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CLEMSON -- As the team filed off the floor late Tuesday night after an exhilarating double-overtime win over Penn State, someone handed a microphone to PJ Hall and he addressed the crowd.
He didn't necessarily deliver a stirring address as he told everyone to come back and be loud for Wake Forest on Friday night.
But he was right at home, in his element as the face of the program.
Just as he was right at home earlier in the overtime periods, taking over the game with not just his talent and size but also with his relentless will and determination.
There have been some special guys who have come through Clemson's basketball program over its history. There have also been some special talents.
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But the rarity is when the special people are also special talents, and that's what you have here with Hall.
After last season, AD Graham Neff faced a decision on whether to move on from Brad Brownell or give it another try with the expectation that the Tigers have to make the NCAA Tournament this season for Brownell to be around for a 14th season.
He chose the latter, and a major part of that decision was the guy who wears the No. 24 jersey.
You can argue there have been better players to come through these parts. But to watch this guy over the course of a game, even as he's still returning to full health following an entire offseason of no practice or conditioning, is to affirm the presence of a rare franchise player within a program that has not been blessed with many of them.
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We all saw it late last year when, even in a second-round defeat at the ACC Tournament, he put the team on his shoulders in a transcendent way even when all that figurative and literal weight was on top of one healthy foot.
And we saw it Tuesday night against a good Penn State team, when Hall was simply not going to be denied after the Nittany Lions forced overtime.
There have been so many instances over the years when the visitor lands a last-second dagger and Clemson feels beaten even when it still has a chance to win. You can feel the air get sucked out of the building. There's a cumulative effect that builds and grows when so many negative experiences pile up on top of a tradition of negative experiences.
So many people had seen this movie before when that shot banked in after Penn State had been down seven within the final minute. This partly explains why you saw hundreds of fans bolt for the exits as the teams started to huddle and prepare for overtime.
But Hall and his thundering, galvanizing presence gives you some pause. It gives you reason to think that as long as he's around there can be a rewrite to the script.
He's still not totally there yet, still rusty, and you could see it at times in the first half. At one point he forcefully established position in the post, took an entry pass and confidently turned to flip in a baby hook.
It was an airball. Those little movements, those delicate parts of muscle memory that are attached to conditioning and repetition, are still getting there. That's natural.
But those movements and moments are starting to become overwhelmed by the stuff we're used to seeing from Hall at full strength.
He hit two 3-pointers in the first half to get his confidence going. And then in the second half he played just five minutes and 25 seconds, partly because of matchups (Penn State went small) and partly because he's still limited (the trainers still don't want him playing a full game).
But even as Hall understood that rationale, you could see him becoming uncomfortable on the bench in the final minutes of regulation.
Yes, it's a great positive that the guys played largely without him against a good team and were up eight in the second half against a solid team. It was a really good sign that this group was up seven inside of a minute not only with Hall on the bench, but with Chase Hunter suffering through an off night shooting (he went 1-for-12).
But he wants to own the floor and own the night, because that's who he is. Not in a selfish way, but in a way that he knows he can help lift this team to playing its best.
That was seen in overtime when he not only became a grown man with the ball in his hands by scoring and drawing key fouls, but by inspiring others to elevate their play. The most telling example of that was Josh Beadle coming up with two monstrous blocks on successive possessions, one that produced a fast break and a layup by Brevin Galloway.
Undoubtedly, the fighting pulse of this team is not represented by Hall alone. His veteran pal Hunter Tyson showed his teeth in the second half after the team didn't show enough edge in the first half in falling behind by 10 at one point.
Tyson was scoreless at the half. He was immediately a different person upon stepping back onto the floor, making shots and being demonstrative and telling his coach and everyone else that these 20 minutes were going to be different. He had 18 points in the second half, six in the two overtimes, and totaled nine rebounds, three assists and a steal.
We still don't know what to expect of this team, now 6-2. But we know that guy at the microphone after the game Tuesday night is only going to get better.
And even if he doesn't yet have all of his best stuff, Hall is must-see stuff.
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