No. 17 Clemson welcomes The Citadel to Death Valley for a non-conference game on Saturday while keeping an eye on the race for the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game.
Clemson (8-2, 7-1) has concluded its ACC slate and must wait to see what happens with No. 8 Miami (9-1, 5-1) and No. 13 SMU (9-1, 6-0), who both have two league games remaining.
The Tigers can’t afford to be distracted against The Citadel (5-6), which arrives in Clemson, S.C., after winning three of its last four games. The Bulldogs scored 20 unanswered points to rally past Wofford, 30-17, last Saturday.
“This is their last game, you know, this is it for them,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said. “This isn’t a game where you know they got a game next week and they’ve got to you know be smart with some guys. This is a game where they got really nothing to lose, so you know you expect probably every trick in the book.”
The Citadel is out of bowl contention and sit sixth in the Southern Conference but its win over Wofford showed the military-like discipline that the school preaches. The Citadel held the ball for 35:47, dominating the second half and keeping the Terriers off the scoreboard.
“It’s no secret we want to play and I use that word ‘boring’ football,” coach Maurice Drayton said. “We want the ball. We want to be methodical down the field. We want to take our time, so to speak, and that will be everything this week coming up. It’s going to shorten the game, one. Two, as long as we’re getting first downs, Clemson’s high-powered offense is not on the field.”
The Citadel’s Johnathan Bennett threw for 166 yards for two touchdowns and ran for 41 yards against Wofford. He leads an offense ranked No. 15 in the FCS with 13.48 yards per pass completion.
He’ll have to watch out for a Clemson defensive line that has improved since the Tigers fell to Louisville on Nov. 2
“As awful as we were in the Louisville game, they’ve really, I mean they’ve played well these past two weeks,” Swinney said. “It’s really good to see those guys step up.”
Since then, Clemson held Virginia Tech and Pitt to a combined 128 rushing yards. In a 24-20 victory over the Panthers last Saturday, the Tigers had 16 tackles for a loss and eight sacks. Of those sacks, four came from defensive end T.J. Parker.
“He went from a third-down player to where he can play first and second down,” Swinney said. “He understands run fits, he understands more about what’s going on offensively. He’s bigger, stronger. He can hold up physically as opposed to where he was last year.”
If both Clemson and Miami win out their remaining two games, the Tigers can only get into the College Football Playoff in one of the seven spots reserved for ranked teams not in the top-five automatic qualifiers. If the current rankings hold, it leaves Clemson out in the cold.
–Field Level Media