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Rex Brown

Clemson's Terrence Oglesby lays on the court and watches Florida State players celebrate a come-from-behind 65-61 victory over the Tigers Saturday at Littlejohn Coliseum.

CLEMSON — It was déjà vu.

All year, this current Clemson team has done everything it could to avoid the ghosts of Clemson basketball past. After winning their first 16 games to start the season, the Tigers hushed their critics with a 5-2 start in ACC play.

They quieted them even more this past Wednesday with a complete domination of the nation’s No. 4 team in Duke. This year’s team was proving by all counts they weren’t your father’s Clemson Tigers.

Then came the second half of Saturday’s Florida State game. Very reminiscent of their home loss to Virginia two years ago when they blew an 18-point second half lead, and last year’s NCAA Tournament first-round loss to Villanova – also an 18-point blown lead – the Tigers blew a 19-point second half lead and watched the Seminoles celebrate a dramatic 65-61 come-from-behind victory at Littlejohn Coliseum.

“It doesn’t matter (about how we lost), it hurts that you win a big game on Wednesday and then you come back and shoot yourself in the foot on Saturday. That’s what hurts,” Clemson forward K.C. Rivers said.

It especially hurts that the No. 10 Tigers appeared poised to take a seat near the top of the ACC standings when a David Potter layup gave them a 44-25 lead with 14:47 to play.

“We wanted to make this a statement game,” Clemson guard Demontez Stitt said. “We talked about it before the game that we did not want to let this be a letdown game and we came out like we wanted to win, but in the second half we got a little bit lackadaisical and got content.

“When you play against good teams you can’t do that. We should have played like we did against Duke.”

Clemson (19-3, 5-3) started the second half that way. First forward Trevor Booker reversed a layup and Stitt followed with a three-pointer from the left side to spark a 10-0 run. After a Florida State turnover, Raymond Sykes made a jump hook and then Terrence Oglesby drained a 3-pointer from the right corner for a 40-22 lead with 18:00 to go.

Clemson kept up the intensity for the next four minutes as it extended the lead to 19 points, but that’s when the Tigers took their foot off the gas and one of the biggest comebacks in FSU history began.

“We just did not play well from that time on, on either end of the floor,” Clemson coach Oliver Purnell said.

From that point on, the Seminoles (18-5, 5-3) outscored Clemson 40-17, including a 23-4 run over the last 8:52. Before that, the Tigers were shooting 54.4 percent from the field, but ended the night with a field goal percentage of 45.3 after missing 10 of their last 11 shots.

“We didn’t have much choice at the end except to play defense,” Florida State head coach Leonard Hamilton said. “We had to have stops to win. We were just playing the game to get stops and not looking to score.”

But the Seminoles did start looking inside and that’s where Solomon Alabi started to take over. Clemson had no answer for the 7-foot-1 freshman from Nigeria. He single handedly kept FSU in the game by hitting on 8-of-10 field goals for 17 points, while grabbing 9 rebounds.

“We let him catch it too deep,” Purnell said. “We weren’t doing a great job of pressuring the ball and when you are staying behind good post players and you let them have it that deep, you are going to have problems.”

And when those problems started to occur, it opened up the perimeter for FSU’s best shooter Toney Douglas, who scored 17 of his game-high 23 points in the second half.

“They made adjustments and started sending their bigs right to the basket,” Purnell said.

And that opened everything else for the Seminoles’ offense. After working nearly the whole game to catch Clemson, the ‘Noles finally caught and passed the Tigers on Alabi’s short jumper in the lane with 2:03 to play.

Instead of responding like they have been known to do in tight games with Illinois, South Carolina and Virginia Tech, the Tigers tightened up and finished the last two minutes in nearly a state of panic.

“I didn’t think we were a real confident basketball team at that point and I think the reason was because we had been in such a dry spell,” Purnell said.

A period of time that looked all too familiar.

“We led Florida State by 19 and we let it slip away,” Stitt said. “It sort of goes back to the Villanova game. It reminds me so much of that.”