Clemson’s long history of failure at Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium added another chapter Tuesday night. The Tigers battled the 7th ranked Blue Devils for the full forty minutes, but it wasn’t good enough as they lost 71-69. The Tigers have dropped 20 straight games at Cameron and are now 4-62 all-time in that building. But they came withing a tiger’s tale of pulling off the upset.
The game’s largest lead was just seven points. The Tigers took their final lead at 65-63 on a Hunter Tyson layup with 3:19 to play. Duke scored the next six points for a 69-65 lead with 1:27 left. A fastbreak dunk by Tyson with 0:37 to play made it 69-67.
The Tigers had two fouls to five at that point and Brad Brownell decided to not put Duke on the line but instead try and play defense and get ball back with a chance to tie. But the Blue Devils ran a play and got the ball inside Paolo Banchero on the left block and he powered his way to a clinching basket with 0:10 left. David Collins put back a missed three-pointer with 0:02 to play to account for the final two-point margin. The Tigers were not able to steal the ball or foul on the in-bounds before time expired.
The stats across the board were fairly equal. Clemson did win the boards 39-31 with 14 offensive rebounds. But they only got nine points out of that. The big different was at the foul line where Duke was 11-13 and Clemson 0-1. Duke was called for 10 fouls, to 13 on Clemson, but the Blue Devils apparently were able to keep their hands off the Tiger shooters.
PJ Hall was only 6-21 from the floor, 2-10 in the second half, but led Clemson with 14 points and 10 rebounds. Tyson added 13 points. Banchero led Duke with 19 points, 14 coming in the second half.
Clemson falls to 11-9 overall and 3-6 in the ACC. The Tigers are off until next Wednesday night when they will host Florida State.
