• Tuesday night will be a homecoming for Clemson senior
Cliff Hammonds. His hometown of Cairo, GA is about
30 minutes from Tallahassee. Last year his family and
friends watched him score the game-winning basket
with 2.8 seconds left in Clemson’s 68-66 victory. Clemson
is 2-1 at Florida State in his career.
• Hammonds will be one of three Clemson student-athletes
to receive an ACC postgraduate scholarship when
the ACC has its academic awards banquet in April. He
was recently named to the CoSIDA Academic All-District
team and is an academic All-America candidate.
• Clemson is looking for its eighth ACC win of the year.
An eighth league win would assure Clemson of at least
a break even season in the ACC, something it has not
done since 1996-97 when the Tigers were 9-7. Clemson
has finished with a .500 or better league record just 10
times in its previous 54 years in the ACC.
• A win on Tuesday would give Clemson 20 overall wins
for the season. It would be the second straight year
Clemson reached at least 20 wins. Clemson has had
back to back 20 win seasons just one other time in its
history, 1979-80 when Clemson was 23-9 and 1980-81
when Clemson was 20-11.
• K.C. Rivers led Clemson in scoring in the win at NC
State with 17 points, including 15 in the second half.
He scored five points in the last two minutes to key the
win. Rivers is now 33-63 from three-point range in ACC
play, a league best .524.
• James Mays, who got a homecoming win in Raleigh on
Saturday, leads the ACC in offensive rebounds per game
in league play with 45 in 11 games.
• Hammonds scored just nine points at NC State, but he
is still averaging 18.4 points per game over the last five
games. He has made 38 of his last 67 shots from the
field, including 13-25 three-point shots.
• Clemson has had a double digit halftime lead in each of
its last four games.
• As a team, Clemson has made 44 of 90 three-point
shots over the last four games, a 49 percent clip. It has
held the opposition to 18-65 on three-point shots for
a .277 figure.
• Clemson has committed just 19 turnovers in its last two
games, including just eight at NC State. It was the low
turnover total in a game by the Tigers all year.
• Cliff Hammonds will tie Greg Buckner’s Clemson record
for consecutive games started when he makes his 122nd
straight start at Florida State on Tuesday. He needs just
16 minutes played to become the third Clemson player
in history to play 4000 minutes in a career.
• James Mays will play his 100th game on Tuesday.
The Series
•This is the 51st meeting between
Clemson and Florida State in men’s basketball.
The Seminoles hold a 26-24 lead. Clemson
won both regular season meetings last year, but
FSU won the ACC Tournament game. Clemson
won the first meeting this year in double overtime
at Clemson. Clemson has won six of the
last eight over the last three years.
•Clemson has a 13-6 record against
Florida State in Littlejohn Coliseum and has won
seven in a row, including the game this year.
Florida State’s last win at Clemson was during
the 2000-01 season by a 75-63 score. Oliver
Purnell is 5-0 at home against Florida State, the
only ACC team he has beaten at home each of
his five years at Clemson.
•The home team has won 17 of the
last 20 games in the series.
•Twelve of the last 21 meetings have
been decided by five points or less or in overtime,
including the first meeting last year when
Clemson won on shot by Cliff Hammonds with
2.8 seconds left, 68-66. Then, Florida State
won 67-66 in the ACC tournament. Clemson
won earlier this year in double overtime. That
means three of the last four by two points or in
overtime.
•Clemson has a 5-14 all-time record in
Tallahassee, including 4-12 in the Leon Country
Civic Center, now known as the Tucker Center.
The wins came in 1961-62 (82-77), 1996-97 (76-
70), 1997-98 (78-49), in 2004-05 (56-54) and
earlier this year, 68-66. So Oliver Purnell has
two of the four wins at the Tucker Center.
•Seven of the 12 Clemson losses in
Tallahassee at Leon County have been by six
points or less and Florida State’s largest margin
of victory over Clemson in the Leon Country
Civic Center is 13 points.
•Clemson’s 78-49 victory in Tallahassee
in 1997-98 is Clemson’s second largest
margin (29 points) of victory in an ACC road
game in history. The record is the 31-point at
Virginia earlier this year.
•Clemson’s 78-45 win over Florida
State at Littlejohn Coliseum in 1998-99 is the
second largest margin of victory in Clemson history
in an ACC game, trailing only a 34-point win
over Duke in 1975-76.
•Over the last 29 meetings, Clemson
has won 16 and Florida State has won 13.
Florida State’s average margin of victory over
that time is 5.9 points per game (77 points in 13
wins) and Clemson’s is 12.3 points per game
(197-point margin over 16 wins.). Florida State
has nine wins over Clemson by seven points
or less during that time, and Clemson has five
wins by six points or less over Florida State
during that time. Clemson won a sixth by 12
points, but in double overtime earlier this year.
•Clemson and FSU first met in the
1952 Gator Bowl Tournament in Jacksonville,
FL. The Tigers won 62-56 and in fact won the
first three games of the series, one in Jacksonville,
one in Charlotte and one in Clemson.
•Since Florida State joined the ACC
in 1991-92, the Seminoles have won 21 of the
39 meetings. Clemson’s top victory in that time
came in the 1993 ACC Tournament in Charlotte.
Clemson defeated a 10th-ranked Florida State
team, 87-75. That victory, led by Clemson
future NBA players Sharone Wright, Chris
Whitney and Devin Gray, broke a 27-game
Clemson losing streak in the Tournament as a
lower seeded team. All three scored at least
20 points.
•Clemson is 2-4 against Florida State
in the ACC Tournament. Each of Clemson’s
two wins over Florida State in the ACC
Tournament came in seasons the Tigers lost
both regular season games to the Seminoles.
Florida State beat Clemson in the ACC
Tournament last year after the Tigers had won
twice in the regular season. In each of the six
ACC Tournament meetings, the team that lost
the most recent regular season meeting came
back to win the ACC Tournament game.
|