Next Up – Clemson

This could be one of the best games of the ACC season.

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Date 2/14 || Time 12:00 Noon || Venue Basketball Paradise || Video ESPN

Clemson comes to Cameron Saturday and that’s probably going to be a good one. Clemson is much better than most people expected, but our feeling is that as long as they have Brad Brownell, they’ll be fine. And they certainly have been to date.

Currently 20-5 overall and 10-2 in the ACC, Clemson relies on 6-3 senior Dillon Hunter, 6-1 senior Jestin Porter, 6-8/230 senior RJ Godfrey, 6-10/240 senior Nick Davidson, 6-10/225 junior

Carter Welling, 6-10/212 junior Jake Wahlin, 6-4 senior Butta Johnson, 6-4 Zac Foster and 6-3 redshirt freshman Ace Buckner, nephew of former Blue Devil Andre Buckner and son of Tiger legend Greg Buckner.

We’ve said before that with the rise of NIL and unrestricted transfers, we’ll see coaches emerge who master the new environment and Brownell has been pretty good. We always say everyone gets a pass on Covid, but Brownell got through that okay: since 2019-20, he’s finished 16-15, 16-8, 17-16, 23-11, 24-12, 27-7 and so far this year, 20-5.

In the last three seasons, Clemson has finished 3rd, 5th and 2nd.

Compare that to UNC: under Hubert Davis, the Tar Heels have finished 7th, 1st and 4th in the same time span.

Clemson is doing alright.

What’s surprising about Clemson is that when you watch them on TV, they look like a smallish team, but with Welling, Wahlin, Davidson, and Godfrey, they have some size. And that doesn’t count the younger Davidson brother, Blake, a 6-9 freshman, Trent Steinour, a 6-10 freshman who is the latest member of the legendary Mahaffey family to attend Clemson, and a couple of others besides.

Clemson’s got size and they also have guard play. Hunter can be streaky but he’s good – and dangerous. Porter, who came over from Middle Tennessee State, has been really solid. Johnson has not shot well, but he’s certainly contributed and freshmen Foster and Buckner have both shown promise.

The immediate question for Saturday’s game is Patrick Ngongba’s status, and Duke’s Jon Scheyer says it’s impossible to know right now. We’ve pointed out periodically that Duke and UNC tend to eerily parallel each other and that’s happening right now with wrist injuries. Caleb Wilson’s is much worse. Ngongba has no major damage but a lot of soreness. So we’ll see.

Given Clemson’s size, that’s important. Isaiah Evans will be at a disadvantage on defense when he’s guarding their frontcourt guys. He’s much stronger than he was last season, but at 6-6 and just 180, he’s giving up a lot on defense. That makes Dame Sarr much more important: he may have to spend time on bigger guys like Godfrey. For that matter, we could see Foster being forced to guard someone bigger at times.

Or Duke could opt to put Sarr on ball and try to limit Clemson that way, gambling that they get more from that than they give up.

However, mismatches go both ways, and someone has to chase Evans around. We’ll see how that works out.

For all those reasons, regardless of their offensive contributions, Duke may end up needing a lot of help from Nik Khamenia and Darren Harris, who are both sturdy enough to body up with some of Clemson’s inside muscle.

Foul trouble will be a critical factor as well. Maliq Brown fouled out at Pitt and earlier at Stanford. He also picked up 4 at UNC last weekend.

For his part, Ngongba had 4 against Louisville on the road, 4 against Cal at Cal, and fouled out in Chapel Hill in 16 minutes.

Cameron Boozer is an amazing player, but he can’t carry the inside by himself and certainly not on both ends. He’ll need help. However, as we’ve seen, he has beautiful fundamentals and he’s a difficult player to contain.

Duke can probably attack Clemson inside and get to the line. It’s something that former coach Mike Krzyzewski did often in his early years, using aggression to overcome the talent gap Duke had back then. You can’t block foul shots, after all.

Clemson also prefers a slower pace, generally speaking, so if Duke can get out in transition, so much the better.

And three-point shooting is always useful. Isaiah Evans hasn’t shot all that well and stats tell us that eventually, people get to their norms. At some point, Evans is going to have one of his freaky three-point games. He hit 5-6 at Pitt, which, needless to say, is really good, but he has the capacity to bust a game wide open as we saw last year with Auburn. As noted above, that’s a mismatch that Duke can exploit.

As you’ll probably remember, over the last two years, Clemson has given Duke fits. Two years ago, Duke was in dire trouble before coming back to beat the Tigers at the last possible minute (after that game, Brownell complained under his breath about how hard it is to beat Duke in Cameron, but the referees didn’t help Jared McCain make three late steals). Last year, Duke played without Mason Gillis, who was ill, and Cooper Flagg played sick. Result: Clemson pulled away late for a 77-71 win.

There’s a pretty good chance that it might be that sort of game again. These teams have a history and it’s gotten particularly intense recently.

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