This weekend belongs to Clemson Men’s Basketball, or at least it did before Dabo Swinney made a couple of personnel moves late Thursday.
The 14-3 (6-0) Tigers take on the Duke Blue Devils Saturday at 5 p.m. in Littlejohn Coliseum.
More on that in a minute, but first up there’ll be a ton of athletic events on the Clemson campus this weekend.
It all starts on Friday at 2 p.m. with Day 1 of the Clemson Invite at the Clemson Indoor Track and Field Complex.
Day 2 of the Invite starts at 10 a.m. and runs through 3:30 p.m. Saturday at the same place, with parking in Jervey Meadow and free admission each day.
Basketball then takes over for a sold-out game against the Blue Devils and here’s your friendly reminder: Lot 5 is offline due to construction, so plan accordingly.
Also Saturday is a softball camp (registration closed) and takes on Charleston (1 p.m.) and UNCG (4 p.m. at the Duckworth Family Tennis Center, where there’s parking. Admission to the event is free.
On Sunday, it’s the Men’s Tennis team’s turn, as they host Furman at noon and Wofford at 5 p.m. to wrap up the weekend.
Clemson Men’s Basketball will have to contend with Duke on the offensive boards
I haven’t done much research or looked into Duke in detail yet, but one stat did jump out to me as I glanced at some stats earlier: Duke is No. 5 in the country in offensive rebounds.
This is an area where Clemson struggles at times, including against Louisville Wednesday night, where the Tigers allowed the Cardinals 11 offensive rebounds.
While Hunter Tyson has been a wrecking ball on the boards, P.J. Hall only recorded a single rebound against the Cardinals.
To be fair, Hall only played 16:28 of the game, but in comparison Ben Middlebrooks contributed 5 boards, 2 on the offensive end, in 23:32 of court time.
My guess is that Hall bounces back Saturday and the Tigers will certainly need him.
R.J. Godfrey has become quite the contributor off the bench, with 6 points Wednesday, but he also had 2 offensive rebounds and an assist in his 8+ minutes on the court and has become an energy guy for Brad Brownell.
Finally, redshirt freshman Josh Beadle isn’t the scoring threat the starting guards are, but he is defending at a high level, despite some youthful mistakes.