Illinois Preview

ACC-Big10 Challenge, Illinois vs. Clemson, Dec. 2, 7:15pm, Littlejohn

As I wrote in the last post, Clemson is in the midst of a crucial five game stretch. After Illinois on Wednesday and South Carolina on Sunday, there are exactly zero non-conference games that will catch the attention of the selection committee come March. We can always hope that a team like Long Beach State or, I don't know, Western Carolina get hot and convincingly win their conference but the odds against that appear pretty long at the moment. That's why the win against Butler was so important, the next two games are no longer essential for resume-padding.

That being said, the next two games are both winnable games for Tigers. I probably won't have time to squeeze in a post about South Carolina between the ACC Championship Game and Sunday, but let me just say something right now: thank you, Oliver Purnelll, for amassing a 5-1 record against the Gamecocks. Lord knows I have trouble sleeping some nights knowing I might die with Clemson trailing the overall series in one of the three main sports (of course we have historically dominated football and baseball) but through your efforts, Mr. Purnell, I can rest a little easier. Still trailing 86-73, though, so please, please keep up the good work.

Back to Illinois and the ACC-Big Ten "challenge". Fun fact: since it's inception in 1999, the ACC has yet to lose this competition, compiling a 62-35 overall record. But it's still fun to hear ESPN hype every year as the year the Big10 will once again become the best league in the country. On a related note Clemson is 8-2 in the challenge while Illinois has managed a 3-7 mark. That pretty much tells the story in a small capsule right there, because while Clemson has never been viewed as an ACC powerhouse, Illinois has often been right around the top of the class in the Big10. This is also a rematch of last year's pretty memorable game at Illinois, which saw Clemson eke out a victory in a seesaw match, ultimately winning after the Illini couldn't get a shot off in the final seconds.

The early returns for Bruce Weber's Illinois team this year have not been kind. After destroying four paperweights, they are coming off back-to-back losses against Utah and Bradley. Its too early to say how good those teams are, but Utah did manage to lose to Seattle University. (Yes, that's right, Seattle apparently has their own University (not Washington University) and their own Division I basketball team with no conference affiliation. They are going around this year and providing filler relief to teams from various conferences across the country whenever its convenient for their schedule. Kind of like Notre Dame in football.) Anyways, once again back to Illinois. Still extrapolating from small sample sizes, but Illinois seems to be struggling quite a bit on defense. They've been holding teams to a reasonable FG%, although teams haven't been shooting the three much against them, but they've really struggled to force turnovers. That would be good news for Clemson, if we weren't so adept at handing the ball over to the other team with out any help. On offense, the bad news for Clemson is Illinois has done a tremendous job of not turning the ball over. On the other hand, they haven't shot the ball particularly well, particularly from beyond the arc.

As for Clemson, after the 76 Classic we are seeing some troubling trends emerge. First, poor guard play, specifically the inability of either Stitt, Smith, or Young to hang onto the ball. While this is par for the course for Stitt and Smith, I'm really disappointed thus far in Young. Additionally, we've really been giving up a lot of trips to the foul line, most since 2006. And we're still hovering around 64.6% from the line, in spite of Stitt's heroics.

The good news is that despite the fact we've looked lost in the halfcourt set for stretches at a time, we're still shooting a decent effective FG% (54.7%). I think this really underscores what we've said since the season preview--this team is a work in progress. Give the youngsters time to adjust to the system, we should get quite a bit better. Hopefully we don't need the improvement to take out Illinois and South Carolina at home and as long as Illinois doesn't come out shooting extremely well from the field (reversing their performance from the last two games), I think we've got a good chance to continue our recent run of success against the Big10.