A quick review of The Citadel’s home opener

Posted on September 8, 2024 by Sandlapper Spike

The advanced stats from South Carolina State-The Citadel:

  South Carolina State The Citadel
Starting Field Position Average 24.38 29.33
Success Rate 54.4% 29.2%
Big plays (20+ yards) 3 4
Finishing drives inside 40 (average points) 4.6 5.0
Turnovers 0 1
Expected turnovers 0.00 0.44
Possessions 8 9
Points per possession 2.88 2.22
Offensive Plays 68 48
Offensive rush play % 61.76% 50.00%
Yards/rush (sack-adjusted) 5.14 4.79
Yards/pass attempt (sack-adjusted) 6.58 6.67
Yards/play 5.94 5.72
3rd down conversions 58.3% (7-12) 25.0% (3-12)
4th down conversions 0 of 0 2 of 3
Red Zone TD% 60.0% 66.7%
Net punting 37.67 43.33
Time of possession 36:13 26:47
TOP/offensive play 30.61 seconds 29.73 seconds
Penalties 9 for 55 yards 6 for 50 yards
1st down passing 4/8 (55 yards) 4/6 (88 yards)
3rd and long passing 3/4, one sack (33 net yards) 7/9, one sack (56 net yards)
4th down passing 0/0 1/2 (9 yards)
1st down yards/play 6.81 6.94
3rd down average yards to go 5.75 8.12
Defensive 3-and-outs+ 3 (of 9) 1 (of 8)

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Housekeeping regarding the above stats:

  • These statistics do not include South Carolina State’s last two drives of each half (three plays in all). The second-half omission is obvious (one play, a kneel-down). I also elected not to include the two plays SCSU ran following the interception late in the first half, because only 12 seconds remained and South Carolina State was in what you could call “desperation mode” in terms of trying to score points (and thus the two-play sequence was not part of the regular course of action). As far as that statistical decision is concerned, your mileage may vary.
  • That means one of South Carolina State’s ‘big plays’ (those of 20 yards or more) is not included in the totals, either (a 21-yard pass reception to end the first half).
  • There was an error in the statistical play-by-play for the game which affected several categories. The problem arose during SCSU’s first drive of the second half. I think I’ve corrected everything in terms of the stats breakdown. (Among other things, this explains a discrepancy involving South Carolina State’s third-down and fourth-down conversion numbers.)
  • Stats-can-be-deceiving dept.: you might notice The Citadel averaged a quite respectable 6.94 yards on first down. Keep in mind that two long pass plays in the second half greatly affected that statistic. In the first half, on the other hand, The Citadel averaged 1.71 yards per play on first down.

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Random observations about the game and the atmosphere surrounding it:

– I was a little surprised at the attendance. I thought there would be more fans on hand (from both sides, to be honest). While the listed attendance of 10,579 was notable, I wasn’t completely sure that reflected the actual number of people at the game.

I have my doubts that noon kickoffs are the way to go at The Citadel in the long term, but I suppose this year is a bit of a trial run.

– The Marching 101 is a great band, and I enjoyed its halftime performance. I have to wonder, though, at the band’s repeated playing at the start of (and during) plays. I was half-expecting the referee to give a warning, but that never happened.

The really unfortunate thing that occurred was the Marching 101 playing throughout the special tribute to Willie Jeffries in the break between the first and second quarters. I suspect officials from both schools were not particularly happy about that.

– I will add that I thought the folks running the sound system also veered very close to the edge when it came to musical cues and the start of on-field action.

– It was nice to see Jan Taaffe honored as well as Jeffries. I think Maurice Drayton’s commitment to acknowledging the past history of The Citadel’s football program (and that of the Palmetto State in general) is refreshing.

– I also liked that this year, the Hall of Fame honorees were presented to the crowd at halftime so that they faced the West stands, instead of facing the scoreboard (which, if memory serves, had been the case in previous years). Now everyone just needs to make sure all the honorees are in alphabetical order when the announcements start being made.

– Dumb question alert: where was the U.S. flag?

[Edit: I have now been informed (thanks!) that the flagpole has an internal issue with the pulley system that is preventing the flag from being locked in the ‘up’ position or lowered. Repairs are expected soon. For Saturday’s game, the color guard was used to present colors.]

– I would have preferred white pants to go with The Citadel’s light blue jerseys. The light blue pants didn’t look bad, though.

– Perhaps this has been the case before and I just didn’t notice, but the ‘red hat guy’ for the game was a member of the Corps of Cadets. He industriously trotted out with the media timeout countdown clock for every stoppage of play.

– I think all of the free t-shirts were size extra-large. They were free, though.

– I’m glad the rain mostly held off, though it led to occasionally steamy conditions with the cloud cover and temperature.

– Johnathan Bennett only threw one first-down pass in the first half (the interception at the end of it). In the second half, he was 4 for 5 passing on first down for 88 yards, including two big plays. The offensive playcalling arguably needs to be more varied at the start of games.

– The Citadel kicked off from midfield after its last touchdown, following a 15-yard penalty on South Carolina State. I was hoping that Maurice Drayton might try an onside kick in that situation, because the team really doesn’t lose too much in the way of field position even if unsuccessful — and if does recover the kick, it gets a free possession in great field position.

– The fourth-down run for 33 yards on what I’ll call the “bunch” formation was a great call, and very well executed. It was set up by a similar formation on a fourth down play earlier in the game, one that resulted in SCSU jumping offsides.

– The Citadel had false start penalties at the start of both of its first two drives. That should not happen.

– South Carolina State was a well-coached team. Deondra Duehart is a quality running back, and I thought Eric Phoenix did a nice job running the show. He was also a better runner than his prior stats had indicated. SCSU’s line play on offense and defense was generally solid.

I’m guessing that improving its offensive red zone production will be a point of emphasis for SCSU once conference play rolls around.

– For the second week in a row, the Bulldogs had the edge in special teams play. This time, it wasn’t quite enough to pull out a victory.

There is something to be said about having a chance to win a game despite losing the turnover battle (1-0) and having the opponent run a higher percentage of successful plays from scrimmage by almost a 2-1 margin. Going forward, though, The Citadel has to get better on both sides of the ball. The offense has to be more dynamic throughout the game, and the defense needs to be considerably more disruptive.

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This recent spate of blogging by yours truly will now come to a crashing halt. I won’t be around much (or at all) until the end of September/beginning of October.

Next week’s game is against a North Greenville squad that lost its home opener last Thursday night by the exact same score as The Citadel (23-20). NGU’s loss came in overtime to the defending NAIA champions, so the Trailblazers are likely a good-to-very good D2 squad. The Bulldogs better be ready for that one.

The Citadel then opens conference play at Mercer, a playoff team last season which is currently 2-0, winning those two games by a combined score of 94-12. The following week will be a Parents’ Day affair against East Tennessee State, a completely revamped squad that won on Saturday by a score of 61-0.

In other words, more challenges are ahead.

Go Dogs!

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2024 Football: The Citadel’s home opener

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Sandlapper Spike

South Carolina State at The Citadel, to be played at historic Johnson Hagood Stadium (minus the yet-to-be-rebuilt East stands) in Charleston, South Carolina, with kickoff at 12:00 pm ET on September 7, 2024.

The game will be streamed on ESPN+. Dave Weinstein will handle play-by-play duties, with former James Madison quarterback Vad Lee providing the analysis. The sideline reporter will be Ainsley Clifford.

The contest can be heard on radio via The Citadel Sports Network. WQNT-1450 AM [audio link], originating in Charleston, will be the flagship station.

Brian Giffin calls the action alongside analyst Lee Glaze.

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Just a few links:

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I’m just tossing out a few things here. As I mentioned when I posted after the Bulldogs’ win on Saturday, I’m semi-retired from blogging, and if you’re going to do something, you need to do it right, and not just go halfway.

That’s why I am ambivalent about posting. I simply don’t have the time to do it justice.

Anyway, let’s get started with this preview, which will primarily be focused on The Citadel’s opponent this Saturday — South Carolina State.

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Here is the advanced stats box for South Carolina State’s 22-18 loss at Florida A&M on Saturday:

South Carolina State Florida A&M
Starting Field Position Average 23.5 29.3
Offensive Success Rate 44.3% 46.5%
Big plays (20+ yards) 3 4
Finishing drives inside 40 (average points) 5.0 4.4
Turnovers 0 2
Expected turnovers 1.1 2.1
Possessions 10 10
Points per possession 1.8 2.2
Offensive plays 61 69
Offensive rush play % 54.10% 43.48%
Yards/rush (sack-adjusted) 5.24 4.63
Yards/pass attempt (sack-adjusted) 4.04 7.18
Yards/play 4.69 6.07
3rd down conversions 30.0% (3-10) 64.3% (9-14)
4th down conversions 0 for 0 1 for 1
Red Zone TD% 66.7% 50.0%
Net punting 40.5 41.33
Time of possession 27:21 31:31
TOP/offensive play 26.90 seconds 26.32 seconds
Penalties 10 for 65 yards 6 for 65 yards
1st down passing 3/7 (9 yards) 10/18 (113 yards)
3rd and long passing 1/3, one sack (-3 net yards) 6/8, one sack (91 net yards)
4th down passing 0/0 0/0
1st down yards/play 4.43 5.90
3rd down average yards to go 6.5 7.5
Defensive 3-and-outs+ 2 (of 10) 5 (of 10)

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A few housekeeping notes on the above:

  • The statistics do not include the final three offensive plays by Florida A&M, which were kneel-downs.
  • The end of the first half featured a hurry-up drive by South Carolina State which resulted in a field goal. SCSU made it to the red zone just before the half ended, but didn’t have time to run a full set of plays inside the 20 (kicking on 3rd down), and thus that drive is not included in the ‘Red Zone TD%’ or ‘Finishing drives inside 40’ categories.
  • Both teams benefited from a defensive penalty on a 3rd-and-long play, leading to an automatic first down. Those plays aren’t reflected in the ‘3rd down conversions’ or ‘3rd and long passing’ categories.

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As far as the quality of South Carolina State’s opponent last week is concerned, Florida A&M was ranked in the preseason FCS coaches’ poll (25th) and is considered one of the contenders to win the SWAC (2nd in the East division in that league’s preseason poll). Of course, last season FAMU was 12-1 and won both the SWAC and the Celebration Bowl.

Random comment: I’m still not used to Florida A&M being a member of the SWAC and not the MEAC. 

I should also note that the game was the Rattlers’ second of the 2024 campaign, while it was the debut for S.C. State and its new coach, Chennis Berry.

South Carolina State held an 18-7 lead early in the 4th quarter, but the Rattlers then scored two touchdowns down the stretch to pull off the comeback.

S.C. State will rue only getting 3 points out of a 1st-and-goal from the 1-yard line situation in the first quarter, and later having a PAT blocked (which led to an unsuccessful 2-point try after another TD). Florida A&M also converted multiple 3rd-and-long plays down the stretch, which had to be frustrating for the garnet-and-blue faithful.

The Bulldogs from Orangeburg were also bedeviled by several untimely penalties, including multiple procedural infractions. That is not overly unusual for a team playing its first game for a new coach.

According to the online participation report, only 40 players took the field for S.C. State. That apparent lack of depth could have been a factor in SCSU’s inability to stop Florida A&M in the 4th quarter. (As always, participation reports should not necessarily be taken at face value.)

It was a little odd that the more rush-focused team (South Carolina State) came out on the short end of the time of possession battle by more than four minutes. Part of the late-game push by FAMU included holding the ball for 9:38 of the final period.

—

Per the Massey Ratings, Florida A&M is ranked 52nd in FCS; The Citadel is 72nd; South Carolina State is 92nd; and Charleston Southern is 106th.

The Citadel jumped 29 spots after its win last week, but SC State is still favored in the matchup, according to Massey, with a projected score of 26-24. In fact, Massey still rates The Citadel an underdog in all of its remaining 2024 contests save one (next week’s game against North Greenville).

Bill Connelly’s SP+ ratings have Florida A&M ranked 53rd in FCS, with South Carolina State 78th, Charleston Southern 81st, and The Citadel 111th (only a 3-spot rise from last week). His projected score for the game at Johnson Hagood Stadium is S.C. State 26.3, The Citadel 20.6.

(Incidentally, the SP+ projected score for the Charleston Southern-Furman game is Paladins 33.4, Buccaneers 9.1.)

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South Carolina State’s starting quarterback (Eric Phoenix) is left-handed, and its placekicker (Kyle Gallegos) is left-footed. There cannot be many teams around that have a left-handed QB *and* a left-footed kicker.

Alas, punter Dyson Roberts is right-footed. You can’t have it all.

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No one on South Carolina State’s roster is a graduate of Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School. That might be unprecedented. It is certainly unwise. In my unbiased opinion, failing to have a representative of the famed maroon and orange is a recipe for disaster.

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Buddy Pough’s final team at South Carolina State included just seven transfers from junior colleges and/or four-year institutions. Chennis Berry’s current roster at SCSU has 37 such players, including 14 who played for him at Benedict.

Only 19 players who saw action against The Citadel last season (a 31-10 victory for South Carolina State) participated in SCSU’s matchup with Florida A&M. However, eleven of them started against FAMU, including four members of the offensive line and the three players (Justin Smith-Brown, Tyler Smith, and Keshawn Toney) who accounted for all four touchdowns against The Citadel.

Linebackers Zan Dunham and Aaron Smith are also returning starters; Dunham led SCSU in tackles in last year’s matchup, while Smith had two tackles for loss. Defensive back Jamare Bejamin, who intercepted a pass during the game, is back as well.

Berry has supplemented that group with several interesting players, including 6’4″, 340 lb. guard Roger Smith, wide receiver Caden High (3 receptions against Florida A&M, a 39-yarder among them), running back Deondra Duehart (74 yards on 10 rushes versus FAMU), defensive linemen Josh Barker and Jayden Broughton (who had a sack and fumble recovery against the Rattlers), linebacker Dedrick Starkes, and defensive back Diego Addison (six tackles in Tallahassee).

All of those players are transfers from Benedict; Smith and Broughton were first-team all-conference selections in the SIAC last year, while Duehart and Starkes were second-team picks. They were key cogs in a Tigers squad that went undefeated in the regular season for the second year in a row.

Without them (and Berry), Benedict lost 23-7 last week to Virginia State in its season opener.

As mentioned earlier, S.C. State’s starting quarterback is Eric Phoenix, a 6’3″, 210 lb. native of Savannah who is not going to be arm-tackled by anybody. Phoenix played for Chennis Berry at Benedict for three years, including the 2022 campaign, but spent last season at Murray State. This year, he is back with Berry, but at a new school.

In Phoenix’s career at Benedict, he appeared in 28 games at QB, completing 63.5% of his passes (8.1 yards/attempt), with 32 touchdowns against 18 interceptions. He did not run a lot, though he did compile eight rushing TDs for the Tigers. Phoenix was voted second-team All-SIAC after both the 2021 and 2022 seasons.

Against Florida A&M on Saturday, he was 12 for 25 passing for 132 yards and a touchdown. He was sacked twice and had six other rushing attempts.

—

Chennis Berry was the SIAC coach of the year in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, the SIAC coach of the year was Gabe Giardina (then of Albany State), who was on the opposing sideline last week as Charleston Southern’s head coach.

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The weather forecast for Saturday in Charleston: not great. Showers and thunderstorms are likely before, during, and after the game. The chance of precipitation is 60%.

I guess that is the tradeoff for the lack of furnace-like conditions for a noon kickoff. (The projected high on Saturday is only 79 degrees.)

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Saturday’s game is being called a “whiteout”. Fans are encouraged to wear white apparel (presumably including rain ponchos). The team, however, will not wear white jerseys, because the visiting team has the right to nix that, and S.C. State elected to exercise its veto.

I would expect the The Citadel to wear its light blue jerseys, and for SCSU to showcase its white tops.

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Per the game notes, there are apparently no changes to The Citadel’s depth chart from Game 1 to Game 2.

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The home opener will double as Hall of Fame Weekend at The Citadel. The banquet is on Friday night, and the honorees are a particularly impressive group. I would anticipate a lot of people will be in town this weekend for the festivities, and that will include a larger-than-normal cohort of football alums.

It is also a big weekend for South Carolina State’s alumni chapter in Charleston, which has organized a tailgate on Saturday that will undoubtedly be humming with activity.

In other words, the scene should be a busy one. It should be fun (and wet). Get there early.

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The Citadel plays a football game in Orangeburg for the first time since 1959

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Sandlapper Spike

The Citadel at South Carolina State, to be played at Oliver C. Dawson Stadium in Orangeburg, South Carolina, with kickoff at 6:00 pm ET on September 23, 2023.

The game will be streamed on ESPN+. Play-by-play will be handled by Tyler Cupp, while Demetrius Davis supplies the analysis.

The contest can be heard on radio via The Citadel Sports Network. WQNT-1450 AM [audio link], originating in Charleston, will be the flagship station. Other stations carrying the game include WQXL in Columbia (100.7 FM/1470 AM) and WDXY in Sumter (105.9 FM/1240 AM).

Brian Giffin will call the action alongside analyst Lee Glaze.

  • “Live Stats” for the game [link when available]

I usually don’t list the the opposing team’s radio personnel, but I’ll make an exception here, because the duo in the booth for SCSU are both institutions.

Play-by-play voice Ernest Robinson has been a continuous part of SCSU’s radio team since 1978. The host of ‘The Buddy Pough Show’ also was a presence on ESPN Radio Columbia for many years with the ‘Sports Hotline’ program.

Bill Hamilton is the radio analyst. He graduated from South Carolina State in 1973 and has been with the school ever since, including a four-decade run as the school’s SID. The press box at Oliver C. Dawson Stadium is named in his honor.

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Links of interest:

– SoCon weekly release

– South Carolina State game notes [when available]

– The Citadel game notes

– Maurice Drayton’s Monday press conference

– The bonds between Buddy Pough and Maurice Drayton run deep

– Box score for The Citadel-Chattanooga

– Buddy Pough’s press conference [when available]

– MEAC video conference for its coaches, including Buddy Pough

– The Buddy Pough Show

– Box score for South Carolina State-Jackson State (SCSU lost 37-7 in a game played in Atlanta)

– Box score for South Carolina State-Charlotte (SCSU lost, 24-3)

– Box score for South Carolina State-Georgia Tech (SCSU lost, 48-13)

– Season statistics for South Carolina State (three games)

– Pough uses bye week to “refine playbook”

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Roster review:

– Of the 110 players on The Citadel’s online roster as of September 14, 58 are from South Carolina. Other states represented: Florida (14 players), Georgia (11), North Carolina (11), Virginia (5), Alabama (2), Ohio (2), New York (2), Texas (2), and one each from Maryland, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

– South Carolina State has 106 players on its online roster. Of those, 85 are from South Carolina. Other states represented: Florida (6 players), Georgia (6), North Carolina (5), and one each from Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania.

– Of the 85 (!) Palmetto State products on SCSU’s roster, two are graduates of Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School, perhaps fewer than would be expected. Of course, Buddy Pough himself played at O-W under the late Dick Sheridan, so he is well aware of the famed maroon and orange and its inherent greatness.

– Only seven of the Orangeburg Bulldogs are transfers from other post-secondary institutions. Three of them came from fellow FCS schools (Alcorn State, Bryant, and Delaware State); none are from P5/G5 universities.

—

Odds and ends:

– The weather forecast for Saturday in Orangeburg, per the National Weather Service, includes a 20% chance of showers. The projected high is 81°, with a low that night of 60°.

That sounds rather nice to me.

– If I get a line on the game before noon on Saturday, I’ll post it here. Given how lines and odds have been posted for FCS schools this season, however, that is unlikely.

– Massey Ratings: South Carolina State is ranked 101st in FCS, unchanged from last week. The Citadel is 96th (a 2-place drop).

Massey projects South Carolina State to win the game by a predicted score of 24-21. The Citadel is given a 44% chance of winning.

—

Meanwhile, SP+ ranks South Carolina State 116th (105th on offense, 101st on defense) and The Citadel 123rd (124th on offense, 103rd on D).

A selected list of SP+ FCS rankings entering Week 4:

  • South Dakota State (1st)
  • North Dakota State (2nd)
  • Montana State (3rd)
  • William and Mary (7th)
  • Furman (18th)
  • Chattanooga (22nd)
  • Campbell (23rd)
  • Jackson State (29th)
  • Mercer (30th)
  • Austin Peay (33rd)
  • Samford (41st)
  • Kennesaw State (44th)
  • Western Carolina (48th)
  • Davidson (52nd)
  • Eastern Kentucky (53rd)
  • Charleston Southern (80th)
  • East Tennessee State (81st)
  • Wofford (92nd)
  • VMI (97th)
  • Bucknell (101st)
  • Morehead State (121st)
  • Presbyterian (126th)
  • Marist (128th and last)

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In other FCS preseason polls/rankings, The Citadel ranks 117th in the Congrove Computer Rankings (a drop of 10 spots), 121st in the Laz Index (a decline of 23 places), and 111th in the DCI (down 11 spots).

—

– Games involving SoCon teams this week [projected score per SP+ in brackets]:

  • Saturday at 1:00 pm ET: Mercer at Furman [Furman 29.3, Mercer 22.0]
  • Saturday at 1:30 pm ET: Wofford at VMI [VMI 19.8, Wofford 18.9]
  • Saturday at 2:30 pm ET: Charleston Southern at Western Carolina [WCU 28.6, ChSo 15.9]
  • Saturday at 3:00 pm ET: Chattanooga at Samford [UTC 28.8, Samford 22.9]
  • Saturday at 6:00 pm ET: The Citadel at South Carolina State [SCSU 26.7, The Citadel 20.4]

East Tennessee State is off this week.

– Among South Carolina State’s notable alumni: songwriter/arranger/producer Horace Ott, longtime congressman Jim Clyburn, and biophysicist Kandice Tanner.

– The Citadel has an all-time record of 3-7 for games played on September 23. The Bulldogs are 1-5 away from home.

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The most notable game played by The Citadel on September 23 came in 1989. In the remnants of Hurricane Hugo, the Bulldogs defeated Navy in Annapolis, 14-10.

The following week, The Citadel played South Carolina State in a game that was subsequently dubbed the “Hurricane Bowl” or the “Hugo Bowl” (your choice). The contest was moved from Charleston to Columbia, and played at Williams-Brice Stadium.

I wrote about that matchup a few years ago, the first meeting on the gridiron between South Carolina State and The Citadel. Allow me to copy and paste this next section.

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There would have been a certain kind of hype attached to the game, which explains why a reporter for The Nation was one of the 21,853 people in attendance. However, any sociopolitical context had already been effectively blown away by the winds that had done so much damage to the state the week before.

The Citadel had won its previous game at Navy, 14-10, but that victory had come at a cost. The starting quarterback for the Bulldogs, Brendon Potts, was lost for the season with a knee injury. His replacement was a redshirt freshman named Jack Douglas.

Douglas made his first career start for The Citadel against South Carolina State. He scored two touchdowns while passing for another (a 68-yard toss to Phillip Florence, one of two passes Douglas completed that afternoon).

Shannon Walker had a big game for the Bulldogs, returning a kickoff 64 yards to set up a field goal, and later intercepting a pass that, after a penalty, gave The Citadel possession at South Carolina State’s 6-yard line (Douglas scored his first TD two plays later).

Adrian Johnson scored the go-ahead touchdown in the third quarter on a 26-yard run. The Citadel had trailed South Carolina State at halftime, but held the Orangeburg Bulldogs scoreless in the second half.

The military college won the game, 31-20, and finished with 260 rushing yards — 137 of which were credited to one Tom Frooman (on 15 carries). The native of Cincinnati rushed for 118 yards in the second half, with a key 41-yard run that came on the play immediately preceding Johnson’s TD.

Frooman added 64 yards on an 80-yard drive that cemented the victory (Douglas capping that possession with a 3-yard touchdown in the game’s final minute of play).

—

In a way, it is hard to believe that was 34 years ago. In another way, it isn’t hard to believe at all.

The Citadel and SC State have faced each other three more times since then, in consecutive years from 1999 through 2001. The Bulldogs from Charleston came out on top on all three occasions, though the 1999 contest could have gone either way, with The Citadel very fortunate to prevail.

Buddy Pough on this Saturday’s game:

“I hope (this game) could develop into some sort of rivalry,” Pough said. “There are all kinds of kinships and relationships with their coaching staff, and this always has a chance to be one of those special, friendly rivalries.”

Pough said there is a large contingent of Citadel supporters around the Orangeburg area, and he knows they will be cheering for their team Saturday.

“We have all kinds of Citadel folks in town that are calling me about parking spots and tailgating spots,” Pough joked. “We have some big supporters in this town, and I told them it was OK to come … but they were going to have to pay. Hopefully, while they’re here, they will leave a few bucks.”

I completely agree with the coach. These two schools should play each other in football more often. They don’t necessarily have to meet every season (scheduling issues for both would more than likely preclude that from happening anyway), but a semi-regular series seems like a natural.

I think it would be more than appropriate for a player at The Citadel to make the trip to Orangeburg at least once during his career, and vice versa, so perhaps two games every four years (home and home) would be good.

After all, regular trips to Orangeburg for a football game are actually an old tradition at The Citadel…

—

While this is the first time The Citadel has played South Carolina State in Orangeburg, the school has a long (albeit dormant) history of playing in The Garden City.

The Citadel has played 38 times in Orangeburg in its history. All of those games were played in conjunction with the Orangeburg County Fair, usually in late October or early November.

Most, if not all, of the games were attended by the corps of cadets, which as a group took the train to Orangeburg. That was back when there were railroad tracks on campus.

In 1916, The Citadel made its debut on the gridiron in Orangeburg by defeating Clemson, 3-0. The last game the Bulldogs played there (before this Saturday) was a 40-8 victory over Wofford in 1959.

From 1916 through 1959, The Citadel played in Orangeburg every season except for 1938 and 1939 (more on that later), the war years of 1943-45 (when the school did not field a team), and in 1953.

Many of those games were against South Carolina — 20 of them, in fact, with generally excellent attendance that occasionally exceeded 10,000 fans (a very good number before World War II). The Citadel also played at the county fair against Wofford (8 times), Clemson (5), Furman (3), and once each versus Presbyterian and Erskine.

While The Citadel opened its account in Orangeburg with a win over Clemson, and closed it with a victory over Wofford, most of the games at the fair didn’t end that way. The Citadel’s record in Orangeburg is 7-27-4.

Only one of those games against the Gamecocks resulted in a victory (1926, which along with 1916 is one of two years in which The Citadel defeated both South Carolina and Clemson during the season). There were two ties among those twenty matchups.

Then there was the 1937 game, in which the final score (21-6 in favor of the Gamecocks) was but a footnote.

South Carolina halfback Jack Lyons was returning a punt and in the open field when he “was tackled by a spectator who was watching the game from the sideline. It was a man dressed in a brown business suit. He slashed in on the ball carrier with a perfect tackle.”

The individual in question, William R. Milligan, became known as ‘The Man in the Brown Suit’, which might have been a play on an Agatha Christie novel of that title which had been published a few years earlier. (I’m just guessing on that; incidentally, it’s not a terrible book but not one of her best, either).

Anyway, his effort on behalf of the Bulldogs led to an on-field fracas featuring spectators from both sides (including the corps of cadets), the football players, and assorted other individuals that only ended when:

“the Bulldog and Gamecock bands began playing ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’

Everybody stopped fighting and stood at attention, with the uniformed cadets of The Citadel leading the way.

The band music returned peace to the stadium and the game resumed with the Bulldogs scoring a touchdown before it was over.”

While peace was eventually restored, it is possible that the folks in Orangeburg decided that the two teams could take a break from meeting at the county fair for a few years.

In 1938, South Carolina played Villanova in Orangeburg instead of The Citadel. In 1939, the Gamecocks again returned to the county fair, this time playing West Virginia.

The Citadel played Wofford in 1940 in Orangeburg. Then, in 1941, the Gamecocks and Bulldogs returned to face each other again at the fair.

Oh, I have to quote the coda to the story of the 1937 game, written a few years ago in The Times and Democrat:

William R. Milligan, “the man in brown,” was hauled away by the Orangeburg Police Department.

He stood around with local policemen and listened to the play-by-play account of the remainder of the game on Columbia’s WIS radio. At the end of the game, he was released to return to Charleston…

…In later years, during fair week, Milligan, a poultry enthusiast, would be a mainstay at the county fair’s poultry barn.

Eventually, South Carolina quit playing in Orangeburg. The Citadel continued to do so, however, against other competition, maintaining the tradition through most of the 1950s.

The exception was 1953, when instead of playing in Orangeburg, the Bulldogs traveled to Roanoke, Virginia, and played Virginia Tech at Victory Stadium (where the Hokies used to play two or three games every season).

That year, the good citizens in Orangeburg settled for a matchup between Newberry and Guilford (though South Carolina and The Citadel’s freshman teams played a game there as well that weekend).

The Citadel’s final game at the Orangeburg County Fair came in 1959 and featured some hard feelings.

The contest drew 8,000 spectators, not a bad turnout, but perhaps not enough for The Citadel to continue to play games in Orangeburg. The Bulldogs won easily, breaking a Wofford winning streak in the series of four games.

Wofford and The Citadel would not meet again until 1967, in part because of a post-game disagreement between the two coaches, Eddie Teague of The Citadel and Wofford’s Conley Snidow. The Terriers’ boss accused Teague of running up the score, a charge heatedly denied by the Bulldogs’ coach.

Snidow complained about a late touchdown scored by The Citadel (though the TD came after Wofford had fumbled the ball away on its own five-yard-line), and he also belittled the Bulldogs’ victory, saying it came against one of his lesser squads.

There might have been some previous bad blood between the two men, as The Citadel had already announced it was suspending the series. My general impression is that Teague, who by this time was piloting a very good team which he had patiently developed over several years, had much better things to do than worry about whatever Wofford’s coach was whining about at any given moment.

The Citadel would only play Wofford once between 1959 and 1975.

College football at the Orangeburg County Fair wasn’t quite done once The Citadel left the scene; Wofford and Newberry played each other there in 1960 and 1961. After that, though, the gridiron action was limited to high school teams.

—

For anyone interested, I’ve compiled The Citadel’s games at the Orangeburg County Fair into a spreadsheet that can be accessed here: Link

The media guide doesn’t always list the games as having been played in Orangeburg (the matchup versus Erskine, for example). I’ve confirmed all the county fair contests via newspaper reports.

—

I’ll be in Orangeburg on Saturday. It might be a little late in the day to also make a trip to get some quality BBQ (and hash!), but we’ll see. That’s why coolers were invented.

I am hopeful for a competitive contest. I suspect both fan bases feel that way, actually.

Nothing further to add. Let’s play some football.

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Non-conference football scheduling for The Citadel — a quick update

Posted on December 9, 2022 by Sandlapper Spike

All across our great nation, people are anxiously awaiting the announcement of a new head football coach at The Citadel. At this moment, there is uncertainty and bewilderment, with many questions being asked. When will the decision be made? What does the future hold for the program? Why did UAB hire Trent Dilfer?

Soon, however, a large plume of light blue smoke will emanate from the rooftop of McAlister Field House, the official acknowledgement that a new coach has finally been chosen. (If the plume is black, that means the building is on fire.)

—

While everyone waits, I’ve decided to write about non-conference football scheduling at The Citadel, an abiding interest of mine.

A couple of months ago, I sent in a FOIA request (something I also did in the fall of 2021) to ask for any non-conference game contracts that had been finalized in the preceding twelve months. After a while, the FOI office at The Citadel kindly responded with the information, and even more kindly did not imply that I was a complete goober for making the request.

What follows is a year-by-year listing of future non-conference games, including the contests I’ve written about before and the “new” games on the schedule.

2023

As was the case this past season, The Citadel will play only five home games in 2023. The FBS opponent next year will be Georgia Southern, with the game scheduled for September 2. The payout for that contest is $320,000, along with 300 complimentary tickets.

The following week (September 9), Campbell will play the Bulldogs in Johnson Hagood Stadium to open The Citadel’s home slate. This is the return game from the 2022 season opener; as is typical, the visitors will receive 300 complimentary tickets.

Two weeks later, on September 23, The Citadel will travel to Orangeburg to face South Carolina State. This will be the first time the (Charleston) Bulldogs will have played SCSU at Oliver C. Dawson Stadium.

2024

2024 is a year in which an FCS school can play a 12-game regular season, and that is exactly what The Citadel will do. Thus, there are four non-conference games.

South Carolina State will make the trek down I-26 to Charleston on September 7, completing a home-and-home agreement. Incidentally, for both the 2023 and 2024 contests each visiting school will receive 300 complimentary tickets, but no others for sale.

On September 14, The Citadel will host North Greenville. The Crusaders will receive $40,000 for their appearance, which is the same amount VUL was paid this past season.

North Greenville will receive 300 complimentary tickets; the contract also states that NGU “shall be allotted TBD tickets on consignment for sale to its followers.” When it comes to evaluating contract details, ‘TBD’ is a tough nut to crack.

The other two non-conference contests will be road games for The Citadel. The first is the season opener, on August 31, at Charleston Southern.

My personal opinion is that scheduling this game is a mistake, for reasons that I have discussed before, but I won’t go on a long harangue about it in this space. The Citadel will receive 300 complimentary tickets and another “500 hard tickets for consignment”.

On November 23, The Citadel will play at Clemson, completing a contract that included the 2020 matchup between the two schools. The payout for this contest is $475,000.

The military college will receive 300 complimentary tickets for the Clemson game and may request an additional 2,000 tickets for sale. For anyone interested, here is the specific language in the contract for those tickets:

The Visiting Institution shall be allocated up to 2,000 tickets for sale if requested by February 1st [2024]. Unsold tickets must be returned to the Host Institution by May 1st prior to the game date. The Visiting Institution is responsible for paying the printed face value to the Host Institution for any tickets not returned to Host Institution by the agreed upon date as set forth above.

2025

This is another year in which FCS teams have the option to play 12 regular-season contests.

The Citadel has two non-conference games scheduled so far for the 2025 season. On September 6, the Bulldogs will face Mississippi in Oxford. The payout for that game is $500,000, with 600 complimentary tickets. The contract also stipulates that the visiting team “shall be allotted an additional 3,400 tickets for its followers in the customary Visiting Team location”.

This past April, The Citadel entered into an agreement with Gardner-Webb for a home-and-home series, with the first game taking place in Boiling Springs, North Carolina on September 13, 2025. The agreement includes 250 complimentary tickets for the visiting school, rather than the usual 300.

The Mississippi and Gardner-Webb games are the only non-conference matchups scheduled so far for 2025.

2026

In 2026, the return matchup for the two-game contract with Charleston Southern will take place in Charleston on September 19. The ticket distribution will be the same for the visitors as it is for the 2024 contest.

Originally, the contest was to be played on September 5, but Charleston Southern apparently asked for the game to be moved. The Buccaneers are currently slated to play at Clemson on October 17, 2026, but perhaps an additional FBS opponent could be in the mix for CSU. Charleston Southern agreed to pay The Citadel $20,000 to change the game date.

Shortly after the addendum making the change was finalized, The Citadel signed an agreement to play at Charlotte on September 5, 2026 (yes, the same date as the original gameday for the CSU contest). The payout is $305,000.

The Citadel also receives 400 complimentary tickets and 600 tickets for sale, although I’m a little perplexed at a caveat in the contract concerning this part of the agreement:

Should Visiting Team sell less than 400 tickets they are responsible for payment to make up difference to 400. If Visiting Team sells 600 tickets or more, they will receive a payment of $5,000.

The Citadel currently has one opening remaining on its 2026 schedule.

2027

Only one game has been scheduled so far for the 2027 season, but it is noteworthy.

The Citadel will face Navy in Annapolis on September 4, 2027. This would be the first time the schools have met on the gridiron since the 1989 season (a 14-10 Bulldogs victory which came immediately after Hurricane Hugo ravaged Charleston).

The payout for the game is $200,000, with 300 complimentary tickets. The contract also states that “Navy will set ticket prices. Allocation will be made to The Citadel by mutual agreement.” I am not sure if that means The Citadel could receive more tickets for sale.

2028

The only officially scheduled matchup for 2028 is the second game of the previously mentioned contract with Gardner-Webb, this time played in Charleston (on September 2). The ticketing distribution is the same as for the 2025 meeting.

Another potential non-conference game in 2028, a contest at Clemson, is not yet official. (More on that later.)

2029

The Citadel is scheduled to play Army at West Point on October 6, 2029. The original contract (signed in March 2021) had established November 17 as the game date, but an addendum signed just a week and a half later changed the date to early October.

The payout will be $200,000, matching The Citadel’s guarantee for the Navy contest.

Per the terms of the contract with Army, The Citadel will receive 3,000 tickets for sale on consignment, but that number includes 500 complimentary tickets.

2033

Four years later, The Citadel and Army will meet again (on November 19, 2033), with this contest also held at Michie Stadium. The contract was finalized on the same day that the addendum to the 2029 matchup was signed. (The 2029 and 2033 games are separate contracts.)

Ticket distribution is unchanged from the terms for the 2029 game.

—

Short version of the above:

2023: at Georgia Southern, Campbell, at South Carolina State

2024: at Charleston Southern, South Carolina State, North Greenville, at Clemson

2025: at Mississippi, at Gardner-Webb

2026: at Charlotte, Charleston Southern

2027: at Navy

2028: Gardner-Webb

2029: at Army

2033: at Army

—

In September, Andrew Miller of The Post and Courier wrote an article about the difficulties The Citadel’s football program has faced in trying to schedule FBS opponents. The story included this paragraph:

The Citadel will travel to Statesboro, Ga., to face Georgia Southern next year. The Bulldogs will face Power 5 schools Clemson (2024, 2028) and Mississippi (2025) in the near future.

When I made my FOIA request, there was some initial confusion about the 2028 game at Clemson — well, I was confused, anyway. I was subsequently informed (for which I greatly appreciate) that the 2028 contest against the Tigers, while verbally agreed upon, is not yet finalized.

—

For those unaware of the rule, I guess I should explain the 12-game regular season scheduling opportunity for certain seasons. Per bylaw 17.11.6.1. of the NCAA Division I manual (2022 edition):

Twelve football contests [for FCS schools] shall be permissible during those years in which there are 14 Saturdays from the first permissible playing date through the last playing date in November…

In some years (2019 being the most recent example), there are 14 Saturdays in the period starting with Labor Day weekend and ending with the last Saturday of November. When that happens, FCS schools can schedule 12 regular-season games, instead of 11. The next three years in which that will be the case are 2024, 2025, and 2030.

—

The Citadel will need two non-conference home matchups in 2025 to set up a six-game home schedule (in a 12-game season). I could see schools like Presbyterian and Newberry getting a call.

I think The Citadel would definitely not be precluded from scheduling another FBS opponent in 2027, when Navy is on the slate; the same is true for 2029 and 2033, when the games against Army are played.

As an aside, with the current upheaval in college sports, I would not purchase hotel rooms for that 2033 game at Army just yet. Contracts are contracts, but the world of intercollegiate athletics will be vastly different in a decade, if not sooner.

—

The upcoming matchups with the service academies are not true “money games”, in my opinion. Realistically, The Citadel is not going to balance the books on the backs of those contests. The guarantees are not nearly as substantial as those from “Power 5” institutions, and the travel costs will be greater.

That said, I am glad to see them scheduled. Our fans want to see those games. That includes graduates and other supporters who do not live in the south.

I have always felt that The Citadel should occasionally play games outside of its geographic region. It might not be the optimal financial decision from the point of view of the department of athletics, but I think it is important to promote the school in other parts of the country — and it is obviously a boon to those alums living in more distant locales.

One of my favorite trips as a fan was making the journey to see The Citadel play at Princeton in 2009. I was really impressed with how many graduates from that part of the country showed up to see the Bulldogs in action.

I also suspect these out-of-region contests can be successfully leveraged from a fundraising perspective. That might not necessarily help the budget of varsity athletics, at least immediately, but it is good for the college as a whole.

—

Notably absent from any future non-conference schedules: South Carolina.

—

Concluding thought: I would enjoy watching The Citadel play UCLA in the Rose Bowl…

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College Football, Week 8: Tuesday notes and observations

Posted on October 19, 2021 by Sandlapper Spike

– Brent Thompson’s Monday press conference

—

Starting around the 17:00 mark of Brent Thompson’s Monday presser, there is an interesting question-and-answer discussion of recruiting, focusing on the impact the “free COVID year” has had. Over about five minutes, Thompson goes over a lot of the aspects involved, and not just from The Citadel’s perspective.

According to Thompson, his staff has offered about 80% fewer players this year than in a typical year. Considering that, as the coach notes, The Citadel is a “high school recruiting program”, it looks like this will be another very difficult year for prep prospects.

—

Time to talk about future non-conference schedules…

In a normal year, The Citadel has three non-conference games. One is always a “money” game against FBS opposition. At least one of the other matchups must be played at Johnson Hagood Stadium, because otherwise there would only be four home contests in a season.

During the 2024 season, FCS teams have the option to play 12 regular-season games because of the way the calendar falls, and The Citadel will indeed fulfill that quota. How, you ask? We’ll get there in a moment.

–

First, the 2022 campaign. The Bulldogs will open the season in Buies Creek, North Carolina, playing at Campbell on September 3.

The next non-conference tilt is also in the state of North Carolina, in Boone against Appalachian State. That matchup was originally supposed to take place on September 24, but was moved forward one week, to October 1. That change was apparently requested by App, and as a result The Citadel’s payout was for the game was increased, from $325,000 to $350,000.

The final out-of-league game of the 2022 season will be a home game for the Bulldogs, and it will be very late in the year – November 12, to be exact. The Citadel’s opponent will be Virginia University of Lynchburg (VUL), which is not a D2 school or even in the NAIA. Rather, VUL is a member of the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA).

VUL, an HBCU with about 500 undergraduate students, has five FCS schools on its schedule this season. It has played three of them so far. Combined score of those three games: 154-27. The winless Dragons have also played Mars Hill and Erskine, among others.

I am honestly not sure of the last time The Citadel played a program that was not in the NCAA or the NAIA. It is possible that it hasn’t happened since before World War II.

The fact the game is on November 12 is also odd. I can only assume The Citadel had difficulty finding a home opponent to fill out its slate. VUL will receive $40,000 to make the trip to Charleston.

–

In 2023, The Citadel will again play only five home games. The FBS opponent that season will be Georgia Southern, and it will be the season opener (September 2). The payout for that contest is $320,000.

The following week (September 9), Campbell will play the Bulldogs in Johnson Hagood Stadium, completing a two-game agreement.

Two weeks later, on September 23, The Citadel will travel to Orangeburg to play another set of Bulldogs – South Carolina State. That will be the first of a two-game series between the two schools; the return matchup will be held in Charleston in 2024.

–

As mentioned earlier, 2024 is a 12-game regular season. The home game against South Carolina State will be on September 7. The following week, on September 14, The Citadel will host North Greenville. The Crusaders will receive $40,000 for their appearance (matching the VUL payout, so that appears to be the going rate for such games).

The other two non-conference contests will be road games for The Citadel. The first is the season opener, on August 31, at Charleston Southern. I am on record as saying that scheduling this contest is a serious mistake that does not reflect well on The Citadel’s department of athletics. This is the first of a two-game agreement (more on that later).

On November 23, The Citadel will play at Clemson, completing a contract that included the 2020 matchup between the two schools. The payout for the contest is $475,000, plus an additional consideration – besides the standard 300 complimentary tickets, the military college has the option to request an additional 2,000 tickets for sale.

–

The Citadel has only one scheduled non-conference game so far for the 2025 season. That is a matchup with Mississippi, now scheduled for September 6. The payout is $500,000.

–

In 2026, the return matchup for the two-game contract with Charleston Southern will take place in Charleston on September 19.

That contest was originally supposed to be played on September 5, but CSU apparently asked for the game to be moved (presumably to pick up an FBS opponent). Charleston Southern agreed to pay The Citadel $20,000 to change the game date. The contract addendum making the adjustment was completed on May 5 of this year.

Less than three weeks later, The Citadel signed an agreement to play at Charlotte on September 5, for a payout of $305,000; The Citadel will also receive 600 tickets for sale.

—

I’ll post my normal stats breakdown either later today or perhaps on Wednesday…

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Putting together the ideal football schedule at The Citadel

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Sandlapper Spike

I wanted to write about this topic after some recent discourse about it, primarily in two places:

– AD Mike Capaccio’s discussion of the schedule on Lowcountry media personality Quintin Washington’s YouTube channel

– Jeff Hartsell’s column in The Post and Courier

Here are some of the relevant passages from each media piece.

Capaccio (direct quotes):

“We need to work with our schedule to be more realistic….we don’t need to be playing two ranked teams, or three ranked teams, and then an ACC team, and then go into our conference, because our conference is a monster…so, not that we [want] an easy schedule, but we need a little break…

…We want to play close to home…three to five hours [away] at the maximum…We don’t need to be taking a trip to Towson…Our philosophy is changing, and we want to play close [to home].”

Hartsell:

By the end of the 2020 season, The Citadel will have played 44 straight games against D-I teams…

…”Do you need a Division II team in there? Every couple of years, I think you do,” said [The Citadel’s head football coach, Brent] Thompson, whose 10-2 SoCon championship team in 2016 won a 38-14 game over D-II North Greenville. “But I don’t think you need one every year. I know just about everybody in our league will have one this season.

“But my emphasis is on more in-region games. Elon is a fine game, Gardner-Webb, Charleston Southern, S.C. State. Those games are a lot easier on your travel and your budget, and they mean more to the kids. I would much rather play a non-conference game in-state, or at least in-region.”

For Thompson, a guarantee game last season might have made the difference between a 5-6 season and a 6-5 season. And as any coach will tell you, that’s a big difference.

Coaches from Dabo Swinney to Nick Saban know that an occasional cupcake tastes good. The Citadel ought to try one.

—

Let me start off by saying that I am not overly fond of the epithet “cupcake” being thrown around when mentioning a squad from a lower classification or division. Playoff-caliber D-2 teams like Newberry and North Greenville certainly weren’t “cupcakes” when they played the Bulldogs. The term also doesn’t apply to The Citadel when it faces an FBS opponent.

Calling a team a “cupcake” is basically a way of saying it doesn’t belong on the same field with the favored opponent. I find this tiresome, as it is primarily a media creation designed to diminish programs that aren’t on national TV every week.

—

Now, as to The Citadel’s football schedule…

Right now, the Bulldogs play 11 regular-season games every season except in years where the calendar allows for a 12th contest. After this year, the next time FCS teams will have a chance to play a 12th game will be 2024.

I don’t believe there will be a rule change altering the current status quo in that regard, so let’s assume that The Citadel will annually play 11 regular-season games for the foreseeable future.

The Bulldogs will play eight Southern Conference games every year, four at home and four on the road. That leaves three non-conference contests to schedule.

—

One of those non-conference matchups has to be a “money” game against an FBS opponent. Here are the already scheduled FBS teams through 2025:

  • 2020: Clemson
  • 2021: Coastal Carolina
  • 2022: Appalachian State
  • 2023: Georgia Southern
  • 2024: Clemson
  • 2025: Mississippi

Of the two remaining out-of-league games, at least one of them almost has to be a home game; otherwise, the Bulldogs would only play four contests in a given season at Johnson Hagood Stadium. That isn’t going to work.

So far, these non-FBS games have been scheduled through the next few seasons:

  • 2020: Elon, Charleston Southern [schedule complete; six home games]
  • 2021: Charleston Southern
  • 2022: at Campbell
  • 2023: Campbell

Mike Capaccio also mentioned during the interview referenced above that Presbyterian is on a future schedule. Perhaps the Blue Hose are on more than one.

—

What, exactly, should be the goals of The Citadel’s non-conference football schedule? Some of them (in no particular order) might be:

  • Help the team prepare for the SoCon slate
  • Raise money for the program (and the department of athletics in general)
  • Promote the school to a wider audience
  • Give the team a better chance of making the FCS playoffs
  • Improve the win-loss record
  • Ensure there are enough home games to satisfy the season-ticket holders
  • Energize the fans by playing quality, high-profile opponents
  • Save money on travel
  • Excite the players on the team by playing quality, high-profile opponents
  • Provide an added impetus for recruiting

—

Random musings:

– I am okay with giving the team a better chance to make the FCS playoffs via scheduling, but only to a point.

That is because the FCS postseason, as currently constructed, is hopelessly flawed. It is structurally biased against southeastern schools (honestly, that is undeniable). Thus, it is not a true “national” tournament.

I see no reason to devalue the regular season just to participate in the playoffs. Until the tournament is fully seeded and not beholden to asinine geographical bracketing, my thoughts on that will not change.

– I’ve already mentioned that The Citadel needs to play at least five home games per season. I don’t think anyone would seriously disagree.

– While I’ve said it before, let me reiterate that limiting the distance the team travels for non-conference games is not always a good idea, at least from a larger perspective. I enjoyed the trip to Princeton in 2009, and I firmly believe the Bulldogs should occasionally make trips like that to promote the school, provide a new experience for the players, and reward our loyal fans from other parts of the country.

– I don’t want to play opponents for the sole purpose of padding the win total. That isn’t what The Citadel is all about. If it were, the school wouldn’t have joined the Southern Conference in the first place, much less stay in the league all these years.

The Citadel is about embracing challenges. That includes varsity sports.

—

Finally, my suggestions for non-conference games.

I am inclined to eschew D-2 and NAIA schools, because I think it is probably beneficial to the conference as a whole for its member schools to play as many D-1 teams as possible, and The Citadel should take the initiative in that respect.

I could see arguments in the other direction — and I’m not automatically opposed to teams like Newberry, North Greenville, or Benedict. I don’t believe Webber International needs to be on the schedule again, however.

– Presbyterian strikes me as almost an ideal non-conference opponent. The Citadel would not have play in Clinton (barring a hurricane, of course). The two schools have a long history on the gridiron, too.

– Charleston Southern is a reasonable choice, though I don’t think it is necessary (or particularly desirable) to play the Buccaneers on an annual basis.

Obviously, any games between CSU and The Citadel would be contested at Johnson Hagood Stadium. Playing at Buccaneer Field is a non-starter for a host of reasons, including A) the state of the facility, B) the fact that 80% (or more) of the fans at the game would be rooting for The Citadel, so forcing them to travel to another stadium would be pointless, and C) the loss of a home game would seriously affect The Citadel’s ability to schedule the rest of its non-conference slate in a given season.

That last point is one that several members of the local media have never seemed able to grasp — or are simply unwilling to accept, even knowing it is true.

A rotation of Charleston Southern and Presbyterian might not be a bad idea.

– Other teams that I think would be good opponents in the “home games only” slot: Jacksonville, Stetson, Davidson, and perhaps Gardner-Webb.

– Schools that would be appropriate “home and home” regional opponents would include South Carolina State, Elon, William & Mary, Richmond, Campbell, and possibly North Carolina A&T.

– I would advocate for an occasional home-and-home versus an out-of-region team, like an Ivy or Patriot League squad, or even one of the MVFC teams.

Yes, I know, it costs too much. I’m sure we could raise some money for a two-game series through a special campaign, though. I noticed that there are currently 38 people listed in The Citadel Development Foundation’s staff directory; perhaps one or two of them could help out.

—

All of the above is just my opinion. I could be wrong about just about everything!

Or maybe I could be right about a few things. Your mileage may vary.

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College Football 2017, Week #1: the top 15 matchups

Posted on August 31, 2017 by Sandlapper Spike

On his college hoops ratings website, Ken Pomeroy has an algorithm called ‘FanMatch’, in which “games are rated for competitiveness and level of play with a lean towards higher-scoring games”. It is a way to rate the potential watchability of various basketball contests. There is just a touch of whimsy involved, which makes it even better.

I’m going to do the same thing (more or less) and rate the top 15 games of Week 1, excluding Newberry-The Citadel, because it wouldn’t be fair to compare that game with all the lesser gridiron battles.

Sometimes the high-profile contests really are the best games of the week, but often under-the-radar matchups are worth the attention of the viewing public. That includes FCS games.

I briefly explained this in a previously post, but basically I’ve created a super-secret formula (patent pending) to produce these game ratings; it is called “Tingle Factor”, or TF. The higher the TF, the better.

Of course, there are many games this week that are worth watching, because after all — they are college football games!

To access a Google Document that has a complete schedule of televised/streamed D-1 college football games, see this post: Link

Here are the top 15 games for Week 1 (Thursday through Monday):

Road Team Home Team Gametime (ET) TV/Streaming TF
Alabama Florida State 9/2, 8:00 pm ABC/ESPN3 86.73
North Carolina State South Carolina 9/2, 3:00 pm ESPN 84.20
Tennessee Georgia Tech 9/4, 8:00 pm ESPN 83.90
Virginia Tech West Virginia 9/3, 7:30 pm ABC/ESPN3 83.55
Tulsa Oklahoma State 8/31, 7:30 pm FS1/FS-Go 79.68
Richmond Sam Houston State 9/1, 7:00 pm ESPN3 78.11
Colorado State Colorado 9/1, 8:00 pm Pac-12 Network 72.15
James Madison East Carolina 9/2, 6:00 pm ESPN3 68.44
Temple Notre Dame 9/2, 3:30 pm NBC 67.18
Kennesaw State Samford 8/31, 7:00 pm ESPN3 66.95
Texas A&M UCLA 9/3, 7:30 pm FOX/FS-Go 65.60
Maryland Texas 9/2, 12:00 pm FS1/FS-Go 64.19
Eastern Washington Texas Tech 9/2, 4:00 pm FS Nets/FS-Go 64.03
South Carolina State Southern 9/3, 2:30 pm ESPN2 63.88
Navy Florida Atlantic 9/1, 7:00 pm ESPNU 63.79
  • Alabama-Florida State will be played in Atlanta, GA
  • Georgia Tech-Tennessee will also be played in Atlanta, GA
  • North Carolina State-South Carolina will be played in Charlotte, NC
  • Richmond-Sam Houston State will be played in Waco, TX
  • Colorado State-Colorado will be played in Denver, CO
  • Virginia Tech-West Virginia will be played in Landover, MD

Additional notes and observations:

– The top four games this week are all neutral-site Power 5 games. I think they would probably be more fun if played on a campus site, but money talks. At least these matchups will take place.

– It’s not surprising that Alabama-Florida State (a 1 vs. 3 matchup) tops the list, but watch out for North Carolina State-South Carolina. That should be a good game, and it is a bellwether contest for both programs.

– The game between Richmond and Sam Houston State was originally supposed to have been played last Sunday in Huntsville, TX, but was postponed and relocated due to Hurricane Harvey. Because of that, I had to resubmit the game into my computer program that produces the Tingle Factor ratings, and as a result it lost two TF points. It is still easily in the top 15 this week, however.

– If Tulsa can successfully replace Dane Evans at quarterback, look out (and as the over/under is 70, bet the over).

– Colorado State-Colorado strikes me as underrated, but perhaps instinctively the algorithm knows the game is being carried on the Pac-12 Network, and that very few people will be able to actually watch the game.

– James Madison, the defending FCS champion, is currently a 1-point favorite over homestanding FBS opponent East Carolina.

– Another FCS vs. FBS matchup, Eastern Washington-Texas Tech, features an over/under of 87.

– Navy-FAU barely sneaked into the top 15, but the algorithm doesn’t know the potential fun of having a military school face off against Lane Kiffin and a team described by one observer as an “Island of Misfit Toys”. This game might actually be top 10 material.

– One contest not in the top 15 is Michigan-Florida, and given that the Gators may struggle to put 11 players on the field at the same time on Saturday, that seems reasonable. BYU-LSU also didn’t make the cut.

– Tennessee State-Georgia State isn’t in the top 15 either, but it might be worthwhile to watch a few minutes of that game (it’s on ESPN3), if only to see the wonder of Georgia State playing at Turner Field (!).

—

It’s time for college football. Life is good.

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Comparing FCS non-conference football schedules

Posted on January 31, 2015 by Sandlapper Spike

Yes, it’s early February, and the return of football is still many months away (well, if you don’t count recruiting and spring practice). All the more reason to post about it, I suppose.

This is going to be a relatively short post about scheduling tendencies, but first allow me a brief digression on a completely different football topic…

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There was a recent article in The Times and Democrat (Orangeburg, SC) about the fabled “man in the brown suit”. This is a football tale that not every fan of The Citadel knows about, mainly because A) it happened in 1937, and B) it happened in Orangeburg.

It’s an amusing story, one with similarities to the much better known situation that occurred in the 1954 Cotton Bowl, when Tommy Lewis was “too full of Alabama”. I might argue that the goings-on at the Orangeburg County Fairgrounds in 1937 were a bit more comic in nature, however.

At any rate, it’s a reminder of long-ago days gone by. I suspect younger alums might be surprised to know that The Citadel has played 34 football games in Orangeburg over the years, from a 1916 victory over Clemson to a 1959 win versus Wofford. The Bulldogs also faced Furman and South Carolina in The Garden City.

I am not completely sure, but I think all of those games took place at the fairgrounds, and the corps of cadets was in attendance for most (if not all) of them.

– Okay, back to scheduling.

—

I got the idea for this post after reading a story about Delaware and Delaware State agreeing to resume their series in 2016. The paragraph that jumped out to me:

The game helps to lock in Delaware’s non-conference scheduling pattern for more than the past decade. Home games against FCS opponents, and road games versus FBS squads. Delaware has not traveled for a regular season, non-conference FCS game since going to The Citadel in September 2002.

I was really surprised when I read that. Could it really be true that in the regular season, Delaware hasn’t played an out-of-conference road game against an FCS foe for twelve years?

Actually, it isn’t true. The internet strikes again!

However, it’s not like the Blue Hens were making a habit of playing such games. Between 2003 and 2014, Delaware played exactly one (1) non-conference FCS regular-season road game. In 2008, UD traveled to Greenville and tangled with Furman. That’s it.

I decided to look at the schedules for a select group of institutions over that same twelve-year period to see if UD’s non-league schedule was unusual, or if it was actually not out of place. I concentrated on east coast FCS schools that typically had conference schedules of eight games from 2003-14, which would give them roughly the same number of OOC scheduling opportunities as Delaware.

There are some caveats. Some of the schools on the list occasionally played seven-game league slates. For example, the SoCon did so in five of the twelve years. CAA schools played a nine-game conference schedule in 2003.

Also, not all schools played a uniform number of regular-season games. When FCS schools had a chance to play 12-game seasons, they generally did — but not all of them always did. There are also a couple of 10-game seasons in the mix.

With that in mind, here is a table listing 16 FCS schools and their schedules in three categories: number of regular-season games played against out-of-conference opponents on the road; number of FBS opponents; and number of non-D1 opponents.

2003-2014 schedules FCS – road non-con. FBS non-D1
The Citadel 7 16 4
Delaware 1 8 10
Furman 12 12 2
WCU 7 18 9
Wm. & Mary 11 12 2
UNH 8 11 0
JMU 7 10 3
Villanova 13 11 0
Richmond 10 11 0
Chattanooga 12 15 4
Delaware St. 16 5 8
SC State 12 12 10
Hampton 16 2 7
Elon 14 7 6
Wofford 7 12 9
Maine 11 12 3

—

Okay, now for the “exceptions and oddities” section…

– Determining whether or not a school was an FCS or FBS opponent could sometimes be tricky. For this table, I am listing Old Dominion’s 2013 team as an FCS squad. If you think ODU should be classified as FBS for that season (which was the first year of the Monarchs’ transition to FBS), then subtract one from The Citadel’s “FCS road non-conference” category and add it to the “FBS” column.

On the other hand, Hampton’s 2014 meeting with ODU went down as a contest against an FBS team.

Meanwhile, I counted Charlotte as an FCS road opponent for James Madison (that game was also played in 2014). Chattanooga played at Western Kentucky in 2006, while the Hilltoppers were still in FCS, so the game is listed in the FCS group for the Mocs.

– Occasionally a school would be a non-conference opponent in one season, then later become a league foe. For example, The Citadel played at VMI three times while the Keydets were a member of the Big South — but in 2014, the game in Lexington was a SoCon game.

That was the case for several other schools as well, including Maine (which played at Albany twice during this period in OOC matchups) and South Carolina State (which played at Savannah State before the Tigers joined the MEAC).

– While the category says “FCS road non-conference”, there are actually a few neutral-site games mixed in as well. All of them are HBCU “classics”. Hampton played four such contests during the twelve-year period, while South Carolina State and Delaware State played one each.

– Speaking of Delaware State, in 2003 the Hornets played an OOC game at Florida A&M. Yes, they did.

That’s because at the time FAMU was making a quixotic attempt to join Division I-A. In 2003, the MEAC schools played only seven league games (though several of them played the Rattlers as a “non-conference” game).

– Villanova played 13 FCS road non-conference opponents from 2003-2014. Seven of those games were fairly easy trips for the Wildcats, as they were matchups with Penn at Franklin Field.

– Of the sixteen schools that were profiled, Western Carolina played the most FBS teams during the time period (18), but The Citadel played the most power-conference squads (all 16 of the Bulldogs’ FBS opponents were from the five major conferences). The Citadel also had the widest variety of FBS opponents, playing 14 different schools from all five power leagues from 2003-2014.

– The ten games Delaware played versus non-D1 schools were all against the same opponent — West Chester.

—

What does it all mean? Probably not much, to be honest.

However, the question “Is Delaware’s non-league schedule that much different from other FCS schools?” can be answered. It certainly is.

For one thing, the Blue Hens had a rather “contained” scheduling policy all the way around. Besides the regular matchups with West Chester, Delaware played only three different FBS opponents, as six of the eight games against the higher division were meetings with Navy.

Every other school on the list played at least seven regular-season non-conference road games from 2003-2014. Also, only Wofford and South Carolina State played as many non-D1 games; two of the sixteen institutions (fellow CAA football travelers Villanova and Richmond) didn’t play any.

When I first looked at UD’s past schedules, I was a bit puzzled by the one regular-season non-league road game that Delaware did play, that 2008 matchup with Furman. There was no “return” game, as the Paladins did not travel to Newark for a rematch.

As was explained to me by the partisans at the UFFP, however, that’s because Furman bought out the return game when it got a chance to play Missouri instead (for a considerable amount of money, obviously).

The result of that move by Furman? Well, it opened up a spot on Delaware’s schedule that was eventually filled by…Delaware State.

So, I guess I’ve come full circle with this post.

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Competing for a crowd: alternatives to the action at Johnson Hagood Stadium in 2014

Posted on July 31, 2014 by Sandlapper Spike

There are a lot of opinions on how The Citadel can attract bigger crowds to its home football games. I have shared more than a few of my own in the past.

However, the purpose of this post is simply to highlight some competition the school will face on each of its six home dates in 2014. It goes without saying that winning is a key factor in producing better attendance, but there is more to it than that.

Anyway, without further ado:

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August 30 — The Citadel vs. Coastal Carolina, 6 pm

South Carolina plays on Thursday night (August 28). Clemson plays at Georgia in an ESPN game that starts at 5:30 pm.

South Carolina State plays Benedict in Columbia at 5 pm, while Charleston Southern opens on Thursday.

Those are the nearest football options. Also taking place on August 30:

– Lowcountry Jazz Festival (North Charleston Coliseum)

Multiple jazz performers will be featured. Luckily for The Citadel, festival headliner Bobby Caldwell is performing on Thursday night. Since he will presumably be free on Saturday, perhaps Caldwell can team up with the regimental band at halftime for a unique rendition of “What You Won’t Do For Love“.

– Shrimp and Grits Chefs’ Competition (Charleston Visitor Center)

For $35 at the door, you can sample some of the cuisine. My suggestion: have some shrimp ‘n grits for lunch (or breakfast) instead, and then head out to the game.

September 27 — The Citadel vs. Gardner-Webb, 6 pm

It’s a long time between the first and second games at home, isn’t it?

Clemson and South Carolina are both on home on this date, playing North Carolina and Missouri, respectively. Times have not been announced (which is the case for most of their games this season).

SCSU hosts Hampton at 6 pm, while CSU is at Charlotte.

Other events on September 27:

– Folly Beach Pier Tournament

The good news is that the tournament will be over by 2 pm, so you can get your fishin’ fix in and still make it to Johnson Hagood Stadium with time to spare.

– MOJA Arts Festival

It’s the 30th anniversary of this ten-day happening.

– Taste of Charleston

The main event takes place on Sunday at Boone Hall Plantation. Saturday night will feature catered food on Charleston Harbor. I’m sure you can find more edible fare in Johnson Hagood Stadium’s concessions area.

October 11 — The Citadel vs. Charlotte, 2 pm

This is Parents’ Weekend at The Citadel. Rings ahoy!

South Carolina is off this weekend, while Clemson hosts Louisville.

Meanwhile, South Carolina State tangles with North Carolina Central in Orangeburg, and Charleston Southern is at Vanderbilt.

Horning in on the October 11 action:

– Zac Brown’s Southern Ground Music and Food Festival (Blackbaud Stadium)

This actually doesn’t look half-bad, though perhaps a bit expensive (admittedly, I’m kind of thrifty). The general type of music being featured isn’t really my cup of tea, but I’ve seen worse lineups.

If you must see Big Head Todd, Blues Traveler, and/or Bela Fleck, though, I’m sure they won’t get going until later in the evening, convenient enough when an afternoon football game is in the offing. Be sure to tell all your friends and neighbors the same thing.

October 18 — The Citadel vs. UT-Chattanooga, 1 pm

This game is being televised on the American Sports Network, which may or may not be available in your locale.

South Carolina hosts Furman, with that contest also kicking off at 1 pm. Clemson ventures north to face Boston College, a traditional banana peel of a game for the Tigers.

S.C. State is off this week. Charleston Southern is at home and plays Presbyterian at 3 pm.

Also of note:

– Fly Fishing School (West Ashley)

For $75, you can learn to fly fish, just like Brad Pitt.

November 8 — The Citadel vs. Furman, 2 pm

It’s Homecoming Weekend at The Citadel. All the cool people will be tailgating at Johnson Hagood Stadium. This year’s 25th-anniversary reunion features the Class of 1989.

Neither South Carolina nor Clemson play on this date. The Gamecocks are off for the week, while the Tigers play at Wake Forest on Thursday night.

South Carolina State is on the road, playing Florida A&M. CSU hosts Gardner-Webb, with that game starting at 11 am.

Other events:

– Charleston’s Veterans Day Parade starts downtown at 10 am. If nothing else, those going to the football game might want to make note of that. It should be over by around 11:15 am.

– Lowcountry Hoedown (Charleston Visitors Center)

This event runs from 7 pm to 11 pm and includes “Bourbon, Moonshine, BBQ, and Bluegrass”. Well then. Featured performers: Barefoot Movement (they don’t wear shoes, as you may have guessed) and Seven Handle Circus (an act that, oddly, appears to only include six musicians).

– YALLFest (American Theater ballroom, American Theater cinema, Charleston Music Hall)

YALLFest “is the largest and most renowned festival in the country specifically geared toward Young Adult and Middle Grade Literature, with over 5,000 international fans expected to attend.” A bunch of young adult author types will also be making appearances at this particular shindig.

The official YALLFest band: Tiger Beat. So, so predictable.

November 15 — The Citadel vs. Samford, 1 pm

Clemson, South Carolina, South Carolina State, and Charleston Southern are on the road this week. Their respective opponents: Georgia Tech, Florida, Morgan State, and Liberty.

Remaining in the Charleston metropolitan area:

– Fly Fishing School (West Ashley)

Yes, it’s back! It’s a monthly thing, and this is November’s scheduled date.

– Plantation Days (Middleton Place)

If you’re into sugarcane pressing, gourd making, and leather tanning (and who isn’t?), this is the event for you.

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There you have it. That is a sampling of what the folks in the marketing department are up against as they promote The Citadel’s home football schedule this year.

At least the Scottish Games and Highland Gathering (September 20, Boone Hall Plantation) won’t conflict with any of The Citadel’s home games this season. That will come as a blessed relief for bagpiper groupies.

However, if crowds this year at Johnson Hagood Stadium are to become truly massive, the maxim of a former assistant football at The Citadel must come into play:

Just win, baby.

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The Citadel hoops it up in Las Vegas…and a couple other places

Posted on December 14, 2010 by Sandlapper Spike

What happens in Vegas…stays in Vegas.

—

On Friday, The Citadel plays the first of four basketball games in the western half of the United States, with one game in Boulder, Colorado, another in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and two games in Las Vegas.  If you have to play four games in the week before Christmas, you could do worse in terms of locales.

The four games are all part of the IBN Las Vegas Classic, which is an in-season tournament that really isn’t a tournament.  Well, I suppose it’s a tournament for Colorado, New Mexico, Indiana, and Northern Iowa.  Those four schools host two games, then play in a four-team bracket in Las Vegas for the “tournament” title. Meanwhile, four other schools (The Citadel, South Carolina State, Longwood, and SIU Edwardsville) play two games at the “bigger” schools and then two games against each other in Vegas.

It doesn’t matter if The Citadel beats Colorado and/or New Mexico before playing in Las Vegas.  It’s still paired off with the Longwood-SIUE-SCSU group.

This kind of in-season event is a growing trend that can be blamed mostly on Gardner-Webb, which a couple of years ago upset Kentucky and replaced the Wildcats in a made-for-ESPN tournament at Madison Square Garden.  That didn’t sit well with event organizers, which missed out on the hordes of UK fans (and also presumably annoyed ESPN, which lost a big TV draw).

After that, the folks who run these types of events started the “guaranteed four” setup, so as to ensure that the four “name” teams in the tournament advance to play at the main site.  Of course, both sets of teams in the LVC are playing at Orleans Arena anyway, but I’m guessing CBS College Sports (which is televising each game of the Colorado-New Mexico-Northern Iowa-Indiana group) didn’t want to be faced with the possibility of televising Longwood-South Carolina State instead of Northern Iowa-Indiana.

In addition, the organizers want to sell as many tickets, advanced or otherwise, as possible, and it’s not as easy to do that without “heavyweight” matchups (although there is nothing particularly heavy about any of the heavies in this tourney).  If you click on the “IBN Las Vegas Classic” link above, you will notice that ticket prices for the event range from $44 to $110, and single-game tickets are not available.  (If you listen to the announcer on the streaming video advertisement, you will also notice him promoting South Carolina as playing in this event; undoubtedly the folks who put the video together got South Carolina confused with South Carolina State.)

The Citadel also played in a “tournament” with pre-determined matchups a couple of years ago, in Cancun, an event that also featured New Mexico, and which was most notable for having its games played in a ballroom (complete with chandeliers).

—

Just some thoughts on The Citadel’s upcoming opponents, nothing too substantial…let’s start with Chris Fowler’s alma mater:

Colorado is 5-3.  The Buffaloes are 5-0 at home and 0-3 on the road.  Luckily for Colorado, it will play The Citadel at home.

This appears to be enough of an edge for The Denver Post, and possibly Buffs coach Tad Boyle, to take the Bulldogs for granted.  Boyle plans to “substitute freely” against The Citadel, in an effort to give his benchwarmers some playing time. According to the Post, “it will be a disappointment if Colorado can’t empty its bench” against the Bulldogs.

I think that qualifies as bulletin board material…

You can understand Colorado’s confidence, what with its impressive wins over national powers Idaho State and Texas-Pan American, and its near-upset of Harvard, which only beat the Buffaloes by 16 points.

Alec Burks (20.5 PPG this season and last year’s Big XII freshman of the year) and Cory Higgins (16.9 PPG) are good players, and need to be saved for other games, like those against top-100 RPI teams.  Colorado needs to beat some of those teams to finish the year in the top 100 itself, something it hasn’t done in the past four seasons. Part of the reason for that has been its less-than-stellar defensive play; among other things, Colorado finished last in the Big XII in 2009-10 in FG% defense.

Boyle won 25 games last year at Northern Colorado, and then moved to Boulder to replace Jeff Bzdelik (currently losing games to low-major squads at an alarming rate for Wake Forest).  He wants to improve Colorado’s defense and rebounding, which is a good idea, but through eight games the Buffs are still struggling to defend (including allowing opponents to shoot 40% from three-land; Zach Urbanus, take note).

The Citadel, by my count, has now lost 51 straight games to schools currently in BCS conferences.  Its last victory over a major-conference foe came in 1989, at South Carolina.  Before that you have to go back to 1979 and a win over Clemson.  The Bulldogs have only one victory over a current Big XII school, a 62-61 decision against Texas A&M in 1971.

While beating Colorado might be considered unlikely, given that history, it’s not out of the realm of possibility, particularly since the Buffaloes are not exactly on the same level as Duke or Kansas.  I’m a bit bemused by the Post story, which appears to be assuming a walkover.

—

Going into this season, Steve Alford had won 76 games in three years at New Mexico, including 30 last season (a school record).  One of those 30 victories came in the NCAA tournament, which matched Alford’s total number of NCAA tourney triumphs in eight years at Iowa.  It appears Albuquerque is a better fit for Alford than Iowa City, somewhat surprising for a Big 10 legend…or a Big 10 leader…whatever.

(We’ll be mocking the new Big 10 division names for years to come.)

Alford should have a good team this year, too, although it could have been even better had MWC player of the year Darington Hobson returned.  He elected to go pro and bypass his senior season, however.  Hobson and Ramon Martinez (also departed) combined to average 30 points and 15 rebounds per game last season; now Alford has to replace that production.

The Lobos are 7-1, including back-to-back wins over New Mexico State (a scheduling oddity; the victory in Las Cruces came in OT) and victories over Arizona State and Detroit.  The one loss was a 25-point beatdown at California.

New Mexico has a lot of depth, and Alford is still in the process of figuring out how to use it, evidenced by the fact ten different players have seen action in all eight of the Lobos’ games, and that doesn’t include Phillip McDonald, who missed three early games with an elbow injury.  When Alford does get a handle on his rotation, New Mexico should be an upper-echelon Mountain West Conference outfit, albeit probably a rung below San Diego State (Steve Fisher appears to have his best team in 12 years at the helm of the Aztecs’ program).

New Mexico plays its home games in one of college basketball’s great venues, The Pit, which has undergone a $60 million renovation.  The Pit is probably best known as the site of North Carolina State’s famous victory over Houston’s “Phi Slama Jama” squad in the 1983 NCAA title game.

It’s too bad Final Fours aren’t played in true basketball arenas any more, because The Pit was a classic host site.  CBS has been using “The Road to…” tagline for years to hype the NCAA tournament, and nothing ever sounded better than “The Road to Albuquerque”.

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Once The Citadel arrives in Las Vegas, it will face South Carolina State.  This is, in a word, dumb.  Two schools 77 miles apart (believe me, I am more than familiar with the distance between Orangeburg and Charleston) will travel across the country to play each other.  I don’t see why the event organizers didn’t have SCSU and The Citadel play Longwood and/or SIU Edwardsville in the first round, to lessen the chance they would play each other.

South Carolina State is 4-4, with all four victories coming against non-D1 opposition. (The Orangeburg Bulldogs will play Indiana and Northern Iowa prior to matching up with The Citadel.)  The losses include setbacks at Clemson and at Charlotte; SCSU has also lost to Furman and, perhaps most disappointingly for its fans, North Carolina Central.

Carrio Bennett, a senior who was the MEAC freshman of the year three seasons ago, scored a combined 35 points against Furman and NC-Central, but averaged just six points against Charlotte and Clemson.  Darnell Porter lit it up against the Bulldogs’ non-D1 competition, but hasn’t yet produced against the better teams on SCSU’s schedule.

All of South Carolina State’s scholarship newcomers this season are junior college players; one of them, Brandon Riley, scored 23 points against Charlotte and 12 against Furman.

Through four games against D-1 teams, SCSU has done a good job forcing turnovers and rebounding, and a poor job defending in the paint (allowing 54.1% on 2-point FG attempts).  The Bulldogs are a mixed bag when it comes to offensive efficiency; they’re a good 2-point shooting team but terrible beyond the arc (26.6%).

This will be the first meeting between The Citadel and South Carolina State since 2004.  Charleston’s Bulldogs hold a 7-3 advantage in the series.

—

After playing South Carolina State, The Citadel will play either Longwood or SIU Edwardsville.

Longwood is 3-8, with its lone D-1 victory over Columbia.  The Lancers share one common opponent with The Citadel, James Madison, losing at home to the Dukes 88-78 (the Bulldogs lost to JMU 74-67 at McAlister Field House).

The globetrotting Lancers have also lost at Kansas, Seton Hall, Marquette, and VMI (losing 114-82 to the run-and-gun Keydets).  When The Citadel is playing Colorado, Longwood will be playing New Mexico (and vice versa).

Longwood is a small school (a little over 4000 undergraduates) in Farmville, Virginia that has been a D-1 member since 2007.  It’s an independent in hoops, which largely explains its all-over-the-map schedule.  Its most famous hoops alum is Jerome Kersey, who was a longtime NBA player for the Portland Trail Blazers.

—

SIU Edwardsville started institutional life as an extension of SIU Carbondale (the school commonly referred to as Southern Illinois or SIU).  SIUE now has almost 14,000 undergraduate students.

Like Longwood, SIUE is a recent debutant in D-1.  The Cougars ply their trade in the Ohio Valley Conference, although they won’t compete in league play as a member until next season. SIUE is still transitioning to Division I.

SIUE is 2-9, with only one victory over a D-1 squad.  That win came last Saturday against Kennesaw State in 2OT.  Kennesaw State had beaten Georgia Tech earlier in the season, so beating KSU was a nice scalp for the Cougars.  Actually, any win would be a nice scalp for SIUE, which prior to the Kennesaw State win had only defeated MacMurray (the college, not the dad from ‘My Three Sons’).  Last season the Cougars were 5-23, which included two non-D1 victories.

SIUE has several notable alums from the world of sports, including the great tennis doubles team of Ken Flach and Robert Seguso, the respected baseball broadcaster Dewayne Staats, and pro wrestler Paul Wight (“The Big Show”).  Sportswriter Bill Plaschke also attended SIUE.  However, the most notable SIUE basketball alum is longtime referee Ed Hightower.

—

When I last wrote about the hoops team, The Citadel was about to play its first two Southern Conference games of the season, along with a game against D-3 St. Mary’s of Maryland.  I had expected the Bulldogs to go 2-1 in those three games, and that’s exactly what happened.

As for the four upcoming “tournament” games, I believe The Citadel should be 2-2 at worst.  I don’t really expect an upset on the road in Boulder or Albuquerque (although it would be nice, obviously), but I think The Citadel has a better squad than South Carolina State (and a more cohesive and experienced one as well).  The Bulldogs should be favorites against either Longwood or SIUE.

Jeff Hartsell did a nice job in a recent “Bulldog Bites” post of breaking down how the season has gone so far, although I think the Bulldogs are a little better than that current Pomeroy projection.  I certainly hope so, anyway.  The Citadel needs to continue to work out its problems on the defensive end; the Bulldogs are a bottom 50 team nationally in 2-point FG% defense and aren’t much better in defensive turnover rate.  The Citadel does have good numbers defensively against the three-point shot, however, as opponents are only shooting 31% from beyond the arc.

The Citadel is only shooting 62.9% from the line, which is actually better than I would have expected, given that the player who has shot the most free throws so far this season is Bryan Streeter.  If good foul shooters like Cameron Wells and Mike Groselle get more opportunities from the charity stripe, the FT% will go up.

One way for Groselle to get more chances is for his minutes to increase, which I think is going to happen, particularly if he can hold his own defensively.  On the offensive side of the court, he has been very impressive.

I’ve been trying to decide who Groselle reminds me of in terms of his offensive game. Maybe this is a reach, and it certainly is a blast from the past, but I’m going to say he has a game not unlike John Pinone, who was a star for Rollie Massimino at Villanova in the early 1980s.

Streeter may be a total liability at the foul line (33.3%), but he is an offensive rebounding machine, with 29 in eight games.  That is getting it done.   Even with his struggles with free throws, he has still been arguably the Bulldogs’ second-best player so far this year when you combine all the elements of the game.

Zach Urbanus appears to have located his missing outside shot, and the team has solid numbers in terms of assist/turnover ratio and assist/made basket ratio (the A/B of 64% is 20th-best in the country).  Where the Bulldogs are hurting offensively is inside.  I noted The Citadel’s poor 2-point FG% defense earlier; it’s matched by an equally poor 2-point offensive percentage.  Between that, the team’s early struggles from three-land and the free throw issues, The Citadel’s eFG% is 314th out of 345 Division I teams.

—

I hope the players have a good time on the trip, and come back with an extra Christmas present or two, like a win in Boulder or Albuquerque.

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