Sunday, Jan. 3rd, Cameron Indoor, 7:45pm
Still working on the midseason review, but its become more involving than I initially thought. I'll hopefully have it up after next week, but I wanted to focus on the Duke game first...
Years of underperformance, selection committee overseeding, and media adoration have etched the image of Duke as an over-rated squad in the minds of college basketball fans across the country. This is largely justified, Duke hasn't been an elite squad for several years. However, I think we may be at the point where the pendulum has swung the other way; Duke has been labeled as "overrated" for so long that this is the year they might actually be underrated. After reading some of the chatter 'round the Clemson blogosphere (although the OP notably voices some caution), I think there may be the mistaken impression that after last year's performance Clemson walks into Cameron Indoor as, if not the favorite, the unquestioned equal of the Blue Devils. I aim to show you in this post this viewpoint is diametrically opposed to reality.
How is this year's Duke team so much better than the team that was beaten down in Littlejohn last season? Two things stand out after looking over the stats and also based on what I've seen from them this year. First, they stopped turning the ball over. I think this stems from two primary developments: 1) the graduation of Greg Paulus, who was a graduate student quarterback for a crappy Big East team for a while under the tutelage of one Rob Spence and 2) the remarkable improvement of Nolan Smith. Smith has gone from a guy who turned the ball over a poor 25.3% of his personal possessions as a freshmen, a semi-respectable 20.8% of the time as a sophomore, and now as a junior he's turning over the ball a microscopic 12.6% of the time. Wouldn't that have been nice to see from Demontez Stitt?
The second thing is the increase in height at Duke. I'm not talking about Zoubek, although he's more useful as a senior, particularly on both glasses. I'm talking more about the emergence of 6'10" sophomore Miles Plumlee and the arrival of this 6'10" freshman brother, Mason. Miles has been a beast on the offensive and defensive boards this season and a potent shot-blocker. On top of this, they've been getting quality defensive bench minutes from 6'10" freshman Ryan Kelly. Put it all together and in one season Duke has gone from 62nd in the country in average effective height to 9th.
These two developments have given Duke reliable ball-handling and a strong inside presence, two features noticeably lacking from recent incarnations of the team. It also spells big trouble for the Tigers, because both of these improvements cut into what made last season's game such a success. We forced turnovers left and right last season with our press; that's not likely to be repeated now. Trevor Booker dominated Duke inside last season; again, that's not likely to happen this time around. Throw in Clemson's general struggles last season with tall teams that feature a good defense and things start looking a little bleak.
There's still hope, though. While Duke runs out a good defense, it's not elite, ours is still probably a little better, and it certainly isn't at the level of a Florida State or Wake Forest. The Duke big men have probably been more valuable on offense than defense. I hope this means we still get some points in our half-court offense. We can also hope for some regression from Nolan Smith, I can believe the jump from 25 to 20 after a year of getting used to the college game, but that's an awful big jump in the third year.
All in all though, we're looking at long odds here. If Clemson can hold the margin of victory to under 10 points, I think its a moral victory and we can build on that to try and score the upset back home at Littlejohn later in the month. Or we can hope Nolan Smith melts down again in the presence of the press. GO TIGERS!!!!
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