Signature win: Clemson basketball upsets No. 2 Duke in instant classic
Down go the Devils.
And here comes Clemson basketball.
The Tigers earned their signature win of the season — and their second court storm of the season — after upsetting No. 2 Duke, 77-71, on Saturday night.
Guard Chase Hunter had the go-ahead layup with 38 seconds left and sank four clutch free throws as Clemson (19-5, 11-2 ACC) finished the game on a 7-0 run and handed Duke its first ACC loss of the season at a sold-out Littlejohn Coliseum.
The six-point defeat also snapped a nation-leading 16-game winning streak for coach Jon Scheyer and the Blue Devils (20-3, 12-1 ACC).
“We played about as well as we can play,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said.
The Tigers, improbably, have now won five consecutive games against AP Top 5 teams while being unranked. Their previous streak of four was already the longest streak by any college basketball team since 1989-90.
The latest upset on Saturday was tied for the third-biggest win in school history by opponent’s ranking (the Tigers have beaten a No. 1 team twice). The Duke win also gives them a marquee win for their growing NCAA Tournament résumé.
Clemson trailed by as many as nine points and led as many as five points in an ACC heavyweight battle that featured three ties and seven lead changes.
Outside of Hunter’s heroics, transfer center Viktor Lakhin was outstanding for Clemson with 22 points on 9-of-12 shooting (one point off his career high).
Duke went up 71-70 on star freshman Cooper Flagg’s 3-pointer with 51 seconds left before Clemson, in a gut-check moment, rattled off clutch play after clutch play.
Hunter tossed in a soft, left-handed layup over Flagg to give Clemson a 72-71 lead with 38 seconds left and the Tigers got a stop on the next possession.
After Lakhin went 1 of 2 on free throws, Duke trailed 73-71, called a timeout and isolated Flagg, its best player, with 18 seconds left. But the star freshman forward slipped and fell on his drive and was called for a travel.
Hunter kept adding to his first team All-ACC audition tape, swishing both free throws after Flagg’s slip for a four-point lead (75-71), blocking a Duke layup on the other end and making two more free throws (77-71) for good measure.
Seconds later he, Lakhin and the rest of the team were dancing at midcourt with students who got their second Littlejohn Coliseum court storming in two months. Clemson did the same after upsetting then-No. 4 Kentucky here in December.
“We’re happy to bounce back the way we did,” Lakhin said of the Tigers, who had a bad loss, at home to Georgia Tech in triple overtime, earlier in the week.
“Tonight’s about our guys mustering up the spirit and energy after a tough loss and really just doing what we needed to do to give ourselves a chance to win,” Brownell added. “And then making the plays that you have to make.”
Game recap
Duke closed as a seven-point betting favorite for Saturday’s game, which had a ton of buildup. The game had been sold out for weeks, and some Clemson students camped out overnight Friday to secure a spot in the student section line.
Legendary ESPN broadcaster Dick Vitale, 85, also made his return to the booth Saturday to call the Clemson-Duke game. He hadn’t called a college basketball game in two years while battling multiple forms of cancer.
The stage was set for a thriller.
Clemson got a great first half from Lakhin, the transfer from Cincinnati who had eight points on 4-of-4 shooting, an assist and a block in just nine minutes.
And the Tigers were generally scorching against the nation’s No. 5 scoring defense, shooting 15-22 in the first half (.682)
But 10 turnovers and a nonexistent outside game (1-4 on threes) hurt the Tigers. Clemson never led in the first half, and Duke went into the break leading 41-35 despite a slow start from Flagg, its star freshman forward.
Guard Tyrese Proctor (16 points) and forward Kon Knueppel (11 points) stepped up in Flagg’s place, carried the first-half scoring load and combined for six 3-pointers to keep Duke’s lead steady at halftime.
The Blue Devils also took advantage of Clemson’s mistakes, scored 18 points off turnovers and led by as many as nine points (29-20) in the first half.
Lahkin kept it going in the second half and scored the team’s first nine points out of the break — at that point, no other Tiger had more than seven points.
With Flagg continuing to struggle and momentum building, Clemson finally got over the hump and took a lead in the game with guard Chase Hunter’s layup at the 12:23 mark, which put the Tigers up 51-49 and sent the home crowd into a frenzy.
Things only got louder as Knueppel had to sub out with four fouls and Clemson stretched its lead to a game-high seven points (56-49) with 9:47 remaining.
The Blue Devils are the nation’s No. 2 team for a reason, though, and methodically worked their way back into the game and led 62-61 with four minutes to go.
Flagg was a big part of that with a personal 5-0 to tie the game 59-59 at the 5:16 mark, and some poor free-throw shooting from Clemson aided Duke’s comeback.
Clemson, one of the ACC’s best free-throw shooting teams entering the game, finished 13-22 (59.1%) on free throws and was a paltry 8-16 (50%) entering the final minute. Multiple players (Ian Schieffelin, Lakhin) had backbreaking misses.
But the teams traded clutch bucket after clutch bucket down the stretch in a duel fitting for the top two teams in the ACC, in terms of conference winning percentage.
A veteran Clemson team locked in on its free throws, going 5-6 down the stretch, and ended up shooting 30-51 from the field (58.8%), the highest percentage Duke’s given up to an opponent this year, while outscoring Duke 40-22 in the paint.
That helped offset Duke’s scorching 12-24 performance on 3-pointers.
“Give them all the credit in the world,” Scheyer said.
Defensively, the Tigers also shut out the Blue Devils and Flagg (who said postgame he’d been under the weather) in the final minute when it mattered most.
The end result was a night Hunter won’t forget. He’s been playing basketball at Clemson for six years. But Saturday’s night atmosphere at Littlejohn Coliseum?
“I would say this is No. 1,” he said.
This story was originally published February 8, 2025 at 9:13 PM.
