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It may have been an upset, but Clemson’s win against Duke wasn’t all that surprising
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CLEMSON, S.C. – Duke may yet become the No. 1 college basketball team in the county this season.
It just won’t happen on Monday when the new polls come out.
The door was cracked ajar for the second-ranked Blue Devils to jump into the top spot for the first time since November 2021 after No. 1 Auburn was beaten by Florida earlier in the day Saturday.
But Clemson had other ideas.
The Tigers slammed the door shut with a second-half surge that halted Duke’s 16-game winning streak and ended its chances of becoming the first ACC team to go 20-0 in the conference. Even though their 77-71 victory at Littlejohn Coliseum will officially go into the books as an upset, it was hardly a surprise.
If the Blue Devils were going to lose to a conference opponent. This was probably going to be it.
You could almost see it coming from as far away as the end of the line of Clemson students who began gathering outside the arena before dawn in anticipation of the 6:30 p.m. showdown.
An amped-up sellout crowd just itching to storm the court. Which it did.
A home team still smarting from a 3-overtime loss to Georgia Tech in a trap game 2 days earlier and desperate to enhance its NCAA Tournament resume.
Duke star Cooper Flagg admittedly under the weather.
Throw in the return of Dickie V. after a 2-year absence and the fact that the Tigers have now won 5 straight games against top-5 ranked opponents.
It was a great college basketball game in a great atmosphere. But if you’re looking for absolutes to take away from the result, there aren’t many other than that Duke isn’t unbeatable and Flagg is mortal.
Sort of.
And that Clemson, which has to do this all over in less than 48 hours when North Carolina comes to town for another important game on Monday, is a lot better than a majority of poll voters are giving it credit for.
“When we’re locked in and playing at a high level, doing the things we need to do and preparing the right way,” coach Brad Brownell said, “we can play with just about anybody in the country.”
The Tigers certainly looked the part on Saturday.
They became the first team all season to shoot better than 50% against a Blue Devils defense that began the day ranked second nationally according to KenPom’s efficiency ratings, going 30-of-51 from the floor. They outrebounded Duke 36-23 and held Flagg to 4 points on 2-of-11 shooting over the first 35 minutes.
Even with all that, it still took Flagg losing his footing on a slippery floor as he drove for the tying basket in the final seconds for Clemson to pull it off.
A big reason for that is the Blue Devils’ freshman star.
Despite not being at his best physically and visibly struggling against a tall, physical Clemson front line, Flagg still had enough gas in his tank to flip the switch and nearly get his team across the finish line. He scored 14 of his 18 points in the final 5 minutes making 4 straight shots – including 3 3-pointers – to carry Duke back from a 7-point deficit into a late lead.
“Cooper was being Cooper there,” Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer said. “He just has a special will.”
Scheyer said he was convinced his team would win right up until the time Flagg hit a wet spot likely caused by the humidity in the packed building, crashed to the ground and was called for traveling with 14 seconds remaining.
While the result said more about Clemson’s potential than Duke’s shortcomings, the fact that the Blue Devils still nearly pulled out the victory in the face of all that went wrong should tell you all you need to know about how good the Blue Devils are when they are locked in and playing at a high level, doing the things we need to do and preparing the right way,”
The job of reaching that goal only intensifies now that at least a few chinks in their armor have been exposed.
“This loss hurts because I think this group is on the verge of doing something special,” Scheyer said. “I just told them afterward that this game has got to mean something … Losing sucks. I hate it. Our team hates it. So I know we’ll have a group that responds and really gets us to a place we need to be.”
Just in case the door to being the best team in college basketball swings open again.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
