Maryland Preview

Clemson vs. Maryland, 02/24, 9:00pm, Comcast Center

A couple of days ago I outlined Clemson's needs approaching the final four games of the season. They probably need two wins to be absolutely sure of an NCAA tournament bid that will likely land them, assuming a single win in the ACC tournament, a 7 seed in the tournament. As an aside, most "bracketologists" I've seen are putting six ACC teams in the tournament, but only Duke is ranked higher than 6. It's absurd.

Perhaps no team is getting burned as badly by bracket gurus than Maryland. On paper, I see this as a 3/4 team right now. Not much room to improve nor much of a threat to reach the elite eight, but still a lot better than the present perception. On the other hand, Clemson fans can be forgiven for doubting my assessment given Maryland's absolutely pathetic performance at Littlejohn a scant 3 1/2 weeks ago. Normally I would try to point out the kind of adjustments I would expect the two teams to make based on their first meeting, but since both teams played well beneath their abilities I have a feeling both coaches will more or less throw the tape in the garbage and draw a plan for this game based on an updated version of the first game.

In other words, I feel the same way I did before the last game--Maryland is a good team that poses matchup problems for us. In addition, it's going to be difficult to go into one of the more hostile environments in the league in front of re-energized fanbase and pull off the upset. Maryland is a team with a balanced offensive approach. They particularly excel at shooting the three and not turning the ball over. There only weakness is an inability to get to the line, but when they do get there they shoot at a 71% clip. Their defense, while not among the ACC elites, is still ranked 25th in the country by Kenpom.com. Most of their strength on defense is derived from holding opponents to a 40% 2-point FG%. Clemson can score points against Maryland by doing two things: 1) knock down some three pointers (Maryland is about league-average in defending the three) and 2) crashing the offensive boards. I talked about this before the last game, but Gary Williams has never been too concerned with giving up the occasional offensive rebound. Jerai Grant, we'll need you tonight.

The good news is that because we are clearly the underdog tonight, there's not a whole lot on the line for Clemson. We have to get a road win at some point, but we'll have better chances later on at both FSU and Wake Forest. I expect Purnell to instruct his players to be a little more aggressive in the early going, overplay on defense by trying to jump passes in the half-court while trying to get Tanner Smith to knock Vasquez off his game again. On offense, we might see a barrage of early three pointers if we're getting even semi-open looks. If we create a few breaks, it could keep us in the game going into the final five minutes. If we don't we'll be down 15 points in a game we were supposed to lose and the freshmen will get some valuable playing time. Either way, GO TIGERS!!!!!