The ACC announced Friday that Clemson guard David Collins will be suspended for the team’s game Saturday against Notre Dame after his hard foul on Duke’s Wendell Moore on Thursday. Collins collided with Moore as Moore elevated for a breakaway dunk in the first half of the Blue Devils’ 82-64 victory. The contact undercut Moore and sent him into a free-fall. He landed hard on his back but was able to return to the game.
Collins was given a Flagrant 2 foul and ejected from the game, and the play infuriated Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. Eventually, Collins apologized directly to Krzyzewski and has been publicly apologetic since the incident. He posted on social media Friday, beginning by saying that “I was going to try to block it from behind but I was going too fast and I couldn’t stop.”
A graduate transfer from South Florida, Collins is averaging 10.5 points and 6.7 rebounds per game for the Tigers. He’s started all 24 of the teams’ games this season. It would have been no surprise to see Collins’ foul and the hard fall that it caused spark a brawl, but Krzyzewski credited Clemson coach Brad Brownell for helping keep tensions down after the incident.
“Brad is unusual,” Krzyzewski said. “He’s so damn good. Brad is an old-school, good coach and a good guy. He’s good people, and his kids are good people. Again, we didn’t want that to escalate, so the fact that he brought him and we did some interaction, I think that was really good and we put it behind. Brad apologized and I said, ‘Please, let’s just move on.’ Wendell [Moore Jr.] is good – I hope he’s good. We’ll see tomorrow after a plane ride and all that. It’s best to move on.”
