Great environment made Clemson win over Duke even more special

There have been plenty of times over the years when Duke has played at Clemson and the crowd has been close to 50-50.

The Blue Devils have one of the best college basketball programs in the country, backed by a large and passionate fan base.

That wasn’t the case on Saturday, though, at a sold out Littlejohn Coliseum.

Of the 9,000 fans at the game, more than 90 percent were rooting for the home team. Students lined up at about 9 a.m. to get into the arena, and the cheapest tickets on game day were more than $200 on the secondary market.

Clemson fans who packed out Littlejohn were treated to an incredible game that ended with Clemson earning a 72-64 win to remain unbeaten in ACC play.

“The environment was unbelievable,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “When Littlejohn is full like this, I think it’s one of the best places in the league to play. The crowd is on you. There’s great interaction. Obviously part of it is our responsibility to have a good team, to keep people excited.”

Clemson certainly has a good team that has people excited this year.

The Tigers are 15-3 (7-0) after Saturday’s win over Duke. While Clemson has zero losses in the league, every other team in the ACC has at least two.

Saturday’s game was much different than the last time Duke played at Clemson.

Last February, the Tigers hosted Duke at Littlejohn in a game that the Blue Devils won by 18 points. Clemson played without star forward Hunter Tyson and struggled that day.

Plenty of Duke fans made their way into Littlejohn last February, and Clemson players noticed. The Tigers got some revenge on Saturday.

“One thing, definitely in particular, when we got our tails handed to us last year when we were down a guy, fighting to even play the game with injuries. We got beat kind of into the dirt a little bit,” Tigers forward PJ Hall recalled. “And in our own arena, we’ve got them chanting ‘Let’s go Duke.’ So it felt pretty good to have this place packed out and kind of shove it back in their face. It definitely felt good.”

Hall led the way for Clemson in Saturday’s win, finishing with a game-high 26 points in 27 minutes.

The Dorman product knocked down 10 of his 16 shot attempts against the 24th-ranked Blue Devils.

Hall and the Tigers will try to stay hot on Tuesday when they face Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Saturday’s win over Duke felt great for the Tigers, but there’s not much time to celebrate.

“Not really getting too high or too low. We were fine in the locker room, but we weren’t doing cartwheels,” Brownell said. “We were ready. We celebrated quickly, but we’re on to the next.”