The Virginia Tech men’s basketball team will suit up and step out on its home floor for the second time in three days Saturday to play the Clemson Tigers at 4 p.m.
Tech enters Saturday’s game in the middle of the pack in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The Tigers (16-6, 4-4 in the ACC) are coming into the game with a bit more rest. They haven’t played since Jan. 31, when they took down the Maryland Terrapins 62-53 in a very sloppy game in which both teams turned the ball over at least 21 times.
“We’re coming off of a big win,” Clemson head coach Oliver Purnell said. “Probably the significant thing about the win was the fact that we did not shoot the ball well but yet were able to pull things out on the strength of our defense.”
The win broke a three game losing streak for the Tigers, in which Clemson lost at Georgia Tech, against Duke, and at Boston College.
Last time the Hokies played two games within four days was last weekend, when they came out sluggish in the second game and gave up 47 points in the first half against the Miami Hurricanes. To make it worse, the Hurricanes were the same team that the Hokies had a 27-point halftime lead against just over two weeks earlier.
The Hokies and Tigers played just once last year in a very close 86-82 Tiger win. In the game, the Hokies dominated early, but Clemson used an 18-0 run early in the second half to earn the victory.
The Tigers were led by K.C. Rivers in last year’s game, who scored 29 points and hit seven three-pointers against the Hokies, but has since graduated.
One person who has not graduated yet, though, is Hokies junior guard Malcolm Delaney, who put up a career-high 37 points in the game last season.
Whoever Clemson decides to put on Delaney will be in one of the biggest matchups of the game. The two players who may be asked to do this are sophomores Andre Young and Tanner Smith.
The other matchup that will have a big factor is Clemson senior Trevor Booker and the Hokies junior Jeff Allen. Booker put up 21 points and 13 rebounds in the that matchup last season, and Allen has struggled of late, meaning that Allen might need some help from other big men like Victor Davila.
Booker has struggled recently too, however. Against Maryland, the senior shot just two for 16 and finished with 10 points.
“We’re going to have an off shooting night, so it’s not something I like to think about,” Purnell said. “But it’s going to happen from time to time.”
“Those are the nights that you hope your defense gives you the opportunity to win.”
Clemson’s defense did just that when Booker had an off game and it will be important for the Hokies’ offense to make sure it doesn’t have the trouble scoring that Maryland had in the Tiger’s last game.
The biggest matchup of Saturday’s game could be how the Hokies handle the full-court pressure that Clemson will almost certainly be bringing.
The Tigers are notorious for not only pressing for most of every game, but for coming up with creative sets to do so.
Purnell stresses defense as the reason why Clemson wins games it struggles in offensively like against Maryland.
“We just played as good of defense as we’ve played in a long time. ... Even though we shoot 31 percent for the game, we hold them to 34 percent shooting,” Purnell said.
“We turn them over 26 times and we didn’t take care of the ball real well ourselves and the fact that we were able to do a really good job on the backboards as well, those were the things that gave us an opportunity to win.”
A version of this article appeared in the Feb 5 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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we played clemson twice last year! we split the series.
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