The concept is simple: knowing the kind of teams Clemson struggles with and the general reasons why, we should be able to infer which teams across the NCAA are most likely to pose serious matchup difficulties for Clemson--"matchups of doom". Last week I simply collected the top-ranked teams in defensive efficiency, average effective height, and average height from Kenpom.com and then did a re-ranked them by weighting these three factors equally. Then I took the top twenty and removed any teams that have no shot at making the NCAA tourney (sorry UTEP--it doesn't matter how tall you are if you don't have an offense or a defense). That leaves us with about 12 teams:
Its good to see Wake Forest and FSU at the top of the list, and Illinois (another team that gave us all we could handle)--it confirms that the list contains teams with similarities to WF/FSU. For what it's worth, GT was somewhere around 15 on the list. Now, we won't end up playing WF or FSU early on (thank goodness) due to rules the selection committee follows, but there but there are a few intriguing teams that we could see in the earlier rounds: Utah, Missouri, Gonzaga, USC (the real USC, of course--although I admit its a bit of a stretch to expect them to make the tournament at this point). There's also some completely unsurprising teams on the list like Memphis and UConn, teams that would be hard to beat anyway.
This is the list that I'll have handy come Sunday, hoping the names are as far away from our part of the bracket as possible--thought I would share it with anyone interested.
GO TIGERS!!!!!!!!!!
Funny how USC is still alive and Missouri is who Lunardi puts us with as the 3 seed, with the Tigers as the sixth...things keep getting better and better, but at least the crappy USC will hopefully not make the tourney.
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