A heart-breaking tale of woe, misery and frustration

I debated whether to do today’s blog entry or not, but in the end, I decided it might be therapeutic, so here goes.

I managed to miss most of the Clemson-North Carolina basketball game on TV last night and it’s just as well. The Tar Heels’ 94-70 victory added another chapter of misery to the Tigers’ basketball history at Chapel Hill.

If you’re a college basketball fan at all, you’re aware that Clemson’s record of futility in away games against UNC is unsurpassed. Last night’s Tar Heel victory made it 54 straight, covering every single Clemson-UNC game ever played at Woollen Gym, Carmichael Auditorium and now the Dean Smith Center. It’s the longest streak of home court domination by one team over another in NCAA Division I history – Brown at Princeton and Washington State at UCLA fell by the wayside a few years ago.

A former student of mine left me a commiserating note on my Facebook page after the game. The young lady, a fan of Clemson and a native of Massachusetts, wondered if I was going to blog about the game and said, “And I thought being a Boston fan was tough stuff!”

I thought that that was a good comparison. To follow Clemson basketball, as I have for almost 40 years, is to know the pain that, say, fans of the Boston Red Sox felt for so long in that 86-year drought between World Series championships.

To be fair, the Tigers have had their moments of success on the court. Most of them have come in the last three decades or so, including eight NCAA tournament appearances. Clemson was actually one win away from the Final Four in 1980, losing to UCLA in the Elite Eight. And the Tigers advanced to the Sweet 16 in 1990 and 1997.

Current coach Oliver Purnell has brought the Tigers back to respectability in the five-plus seasons he’s coached the team, starting with an appearance in the NIT finals in 2007. Last season, Clemson made its first appearance in the ACC tournament championship game in 46 years and earned its first NCAA tournament bid in a decade.

But the one mountain they can’t seem to climb is colored heavenly blue. After last night’s victory, UNC now owns a 122-19 all-time record against Clemson. Almost all the Tigers' wins have come at Clemson, with one or two in “neutral court” games in Charlotte and exactly one in the ACC Tournament.

The Tar Heels have won the last 10 meetings. That includes three close games last year that I think were the best challenges the Tar Heels got from an opponent that they didn’t end up losing to. The one at Chapel Hill was particularly heartbreaking, as the Tigers extended the home team to two overtimes before falling, 103-93.

More of them have ended up like last night’s game, in which Clemson was competitive for about a half, then let the game get away from them. Of course, lots of teams come to Chapel Hill and lose, but the Tigers are the ones who have perfected it over time.

I’ve always thought that Clemson lost its best chance to break the string during the 2001-2002 season, remembered fondly by Tar Heel-haters everywhere as the year that Carolina had an 8-20 record. Two of those wins were against – you guessed it, Clemson.

I particularly remember the game at Chapel Hill, in which the Tar Heels played with a ferocity that teams usually save for a national championship game. (They should have played half as well against Kansas in last year’s Final Four.)

I was talking with a friend at church about it the day after the game, and it occurred to me that the North Carolina team played that game as if someone were trying to take away the last shred of its dignity. The rest of the ACC had taken the rest of it away from them, but by golly, they could still beat Clemson at home.

I could go on, but it’s just too painful. Maybe next year.

Pfeiffer's flock of Falcons

My favorite sport to cover is basketball, and one of the reasons is that there are so many different ways to play the game. I saw one worth writing about on Saturday night when I covered a men's game between Queens and Pfeiffer at the Grady Cole Center here in Charlotte.

These two schools usually battle each other near the top of the standings in Conference Carolinas of NCAA Division II. This year is a little different as Queens is struggling through a 2-11 season with a lineup made up largely of freshmen and sophomores.

But Pfeiffer is doing what it usually does, wearing down its opponents with one of more unsual approaches to the game I've ever seen. Coach Dave Davis runs players in and out of the game in waves, generally substituting five-for-five every few minutes. And they play it at a tempo just a hair short of chaos. (It reminds me a little of a hockey game, with players going all out in 1-2 minute shifts, then replaced by a whole new unit.)

Davis, who has been at Pfeiffer for 15 years, says this strategy began as a way to evaluate a lot of players in a short time during pre-season drills.

"It sort of evolved into something we do all the time," he said. "There's no excuse for a player not to play hard in this system, because he's only going to be in the game for a few minutes at a time."

Davis played 13 players in the game, 11 of them for at least 10 minutes. And it eventually wore down the young Royals, who battled back a couple of times before going down to a 98-84 defeat. Eleven different players scored, led by senior forward James Crowder's 25 points. He hit 7-of-11 three-pointers.

"The only way to prepare for this is actually to play against it," Queens coach Wes Long said. "You can't duplicate it in practice."

Davis agrees. "You aren't going to see anything like this against anybody but us, so it does give us a little advantage."

Pfeiffer plays it this way against everyone, even the North Carolina Tar Heels in a November exhibtion game back in 2006. They lost by 36 points, but the 140-104 final score indicates that everyone at least got their entertainment dollar's worth, including the Falcons.

"We had the time of our lives," Davis said when I talked with him about it as we were watching a game at Belmont Abbey shortly afterwards. "Great fun."