Once in a while, a team gets lucky and has a tremendous shooting game when it counts. That goes a long way in describing West Virginia’s win last night.

It seemed that anything West Virginia threw toward the rim swished right through. Everything Clemson put in the air clinked and clanged off the rim and backboard. That obnoxious noise is the sound of my discontent. Undoubtedly it will haunt me in my dreams. To emphasize, West Virginia shot 12-20, or 60%, from behind the arc, well above their season average. Clemson, on the other hand, managed a dismal 6-23 for 26%. 3 of those 6 came with less than 45 seconds left and the game practically over.

The Tigers were also unable to create any rebounding superiority. Despite a sizable early edge, they got out-rebounded 35 to 31.

All told, the game was nearly as close as the final 78-73 score indicates. A quick run by the Mountaineers toward the end of the first half established a large lead that Clemson just couldn’t cut into.

I don’t think I want to talk about basketball anymore.

• The women’s tennis team is doing a good job of avoiding the rankings curse that befell the football and basketball teams. They are currently eighth in the Fila/ITA Tennis poll; they’ve stayed in the top 10 for 4 straight weeks. They have six remaining league matchups before the ACC Championships begin April 19th.
• Justin Miller showed some of the basketball players around New York City. Miller is close friends with Vernon Hamilton. Players also went to a Brazilian restaurant, which was recommended by Oliver Purnell’s daughter, Olivia. Yes. Oliver named daughter Olivia. Not cool. Although the name Olivia is not as bad as some of the names in my family tree; I recall seeing the name Jacobina.
• Speaking of the basketball team, they beat Air Force by a point to move on to the NIT finals. More on that later.
• Gardner-Webb gave little resistance to the baseball team last night. The Tigers blitzkrieged the Bulldog defenses en route to a decisive 14-2 win.
• “Clemson’s sixth-ranked men’s golf team will be back in action for the first time in 19 days when the Tigers start action Friday at the Administaff Augusta State Invitational in Augusta, GA. The Tigers are one of 18 teams who will compete for the title on the par 72 Champions Retreat Course that is 7,265 yards in length.”

The anguish of watching Clemson sports… Why can’t Clemson remember that the game lasts 5 minutes past what they put into it?!?!? I swear after watching the first half that I completely forgot about the final five minute droughts that Clemson had been putting up throughout the season. The game looked like it was in the bag at the half with KC and the boys shooting lights out from the 3 point line. The second half even started strong with the Tigers continuing the momentum to gain a 17 point lead. But alas, similar to the rest of the season the Tigers unraveled in the last minutes of the game giving ‘Cuse a small chance of hope to squeak by after a miserable game. Somehow Clemson eked out a win, much to my surprise as I turned the TV off with 3 minutes remaining as it had turned into a foul fest with people being ejected from the game with every trip down the court. Here are a few thoughts I had on the game:

1. How did Clemson, after hopefully watching an entire series of tapes on Syracuse, not figure out how to break down the deep 2-3 zone that the defense placed on them?

2. Why did Clemson never figure out that if Devendorf got the ball he was going to drive the lane. Even the announcers said it every time the kid got the ball. Someone put a body on the man!

3. That was the worst officiating I have seen in a basketball game in a while. Both sides of the ball got unfair calls and completely missed calls. I mean when someone barely touches a player and gets called on it and then on the next trip down someone gets suplexed on a layup and nothing is called something is wrong.

4. Syracuse, unlike Clemson, obviously watched a lot of Clemson ball tapes and figured out what to do with the Tigers. In a nutshell, here it is: Let Clemson play their kind of ball, full press flash and run ball, until the last five minutes. Then… foul the everloving hell out of them as NO ONE ON THE FREAKIN TEAM CAN SHOOT A FREE THROW. It was(is) absolutely miserable watching teams foul Clemson knowing that they will, at best, hit 50%. It was so bad that our best free throw shooter, Rivers, missed all 3 after getting fouled outside the arc.

5. Clemson has a young team that still has some emotional control issues. Booker was obviously frustrated last night and let it force him into mistakes that cost the team as a whole. On the same thought, Clemson has a young team that loses one of it’s starters for next year. That’s just scary.

In the end, I was glad to see Clemson win it after checking the internet while peeking through my fingers in fear of the disappointment that might occur. I just wish that they had kept the decisive lead on the “Orange” instead of floundering to a weak finish. Hopefully, they will play well against Air Force but with the previously mentioned “young guns” travelling to the Big Apple, it may take a while to get them settled down.

Hey Clemson is something like 17-0 against out of conference opponents, so if they keep that record going they have to win it all… right?!

The P&C has a pretty good pre-game summary.

Game time is 7 PM.
ESPN2 has the TV coverage.

The oddsmakers in Vegas have the spread set at 3.5 in favor of the Tigers.

My not-so-great prediction algorithm favors Clemson by 5.3. Unfortunately that factors in a home court advantage that is greater than is what is deserved for what will probably be a relatively small, sedate crowd in Littlejohn tonight. If money were on the line, I’d take the underdog.

I’ve accepted the offer from MariusJanulisForThree of to share 5 things to know about respective teams. Here’s what you should know about Syracuse.

1 - Contrary to popular belief, Jim Boeheim has not been involved with every Syracuse basketball game to ever be played. Jimmy first came to Syracuse as a walk-on player in 1963, some 62 years after the first game in school history (a gutty 23-9 loss to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). After graduating in ‘66, Boeheim returned to SU in ‘69 as a graduate assistant, working his way up to assistant coach and finally became head coach in 1976.

2 - Clemson fans know better than anyone the perils of having orange as one of your main colors. Hey, it could have been a lot worse…Syracuse’s original school colors were rose pink and pea green. Imagine the fun Georgetown could have had with that.

3 - Believe it or not, the Syracuse mascot always hasn’t been a walking piece of fruit with arms where his ears should be. It was originally the Saltine Warrior, a Native American named for the salt deposits common to the area. Back before banning insensitive mascots was what the cool kids did, Syracuse banned the Warrior in 1978. He was briefly reborn as a Roman warrior but officially replaced in ‘82 by a big orange. A group of cheerleaders chose Otto over Opie and the name stuck.

4 - We love our “scrappy white guys who shoot the three.” You may remember Jason Cipolla from the ‘96 Final Four squad. Following him and included in our brief infatuation with Eastern Europeans was Marius Janulis. Gerry McNamara carried the torch proudly as well. Currently you’ll find the scrappy, white, three-point shooter role split between Eric Devendorf (scrappy) and Andy Rautins (almost exclusively shoots threes).

5 - Hey we play a little football too! Well, not good football these days. Even though Paul Pasqualoni led the Orange to numerous conference championships, multiple bowl games and two BCS bowls between 1991 and 2004, fans never felt he could get the team over the hump into national prominence. We replaced him with Greg Robinson in 2005, and he’s gone on to…well…win one Big East conference game so far. Don’t even get us started on Rutgers…

[5+1 things about Clemson available here]

In the first half, I checked the score — the Tigers were up 4. Then Ole Miss scored real quick and the Tigers turned it over.

I turned the channel. Several minutes later I checked again and the team was down and I was pretty damn sure the season had about 23 minutes left, in accordance with prophecy. Then sometime after the half, I checked back in, and much to my amazement Clemson was up by almost 20. What’s more, they held on to that lead and went on to win 89-68.

I’ll mark this one down as a pretty solid win. Booker was impressive, scoring a career high 21 points. And the team is now 23-10.

Next up for the Tigers is a game against #2 seeded Syracuse, “in the most Orange of tournament quarterfinals on Wednesday night.” Indeed.