By Derek DeBurger
Louisville will head down to South Carolina to face the Clemson Tigers on Tuesday evening.
A team with a once-promising start to the season, Clemson has hit hard times now that conference play has rolled around.
Louisville is similar (minus the whole promising start thing).
What should give fans some hope in Tuesday’s matchup is that Clemson was one of Louisville’s two conference wins a season ago. The Tigers, however, will most likely be very ready to get some revenge–the Cards almost singlehandedly kept the Tigers out of the 2023 NCAA Tournament.
Clemson is a team with a great offense and a not-great defense. According to KenPom, the Tigers have the 16th-best offensive efficiency and the 76th-best defensive efficiency. The top threat offensively is center PJ Hall followed closely by guard Joe Girard III, who score 19.6 and 14.8 points per game, respectively. As a team, the Tigers score 80.2 points per game off of 47.6% shooting from the field and 35.7% from three-point range. The Tigers also sport a great assist-turnover ratio– 15 to 10.4.
Clemson’s offense is going to cause major problems for the Cards. Alabama has the most efficient offense in the country, scoring 1.2 points per possession; since ACC has been in full gear, the only team the Cards have held to below 1.2 points per possession was Miami, and they just missed a lot of open shots. If Louisville wants to have any chance in any game, their options include playing significantly better defense than they have the last two seasons or hoping for a bad shooting night.
The Tigers have good height in the frontcourt, so they defend well from inside the three-point line and in the paint, but they struggle outside the arc and force turnovers. While I think the Cards will put up points on the Tigers, the question is how they’ll handle any attempts to stifle Brandon Huntley Hatfield’s post-game. In the past handful of games, the Cards have done a very poor job of getting the star involved when teams deny and/or double him in the post.
This game will likely be a shootout, but I have no faith that will be able to keep up for a full 40 minutes.
