Clemson Men’s Basketball: Tigers host Louisville Cardinals

Coming off two big road victories last week, Clemson Men’s Basketball finds itself in a couple of unfamiliar positions: 1) Atop the ACC standings by themselves and 2) as prohibitive favorites over the Louisville Cardinals.

This is not the Louisville Cardinals that your Grand Pappy knew, as this version is 2-14 and 0-5 in the ACC.

Louisville has lost games to Bellarmine, Wright State, Appalachian State and Lipscomb, while beating only Western Kentucky and Florida A&M.

While a couple of those mid-majors aren’t bad, in the abstract Louisville losing to those names isn’t good.  At all.

KenPom.com projects a 19-point Clemson win, while the projected margin over on Haslametrics.com is even larger.

What could go wrong?

In a word, everything.

With two bad losses already, a third, especially to a 2-14 team would be devastating for the Tigers and undo a lot of goodwill they’ve earned in the last 5 games, particularly in the last week.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time harping on the loss of Alex Hemenway and what that might mean for Clemson (I’ve been wrong to date), but at this point, I feel as if I should point out the benefit of said injury with the hindsight of four consecutive conference wins without Hemenway in the lineup: The young players are divvying up Hemenway’s 32 minutes per game, gaining experience and confidence along the way, not to mention contributing in a big way.

Collectively, Clemson fans, myself included,  have spent considerable time over the last few years bashing Brownell and we should give him and his coaching staff their due: This is a well coached team and Brownell made changes that were needed, one of which was a lineup that included bigger guards.

Clemson Men’s Basketball is a big favorite over Louisville

Clemson enters Wednesday’s contest as a 16.5 point favorite with an over under of 136.5, which implies a score of 76.5-60 in the Tigers favor.

Marty Coleman (11-5, 6-10 ATS):

This team has proven resilient over the last couple of weeks and this is a game that they should win handily.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Tigers are peeking ahead to Duke on Saturday, but Louisville is not good enough to take full advantage of the Tigers let down.

John Chancey (11-5, 8-8 ATS):

Against Virginia Tech and Pitt, I predicted the Tigers would cover, but wouldn’t win the game. Both times they proved me wrong and won. I am impressed with the way this team has played lately, but they are in new territory being the hunted. They also have Duke just around the corner. This time, I think Clemson wins the game, but I don’t think they cover such a large spread.

Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change