horrify Chad Morris. The lack of offensive snaps was partly due to the Tigers’ tendency to “quick kick” whenever possible. Clemson punted on third down six times, punted on second down three times, and punted on first down (?!) once.
– Clemson only picked up three first downs during the game (well, sure, with all that punting), not getting its initial first down until the fourth quarter.
– At one point during the contest, the Tigers threw incomplete passes on consecutive plays. By rule, that resulted in a five-yard penalty.
– The News and Courier reported that both team captains were redheads.
– Attendance: 4000.
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***Brief subject change before going back to football***
Clemson last played a football game at The Citadel in 1953, which shouldn’t be a shock to anybody. What may come as a surprise, though, is that the Tiger baseball team has not played The Citadel in Charleston during this century either.
In fact, Clemson and The Citadel have not met on a Low Country diamond since 1990, when the teams were coached by Bill Wilhelm and Chal Port. That game was played at College Park.
Now, you wouldn’t necessarily expect the two schools to play each other every year, as they are basically at opposite ends of the state. That’s not true for the University of South Carolina, of course, and thus the Gamecocks and Bulldogs naturally meet more often.
However, South Carolina doesn’t just play The Citadel once in a while; the two schools play each other home-and-home every year. Meanwhile, Clemson…doesn’t. The last regular-season meeting of any kind between the Tigers and Bulldogs came back in 2004, at Clemson.
I think this is something that needs to be addressed, particularly because Clemson isn’t averse to playing in Charleston. The Tigers played at College of Charleston in 2008, for example.
It is facing the Bulldogs on The Citadel’s home turf that seems to have become an issue for the Tigers in recent years.
Speaking of that home turf, Clemson has actually played at Riley Park. In 2012, South Carolina and Clemson met in a game that was relentlessly hyped by sports columnist Gene Sapakoff of The Post and Courier, who apparently believed the matchup was the most important development in the history of western civilization and would be attended by hundreds of thousands of dignitaries from around the globe.
Sapakoff was highly upset at the game’s actual attendance (5,851), and was unable to accept the fact that despite the nonstop promotion (much of it by himself), the game drew about the same number of people who would attend a typical game between The Citadel and South Carolina at Riley Park. Indeed, last year’s game in Charleston between the Gamecocks and Bulldogs, played on a Tuesday night with no hype whatsoever, had an attendance of 5,838.
That said, having a crowd of 5,000+ for a regular-season college baseball game is very impressive, and not surprisingly the folks who run the Charleston Riverdogs wouldn’t mind seeing the Gamecocks and Tigers get together again at Riley Park in the near future. In a newspaper article from two years ago, the year 2015 was suggested.
However, I don’t think that game should be played. Not in 2015, anyway.
That’s because I believe the next game Clemson plays at Riley Park needs to be against the local college team that calls the stadium home. The Tigers should play The Citadel there first.
I am aware of a few reasons why Clemson and The Citadel have not met in recent years. I don’t care. People can put aside their differences, if only for one night.
Imagine how many people might attend a game at Riley Park between Clemson and The Citadel if the local media promoted it as heavily as Clemson-South Carolina 2012. That’s part of what this is about, at least to me.
I want The Citadel to receive that kind of positive attention, instead of being ignored while various entities start panting heavily at the mere sight of schools from other parts of the state.
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Bringing this back to football, but in a similar vein, I find it a bit tiresome that a writer for a local newspaper (Aaron Brenner, the Clemson beat writer for The Post and Courier) has written multiple times that a local team is a “tune-up” for an opponent. It is particularly annoying that he first characterized the game as such before the season even started.
Look, I’m a realist here, but it wouldn’t hurt to show a touch more respect for a school located in your paper’s immediate area. When I first broached the subject with Brenner, back in August, I was immediately informed that Clemson had beaten The Citadel 15 straight times, and mostly by significant margins. (Tell me something I don’t know.)
Of course, I’m guessing Clemson fans wouldn’t think the 1931 loss to The Citadel is going to have any impact on Saturday’s game, and they would be correct. However, I would suggest that those 15 losses he mentioned won’t have any impact either. Do you think the 1976 game matters to the players of 2013? What about 1954? Or 1986? No, no, and no.
The real issue, I think, is that he isn’t covering Clemson from the Charleston perspective. Rather, he’s writing about the Tigers for the Charleston newspaper. There is a difference.
That’s not really the fault of Brenner, to be fair. He is doing what his employer wants him to do. You may not think there is any fault to be found at all, and I can understand that point of view.
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Generally during one of my previews I start discussing a team’s statistics in relation to a comparison with those of The Citadel, but it’s pointless to do that this week since Clemson is an FBS squad. Instead, I’m just going to mention some of Clemson’s numbers. A few of them are scary.
– Clemson is averaging 41.3 points per game, 11th best nationally. The Tigers actually have a higher scoring average on the road, “only” scoring 39.8 points per game at Memorial Stadium.
– CU is ninth nationally in total offense, passing offense, and turnover margin.
– Clemson isn’t quite as dominant in a few offensive categories, ranking 50th in the nation in offensive 3rd-down conversion rate and 43rd nationally in offensive red zone TD%.
– The Tigers have had seven plays from scrimmage this season of 60+ yards, tied for third-most in FBS.
– Of course, Clemson’s raw offensive numbers are skewed by the hurry-up-no-I-mean-really-hurry-up style of offensive coordinator Chad Morris. The Tigers are averaging 82.9 plays per game on offense, fifth-most nationally. In terms of yards per play, Clemson is 32nd in FBS with a 6.18 average (Baylor leads the nation, averaging a staggering 8.5 yards per play).
– Clemson’s defensive third down conversion rate of 30.25% is 6th-best nationally. This may be the statistic that best demonstrates the influence of second-year defensive coordinator Brent Venables. In his first year at Clemson, the Tigers were 24th in FBS in this category, a substantial improvement over the 2011 season (when they were 72nd).
– Clemson’s defensive numbers are affected by its offensive style, and look better in context than in raw totals. Tiger opponents are averaging 5.25 yards per play, 42nd nationally. Getting off the field by stopping teams on third down has helped Clemson in that department (The Tigers were slightly above 5.6 y/p in both 2012 and 2011).
– On defense, the Tigers are allowing a red zone TD rate of 62.5%, which is only 69th in FBS. Venables is probably disappointed with that particular statistic.
– Clemson’s punting and kick coverage/return statistics are, in general, indifferent.
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As for Clemson’s players, it’s simple: the Tigers have playmakers all over the field, particularly on offense.
Tajh Boyd has been a wonderful quarterback for Clemson. He has occasionally been labeled as a “doesn’t play well in big games” type, but anyone who believes that did not see his magnificent bowl-game performance against LSU last year.
Sammy Watkins is ridiculously good. Dabo Swinney said during his press conference this week that he thinks Watkins is the best wide receiver in the country, and you could certainly make that argument. I have no idea how the Bulldogs are going to cover him, but then almost every other team in the country would have the same problem.
It says something about Clemson’s talent level that Watkins may not even be the most difficult matchup for The Citadel on Saturday. Another wideout, Martavis Bryant, could pose even more problems.
The Tigers’ running game is keyed by the excellent Rod McDowell (who overcame a clubfoot as a child). McDowell runs behind a starting offensive line that averages 6’4″, 298 lbs.
Clemson defensive end Vic Beasley has 17 tackles for loss, fourth nationally. Ten of those TFLs are sacks. The other three starters on the Tigers’ d-line weigh more on average than The Citadel’s offensive linemen.
The Tigers have intercepted at least one pass in 13 straight games, the longest such streak in the country. Eight different players have at least one pick.
Linebackers Stephone Anthony and Spencer Shuey are 1-2 on the team in tackles.
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Saturday’s game is officially a sellout, and that crowd will include a fair number of fans wearing blue and white. There will be multiple tailgating events on site for Bulldog fans, who usually know how to have a good time.
I trust the same can be said for the players. The game against Clemson should be fun.
It will be very challenging, to be sure. However, there is no pressure on the Bulldogs, and I think that will be reflected in their play.
One game is left this season. I hope it’s a memorable one for The Citadel, and in a good way.
Filed under: Football, The Citadel | Tagged: Clemson, Dabo Swinney, Delmar Rivers, Edwin McIntosh, Johnson Hagood Stadium, Kevin Higgins, Larkin Jennings, Riley Park, Tajh Boyd, The Citadel |
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