Just when the Clemson basketball team appears to be gaining momentum, the Tigers were hit with an extended layoff.
The Tigers endured a 13-day period without a game in late November when their home game against Duke was postponed due to positive COVID-19 tests in the Duke program. Clemson’s last game before the break was a 17-point win at Virginia; the Tigers’ first game back resulted in a 10-point home loss to that same Virginia team.
Clemson (11-9, 3-6) hopes to avoid a similar fate when the Tigers host Florida State (13-7, 6-4) on Wednesday night in Atlantic Coast Conference play. It will be the Tigers’ first game following an eight-day break that was preceded by strong performances in a 27-point home win against Pitt and a two-point road loss at Duke.
“We had a great win against Pitt, played really well,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “We had a difficult loss at Duke, but played very well, so for team momentum I would have liked to keep playing. We’ve got to get fired up and get back in that mentality the next couple of days.”
However, the break may have been a good thing for a couple of Brownell’s top players. Leading scorer P.J. Hall has been slowed by a sore foot while Hunter Tyson, the team’s fourth-leading scorer, is recovering from an ankle injury.
The Seminoles are ailing as well. Florida State is coming off a 13-point home loss against Virginia Tech in which Coach Leonard Hamilton’s team basically played without three of its top five scorers in RayQuan Evans, Caleb Mills (played just three minutes) and Malik Osborne.
Osborne is out for the season with an ankle injury while Mills is doubtful for the Clemson game with tonsillitis. Evans also is doubtful due to bereavement following the loss of a loved one, according to Hamilton.
“They’re not going to change how they play very much, I don’t think,” Brownell said. “They’re still going to pick you up, press you, be aggressive defensively, push the ball when they have chances and spread you and space you and attack. They play 11, 12 guys. If they’re down a few, they may play 9, 10.”
Florida State got off to a 7-1 start in 2022 but has lost its last two games by a combined 27 points against Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech.
“You become accustomed to rotating players a certain amount of minutes,” Hamilton said. “I normally don’t like to play guys seven straight minutes, but we were missing three starters — three of my most experienced players. I thought we ran out of gas. But we learned a lot about ourselves.”
–Field Level Media
