Clemson thumped by Duke and ACC referees

Statsheet postmortem

Tonight went pretty much how I feared. If you watched that game you saw a team with great fundamentals against one without any fundamentals.

Clemson has one basketball player on this team, and a ton of contributors. As I've felt last season and on into this one, we lack a guard who will really attack the basket and create off the dribble. If we don't find one then you should never expect us to win 8 ACC games, much less the NCAAs. Our interior play is not so good to alleviate this deficiency. Teams with size enough to manhandle Booker will shut Clemson totally down.

How much of this is scheme and OP not letting players do what their innate abilities dictate, I do not know. I would think there is a much better scheme on hi/lo entry to get us in position to do better offensively. 

• 1st half highlight: great defense. Thats it. We couldnt do jack otherwise. 12 points, jesus.
• 2nd half play was bearable. We became aggressive after the half and played better offensively, but the defense tailed off halfway through the 2nd. Duke does a great job at playing along the perimeter, forcing you to drive, and taking charges, thanks to Karl Hess. I love how Duke reaches and slaps on every play and never gets called.
• As I feared, it would be Scheyer, Singler and Smith that ate us up. The big men are nothing to worry about. We could force all 3 into turnovers but it wasnt enough.
• As we've thought all year, you need someone to get the pressure off of Trevor Booker, and that someone is not on this team. It doesnt help when he doesnt work during the 1st half to get position and TRY to hold it. However TBook did not impress with his defense, it seemed like he was so afraid of fouls that he wouldnt attempt to do anything. His rebounding stats showed this: 5, total.
• Where was the jumpshot tonight? PULL UP and shoot one. Either drive and finish, which we dont do, or pull up a jumper, which we didnt do.
• Learn how to set a damn pick/screen. We are terrible at this, then take bad 3 point shots with people in our face, or pass-pass-pass-pass-clock-goes-down-shoot-a-bad-shot
• Half-court sets look worse than some SC AAAA teams. Spacing = shitty. I love it when we drive in and run into 9 people all huddled together. MOVE AROUND! 2nd half offense was off the defense/transition and some penetration, not sets. The plus side is that this game so early gives us a chance to TRY to work on this garbage.
• Milton Jennings is a freshman, and played like one tonight. I think it was more mental tonight than skill. OP jerked him out of there.
• Devin Booker needs an easy game to get his damn head on straight.
• If you dont put up points and cant rebound, you cant run a Press. We're not great enough at half-court defense so we're in deep trouble unless consistent scoring threats emerge. If we go at teams like UVA and can't score points consistently, we'll be upset ourselves.