By Will Vandervort
CLEMSON — The Chick-fil-A Bowl might be calling for a 16th consecutive sellout when No. 13 Clemson squares off against No. 7 LSU on New Year’s Eve, but there still might be a lot of empty seats in the Clemson section.
Clemson officials confirmed Friday that it has sold just at 9,000 tickets thus far. The school says it is still selling from it allotment of 18,000 and fans can purchase tickets at www.clemsontigers.com or by calling 1-800-CLEMSON.
In hopes of getting more Clemson or LSU fans to buy tickets in the Atlanta area, Clemson returned some of its allotment to the Chick-fil-A Bowl.
There are probably several explanations as to why ticket sales are low. First the economy can be used as a reason especially with Christmas the week before. But more than likely, it comes down to the fact Clemson opened the season in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome against Auburn as part of the Chick-fil-A Classic. Losing the season-finale for a fourth straight season to South Carolina did not help either.
Tigers wrap up bowl prep. Clemson (10-2) closed out it bowl preparations in Clemson Friday. Head coach Dabo Swinney says the team had good practices the last two weeks with a good combination and balance in trying to prepare for LSU, while working on Clemson as well.
“There was a lot of good competitive work,” he said. “The hay is in the barn, if you will, at this point. The game plans are done so now the next thing is for these guys to get out of here this afternoon and enjoy a couple of days with their family and celebrate Christmas.
“We will get back together Christmas Night in Atlanta. We will have a team meeting at 8:30 and we will start back to practice on the 26th. That really sets up nice. We will have kind of a normal game week from a preparation standpoint so we are excited and we are looking forward to it.”
Swinney says from a game plan standpoint, the team should be polished when they reconvene in Atlanta on Dec. 26.
“We work on the precision and the execution of what we are trying to do and the knowledge,” Swinney said. “Hopefully, we will show up on Game Day and play our best game. That’s where we are.”
Tigers are healthy. Swinney says the team is in good shape overall for the Chick-fil-A Bowl. As he announced on Wednesday, Bashaud Breeland (groin) is the only player of the injured ones who missed the South Carolina game that he thought could play on New Year’s Eve. But that is not going happen as the cornerback had to have surgery on Thursday morning.
Kick coverage. In the last two games of the season, Clemson’s kick coverage teams were not that spectacular to say the least as both NC State and South Carolina had big returns. Because of that, Swinney says the Tigers did quite a bit of live kickoff coverage in practice the last two weeks.
“We really put an emphasis on the coverage aspect,” he said.
Swinney says there was a combination of things that happened in those games from a coverage standpoint. There were of course breakdowns, but also NC State and South Carolina had something to do with it as well.
“You always want to give the opponent credit,” Swinney said. “You do not want to take anything away from them, but we have to do a better job of coaching it and teaching it and the guys have to take those things to the field.
“We got out of position a couple of times, guys broke containment and we had a few guys get blocked. Again, ultimately that is our job as coaches to try and improve and that’s what we tried to do. Up until the last game, we had done a good job. We had given up, what we like to say, one first down since the Florida State game. So it was really disappointing on how we did down the stretch.”