Clemson’s NCAA tournament hopes received a huge shot in the arm with road wins at No. 3 North Carolina and Syracuse last week.
The Tigers begin the second week of February at 16-7 overall and 6-6 in ACC play. They entered the year on a tear at 11-1 through their first 12 games but then proceeded to drop six of their next nine contests in conference play.
Thanks to the past week, the Tigers are on the move again, if only slightly. Clemson moved up two spots to a projected No. 6 seed in Joe Lunardi’s latest bracketology update for ESPN.
Lunardi’s new projections have Clemson facing the winner of a play-in game between Nevada and Utah from the First Four competition in Dayton, Ohio.
The projected 6 vs. 11 matchup would be at Memphis’ FedEx Forum in the West Region of NCAA Tournament games, Lunardi forecasts.
Lunardi predicts that only four ACC teams will make this year’s NCAA Tournament: Clemson, North Carolina, Duke, and Virginia.
The lack of strong ACC presence in the tournament is something Lunardi points to as part of the conference’s overall decline in the past five years.
“For the first two decades of this century, the ACC averaged at least one top seed per year. The conference peaked in 2019, landing three of four No. 1 seeds, including national champion Virginia. Since then, there’s not been a single top line selection from the ACC, its longest drought since seeding began in 1979,” he writes.
Lunardi awards the SEC and Big 12 with the most bids by conference with nine apiece.
Clemson returns to the floor Wednesday night at Littlejohn Coliseum when it hosts Miami (15-9, 6-7) in a rematch at 7 p.m. EST. The Tigers fell to the Hurricanes on Jan. 3 at Miami’s Watsco Center, 95-82. Wednesday’s game will be televised by ESPN2.