Orhorhoro says 'little things' have held Tigers back, 'scary' times ahead for opponents

Ruke Orhorhoro says the Tigers made too many mistakes against Syracuse.

Ariana Pensy · Correspondent · Friday, October 28 2022

CLEMSON - The Syracuse game wasn’t exactly the best outing for Clemson defensively start-to-finish, but fourth-year defensive tackle Ruke Orhorhoro says the mistakes made early on Saturday were not all that complicated.

“It’s just little things that hurt us, nothing big,” he said. “We pretty much beat ourselves for the first two quarters. Once we put a complete four quarters together, on all levels - special teams, defense, offense - it’ll be really scary. I’m hoping y’all will see that really soon.”

That's something Tiger fans would all love to see, a glimpse shown in the fourth quarter finishing the game. In fact, the Clemson defense did completely shut out Syracuse in the second half.

“In the fourth quarter, that’s when we finish (games) and we finished the game out pretty strong,” he stated. “I wish we would have played like that the whole game. But, some games just start out slow and finish fast.”

Clemson has started slowly in a number of games. The Tigers have scored a total of 297 points this season; 165 of them came in the second quarter or overtime, which is a little over 50% of their points. In addition, in five out of their eight games this season, the Tigers have had at least one quarter where they did not score points (They had a three-week streak in Weeks 3 through 5 where they scored in every quarter).

Orhorhoro himself is having a good season thus far. He has 5.5 tackles for loss this season, bringing his career total to 15. Furthermore, he has two sacks this season. He only had 2.5 sacks last season so he may very well have a career-high in sacks to come with four games to go in the regular season.

The Tigers will be playing their next game against Notre Dame, who they have faced six times previously. Clemson has won four out of these six games. The Tigers have come into all of them ranked, and they will next week as well (7:30 p.m./NBC). Notre Dame, on the other hand, has come into five of these six games as ranked. The last time Notre Dame came into a game against Clemson unranked was in November of 1979.

There has been a recent rivalry between the Tigers and the Irish. Prior to 2015, Clemson had not played against Notre Dame since 1979. In 2018, the two faced each other in the playoffs with Clemson ranked No. 2 and the Irish ranked No. 3. In the last meeting in 2020, they faced each other in the ACC Championship and Clemson won easily 34-10 to avenge a regular-season Tigers' loss in South Bend, Indiana.

Going against Notre Dame in Week 10 will mark the seventh game Orhorhoro has played in the month of November. In November, he's recorded 3.5 career tackles-for-loss and 1.5 sacks.

Orhorhoro’s cousin, Ovie Oghoufo, played for Notre Dame from 2018 to 2020. However, Orhorhoro was never able to see his cousin play before he transferred to Texas. Going to South Bend to face the Irish will be the first time that he has been to the state, he said this week.