Opportunities for Quad-1 wins in college basketball are massive. That's the top criteria the selection committee looks for when seeding the NCAA Tournament in March.
This year, the ACC is not as strong as it usually is so chances for teams to get in-conference Quad-1 wins will be rare. That makes Clemson's home loss to Memphis on Saturday a true kick in the gut.
The Tigers lost a 72-67 lead in the final minute of regulation to fall in overtime, 87-82. What's more, they wasted a 23-point, 11-rebound effort from big man Viktor Lahkin, his best game of the season by a mile.
To be clear, this loss won't kill the Tigers' NCAA Tournament hopes. Given the relative weakness of the ACC this year, Clemson should rack up more than enough wins to get back into the Big Dance.
However, the program is trying to build on last year's Elite Eight run and the expectation is no longer just to get into the field of 68 but to make serious noise on a national scale. To do that, a nice, high seed would be beneficial, so dropping this game to a Memphis team that is considered a top 50 team in the country has to be seen as a missed opportunity to beef up the tournament resume.
So why did the Tigers drop this important game? Let's look at three factors that led to this disappointing defeat.
Clemson got nothing out of Chauncey Wiggins
The most maddening player on the Clemson roster is 6-foot-10 junior Chauncey Wiggins. That's because he has shown at times that he has all the tools to make an impact but far too often he is a non-factor. Against, Memphis, he had his worst game of the season.
Despite starting the game, he scored no points and grabbed no rebounds. What's more, he got in head coach Brad Brownell's dog house and played only 13 minutes. Any time you have a starter give you more turnovers than any other statistic, that's a problem (Wiggins had two turnovers).
Given his size, Wiggins could have been an asset against a Memphis team that has size and athleticism inside. But he simply didn't come to play on Saturday.
This year, Wiggins has been a yo-yo. In three of the season's first four games, he scored fewer than 10 points. Then, in five of the next six games, he put up at least 12 points. However, in his last two games, he's scored five total points. He has too much talent, size, experience, and skill to be such a small factor and on Saturday, he did nothing to help his team in a critical game.
Clemson dug itself an early hole that set the tone
With the students gone and the game tipping off at 11 a.m. Eastern, it was fair to worry about whether or not Clemson would come out of the locker room with energy. Those fears were realized by the way the Tigers started the game.
Memphis got out to a 10-0 lead to open the contest. In fact, the Tigers didn't score a single point until the 14:16 mark of the first half.
While the home team was able to come all the way back and take its first lead at 29-28 with 1:55 to go in the first half, the 10-0 run that Memphis went on to open the game was a tone-setter for the entire contest.
That lethargic start drained any energy that the crowd might have brought. In fact, it was so dead inside Littlejohn that the event staff brought dozens of elementary school children and their parents down from the upper reaches of the arena to sit courtside where the Clemson student body usually sits in an attempt to breathe some life into the crowd.
While that plan seemed to work to a small degree, it was implemented too late. Memphis' fast start allowed the visitors to feel right at home in Clemson's gym and all day, the visiting Tigers looked like the more comfortable team. That's why the home team simply can't afford such a slow start against a quality opponent.
Clemson couldn't match Memphis' 3-point shooting
Finally, this game was lost at the 3-point line where Clemson was cold and Memphis was red-hot. In the modern age of basketball, across all levels of the sport, games are now won and lost from beyond the arc and that was the case on Saturday in Littlejohn.
The Tigers were extremely efficient from deep making 12 of their 25 attempts (48%). Meanwhile, Clemson was just 10-31 (31.2%) as a team.
The 3-pointer has been a big key for Clemson this year. The Tigers are 54th nationally in 3-point percentage as a team (37.5%). That's third-best in the ACC. However, they didn't live up to that standard on Saturday and it cost them because their opponent was on fire from deep.
So far this season, Clemson has allowed opponents to shoot only 31.8% from beyond the arc. But Memphis far exceeded that.
What's more, the blue Tigers drained timely 3-pointers including one to beat the first-half buzzer to give them a 33-32 lead going into the break, one with 51 seconds to play in regulation to cut Clemson's lead to 72-70, and one with 58 seconds to play in overtime to give them an 83-81 lead, an advantage they would not relinquish for the remainder of the game.