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CLEMSON -- Over a six-game stretch from October to early November, a pattern of weird stuff happened to Clemson's football team.
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Virginia giving them a game when everyone expected a walk in the park. Three blocked field goals by Miami. A blocked punt and a pick-6 by Syracuse. A 97-yard fumble return for a touchdown by Boston College, and almost a punt return for a touchdown (it was nullified by penalty). Another strip score for a touchdown by Notre Dame.
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On one hand, you could say that team showed deficiencies all year long and it all caught up to them in the Sugar Bowl. On the other, you could say it was just a bunch of 2020 weirdness that can't really be explained.
-- Rivals.com's 1-on-1 VIDEO interview with Dabo Swinney
Which brings us to the current state of Clemson basketball.
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How does a team that looks so good in starting 10-1 and rising to a No. 12 ranking then look so bad in losing four of the next five games by an average of 24.5 points?
It could be that such unsightly play means all the good things in the aforementioned start were a mirage and this team just isn't good at all.
It could also be that this is just a weird year in so many ways, and that ultimately a good team can go through a stretch of really poor play.
We don't know what the definitive answer is yet. We do know that Brad Brownell's team showed in its most recent time out that it still has plenty of fight and spirit remaining.
You can be forgiven if, in watching Clemson beat North Carolina 63-50, you wondered where in the world that resolve was a few days earlier at Duke.
Brownell was so enraged during that game that you wondered if some of his guys might've checked out. He followed that, upon the return home Saturday night, with a meeting that lasted 90 minutes.
"Coach told us how disappointed he was in our effort in the last five or six games we've played," said Aamir Simms. "He just challenged us mentally and physically. Usually we'll meet for like a couple of seconds right in front of the bus. But we came back in front of our club and we probably spoke for an hour-and-a-half.
"We just talked about what we wanted to accomplish, and our fight and our grit. And that's something that should never be challenged, as a person or as a man. And I think a lot of guys took that personal. And I think he knew that's what he needed to say to us, because that's what we needed to hear. And honestly that's as simple as it was: He just challenged our integrity and our fight and our grit, and just our spirit."
It was fairly easy to tell who took Brownell's message most to heart. As you'd expect, the two seniors (Simms and Clyde Trapp) were the two best, most commanding players on the floor.
In Trapp's case, it's confounding that he can look so good and explosive against North Carolina (14 points, 9 rebounds) after looking so flat and dead-legged against Duke (2 points in 25 minutes).
"It's crazy: He only took two shots in the Duke game and it wasn't by design," Brownell said. "I thought he was a little sluggish, probably tired, didn't really have any pop to him. We talked about it. I just said: 'Hey man, I can't be playing you 25, 30 minutes in games and you're going to take two shots. He just didn't have it.
"My team, Aamir and Clyde especially, they're physically drained after these games. They're really good athletes, but they're not the kind of guys that can do it every day, all day I don't think. They throw so much into it, expend a ton of energy, that there are days every once in a while where they just need to take it easy. This was a long stretch for us, third game in seven days, plus practices leading into that game. You're going to feel that."
While Brownell was liberal with distributing playing time earlier this season, his patience is thinner now with players who can't flush mistakes.
PJ Hall and Olivier-Maxence Prosper got the quick hook against North Carolina; Prosper played 10 minutes and made some valuable contributions, and Hall played less than five minutes.
John Newman missed the game for disciplinary reasons, and Brownell left open the possibility that he could sit Saturday's game against Syracuse as well.
While one thought is that Clemson can't achieve what it wants to if Newman is not a consistent offensive threat, it's also true that the Tigers have won both of the games Newman hasn't played (they prevailed at Miami on Jan. 2 when Newman was sick).
It's probably safe to say Hunter Tyson provided the type of grit and mental toughness against North Carolina that Brownell wants to see out of some other guys.
Tyson played almost 26 minutes and scored 16 points on 5-of-11 shooting with four rebounds, two steals and an assist.
"He played good, and he fights," Brownell said. "He generally fights. There are times when some matchups are harder for Hunter than others. I believe he really wants to compete. He has pretty good confidence. He has to work at things, though. It's not easy. He's not a natural athlete and all that. He's got to really fight and buckle down, and we're trying to teach him. He needs to embrace physicality and dirty work. He has to be more than a shooter. But the one thing you know about Hunter Tyson is he wants to win, and he wants to compete. They scored on him some, but he was fighting like crazy down there."
There's still some fight left in this team, whose path suddenly looks a lot better with a win over Syracuse.
Does the recent ugliness mean this will be a lost season, or just that it's a weird season in a profoundly weird time?
Only the future has the answer to that question.
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