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Posted on Wed, Mar. 19, 2008
Spear | The longest second
In case they need one, the Tigers need look only into their past for a reminder how one tick of the clock can separate heartbreak and joy in March
Bob Spear 
Sports Editorbspear@thestate.com
(803) 771-8406
Clemson in the NCAA Tournament
-- 1980: Beat Utah State, BYU and Lamar; lost to UCLA-- 1987: Lost to Southwest Missouri State
-- 1989: Beat Saint Mary’s; lost to Arizona
-- 1990: Beat BYU and La Salle; lost to Connecticut
-- 1996: Lost to Georgia
-- 1997: Beat Miami (Ohio) and Tulsa; lost to Minnesota
-- 1998: Lost to Western Michigan
HOW LONG IS a second? The blink of an eye? A snap of the fingers? A hiccup?
Can a basketball team score that quickly when starting from the opposite end of the court? In the NCAA tournament? With a step toward the national championship so close and yet so far?
Perhaps the first four questions leave room for debate, but the answers to the others — YES, YES, YES — bring stone-cold reality to the world of sports.
Ask Clemson, the victim of one of the most astounding finishes in the tournament’s history. The Tigers lost in the longest second.
In the days leading to the March Madness that opens Thursday, be sure that the folks in the nostalgia department will pull out tapes of buzzer beaters, and the Tigers’ kicked-where-it-hurts defeat in the 1990 third round will be among those featured.
“Think back and you wonder, what else could we have done?” then-Clemson coach Cliff Ellis says, reflecting on the loss.
“I turned around and looked, waiting for the officials to wave (the basket) off,” Elden Campbell, one of the Tigers’ stars, says. “Then I saw the celebration and thought, oh, no.”
The Tigers’ “oh, no” became Connecticut’s “oh, yes” in what historians call the Tate George Game in honor of the player who made the miracle shot in the Huskies’ 71-70 triumph.
“We felt the highs and lows of the NCAAs in just a few seconds,” Ellis says. “That’s what makes the tournament so great. There are moments for a lifetime.
He pauses, then adds, “Of course, winning would make the moment better.”
‘The pieces fit so well.’ No matter what awaits the Tigers, who face Villanova in the NCAA tournament’s first round Friday, their fate cannot be as cruel as that from 18 years ago.
The 1989-90 Clemson team might not have been the school’s best. Indeed, Campbell believes the Tigers had more talent in 1987, his freshman season.
Still, that 1990 outfit is the only Clemson team to win the ACC regular-season title.
Campbell and Dale Davis, both stalwarts for years in the pros, provided an imposing inside presence, and the supporting cast meshed perfectly.
Guards Marion Cash and David Young joined forward Derrick Forrest in the starting lineup. Sean Tyson, Ricky Jones and Kirkland Howling created superior bench strength.
“The pieces fit so well,” says Ellis, now the coach at Coastal Carolina. “We had stars, of course, but we had other kids who played important roles. They all stood out in one way or another.”
Campbell, 6-foot-11 and the leading scorer, equated those Tigers to a family.
“We had a good group of guys, and we competed,” he says. “We were tight, and that’s what it takes to some degree. We had a fun season.”
The fun included 24 wins in 32 games, highlighted by whipping North Carolina and Duke in back-to-back home games to lock up the ACC tourney’s top seed.
Virginia upset the Tigers in an ACC semifinal, but they marched into NCAAs as a fifth seed brimming with confidence. Clemson pulled off two wins to set the stage for a game basketball aficionados never will forget and left the Tigers wondering what might have been.
A rendezvous with history. Clemson rallied in the final minutes to record a 49-47 victory against Brigham Young in the first round, a struggle that longtime Tigers sports information director Tim Bourret calls “a terrible game, one that it hurt to watch.”
But winning is all that matters in March Madness, and the Tigers did just that in Hartford, Conn. Next came La Salle, a team with a 22-game winning streak.
The Explorers led by 16 at the half, and Bourret remembers a story that turned the tide.
“I wasn’t in the dressing room, but (players) told me Dale Davis made an impassioned talk with the coaches out of the room,” he says.
The 6-11 Davis led on the court, too, with a monster game — 26 points and 17 rebounds — in Clemson’s 79-75 triumph.
“Strange things are always happening in the NCAA tournament,” Ellis says in recalling the rally. “I remember how (N.C. State coach) Jim Valvano used to laugh about winning the national championship on an air ball.”
The win against LaSalle sent the Tigers into a rendezvous with history, a Sweet 16 date against Connecticut, the region’s top seed, in East Rutherford, N.J.
“The forgotten story of that game is (Clemson) trailed by 19 points in the second half and made an awesome comeback,” Bourret says.
Young’s 3-pointer put the Tigers in front 70-69 with 11 seconds remaining, and Connecticut’s George missed his first chance to be a hero. Tyson seized the rebound after George’s missed shot and drew a foul with one second on the clock.
Do not blame the Tigers for feeling secure. How could they lose?
‘They ran a perfect play.’ In those days, game clocks did not show tenths-of-a-second in the final minute. Using the late Al McGuire’s theory, anywhere from 1.0 to 1.9 seconds remained that night at the Meadowlands.
Tyson missed the first of his one-and-one free-throw opportunity at the line. Connecticut rebounded and called time — the clock still showing one second.
“I looked at the clock and thought, this game is over,” Campbell says.
Ellis had Campbell challenge Scott Burrell on the inbounds pass, and the ball slipped through his windmilling arms. The clock does not start until the ball has been touched, and that did not happen until George, the shooter, took the pass.
Instructed not to foul, Tyson ran at the shooter and veered to the side, but George drilled the shot.
“Their guy threw a strike and their guy made a big-time shot,” Ellis says. “They ran a perfect play, and we didn’t cry about it.
“I know a lot of people will talk about that last game and how we lost, but that team was more than that. They knocked down some walls for Clemson basketball. If we had won that game, we would have played Duke in the Elite Eight, and we had just beaten them (in the regular season).”
What goes around comes around, and Duke beat Connecticut on a last-second shot two days later. Christian Laettner, who made an even more memorable buzzer beater against Kentucky two years later, sank the Huskies.
“The TV people put on our game with Connecticut every year about this time,” Ellis says. “That game had everything, including our rally and their last-second shot.
“It’s a tournament classic, one of those moments no one will ever forget.”
Bourret calls the loss the most disappointing in basketball since he has been at Clemson (1978).
Huskies coach Jim Calhoun tells the story of Connecticut fans who attended a Broadway play the night of the game.
“Jim says the men all had radios with earpieces,” Ellis says. “When Connecticut scored, there was a roar like in the stadium. The actors looked like, ‘What in the world happened?’ ”
The Tigers know what had happened: They fell victim to a 1,000-to-1 shot.
How long is a second? The blink of an eye? A snap of the fingers? A hiccup?
In Clemson’s case in 1990, a second turned out to be too long.
