Omaha or bust

We reporters like to snicker and thumb our noses when coaches use tired cliches and say they take one game at a time and boring stuff like that.

But the last two nights show us why coaches never take anything for granted, why they're always preoccupied with the little things.

Everything Jack Leggett and his players had accomplished this season, and everything they aspired to, was ripped from their grasp in the most swift and rude fashion you can imagine.

And it didn't happen in hostile territory or even neutral territory.

A team from up North, a team from the Big East, came to a baseball cathedral and sacked the place and then said a bunch of nice and polite things on its way to Columbia.

Afterward, Leggett talked about something he calls "PSD." It stands for Post Season Depression, and he said it usually lasts a few weeks and is difficult regardless of how the season ends.

Leggett hasn't yet experienced the ultimate thrill of winning his last game in the NCAA Tournament, so the end of every season has been difficult because he, like most coaches, broods about the what-ifs and things he might've done differently to get a win in that last game.

Surely his PSD this summer will be more difficult than usual because of how rapidly this postseason went from promising to pathetic.

Poof, just like that. A squandered 4-1 lead Sunday night, and then everything completely disintegrates. And it happens in front of fans who simply aren't accustomed to witnessing stuff like this.

You can consult the record books, and you will not be able to find a worse postseason beating suffered by the Tigers at home. A 13-run loss, and it might as well have been 30.

From 2000 to 2006, Clemson won 21 of 22 home NCAA Tournament games in taking eight regional or Super Regional tournaments. The Tigers have now lost four of their last 11 NCAA games in the home confines.

This team did impressive things, making a remarkable recovery form a 14-12 start. But the standard at this place is trips to Omaha, and thus this season has to be branded a failure given that the Tigers didn't come close to that precipice after getting there last year and ending it among the last four teams standing.

You'd have to be an ardent consumer of orange Kool-Aid to discount the fact that last year carried a stain by virtue of how it ended -- CWS losses to South Carolina on successive days when one victory would've put the Tigers in the championship series.

The same thing happened in 2002, except this time the Gamecocks followed their Clemson slayings by bringing home the trophy.

If you're a Clemson fan and you consider that awful experience, consider the Gamecocks' absolute palace of a stadium, consider the Gamecocks' recent head-to-head mastery of the Tigers, consider the fact that Clemson couldn't even close the deal this year to get an opportunity to play the Gamecocks for the right to go to Omaha, your view of Clemson baseball is at least a little unsettling. It's just not fun to be established as the inferior program in your own state.

Did that contribute to all the empty seats we saw at Doug Kingsmore Stadium this weekend? Dunno.

The feeling here is that Clemson's baseball program will be OK despite one trip to Omaha in the last four seasons, despite what's going on down the road in Columbia, despite the potential ravages from the ongoing MLB Draft.

But the next few weeks of Leggett's PSD might be more difficult than all the others, because he's never seen the end in this fashion. Completely undressed ... on his home field ... just a day after everything seemed right with his world.

The last two nights proved there can be a gaping chasm between appearance and reality, and thus you begin to understand why Leggett and others in his profession take absolutely nothing for granted.

LW