- February 17th, 2009, 12:06 am
#234626
Clemson will choke down the stretch of the season as long as Oliver Purnell is the head coach. He has consistently proven he is not capable of getting his teams mentally tough enough to close out the season strong. Man has never won a single NCAA tournament game as a head coach in 20 years - three were at Radford, so I guess those three years really shouldn't count against him in the whole NCAA Tournament wins thing. He's been awesome in the NIT, but the NIT doesn't really matter, especially for ACC schools...
03-04: they flat out sucked, hard to finish strong when you just simply suck
04-05: started out 9-3, finished 16-15, went 5-5 in last 10 regular season games
05-06: started out 11-0, finished 19-13, thus going 8-13 in their final 21 games, at one point lost 7 of 8 games beginning in late january and going into february
06-07: started out 17-0, finished 25-11, thus going 8-11 in the last 19 games, once against went on another 1-7 stretch from late january into february
07-08: started out 12-1, finished 24-10, going 12-9 down the stretch which isn't finishing strong in my book, made it to the acc championship game, but proved that was a fluke as they lost as a #5 seed (I believe) in the first round to Villanova after leading by as many as 18 points.