By Will Vandervort.

The Clemson football team is at the halfway point of spring practice and as they go into the locker room for a 10-day break, they will be faced with a hard second-half to accomplish a successful spring.

The Tigers are taking the long break because the school is closing up shop for spring break and head coach Dabo Swinney likes to give his football team a chance to relax and spend some downtime with their fellow students before returning to the grind and concluding the last three weeks of practice.

After Wednesday’s practice inside the Indoor Practice Facility, Clemson has now completed six of the 15 practices the NCAA allows for the spring. One of those 15 practices is used to go over the summer program and organize how they expect workouts to go, while the other is the annual Orange & While which is less of a practice and more of a glorified exhibition game where the team is split into two teams.

“Basically, you have seven practices (left) where the whole team is together,” Swinney said. “We have a lot to do and everybody has to get better. They key is when we do get back, we can’t start over. We have six days of installation that we have to retain. We have to pick up and keep moving forward. We don’t have time to start over.”

Swinney says that will be on his players.

After losing one of the best senior classes in Clemson history, the coaches are anxious to see how this team responds to their first challenge in regards to leadership.

The Tigers’ head coach admits he wants his guys to take a breather and relax some over the next 10 days, but he also expects them to come back to practice on March 23 prepared to perform.

“That’s on them. That is those guys taking pride in their performance and being prepared when they get back,” Swinney said. “That’s is going through their notes and going through their film on their iPad and all of that stuff.

“Everything is available to them. There is no excuse for not being prepared for what we have done. We have gone over the mistakes, the corrections and all of that. That’s the challenge to those guys.”

Swinney feels his team can pass this first challenge because, though they are young, there is a lot of talent and the competition this spring at every position is the best he has had since he took over as head coach in 2009.

“Like I said the other day, this is a fun team to come out to practice with every day,” he said.  “One of the things that I saw today is that if somebody comes to practice and they don’t bring that sense of urgency, they get exposed pretty quickly. It is very competitive. You can’t really hide out here.

“There is no room for error and it is really that way at every position day in and day out. That is going to make us better. Anytime you have that type of sense of urgency at practice, you can’t help but improve.”

Clemson will have scheduled meetings today and then the team will begin its 10-day break on Friday.