To borrow from a great baseball coach: Nice dunk, TO. Don’t ever fuckin’ do it again.

Well, aside from TO’s stupid dunk at the end of the game, I gotta say that I’m pleased that the team can leave Boston with a solid victory. I only caught the 2nd half. It was good to see Booker making his presence felt and imposing his will. Raymond Sykes was also showing some hustle and getting things done. TO was 6-10 from behind the arc, however for at least a couple minutes there I knew that I’d rather have the ball in Sykes’ hands than Oglesby’s. Talk about a role reversal!

In case you missed tonight’s game against Florida State, congratulations!

Actually it wasn’t that bad for about the first 3/4 of the game. But unfortunately the team decided to squander a 19 point lead by not rebounding a damn thing and making sure that every shot they took was blocked.

Hats off to Florida State for playing tough and walking away from Littlejohn with a solid W.

We’ve already burned through most of the first half. Clemson has a 6 point lead and 6:27 left. The team is playing well, but probably not well enough.

33-21 at the half. A 12-point lead is certainly appreciated, but it still seems like Clemson needs to figure out how to be frenetic on defense and patient on offense.

14:05 left in the 2nd half, Clemson’s up 20. Grant has made some good plays. I’m a little surprised with some of the stuff the refs have been letting go.

12:52 left. Smith called for a charge. The calls can certainly start going against Clemson real quick. Don’t think that I think that Duke is out of this one yet.

Roughly 8 minutes left: Oglesby hit a bit 3. Sheyer walked without a call (and put up a duck). Then Booker had a wide open dunk. Booker is playing to make a statement. 61-39 right now.

2:00 left: Oglesby missed a dunk. Purnell just shakes his head. I’d have liked to see Clemson play smarter.

I can’t believe Duke just folded like this. They remind me of the bully from A Christmas Story right now.

Game over. First home win against Duke since ’97. The Tigers played like they expected Duke to adjust to their game plan rather than vise versa. And they pulled it off.

It’s still a bit unbelievable. I can empathize with my Duke friends right now, but I’m still going to take some joy from their misery.

First half:

Tech was ready for the press. They were getting easy points for a long time, and it seemed to take the Tigers out of the game mentally. That allowed VT to lead by as much as 14pts. Fortunately VT made some mistakes and Clemson toughened up a bit and got the ball down low a bit more while also grabbing some more defensive rebounds.

The Tigers should have ended the half down by a mere, and very respectable given the larger earlier deficits, 6 (or less had they converted on their last possession, but Tech’s Delaney hit a 3/4 court prayer at the buzzer.

Crap. That was deflating.

Second Half:

Clemson came out a little flat, and then something amazing happened, they woke back up. They went on a 20-1 run encompassing about 7 minutes. The lead shifted a few times before Clemson ended up on top. That was a rather remarkable victory. Way to fight back!

As you’ve probably heard, Oliver Purnell’s team completed the first half of their season last night with a convincing win over a pretty good Alabama team. The 11th ranked Tigers won 66-59 while shooting only 13-22 from the free throw line (perhaps that word, “throw”, causes some confusion for our shooters?).

At the halfway point the team is undefeated at 15-0, which is impressive and fantastic. But it is not something that hats can be hung on. There are games left, all of which are in-conference, and we know from past experience that ACC play in the 2nd half of the season isn’t the same as OOC play in the first. At this point, the correct way to judge this team is based on how well they do in the 2nd half. Good/great starts are fine, but they’re worth almost nothing with a bad/horrible finish.

The 2nd half kicks off with with games against NC State, Wake Forest, and a road trip to UNC. Those teams are a combined 35-4 at this point. Talk about a challenge!

From my perspective, this season is just getting started.

In just over 8 days I’ve been on 8 flights and to 8 different airports. While I should have taken pictures at Dulles, Las Vegas, Reno, Oakland, Spokane, Seattle, Portland, and Midway, I did not. I suck. I apologize. But boy is it good to be back home.

Given the light amount of blogging going on here, the least I can do is direct you to Clemson basketball blog The OP, which is doing a pretty bang-up job of keeping tabs on the current season.

Thanks to wonderful weather in the Pacific northwest, I was stuck in Reno for the night, unfortunately without time to take advantage of all that Reno has to offer. (It’s 4:30AM local time, I can’t sleep, and I have to make it back to the airport soon.)

While all that sucks, it was nice to see that Clemson Tiger basketball pretty much destroyed Miami last night. The final score was 91-72 and it was Miami, not Clemson, that was horrible from the charity stripe shooting only 12-27.

UPDATE: It’s now 10:10AM local time and I’m stuck at the airport riding the standby wave. I may easily be here until Wednesday; there’s a strong chance I won’t make it to my destination at all.

On the upside, it looks like Reno is a pretty fun place to be stuck in. And I’d like to add that I’m now a big fan of the Atlantis Hotel/Casino, as I reserved a room for $30 and was upgraded to a two-room suite with LCD screen, bar, and a slightly-sketchy in-bedroom jacuzzi tub. It’s definitely the best $30 hotel room I’ve ever stayed in. I just hope that if I get stuck here for another couple nights that I end up in the same room and that I don’t lose too much money gambling.

I’ve seen in some articles blog posts that this edition of the Clemson men’s basketball team was actually counting free throw shooting as a strength. This is quite a deviation from recent history. But if last night’s shellacking of Wofford offers any indication, then the output from the charity stripe may very well be improved. Clemson was 16-18 on the night. That, folks, is 89% shooting. It doesn’t get much better than that.

While I’m in basketball mode (and I can’t believe I didn’t reach this point much earlier), let me wonder about how Raymond Sykes is going to step up this year. Last night he had “14 points, eight rebounds, two blocks and a steal.” The stats are not bad, but I’d like to see how he’s playing. Hopefully since he’s the starter now, he can be more settled and contribute positively.