Right now, the Tigers are in a precarious situation.

Their performance of late has been less than consistent. At best, the Tigers are a Sweet 16 team; at worst, they don’t even make the tournament. They are a team with two distinct parts of their personality:

1. They play aggressive hard-nosed defense. They feed the ball through T. Booker,  Stitt  slashes and passes, and another player rises to the occasion as necessary.
2. They have short-term memory loss. They build big leads quickly and let off the gas. They do not follow through with their course of action

This is what I wrote on Deadspin before last year’s NCAA tournament:

2) Stay Hard Clemson Each of the past four years, the Tigers have started out hard. Each of the
past four years, the Tigers have finished soft. Incidentally, the 1996-1997 team did as well.

2006: First Half of season: 11-0, second half: 8-13, final record, 19-13
2007: First Half of season: 17-0 second half: 8- 11, final record: 25-11
2008: First Half of season: 10-0, second half: 14-10, final record: 24-10
2009: First Half of season: 16-0, second half: 7-8, current record: 23-8

These strong starts have been a knock against Clemson Basketball from both fans and national media. Still, as a charter member of the ACC, and a self-proclaimed “football school,” just being discussed in the context of basketball is nice. We’ll see if Oliver Purnell can get his first NCAA win and help the Tigers seal the deal this year.

The same general idea holds true now. While we are not involved in a gaudy winning streak. We are involved in a series of in-game collapses, or near collapses- see Illinois and NC State games.

With Duke coming to town this weekend, the Tigers must not get wrapped up in the national attention this game will be receiving, but rather play their game.

Duke is not invincible. They lost to NCSU, who the Tigers just beat, though just barely, last week. They keep their focus tight and clear. It is up to the Tigers to prevent the Blue Devils from playing the anticipatory Duke brand of basketball. They block passing lanes, they move well without the ball, and do the small things that most other teams do not. Their big three: Scheyer, Singler, and Smith now have a capable supporting cast.

Clemson has to feed Trevor Booker. They have to have a big game from Stitt.  Someone else from either the starting lineup- Grant, Potter, or Smith needs to play well and one player- or any combination of players- from the bench needs to step up.

The loss to GT was tough, but it proved that the Tigers can be resilient. This resilience will be necessary to avoid a mini-collapse as the ACC progresses.

The next group of games after this much-hyped match up with Duke could be dangerous for the Tigers if they are focusing on anything else but the game at hand.

For more Clemson basketball news and info, check out The OP blog or follow me on twitter.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.