The "road warrior" aura that once surrounded the Clemson Tigers has hit a wall. After a bleak week that ended with a 14-game conference road winning streak broken and their home-court superiority shattered with the loss to Virginia Tech, the Clemson Tigers (20-6, 10-3 ACC) slumped six spots to No. 24 in the most recent data at USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll on Monday.
The drop comes after the program’s first back-to-back losses in over two months—a 10-point home defeat at the hands of Virginia Tech, then a 13-point “wallop” against the new No. 3 Duke Blue Devils.
As Clemson edged along to the finish line of the Top 25, the landscape around the league took a violent turn. Duke (23-2), buoyed by the scoring prowess of its star Cameron Boozer against the Tigers featuring 18, moved up three spots to No. 3 and established itself as the conference's top title contender.
In the meantime, Virginia (22-3) topped to No. 14, beating North Carolina (20-5), whose team fell seven spots to No. 20 following an upset loss to Miami. Overall, the ACC enters the third week of February with five teams placed in the Top 25, although Clemson now bumps that number down, the second-last team on the list due to a familiar top name for the poll.
The Michigan Wolverines (24-1) returned to No. 1 after undefeated Arizona dropped its first two games of the season to Kansas and Texas Tech. Michigan pulled ahead by getting 31 first-place votes to clear the way to the top to beat Houston and Duke.
With just five games left in the regular season, Brad Brownell’s side was in “damage control” mode to defend their NCAA Tournament seeding. Before last week’s slide, the Tigers had won 13 of 14 games and were flirting with a top-two seed. Now they have a tricky final challenge to avoid missing the rankings entirely.
The attempt to halt the bleeding starts Wednesday in Winston-Salem.
Next Up:
Wednesday, Feb. 18: at Wake Forest (7 p.m. ET, ACC Network)
Saturday, Feb. 21: vs. Florida State (Noon ET, The CW)