Will Lamb finally gets a clutch hit against South Carolina and he feels compelled to call out a South Carolina player? 

Did he forget Omaha already?  Or that the Gamecocks have won 13 of of the last 19 from the Tigers? 

Maybe if somebody punched him in the face with one of these it would jog his memory.

I watched the South Carolina basketball team again Saturday night, and for the first time this year I didnt really get angry at our team. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that this team, as I heard a football coach say once, is what it is.

Even though this season has been a disappointment, I come back to the question I keep asking myself every time I want to rail against Darren Horn and Co.  what did you expect? You lose Devin Downey from a bad team (that had already lost Dominique Archie and Mike Holmes) and you expect a bunch of roll players and freshmen to take up the slack? The NIT is/was truly our best and only hope for this year.

The blogosphere-slash-boardosphere is pretty much split on Horn  the give him more time crowd versus the cut bait and go after ____ crowd. I’m still on the fence in regards to Horn, and there is no doubt he will be back next year. But, unless we show significant improvement next year, we’ll be in the market for a new coach once again.

So, in light of the beautiful pre-spring weather we had on Sunday that put me in a good mood, I decided to think optimistically and look at what we had to do to reach that vague goal of significant improvement for Gamecock basketball in 2011-2012. Here are a few things I came up with:

• The maturation and health of Bruce Ellington many thought #23 was going to step in for Devan Downey and we wouldnt miss a beat. Early on he looked like he just might, but a slump combined with a lower leg injury have caused a precipitous drop in his production. We need him to be the man, and I truly believe he will be, because based on his body language and the fact he keeps jacking up shots, he doesnt lack in one thing many on our team do…
• CONFIDENCE – confidence is the most important intangible in basketball. It can make or break you at the D-1 level, and currently some of our players are completely devoid of it. The best example is Brian Richardson – the first part of the season had it and was knocking down threes, and when SEC play started he completely lost it. We need him to get it back, and that’s putting it mildly. On the flip side, R.J. Slawson and Damontre Harris started the season looking lost, but first Harris, and then Slawson, have come on strong in the last few weeks. They now know they can play at this level, and it shows. They will be key cogs in the middle next year, but will need help from some…
• Shooters – holy crap our shooting is bad. I love Lakeem Jackson and what he brings to the court, but he might be the worst shooter I have ever seen at this level. And Eric Smith has had his moments backing up Ellington, but he has to develop some semblance of a shot. Its hard to find even an average shooter on our team. We’re bad from long-range, medium-range, and have a terrible time . .
• Finishing around the basket – I’ve noticed this as much as anything this year, we have a terrible time finishing when we get in the lane. Granted, we have been spoiled the last few years  Tre Kelly and Downey were both excellent at getting in the lane and finding any way to get the ball in the basket. Ellington has not shown that ability, but hopefully will develop it. If he doesn’t we need some of our post guys to . . .
• Hit the weight room – we have a recent history of finesse post players. And by finesse I mean skinny as a rail. Slawson and Harris need to get on a program, and quick, because Anthony Gill is the only post player coming in, and he may be the skinniest of all. Maybe another scholarship will open up through . .
• Attrition –  I’m looking at you, Stephen Spinella. Let us have that scholly so we can go get a 6�9″ banger from the JUCO ranks. And speaking of newcomers . . .
• Damien Leonard – this guy could be the answer to our shooting woes. Lets hope he’s as good as advertised, because we don’t get to reload like Kentucky. Our freshmen and sophomores need to get a lot better, and our . . .
• Coaching needs to get a lot better (I think) –  Here’s the deal: I love Horn’s style of defense. Yes, we give up a few easy baskets every game, but for the most part I’m in favor of the pressure style he brings, particularly in the second half of games. The offense is a totally different story. I have no idea what he’s trying to do in the half court set, and if anyone does please comment or email me. All I know is we wind up with way too many one-on-one situations late in the shot clock, after a series of predictable high screens.

The bottom line is we need some guys to grow up fast, and a lot, over the summer. But more importantly, we need Darren Horn to show he is the coach many of us thought he was when he was hired. Time is running out.

This will be my final Jadeveon Clowney-inspired post, at least until my next one.  What brings me back to the topic is this puzzling quote from a Post and Courier story this morning:

“Clowney said he was influenced by NBA star LeBron James’ decision to televise his free agency destination this summer…”

Um…influenced?  Influenced by the worst PR decision in the history of professional sports?  Influenced by an event that turned a well-liked NBA superstar into perhaps the most hated man in professional sports? 

I’m not trying to make anything out of this at all, I just found it a bit humorous.  Let’s hope JC gets his “influence” from more positive sources and/or events from here on out.

The roller coaster ride wrapped in a circus that was the recruitment of Jadeveon Clowney finally ended today.  Despite the ridiculous amount of media coverage that mounted over the last few months, and last two weeks in particular, the importance of his decision to the University of South Carolina football program cannot be overstated.

Oh, sure, we all at one time or another talked about how football is a team game and Clowney is but one player, trying to convince ourselves we’d be fine if he went to Alabama or Clemson.  But as Gamecock fans we all knew that we would not only be missing out on perhaps a once-in-a-generation player, but a huge chunk of good will gained from the 2010 football season would’ve been lost.

Given all the factors that were in our favor, seeing Clowney put on an orange or crimson hat this morning would’ve been nothing short of devastating.  We needed his commitment worse than Clemson or Alabama.  Much worse.

So instead of imagining that dread scenario any further, I bring you good news – Jadeveon Clowney is a Gamecock.  He is the consensus number one recruit in the country.  He has been called the best high school player to come along in years.  Some say he is the best ever at his age.  He has been compared to Jevon Kearse and Mario Williams, which ain’t bad.  His highlight films are freakish.  And best of all, we’ll get the pleasure of seeing him suit up in the garnet and black in the fall.

Here are a few other not-so-random thoughts from a busy day:

Curb Your Enthusiasm – Freshman defensive ends rarely burst onto the college football scene.  Clowney may very well be the exception, and I hope he is, but he needs to add weight, needs time in the weight room, and needs to work on his technique.  Don’t expect him to be the defensive equivalent of Marcus Lattimore out of the gate.

Shane Beamer – The Rubber Chickens bloggers have differing opinions on this.  Spurrier said after the FSU game that Beamer does a good job and he just needs better players.  I tend to believe SOS here, because he doesn’t have a track record of defending bad coaches.  At the same time, we have seen our share of terrifying special teams moments with Shane-O at the helm.  Best of luck to him, seems like a good guy.

Chris Rumph – If this story is accurate, it says a lot about the type of person Rumph is.  Look, I like making fun of CTU as much as the next guy, but what a bum.  To sell kids hard on Clemson one day, and then a few days later tell them “they can’t win at Clemson” is about as low rent as you can get.  (Not terribly excited about JC’s comments about Saban here either, FWIW.)

ESPN – my love-hate relationship with the Worldwide Leader tilted heavily to the negative today.  If you’re going to orchestrate the biggest day of an 18-year-old’s life, then for goodness sake orchestrate it around your commercial breaks.

Next up, spring practice, and BASEBALL!

Earlier this week I read a blog post called “Dear Jadeveon…if you attend the University of South Carolina” (h/t chuckoliver.net). It’s fair, and honest, and lays out some good reasons for Jadeveon Clowney to don the garnet & black next season.

But to the dismay of Gamecock fans everywhere, CTU has come on strong in recent days and by all accounts is in a neck and neck battle with USC for the services of the consensus top player in the country. And let’s be honest, there are a lot of great reasons for him to consider CTU, some football related and some not.

So to keep things fair, I ask the Gamecock Nation to take the blinders off for a moment and consider some of the reasons Jadeveon Clowney might just choose CTU:

• Practically unlimited, and irrisistible, orange and purple uniform combinations
• If you like to have your rear end smacked, Dabo is your man
• The thrill of playing in front of literally hundreds of fans at Cameron Indoor Wallace Wade Stadium
• ACC football tradition…what? Oh, sorry, ACC basketball tradition
• Two syllables: tractors
• Dabo has promised to punch himself in the face until unconscious strictly for your entertainment
• Speaking of Dabo, who else has a coach who also stars on “30 Rock”?

  

• That little street through the middle of town with the store that sells stuff
• The possibility of seeing a drunken Brent Musburger hitting on young co-eds at the Esso Club
• Gameday meals provided by Ernie & Jewell’s Pig Innards and Snout Grindings
• When Cletus brings his wife and sister to an autograph session, you only have to sign two autographs
• If you’re really drunk, the lack of dental services and that big clock in the middle of campus make it easy to pretend you’re in London
• Now that Brad Scott has retired he’s looking to shade some folks, if you’re interested
• Kevin Steele gets so jacked up on the sidelines that he passes out, which is AWESOME
• Cow patties make great doorstops
• Hop in a car and drive south and you can find really hot college chicks within a couple of hours
• CTU facemasks are dipped in diesel fuel to block the smell of the pastures
• That’s Danny Ford lurking in the bushes naked, no kidding
• Make all-ACC more than twice and have your jersey retired and a tool shed named after you
• You can celebrate the 1981 National Championship, and the subsequent 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1985 probations (aka “The Salad Days”)
• Every year you’ll only be 8-10 plays and 48-65 points from an ACC championship and/or BCS National Championship birth
• Even after South Carolina beats you four straight, you can still say, “YEAH, BUT LOOK AT THE ALL-TIME RECORD BAYBEE, WOOHOO!”
• Speaking of WOOHOO…Awesomest. Fight song. Ever.
• You never have to hear of the God-awful city of Omaha ever again, for it has been stricken from the record at CTU
• You get to play at the most storied college football program in the history of Pickens County

Godspeed Jadeveon, I’m glad you’re making the decision and not me.

Saturday’s loss to Auburn has me torn.  On one hand I’m thinking:

Is Darrin Horn just not a good coach? I know, I know, he didn’t shoot 7-33 from three-point range or get pounded on the boards, his players did.  He was the same coach in today’s loss to Auburn as he was in surprising victories over Vandy and Florida.

But today might be the worst game he has coached at South Carolina.  The player rotation was what struck me as most bizarre.

– Damontre Harris comes out of the gates hitting nice jumpers on the first two possessions of the game, and winds up playing only nine minutes and taking one more shot.  Why was he on the bench so much?

– Stephen Spinella showed over and over why he should be the absolute last guy off the bench, but somehow was allowed to log twelve minutes and miss all five of his shots.   Why wasn’t he on the bench more?

– Johndre Jefferson, honest to goodness, I forgot he was on the team until he showed up in the second half.  But by the time he arrived playing solid interior defense where there previously had been none, it was too late.  The way we were getting destroyed around the basket, why did it take so long to get him in there?  We may not have seen him at all if Malik Cooke hadn’t been T’d up.

The loss of Lakeem Jackson today just seemed to throw Horn’s entire coaching strategy off.  Jackson is a nice piece, but we shouldn’t have missed him as much as we did.  I just can’t remember a Carolina basketball game in which I kept looking at the floor and then the bench and then the floor again wondering what the heck Horn was thinking.

On the other hand:

What did you expect? This is a team that lost one of the top five players in school history from last year’s team, a team that despite upsetting #1 Kentucky was not very good.  The stars of this year’s team are a freshman point guard who doesn’t shoot all that well and still has trouble with control and decision-making at this level, and a senior who until this year has been a role player.  A good role player mind you, but a role player nonetheless.

The rest of the team is littered with freshmen and sophomores who are not game changers. My fingers are crossed that one of two of them may develop into that, but at this point they are far from it.  Brian Richardson has been in a shooting/confidence slump since the beginning of SEC play, and our two freshman big men, Harris and Slawson, combined for a whopping four points in 15 minutes of play on Saturday.  Tack on a transfer from Nevada and a JUCO transfer, and you can understand why we were picked sixth in the SEC East in the preseason.

I’ve seen several tweets and other comments about how it’s inexcusable we lost to a team that has so much less talent than us.  I find that laughable.  Look at our team from top to bottom and I think you’ll come to realize victories over Vanderbilt and Florida are the aberration, not a loss to Auburn.

So maybe Darrin Horn knows exactly what he’s doing, and a bad loss like Saturday’s is just part of the process.

And to that I say, after watching 30 years of Carolina basketball, I’m sick of the process.

With only a week to go before signing day, TRC would like to focus on the final remaining recruits on South Carolina’s board and let you know where we think they will ultimately sign.  In our continuing efforts to give you the “outside view” of Gamecock sports, understand that we have put about four minutes of thought into this and have access to no insider information whatsoever.  (Some people think my uncle Billy is a Gamecock insider because he has a block C tattooed on his calf, but I’m not buying it.)

Cedric Cooper - A linebacker out of Lithonia, GA, if Cooper had committed to us back in September we would’ve said “meh” and not remembered him until next Wednesday when we read down the list of LOI’s.  But since he’s stringing us along and is one of the last of the uncommitteds, he is an ABSOLUTE MUST HAVE for this class.  The funny part is everyone seems to be aghast that he committed to SC and Arkansas without decommitting from either.  GASP!  BLASPHEMER!  After committing to several more SEC and ACC schools over the next week I think he winds up at, oh, let’s say Virginia.

Jerrell Adams – Very impressive player based on the touchdown pass I saw him catch in the Shrine Bowl, which is the only play I saw from the Shrine Bowl and the only play in which I have ever seen Jerrell Adams.  Clemson has had an Adams (Gaines) more recently than us (Frank), so I say it’s our turn to have an Adams and he signs with USC.  

Roderick Byers – Kids from South Carolina flirt with Oregon every year for some strange reason, and none of them ever go there.  As appealing as their neon shoe/sock combination is, he’ll be a Gamecock.  If he does go to Oregon, we will not hear from him again until some message board yahoo starts a thread in 2014 called “Remember Roderick Byers?”

Phillip Dukes – Dukes is from Manning, and kids from Manning always seem to screw us.  And by “always”, I mean once, and I’m referring to John Fulton.  Dukes winds up at UNC. 

Jadaveon Clowney – Not sure if you’ve heard of this guy, but I predict this DE/RB will be the real sleeper of this class.  The problem is, somehow Alabama got video of him and are hot on his trail.  Despite neither him nor his family ever claiming a favorite, or for that matter, ever commenting on anything AT ALL, most folks seem to think he is USC’s to lose.  I personally think it’s 50/50, so I flipped a coin to decide things once and for all.  I called heads for USC, and it landed on tails.   After losing it for a few minutes - weeping uncontrollably, calling the coin “stupid”, breaking my hand on a dugout wall - I convinced the coin to go best two out of three.  Then four out of seven. 

Fortunately for us, the coin finally landed on heads five times out of nine.  So when Jadaveon Clowney professes his love for the University of South Carolina on February 14, you can thank the Buckster.

Apparently upset about the position of his NFL draft declaration on the ESPN.com home page Thursday, Cam Newton withdrew his name with the intention of re-declaring as soon as Friday.

“I fully expected the Heisman Trophy winner and quarterback of the National Champion football team to command more real estate on ESPN.com when he announced his intentions,” Newton said.  “Obviously I was unaware ESPN would give prime position to a feel-good NFL story about some Division III wingback.”  (Newton was referring to New England running back Danny Woodhead.)

Newton continued, “Hopefully tomorrow will be a slower news day.  Also, I’ll be sure to hold a press conference, cry a little bit over the trials I have been through this year, dance and smile a little, and maybe throw in some streamers and balloons and (stuff).  Praise God.”

ESPN immediately responded via press release that they would be filming a “30 for 30” documentary about the situation, and would dedicate the first “College Gameday” of 2011 to Cam Newton’s juice bottle.

Cecil Newton and Jay Jacobs could not be reached for comment from the car they were riding in together.

On the day of the official end of competition for the 2010 football season, I’d first like to say on behalf of the TRC staff thanks to all our readers for making our little blog venture a success.  Because there is so much news and analysis on the web, we’ve tried to be a little different, and a little entertaining, and not TOO serious (read: silly).  We hope you’ve enjoyed reading as much as we’ve enjoyed writing.

We’ll continue the blog through recruiting, spring practice, basketball season, baseball season, academic casualties and bar fights until we’re back around to August and another glorious football season.

My final thought on this season is a mix of college and pro football.  A couple of weeks ago I was reflecting on the Gamecocks’ and Falcons’ (my favorite pro team since forever) seasons and wondered:  is this the greatest football season I’ve ever experienced?

I searched the internets and compiled win-loss records for the two teams since 1987.  I chose 1987 because that’s my first year as a true, die-hard Gamecock fan (my allegiances were elsewhere before that, but that’s a story for never, lest I risk losing readership).

The answer was a little depressing in that, strictly in terms of wins and losses, this is by far the best Gamecock/Falcon season ever with 22 wins – and the Falcons have the opportunity to add at least three more to that total.  The teams combined for 18 wins in both 2004 (USC 6, ATL 12) and 2008 (USC 7, ATL 11).  In 1998 – Atlanta’s Super Bowl year – the teams “combined” for 17 wins, with Atlanta securing 16 of those.

The teams combined for single digit wins in 1989 (9), 1996 (9) and the low water mark in 1999 (5 – all by the Falcons).  Overall, the teams’ combined record since 1987 is 316-355-5.

I hope for my fellow Gamecock fans that you follow a different pro team than I do.  If you are a Gamecock/Falcon fan, all I can say is:

I feel your pain.

Yes, I should have done this last week, but there are a lot of things I should have done last week instead of absolutely nothing.  So, even though 60% of the BCS games have been played, who is here I am (and was) pulling against:

Bret Bielema - from hanging 70 points on Austin Peay and Northwestern, to putting up 83 points on Indiana, to the unneccessary 2-point conversion against Minnesota, Beilema has set himself up for some serious comeuppance.  Football has a strange karmic sense about it, which means payback will probably come in a much greater form than a two-point loss to TCU. 

Tostitos Fiesta Bowl – Nothing against the good people of Glendale, but I’ve never been a big fan of the Fiesta.  After all these years, it still doesn’t seem to belong among the Rose, Sugar and Orange.  This year’s epic tilt between Oklahoma and UConn certainly didn’t help (although I realize that’s not all their fault).  Now that they have a shiny new stadium in Dallas, the Cotton Bowl needs to be returned to its rightful place among the top tier bowls.  Or, re-rename the Chik-fil-a Bowl back to the Peach and give Atlanta a BCS game #nevergonnahappen. 

 Virginia Tech’s Uniforms – Nike and Virginia Tech, please stop.  There is no combination of orange, white and whatever that other color is (maroon, really?) that is going to look good.  Ever. 

Jim Harbaugh – Nobody is this likeable.  I’m very suspicious.  There must be something dark and disturbing he is hiding… 

Terrell Pryor – A case study for not paying college athletes.  The only guy who can make Kirk Herbstreit a sympathetic figure (not because I don’t like him, but because he’s so darned handsome), Pryor used the money he gained from selling his possessions to get a tattoo.  Hardship, indeed. 

Cam Newton and Auburn – If you don’t get this one, you must be new to the TRC blog.  Welcome.