The regular crew at The Briefly Stated Cafe discussed many things, including the grim news about something called a syndesomosis ligament injury, commonly known as a high ankle sprain. Our imaginary friends at The Cafe are considering what they found searching the Internet, namely that these injuries, like the one sustained by Clemson's Trevor Booker Sunday, often take six weeks to calm down.

In six weeks the Atlantic Coast Conference regular season will have ended and one can only guess what sort of shape Clemson's basketball team will be in by that time if it misses Booker for any significant portion of the remaining schedule.

When they lost in the final minutes at Miami Sunday, the balance tilted at the end when the Hurricanes' Jack McClinton converted three 3-point shots in less than 90 seconds and Clemson was unable to answer with long-range baskets of its own.

The issue was exaggerated by Booker's absence because without him under the basket with James Mays, the Miami defensive assignments were simplified, making it easier to defend the 3-point shots. The loss was especially difficult because Clemson is now 3-3 with 10 conference games remaining, including only four at home.

To get to 8-8, at least one road game will have be won ó Virginia, maybe? North Carolina State? ó and that presumes a sweep of Boston College, Georgia Tech, Miami and Virginia Tech at Littlejohn Coliseum.

Coaches will tell you it's a day-to-day existence, the biggest mistake often occurring when one assumes too much.

All in the family -- College football is nobody's idea of one big happy family, but there are surely coaching connections that give it a familial feel whenever coaches begin to change jobs.

When Ed Orgeron was fired by Mississippi at the end of the season, down went the coach who though he had quarterback Stephen Garcia ready to enroll at Oxford a year ago until Garcia's late decision sent him to South Carolina and coach Steve Spurrier. Arkansas' Houston Nutt took the Ole Miss job seemingly minutes after Orgeron left and Spurrier's defensive coordinator Tyrone Nix then accepted a similar role there. Ellis Johnson left Mississippi for the DC position at Arkansas where Bobby Petrino was named the coach when he ran out on the Atlanta Falcons.

That caused Spurrier to hire Brian VanGorder to replace Nix after Petrino's escape left VanGorder in limbo at the end of the NFL regular season. VanGorder then jumped back to the Falcons after they named Mike Smith their head coach last week, prompting Spurrier to fill his VanGorder vacancy with Ellis Johnson.

So when Marion Hobby, the former Clemson assistant who had taken a more lucrative offer with the New Orleans Saints, accepted the defensive coordinator job at Duke offered by new head coach David Cutcliffe -- run out of Mississippi for Orgeron in the first place -- that left an opening for a defensive line coach with the Saints.

Give yourself 10 points if you knew that had to mean Orgeron was hired by the Saints to replace Hobby, the guy now working for the coach Orgeron replaced.

Stated briefly -- Something's amiss when you read that 45 Florida State football players have been drafted by the NFL since 2001, which is roughly the point that Seminoles began to lose traction, spin their wheels and come back to the rest of the pack in the ACC. . . . With James Davis returning to Clemson for his senior season, performing a neat about-face in his previous decision to leave for the NFL draft, you can only wonder if someone will be left out when one fewer scholarship is available for incoming freshmen.

Seems like just the other day we started the clock on the friendly quarterback rivalry at Clemson and South Carolina when freshman pals Willy Kornand Stephen Garcia were enrolled in school and looking forward to spring football

Garcia was involved in some minor scraps that prompted disciplinary measures and caused him to miss spring ball a year ago and looked like Willy Korn would be the first of the two to get significant playing time. A year later, Stephen Garcia appears to have matured and settled down, Cullen Harper has asserted himself as the Clemson quarterback and Garcia may have a clear shot at the starting position in the fall, while Korn continues to watch and learn.

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