"He was gone": Uiagalelei, Tiger players and coaches high on "dude" Will Shipley |
CLEMSON – CJ Spiller doesn’t mince words when it comes to the running backs on the Clemson roster, and when he said last week that talented freshman
Will Shipley reminds him of a young CJ Spiller, you have to listen.
Shipley is the former 5-star who was rated as the No. 1 all-purpose running back and No. 45 overall player in the nation by Rivals.com. He was the Gatorade Player of the Year in North Carolina and Charlotte Observer Player of the Year for 2019 and led his 2019 team to a 16-0 record and the state 3A title. Shipley was the MVP of the 2019 state championship game when he rushed for 256 yards and scored four touchdowns in a win over Lee County for his program’s second straight state title. Spiller told the media that while Shipley reminds him of himself, that’s not who he wants Shipley to be, especially in the return game. “I don’t want him to be like me,” Spiller said. “I want him to be like Will Shipley. That’s the thing that I tell him because I know those comparisons are going to happen. I don’t want that added pressure to him. I just try to tell him, ‘Go be Will Shipley.’ I’m going to give him the pointers of how I’ve seen it as a returner, but I don’t want him to be the same returner that I was. Go be better than I was. Go break the NCAA record if that happens. I’m going to give him all the knowledge, wisdom, and things I’ve seen as a returner, but don’t go back there and try to do what I did. That’s been really my biggest message to the guys this spring is go be yourself. I don’t want you to be anybody else but yourself, especially with Will.” Spiller said he never has to push Shipley to go – instead he has to reign him in. “He’s gonna be real good,” Spiller said. “Will did a great job of just coming in and really wanting to learn. He was very eager to come in and learn the playbook. He’s one of those guys that sometimes you might have to pull them back a little bit because they want to learn so much. You just want him to take it one day at a time. He comes from a great foundation in his high school up there in Weddington with his coach. You kind of see that translating over here to Clemson now. I’m excited about seeing him grow as a player. He’s going to hopefully have a special career here at Clemson.” Shipley has drawn comparisons to former Stanford star and current Carolina Panther Christian McCaffrey, who can play running back, in the slot, and excel in the return game. “Shipley is a big weapon,” linebacker James Skalski said this week at the ACC Kickoff. “He’s got a lot of talent and they’re going to find a way to use him.” Count left guard Matt Bockhorst as a big fan. “Oh, dude. Will Shipley’s a dude. I’m excited to see what he does, I really am,” Bockhorst said. “I think that Will Shipley is gonna be an exceptional player, and I think he’s gonna make an impact this year. I mean he just dominates in practice, like, I can just say what I’ve seen. He dominates in practice. Straight up. I watch him in conditioning drills, he dusts everybody. I watch him in practice, and he literally left everybody and scored. Like I’m telling you – he is a very good player. Whether or not it happens this year, the verdict's out on that. But he is a very good football player.” Quarterback DJ Uiagalelei told TigerNet he expects Shipley to have a stellar freshman campaign and recounted one play during the spring that highlighted his speed. “He would come out there and dominate, just the way he could run the rock, how fast he is. And just what his makeup is,” Uiagalelei said. "I remember one play in spring ball, we were playing a scrimmage. It was on (our) 30. We handed the ball off to him, it was a little inside zone. He broke through the line and just split the safeties and no one touched him. He was gone. The fastest people on the team were trying to catch up to him and he was just out of there.”
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