Who?
After
Highly overshadowed by other teammates, McClure finally had his moment of glory. The buzzer-beating shot was highly controversial due to a clock reset that even Duke fans find a little sketchy. After a painful Duke turnover with 5 seconds left, Clemson inbounded the ball and Clemson's game scoring leader, Vernon Hamilton, hit a clutch three-pointer, quieting all of Cameron Indoor. The game clock had not started when the ball was inbounded and the officials had the clock restored to 4.4 seconds. This would allow only .6 seconds for Hamilton to get the shot off . . . ya right.
Duke's Jon Scheyer summed up the game's ending."That's about as crazy as it gets."Unfortunately, this gives all those Duke haters out there more ammunition in their ludicrous claim that the ACC officials favor Duke. But if we think about this from a logical perspective, it becomes obvious that with less game time, the brilliant Coach Krzyzewski would have used a different strategy that took less time to win the game (eg. last year's win against Virginia Tech). And even if that didn't happen, the game still would have gone into overtime, allowing for Duke's solid defense and unequivocal offensive strategies to take out Clemson in OT.
Duke had a 40-24 rebounding advantage over Clemson allowing for 19 second chance, most coming from Duke's big man, Josh McRoberts, who ended the game with 17 points. David McClure finished with eight points and six boards. But stats are not what everyone is talking about. I have never had so many hateful voicemails.
Poor Duke. So many haters out there.
2 comments:
Well, the clock "malfunction" was a joke, but not in the same way that the infamous Oklahoma-Texas Tech clock malfunction from 2004 was a joke. In that game, the clock actually stopped WHILE THE GAME WAS BEING PLAYED, then started again just in time for OU to hit a shot to send it to overtime.
Jay Bilas made a good point in that while the clock was obviously wrong, it didn't change what was happening on the court. If the refs don't put 4.4 seconds up there, then Duke runs a different play...but since they did, Clemson had every chance to defend the play that Duke ran.
Still, I think it's interesting that every year, Duke collects two or three wins like this --- all at home, all against mid-level competition. They don't seem like much on their surface, but they end up inflating Duke's NCAA tournament seed by 1 or 2 spots. Of course, all that's meant these past few years is that the Blue Devils get bounced by progressively lower seeds. Maybe this is the ACC's contribution to basketball parity?
thats the best picture ever. GO TERPS
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