It's a perfectly nice day in South Carolina. No snow in sight.

CLEMSON, S.C. – The title of this post for all intents and purposes captures tonight’s match-up in four words.

The visitors have won six of seven, while playing their best basketball of the season. That high level of play hasn’t waned in their three road games during that stretch. They just hope they can keep it going.

For a full run down of the Clemson men’s basketball team’s various ailments, The Greenville News’ Scott Keepfer has the doctor’s report, or as close as we’re going to get before the scheduled 5:30 tip. But basically, point guard Demontez Stitt remains doubtful with a sprained foot and the Booker brothers, Trevor and Devin, are bothered by the flu and a broken nose, respectively.

Tiger coach Oliver Purnell, whose team is mired in a three-game conference losing streak, has called it the most important game of the season. Not being at 100 percent doesn’t help his team’s cause.

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Former Terp basketball coach Bud Millikan has died, current Terp coach Gary Williams, who played for Millikan at this university, confirmed in a press release today.

Millikan coached the Terps from 1950-1967, totaling a 243-182 record. His best season was 1957-58 when the Terps went 22-7 and reached the NCAA Elite Eight after winning the ACC title.

Millikan learned the game playing for Hall of Fame coach Henry Iba. And Williams has talked extensively about his biggest basketball influences- Millikan and longtime Iowa coach Dr. Tom Davis.

After a Maui Invitational loss to Wisconsin in November, Williams talked about the evolution of his defensive philosophy. Millikan taught exclusively man-to-man defense, and Williams picked up his zone influences from Davis.

Several other former Terps who played under Millikan went onto achieve coaching success, including Terp assistant Joe Harrington and former Towson coach Terry Truax.

“To have that many coaches come off one team shows that if you listened, you picked up a lot of good things,” Williams said in the release. “He was a tough coach and if you wanted to play, you did things his way. He was a great person.”

Information regarding memorial services was not available in the release.

Eric Detweiler is The Diamondback’s Terrapin Men’s Basketball Team beat writer. He can be reached at edetweilerdbk@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/edetweiler.

One of the most interesting things about the Terps’ third straight double-digit conference win yesterday- an 81-59 drubbing of Miami- was the Terps acted like a team that had been there before.

I’ll have a little more on that in Friday’s print edition preview for the Clemson game on Sunday, but the Terps were very careful not to provide too much bulletin board material for the rest of the conference they currently lead.

Most of the Terps who were available to the media afterward (Vasquez, Mosley, Milbourne, Hayes) were more interested in looking ahead to 11 more conference games than offering reaction to their incredible success in the last few weeks.

The title of this post is a reference to that point. In a league in which many games have been decided in the last two minutes, the Terps have put together three consecutive conference games in which they could take a breath and rather enjoy the last few minutes of an assured win.

After first-year walk-on Ersin Levent checked into the game for Landon Milbourne with 2:09 remaining Tuesday, all five Terp starters were watching from the bench.

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