February 10: Florida State, 7:00.

February 13: Miami, 12:00.

February 20: Virginia, 4:00.

Those three games will determine the direction of Clemson’s season as they are 16-7(4-5 ACC) with 3 of their final 4 on the road.

The Tigers lost 70-59 to the Virginia Tech Hokies in a game that had little rhythm to it as the defenses and referees’ whistles reigned. Clemson forward Trevor Booker only played 23 minutes due to foul trouble and added just 7 points and 4 rebounds. Tigers forward David Potter led the team in scoring with 11 points including three 3-pointers. Clemson would shoot 7 for 25 from the perimeter on the day and 19 for 62(30.6%) overall.

There were some positives out of the loss as Clemson out-rebounded the Hokies 42 to 31. Clemson forward Jerai Grant posted a third straight solid game as he had a double-double at 11 points and 15 rebounds. He has emerged as the secondary low-post option to Booker.

He and Booker are needed to step-up in this coming stretch of home games with Florida State on Wednesday, Miami later in the week, and Virginia in two weeks. FSU and Virginia have each notched two ACC road wins(FSU at BC, GT; UVA at NC State, UNC)–Miami has not been as fortunate and have struggled all ACC season so far. Clemson is 3-1 at home in ACC play with blowout wins over North Carolina and Boston College–also a more hard-fought victory against Maryland.

Clemson goes 3-0 in their home-stretch and they are at 19-7 and more importantly, 7-5 in conference–just one game away from the most likely NCAA Tournament bid securing the 8-8 ACC record they need with four games to go.

The pressure is on Clemson’s guard play down the stretch as senior guard Demontez Stitt is playing hurt(played 27 minutes against Virginia Tech with few results as he only scored 3 points). The Tigers’ inexperienced guard-play outside of Stitt hurt them against the Hokies as no one stepped-up with the underclassmen guards shooting 7 for 25 from the field and two of those were garbage-time 3-pointers.

The Tigers’ forwards are talented enough to carry them to wins in this home-stretch, but the home-court is usually kinder to shooters and it will have to be in each of these games so it all does not rest on Trevor Booker’s shoulders.

Clemson is just one of many ACC teams that will look to grind out every ACC victory they can to get an NCAA Tourney bid, but the ACC scheduling has given them a great opportunity to gain momentum into March.

I think the Tigers pull off the sweep, but the hardest of the three games is Wednesday with the ‘Noles coming off the big win over Miami.

Tags: ACC Basketball, Clemson Tigers, Florida State Seminoles, Miami Hurricanes, potw, Virginia Cavaliers, Virginia Tech Hokies

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.