Through the joy ride that has been Clemson's 2024-25 basketball season, in the back of your mind you wondered where this team might find a chip on the shoulder.
Those can be important this time of year, and all we have to do is think back one year ago to recognize that.
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A one-and-dud against Boston College made most folks, particularly Clemson folks, write off the Tigers' chances in the NCAA Tournament. Plenty of people were already writing in their favorite choice to replace Brad Brownell.
That team fed off it as it started walking tall in Memphis and commenced a joy ride that stopped a whisker short of the Final Four.
If the current team needed an edge going into this year's NCAAs, consider that done after last night in Charlotte.
Where to start?
It has to be the image of Brownell shouting halftime instructions to his team in a corridor outside the team's locker room.
The Tigers had to wait five minutes to get in.
The ACC has a slogan called "ACComplish greatness."
The conference accomplished embarrassment for the tournament that's been its crown jewel forever.
We've never been big conspiracy theorists as it relates to the decades-long grievances Clemson fans have had against the ACC in basketball.
But how in the hell do you explain this? How in the hell does the ACC not issue a formal, public apology for this epic fail?
Maybe Clemson can push for a new Grant of Rights as part of the settlement among itself, Florida State and the conference.
A grant of locker-room rights.
Once upon a time 11 years ago, Clemson was on the verge of knocking off Duke in the ACC quarterfinals.
You know the rest. The image of Rod Hall driving. The image of Tyler Thornton reaching out (and reaching in, Clemson fans screamed) to poke the ball away in a 63-62 Blue Devils victory.
Those things -- controversial calls on the precious few occasions your team is poised to bust through and challenge for a conference championship -- tend to get seared into your memory.
And no doubt last night's Hack-a-Hunter visions are going to linger for quite some time.
Not to mention the almost shockingly uneven way the game was called by the referees from an anything-goes first half to an orchestral chorus of whistles beyond halftime (except for on Chase Hunter's final two shot attempts, of course).
A second-half observation from a Clemson friend last night:
Drop kicks and karate chops were allowed in the first half for both teams. Look at someone funny in the second half and it's a foul.
Yep, that's about right (except on Hunter's final two shot attempts, of course).
Look: This team has more important issues to solve than finding, well, madness to fuel it through the rest of March.
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The absence of Dillon Hunter is a big deal, as we saw last night.
If the bench production doesn't improve, this group can get bounced in a hurry.
If Chauncey Wiggins doesn't start producing, it's hard to conceive of the Tigers advancing near as far as they did last year.
This team has gone from excellent to excrement from 3-point land over the last five games. That simply cannot continue.
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So yes, they have plenty of work to do on themselves and that's the biggest challenge.
But if a high-achieving team needed an all-consuming insult to galvanize it as it turns its attention to the Big Dance, and turns itself to addressing the above challenges, last night might have been what the doctor ordered.
Louisville and Duke will play for a championship tonight.
Clemson will watch with a champion-chip on its shoulder.
