Clemson’s late-season ACC swoon continued on Saturday afternoon with the home-standing Tigers dropping a crucial conference game to the surging Florida State Seminoles, 70-65. Florida State’s Robert McCray V decimated the Clemson defense, putting up a game-high 29 points and scoring at will down the stretch. The Tigers were led by freshman guard Ace Buckner, who scored 15 points off the bench. Dillon Hunter chipped in 13 points, and RJ Godfrey contributed 12 in the losing effort.
The first half was a back-and-forth affair with neither team finding an offensive footing until both teams hit a scoring surge late in the half. The score was 21-18, Clemson at the 5:07 mark in the opening stanza, but the Tigers went to the halftime break with a 36-33 lead. Ace Buckner got hot from deep and poured in nine of his team leading 15 points on a trio of treys down the stretch of the first half, and Dillon Hunter temporarily overcame his scoring phobia and chipped in seven, including an acrobatic finish at the buzzer to push Clemson’s lead out to three going into the locker room.
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I’m not sure what happened to Florida State’s Robert McCray V in the locker room, but the Noles should bottle it, because he came with his phasers set to kill in the second half. While Clemson worked the ball around and eventually launched ill-fated 3-pointers, Florida State got the ball into McCray’s hands and got out of the way. Clemson had to search for baskets, but the Noles knew exactly where to look. That was the story of the game for me. The normally solid Brad Brownell defense could not stop McCray from driving the ball into the lane, and they couldn’t stop him from finishing once he reached the heart of the Tigers’ defense. He went five of six from inside the arc, and three of five from outside the arc, and Clemson couldn’t find enough buckets late to close the gap. Whenever Florida State needed a bucket, McCray provided. Meanwhile, Clemson let multiple wide-open looks from distance go wanting down the stretch and refused to cut into Florida State’s lead despite multiple attempts by the Noles to melt down and give Clemson the victory. After multiple attempts to give up the lead in the last two minutes, Florida State got frustrated and decided to win the game by extending its three-point lead to five points at the foul line.
At the end of the day, Clemson can either hit shots or play solid defense to win games. They didn’t do either today and lost a home game to Florida State. There’s not much else to say, other than don’t shoot 33 3-pointers if you can only hit 10 of them, and don’t let one player beat your entire defense.
The Tigers get a week to lick their wounds before Louisville comes to town in what is shaping up to be a critical game for the Tigers’ postseason seeding.
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