General Basketball and Liberty Notes

Clemson tore through Presbyterian last week Friday, beating a bad team up and down the court with our "second team" in for half the game. Nothing to get excited about, but a few quick bullet points:

• Good to see Noel Johnson go 4/8 from behind the arc. Not predictive of future performance, of course, except in the sense that if he's not knocking them down now he's probably not going to knock them down later.
• Tanner Smith wasn't looking for the three, which is a little disappointing. I'm hoping the coaches really try to get him to look for his shot in the early season here so he'll be at least somewhat useful off the bench.
• I was mildly surprised to see Jerai Grant get the start, but he ended up with less minutes than two of the freshman, Johnson and Jennings. He also did little to impress. An early nod to seniority?
• Lots of people played lots of minutes. Baciu, however, played only six minutes. Does this spell the end of the Baciu experiment? Its one game, but if he's not getting time now...
• Stitt and Young basically split time at the point 22 minutes vs. 20 minutes. The battle is on! (both had a single turnover credited to them)
• The freshmen trio of Jennings, Johnson, and Hill combined for a 6:3 assist:turnover ratio. Notched 7 steals between them. Not too shabby.
• The one black eye on the night? 40.0% from two-point land. The good news is effective FG% (which gives extra weight to made 3-point shots) was up at 52.1%.

You might remember Liberty as the team that required a Herculean effort from K.C. Rivers to defeat last season at Littlejohn. At the time they were led by the dynamic Seth Curry (of Curry father and sons fame) and I thought they might be poised for a run in the Big South Conference. Not so, as they ended up with a spectacularly mediocre season, finishing 7-7 in conference play. A couple of their big wins early on didn't look so good once January rolled around (Virginia, George Mason). They managed to give George Mason a run again in this season's opener, but came up short 76-72. This means they are more talented than Presbyterian, but luckily for Clemson they no longer have the advantage of the services of Seth Curry. Unfortunately for Clemson, he'll be shooting the ball for Duke beginning next season. Liberty also lost senior Anthony Smith last year, look for senior Kyle Ohman to lead the charge for the flames from behind the arc Tuesday morning. Which brings me to another point: what good is national exposure if no one is at home to watch? Guess I shouldn't complain, just getting included in the ESPN Tipoff whatever thing is another notch on the program's belt. GO TIGERS!!