Booker's highlight-reel dunk propels Tigers to 29-point ACC win over Maryland |
CLEMSON - Terrence Oglesby’s second half 3-pointer bounced high off the rim, and Trevor Booker stepped into the lane, jumped high off the floor, caught the ball at its apex, and with his left hand cradling the basketball, stuffed it home for a thunderous dunk that will definitely make the highlight plays for the week, if not season.
At that point, game over. Booker’s dunk with just over 17 minutes remaining started the 13th-ranked Tigers on a 33-10 run, lifting Clemson (21-4, 7-4) to a crucial 93-64 home ACC win over the Maryland Terrapins (16-9. 5-6) at Littlejohn Coliseum Tuesday night. The win was the largest-ever for Clemson over a Maryland team, eclipsing a 22-point by Tree Rollins’ Tigers (93-71) in January of 1977. The win was also their second conference win of 27 or more points this season. “He changes the game,” Clemson head coach Oliver Purnell said. “He has that kind of ability. Teams decide to take him away, and then he isn’t going to get a lot of shots. Then he has to go get it on the offensive glass, like he did there, in spectacular fashion ,which ignited our team. You need your great players to make plays like that at crucial times and he has done that a lot this year.” The Tigers racked up 12 personal fouls in the first half but still held the lead at intermission on the strength of 10 first half points by point guard Demontez Stitt. Maryland held its last lead of the half at 8-7, but Clemson would lead by as many as seven points at four different points. With 3:35 remaining, Stitt hit his second 3-pointer to give Clemson its biggest lead at 28-20, but the Terps would score 10 of the next 12 points to trim the Clemson advantage to just two at 30-28 with under a minute remaining. Oglesby would hit two free throws with 28.3 seconds left for a four-point Clemson lead, then K.C. Rivers would end the ensuing Maryland possession with a steal and coast-to-coast play that ended in a dunk and a 34-28 Clemson lead at the break. The Terps came out in the second half and trimmed the Clemson lead to jus three points, but Booker’s dunk started a four-minute stretch in which he dominated the court, blocking shots, stealing the ball from guards, rebounding and even throwing a nifty no-look pass to K.C. Rivers for an assist. He even stepped out at the top of the key and buried a 3-pointer as part of his highlight reel that saw him add 14 rebounds to his 11 points, “Teams are doubling Booker now, and he’s doing an outstanding job of finding people,” Purnell said. “He only took five shots for the game, but he set up so many other guys. And teams are going to double like that, but we have the ability to tear from the outside, as long as we’re making great shots. Our ball movement was really good in the second half.” The Tigers hit nine 3-pointers in the second half, with six different players hitting a shot from beyond the arc. For the game, Clemson hit 12-of-26 long range shots and shot 37-for-64 overall (57.8%) from the field overall, with their biggest lead of the night coming at the end of the game as Young had five points and Bobo Baciu had a put-back as Clemson closed out the 29-point win. “Clemson did a good job tonight,” Maryland head coach Gary Williams said. “They made us scramble in the first half and we missed shots down the stretch and they made them. Once they got hot it was hard to stop them and we had trouble scoring.” Oglesby’s 16 points led six Clemson players in double figures, with Stitt adding 15, Rivers 14, and bench players Andre Young and Jerai Grant added 10 apiece. Oglesby added six assists as the Tigers combined for 24 against just 12 turnovers.
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