By Will Vandervort.
By Will Vandervort
CLEMSON — It was about this time three years ago when the 2009 senior class at Clemson, led by C.J. Spiller, Michael Palmer, Thomas Austin, Kavell Connor and Ricky Sapp expressed to the under classmen how important it was for them to leave Clemson as winners.
After winning six straight games to advance to the ACC Championship game that year, the Tigers were humbled by South Carolina and then lost a heartbreaker to Georgia Tech in the Championship Game. Though they played for the ACC Championship and were being courted by the Chick-fil-A and Gator Bowls, Clemson ultimately fell to the No. 5 Bowl slot in the ACC and found itself going to the Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tenn.
To be on a two-game losing streak, then to find out they slipped to a lower tier bowl game, it would have been easy for the seniors that season to just play through the emotions and prepare themselves for the NFL Draft. But that was not the case. Instead, they embraced the opportunity of playing a Southeastern Conference opponent in Kentucky and the underclassmen followed their lead.
“They were all hungry,” senior tight Brandon Ford recalled Tuesday. “We had just lost the ACC Championship and there was a bad feeling. But those guys got the team focused and they were ready to go. Everybody rallied behind them and it was a great win for us that year.”
The Tigers, led by a defense that held Kentucky to 267 total yards, got an eight-yard touchdown run from Spiller in the fourth quarter to beat Kentucky, 21-13. One of the seniors, Conner, made the game’s key play when the linebacker stripped the football from wide receiver Gene McCaskill early in the fourth quarter to set up Spiller’s game-clinching touchdown.
“I feel we have to do the same thing or even better this year than what they did in 2009 to finish this year out strong,” Ford said.
Though the 13th-ranked Tigers (10-2) are in a better bowl game—the Chick-fil-A Bowl—than they were in 2009, this year’s senior class comes into the New Year’s Eve bowl riding the disappointment of a difficult loss to South Carolina, which snapped a seven-game winning streak overall and a 13-game home winning streak.
Clemson will also face another SEC opponent, except this time it is No. 7 LSU.
“Those guys did an unbelievable job in corralling the team and putting us on their back,” senior center Dalton Freeman said. “But at that time, we were so lost that it was easy to follow a leader. This year, we are so much more consistent.
“We don’t have the inconsistencies we had then. I don’t think it is necessarily evident when some guy stands up and talks and you feel like you have to really respond. We all feel like we put in our time and we all believe in each other. This is just a much more consistent and mature football team than in2009.”
Senior defensive back Xavier Brewer says the attitude of the team has been the way Freeman described it all season. He used the way the team handled the adversity following the loss to Florida State as an example of how well the team as a whole has followed their lead in the locker room, on the practice field and in the games.
“We had to turn right back around, respond in a positive manner and move on to the next game,” Brewer said. “There were a lot of ACC games left to go and I feel like (the underclassmen) admired the way we took the team under our wings the next Monday and told them to get everything straight and forget about that because we had a whole season ahead of us.”
Clemson won seven straight games after that by at least 14 points each week on its way to winning a share of the ACC Atlantic Division – the third in the last four years.
“I don’t think it is going to be any different from this, coming out of the South Carolina game,” Brewer said. “We have a month to prepare for a great LSU team so I think we are going to be just fine.”