Duke vs. Clemson, 1/23, 9:00pm, Littlejohn
I'm swamped at work so I'm just going to point everyone to the first Duke preview I wrote about three weeks ago. My opinion hasn't changed much regarding Duke, losses to Georgia Tech and NC State notwithstanding. These guys are a good team. Check out their Kenpom.com page. In the upper left-hand corner notice how everything is either a light shade of green or a dark shade of green. There's no pink or red anywhere. That's the mark of a championship-caliber team--no obvious weakness when glancing over the stats.
That being said, 5 games into the ACC season, Duke has shown some signs of slipping on defense. They still defend the shot very well (the strength of the defense), but they aren't forcing as many turnovers and they are having problems keeping teams off the offensive glass (how do you do that with their height?).
If Clemson plays as well as they did against GT last Tuesday while getting a few more shots to fall and hitting a couple of extra free throws, we'll have a chance to pull the upset at the end of the game and hand Duke its third straight conference road loss. I know it might sound far-fetched considering the 20 point thrashing we got up at Cameron, but if we can get the ball into Trevor Booker in the halfcourt set like we did in the second half of the first Duke game, then we can swarm the rim and pick up some easy points. Its doable, but the margin for error is thin.
GO TIGERS!!!!
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