I'm going to do these recaps as often as possible during the ACC season, similar to what I was doing last year...
I don't have a lot of time, so straight to the chart:
(Chart from Statsheet. I can't find win probability charts, but this is pretty close. I assume they are using Bill James' formula to calculate safe leads, but I might be wrong.)
All in all, I thought it was a fairly standard outing this season by the Tigers. We're going to hear a lot about how this was a "tale of two halves" or whatever, but the nature of Clemson's game (particularly this year) is such that when the pressure is working, the defense looks great; but when Clemson starts looking tired, the other team makes adjustments, puts in someone who can handle the ball better, or starts getting a few bounces/calls to go their way they are going to put points on the board. UNC could never make the adjustments and we stomped them for two halves. Duke almost never had a problem and they stomped us for two halves. No one's going to accuse Sidney Lowe of being a coaching genius, but limiting turnover machine Javier Gonzalez to 10 minutes of playing time (well below his season average of ~27 minutes) isn't the work of guy who doesn't understand the situation. All of this raises a bit of a red flag: while the pressure defense probably hasn't been better since the days of Hammonds and Mays, the half-court defense (while perhaps a little better than last year), isn't enough to keep even offensively-challenged teams like NC State from scoring.
It's good to keep in mind, however, that the nature of Purnell's (and by extension, Clemson's) brand of basketball is inherently pretty volatile, a number of different factors like referee style of officiating ("calling it close" or "letting them play"), the level of fatigue for Clemson or the opponent, a series of missed calls, etc. can have a dramatic impact on the overall effectiveness of the defense. This can leave the team look like a polished, overwhelming machine at one point in time and totally clueless the next--and I think this is heightened somewhat this year because we lack a really solid half-court defense to fall back on. The prototypical game which I refer people to is the Villanova game in round 1 of the 2008 tournament. We came out and absolutely flustered Villanova's pair of excellent but inexperienced guards (Scottie Reynolds and Corey Fisher, I believe), building a quick lead in the first ten minutes of the game--and it looked like we could do no wrong. Then the guards remembered that they were pretty good, stopped throwing the ball away, and cut the lead in half by the break. Then in the second half, it looked like Clemson could do nothing right while giving up 48 points en route to a 6-point loss. The key: Reynolds and Fisher shredding through the pressure defense.
Anyways, I've wandered off topic here but I guess I needed to justify my statement above: this did feel like a standard Clemson outing. Ever wonder why Clemson struggles to "close out games" or "finish strong"? The preceding paragraph seems like a reasonable explanation--mull it over for a while. I don't by the lack of leadership argument; a coach couldn't design a better leader than T. Booker. This reasoning also explains how Clemson manages furious finishes from time to time. Remember the Butler game? Remember how tired Butler looked early on in the second half? The same players allegedly lacking a leader managed a thrilling comeback. Remember last year's allegedly dysfunctional squad pulling off an improbable comeback at Virginia Tech? Maryland two years ago? This may be a bit preemptive, but if someone wants to complain about Clemson's failures to "seal the deal", can we at least get some acknowledgement of their ability to unexpectedly storm back to victory? And then maybe we can start seeing the two outcomes as sides of the same coin. Clemson plays a volatile style of basketball, sometimes it works for us, sometimes against us, and sometimes we have just enough in the tank to overcome home-court advantage plus three points.
***Lastly, unrelated to the above, I wanted to comment on Stitt's status. I'm not the biggest Stitt fan, I'm on the record as saying that Young is more than capable of filling most of the roles he plays for the team. But that doesn't change the fact that losing Stitt for any extended period of time is a big blow. No one on the team can replace Stitt's explosive first step and his ability to penetrate and cause problems for the defense. It also seems like he's been cut loose a little over the last three games, and the results have been pretty good. Unfortunately, he's also got a growing injury history. He's got a little bit of Dwayne Wade in him that way--penetration guy with little regard for his body and a litany of nagging injuries hampering his play. Unfortunately, Stitt's injury sounds pretty serious--not a pulled muscle or something. There's also the issue of how healthy he is when he finally comes back. If you watched the team closely last year, Stitt never seemed the same after coming back from a pre-ACC season injury. I'm not going to jump to any conclusions here, but obviously keeping the game close against in Atlanta on Tuesday just became a lot more difficult. I'll try to comment more when we get news of the severity of the injury.
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