Clemson has been one of the top teams in the ACC this year. They opened up conference play with six straight wins before a loss. After the loss to NC State, head coach Brad Brownell was honest in his assesment of his squad. After four more wins with two on the west coast, Clemson fell to Virginia Tech, 76-66, on Wednesday night.
Like he was after the NC State loss, Brownell was honest with the media following the defeat, per Derrian Carter of Greenville News.
“The story is not that Clemson came back from the West Coast and whatever. We got beat by a good team tonight that outplayed us,” Brownell said. “No excuses.”
Clemson defeated Stanford on the road back on Feb. 4, and then won over Cal on Feb. 7, both west coast teams in the conference. They then returned home for this game with Virginia Tech before hitting the road again. Clemson gave up 76 points in the loss, the most they have given up in regulation since an early December loss to BYU.
“You score 76 points on the Tigers, you're getting something done,” Virginia Tech coach Mike Young said.
The Hokies dominated from three in the game. They hit 11 of 21 attempts, good for 52 percent. Further, they shot 52 percent from the field and hit all 11 free throw attempts. Meanwhile, shots for Clemson were not falling. They shot just 45 percent from the field and 31 percent from three. They also hit just 11 of 18 free throws.
“We had a lot of guys for the first time in a long time not play well,” Brownell said. “Too many different guys not playing well on the same day . . . We're one of those teams that we need most of our guys to play well.”
Clemson will now look to have all their guys firing on all cylinders when it hits the court next. Clemson travels to Duke, one of the top teams in the nation, on Saturday.
