Both Clemson Men’s Basketball and Women’s Basketball were in action over the weekend, the men on Saturday and the women on Sunday.
The women continued their solid rebuilding season, defeating Boston College 67-57 in Chestnut Hill to move to 13-8 overall and 4-5 in the ACC.
Daish Bradford led three Tigers in double figures with 17, while Brie Perpignan had 14 and Amari Robinson 12.
Hannah Hank led the Tigers with 12 rebounds.
Clemson trailed 16-15 after the end of the first quarter, but outscored the Eagles by scores of 19-11 and 19-13 in the second and third quarters to cruise to the 10-point win.
After finishing last season 10-21 and 3-15 in the ACC, the Tigers continue to build towards a winning season.
The men defeated Virginia Tech 51-50 on Saturday in one of the prettiest ugly games I’ve seen in a while.
Hunter Tyson buried the game-winner with 10.9 seconds to go, and it was only the Tigers third three of the game.
https://twitter.com/ClemsonMBB/status/1616975687734149120?s=20&t=xjdmgClorD6d5Vnt60J3eQ
While I understood it wouldn’t be a big win – Virginia Tech is a quad 2 team at the moment – color me surprised to wake up and find Virginia Tech, at 11-8, 1-7 in the ACC and 0-2 against Clemson 13 spots higher than the Tigers in the KenPom rankings and 4 spots higher in the Net Rankings as of Sunday afternoon.
Clemson, a quad 2 team, beat Virginia Tech a quad 2 team. Clemson remained No. 59, while Virginia Tech improved by 6 spots.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist (generally) or think someone’s out to get Clemson, I genuinely would like to understand how this could happen.
The Net Rankings are doing no favors for Clemson Men’s Basketball
The two teams play in the same conference, one is 1-7 in that conference and one is 8-1. One team has beat the other twice. One team is 2-4 against Quad 1 teams, one is 3-2. One team is 2-3 against Quad 2 teams on is 4-0. One team is 1-1 against Quad 3 teams, one is 3-0.
The only area Clemson fails in is their 6-2 record against Quad 4 teams while Virginia Tech is 6-0.
Those two losses are killing the Tigers, some would say too much for two losses in early December.
Coming up for Clemson are Net Rankings of 180 (Georgia Tech), 187 (Florida State) and 201 (Boston College).
Simply put, the Tigers can’t afford to lose any of the next three games.