Gophers Lose Another Ugly One, This Time to Clemson

This is starting (starting???) to get a little old. Minnesota lost its 5th consecutive game Wednesday night, falling 90-68 to Clemson. Granted, Clemson is now 8-0 on the season and has some impressive athletes, but losing to a team like them at home and by 22 points is not a good thing.

There were some freakish and horrific stats in this one. Topping the list was Clemson winning the offensive rebound battle in the first half 18-0. 18-0! That’s 18 offensive rebounds given up in 20 minutes of play! Clemson finished the game with 24 offensive rebounds. For comparison, Minnesota finished the game with 17 defensive rebounds. Don’t know if I can remember a team getting less than half of the available rebounds on its defensive end.

Another interesting stat was Minnesota shooting a blistering 73% from the field in the first half, as compared to Clemson’s cold 43%, and yet still trailing by 9 points at intermission. That’s because the Tigers got almost twice as many shot attempts as Minnesota (42 vs. 22) due to their offensive rebounding and a plethora of Gopher turnovers.

The last one I’ll mention (because reliving this is painful) is Minnesota’s starting frontcourt finishing with 44 points on 19 of 26 shooting from the field. That sounds like a box score from a dominating victory, not a 22-point loss. But I guess when you give up 90 points, 44 doesn’t mean all that much.

Not much more to say about this one. The Gophers were tentative and soft almost the entire game, panicking against the press, giving up rebounds, and getting beat to loose balls. Their defensive performance wasn’t much better. Every player was guilty of these things. With that said, if I have to point out a positive (and I feel like I do), it would again be the play of Brandon Smith. He did many of these bad things, but he also did a lot of good. He had some very nice assists (hasn’t shown that before), a few strong rebounds, and some impressive plays on offense. That’s a good sign. Dan Coleman also had a pretty solid game on the offensive end.

Here’s the box score.

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