The reasons for Clemson’s defeat at Duke are absurdly poor.
Not very impressive. Not even close.
Brad Brownell had to hold Joe Girard back after Duke’s Saturday afternoon victory against Clemson to prevent him from pursuing an official. It turns out that they weren’t happy with the way the game finished.
After the Duke-Clemson game, if you watched X, the classic Duke-gets-all-the-calls narrative came back to life. Many of them are merely frustrations, and we are fully aware of it. But some of it is plain absurd. Let’s examine the reason.
The conspiracy theory concept. There would need to be many events for the ACC to “rig” the game in favor of Duke. First of all, no one would do it in the current atmosphere; Duke basketball would have to take precedence over Clemson football. The ACC would not risk an offense.
Second, all of the ACC’s officials as well as conference supervisor of officials Bryan Kersey would need to be in on it.
Practically speaking, a conspiracy involving so many actors is certain to fail because people tend to talk. However, that doesn’t make sense logically because Kersey would ruin his career. Additionally, all of the officials desire to work in the NCAA tournament and are employed by several leagues. Additionally, this group tends to be somewhat independent and arrogant. There’s no way you could convince them all to support this. And how could they manipulate the game to that extent even if they succeeded? It isn’t professional wrestling.
Thirdly, Clemson doesn’t approach the game like a group of male choir members. It’s not that they’re unclean, but as we seen a few years back when Wendell Moore was beneath a quick break dunk. Nolan Smith brought the ball down court when Brownell first arrived at Cameron, and it bounced around like a pinball hitting bumpers. Duke doesn’t seem to be complaining about it, though; that’s simply the way they play.
