On Tuesday, October 21, 2008, the NCAA suspended Freshman Catalin Baciu for the first five games of the season for his participation with a Romanian professional basketball team.

Although Baciu was not paid for his participation, NCAA rules prohibit student-athletes from playing on a professional team, regardless of whether they are employed.

[1] On Sunday, October 26, 2008, members of the ACC media were polled and picked Clemson to finish fifth in the conference behind North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest and Miami respectively.

This also ended Clemson's streak of not losing back-to-back ACC games that dated back to the 2006–07 season.

On Sunday, January 25, 2009, with a 73–59 victory over Georgia Tech, Senior guard K. C. Rivers broke the team record for most career wins as a player with 85.

On Monday, February 2, 2009, EA Sports announced that Littlejohn Coliseum was one of the Top-15 toughest places to play in College Basketball.

Through an online poll, Fans determined 15 finalists, whose home courts were judged to be the most difficult for opposing teams to play in.

These results will form an integral part of a new game mode in the EA SPORTS NCAA Basketball videogame franchise for 2009–10.

With the win, Clemson snapped a 22-game regular season losing streak to the Blue Devils dating back to January 7, 1997.

The defeat was also the worst suffered by Duke since the NCAA Championship game of 1990, a 103–73 victory by UNLV on April 2, 1990.

On Tuesday, February 17, the EA Sports Tour visited Littlejohn Coliseum as Clemson hosted Maryland.

After their visit, Novell Thomas, the producer of the NCAA Basketball game, wrote that "Hands down, Clemson just set the bar for all hosts of the EA SPORTS Toughest Places to Play, tour.

[7] Clemson defeated five NCAA tournament teams during the regular season in Duke, Maryland, Boston College, Temple and Illinois.

Clemson had a chance to tie the game with 13 seconds left, but K. C. Rivers' contested 3-pointer at the buzzer fell short.

The 59–62 loss dropped Oliver Purnell to 0–5 all-time in NCAA Tournament games as a head coach.

Rivers, Raymond Sykes and Jesse Yanutola finished their careers with 91 victories, a Clemson record for a four-year class.