News-Record.com

A few years ago, a friend of mine had this idea for a promo poster for Clemson Basketball.

"Big Trouble in Littlejohn."

Sort of a takeoff on the movie Big Trouble in Little China - a highly underrated flick by the way.

At the time it was sort of a joke, because back in those days, nobody was having much trouble in Littlejohn, where there were so many NIT banners with the Red Apples on them (for NYC, I'm guessing) that local wags had taken to calling the place, "The Orchard."

Now though, this is a dangerous place to play because, chiefly, it is occupied by a dangerous team. Oliver Purnell's last two recruiting classes haven't been big on star-power but have been deep and filled with athletes who played hard. That's allowed them to lose Cheyenne Moore to transfer and James Mays to academics and still keep making steady progress. A win today over State would give Clemson a huge boost toward a possible NCAA berth.

The consensus here in the press room? The Tigers' guards need to shoot well from 3-point range. They do that, and the upset looks very possible. If not, State should win - assuming they relocate the team that played the first 17 games of the season, not the one that showed up against Seton Hall.