CHIRP TV - Lembo Interview Clemson game from Ball State Student Media on Vimeo.
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For the majority of the Ball State football team, getting on an airplane for Greenville, S.C., Friday morning will just be another road game.
But for a select few, including coach Pete Lembo, wide receivers coach Keith Gaither and running back Jahwan Edwards, they're going back to a familiar place.
Before arriving at Ball State, Lembo coached for five years at Elon in Elon, N.C., and grew to know the Carolinas well. As part of the Southern Conference, he would compete against teams in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. He became familiar with those areas, including Greenville, where SoCon rival Furman is located.
"I've stayed in Greenville many times before," Lembo said. "The place where we're going to eat as a team on Friday is a place I stopped in at all the time when I was recruiting. It's always nice to go back to a familiar place."
Lembo has prided in building teams from in-state recruiting, but he keeps the pipelines open with his connections he has in the Carolinas and Georgia. Because Elon has the same academic standards as Duke and Wake Forest, two teams from the ACC, he was able to work with those coaching staffs and did recruiting at their camps.
"We'd look for those guys that we're an inch too short or half a step too slow for them," he said. "I keep in touch with the coaches at Wake Forest and the guys in the Southern Conference at Furman and Georgia Southern."
But he's not the only coach with ties to the area: Gaither played four seasons as a defensive back for Elon before graduating in 1997.
Growing up, Gaither would watch ACC football games on television, especially his older brother's favorite team, Clemson. They even had a poster of Clemson's famous "running down the hill" - known as the most exciting 25 seconds in college football - on their bedroom wall. He grew to become familiar with Clemson and is even friends with running backs coach Tony Elliott.
Gaither said he's excited to go back to the South and has a number of friends and family that will be at Clemson Memorial Stadium for the game. But there's still a task at hand for Ball State.
"You always like going up against the best, and Clemson is one of the top programs in the country," Gaither said. "We'd like to think we're pretty good too, so we'll see how it goes."
While Gaither is friends with the coaching staff at Clemson, Edwards knows a number of players who play for the Tigers. Playing at Butler High School in Matthews, N.C., he was only a three-hour drive from the triangle of North Carolina, North Carolina State and Duke.
Edwards had several high school teammates go on to play at schools in the ACC, and players from his conference, such as linebackers Spencer Shuey and Stephone Anthony, went on to play at Clemson.
"The environment of the football in North Carolina, it's a good place," Edwards said. "There's a lot of college football teams there, and there's a lot of scouts at the high school games. It's a good environment to play in."
Saturday's game against Clemson is the closest game to home that Edwards has so far in his career at Ball State. He said that in the weeks leading up to this game, friends and family have been calling, and he's had to get 34 tickets for the game.
Even though the trip will have a sense of going to a place that was once called home, Lembo knows this isn't like the vacation to South Carolina he took over the summer.
"Whether you're recruiting or playing games in this profession, a lot of times you're in and out so fast, you don't always get to enjoy it as much as you would as a fan or if you were on vacation," Lembo said.
It might not be a vacation when Ball State walks into Clemson Memorial Stadium, but if the team can come away with an upset of No. 12 Clemson, it might just make the trip that much more enjoyable.
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