The Committee Gets It Right and Leggett Takes the Blame

First, Pitt’s a good team and they had a good plan for solving Clemson’s defense. That said, this was a team that just got blown out by Miami. Clemson should have won this game. I’m more and more concerned about the turnover bug. I don’t know if Deshaun is not reading the defenses right or if defenses just have more film on him and know his tendencies, but it’s troublesome.

Despite this annoyingly bad loss, Clemson is still ranked in the Top 4 based on the ranking released last night by the Committee. Clemson is ranked above Louisville and behind Alabama, Ohio State and Michigan. Clemson is rightfully ranked above Louisville.

Consider:

Yes, certainly most of Louisville’s wins have been impressive stylistically, but outside of FSU, they’ve beaten no one of note. They’ll have a chance to beat a good Houston team this weekend, but that alone isn’t enough to justify leapfrogging them over Clemson, who uh, actually beat them. This isn’t a hypothetical thing here, Clemson literally played them and beat them. You can’t rank one team that has the same record as another team with an inferior strength of schedule and a loss head-to-head over the other. That would be ridiculous.

Injuries

According to the latest injury report, it looks like Adrian Baker and Scott Pagano will definitely be out for Wake Forest due to injury. Mitch Hyatt is probable. Coach Swinney said he’s optimistic (shocking!) but not certain he will play. Jake Fruhmorgen is listed with a shoulder injury, but is out indefinitely at the moment due to some sort of family situation. Fruhmorgen has struggled this year, but we definitely need him back. This is baseless and probably irresponsible speculation, but I wonder if whatever personal issues Fruhmorgen is dealing with affected his play on the field? Whatever is going on, hopefully it’s not too serious.

Roundball Note

ESPN ranked Jaron Blossomgame as one of the Top 10 college basketball players in the country. That’s pretty cool. No pressure, Jaron! The last time I had high expectations like this for someone on our basketball team was back when Trevor Booker was playing.

Jaron came in at #7 overall.

Leggett Takes the Blame

In media interviews, Jordan Leggett took the blame for the last pick that set up Pittsburgh for a touchdown later in the 4th quarter.

The relevant portion starts at the 3 minute mark, which the link should start at. Apparently he went too deep in his route. I definitely don’t put this turnover on Leggett. He may have been partly responsible for the turnover, but going too deep or not, there were a lot of Pitt guys around there. I don’t know that you should make that throw even if Leggett runs the right route. Situationally it was just a really poor decision to try to force the ball on that play. A field goal or a touchdown makes it a two possession game, which is all we really needed.

Leggett also said that turnovers are just something they need to get corrected. At this point in the season it’s more than just a blip. Clemson is consistently turning the ball over with fumbles and interceptions, and it’s hurting them. Games the Tigers should be able to put away are close because the run game is generally not working and because we keep turning the ball over.