ESPN no longer has Clemson basketball as a lock for NCAA Tournament

Momentum has clearly shifted for Clemson basketball as February winds down, and that change is now showing up in national projections.

ESPN’s newest men’s college basketball Bubble Watch no longer places the Tigers in its safest tier of NCAA Tournament teams. Clemson has been bumped from “lock” status and is now categorized as a team that “should be in,” meaning the Tigers are still expected to make the field but no longer sit on unshakable footing.

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The adjustment follows a rough stretch that has stalled what was once one of the ACC’s hottest runs. Clemson (20-8, 10-5 ACC) has dropped four straight games, falling to Virginia Tech, Duke, Wake Forest, and Florida State, including a 70-65 setback at Littlejohn Coliseum over the weekend. It is the program’s first four-game skid since the 2021-22 season.

ESPN analyst Neil Paine noted that timing is a major factor in the Tigers’ slide within the projections.

“Clemson has gotten ice-cold at the wrong time,” Paine wrote. “The Tigers had been an ACC ‘lock’ since Bubble Watch launched on Feb. 3, with a 97% or higher at-large probability in the forecast every day for the past three weeks — until Saturday. They fell below that threshold with their fourth loss in a row, this time to Quadrant 3 Florida State. They still rank in the low-to-mid 30s nationally on résumé (no worse than eighth in the ACC) and their consensus chances are still around 90% despite the slump. But they have been downgraded as a result, trending lower in the conference’s pecking order according to the odds.”

What makes the downturn more surprising is how strong Clemson looked just days earlier. Prior to the losing streak, the Tigers had won 13 of their previous 14 games and had quietly built a 14-game ACC road winning streak dating back to last season, tied for the second-longest in conference history.