Clemson’s men’s basketball team returned to Littlejohn Coliseum five days ago hoping to stop the bleeding. Yet after a three-game homestand, the Tigers are just trying to make sure they don’t start hemorrhaging.
Clemson capped an eventful and winless week with a 76-61 loss on Saturday to the ACC’s co-leader, Notre Dame. That came on the heels of a blowout loss to No. 7 Duke that included an ejection and subsequent one-game suspension for senior guard David Collins and a narrow setback to North Carolina in a game that was up for grabs until the final seconds.
“I’m proud of our guys,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “I thought we fought pretty hard. You’re playing three of the best teams in the league. The first game, we’ve got the lead with a minute to go and have a chance to win. The second game, we battle for a half and, the first five or six minutes of the second half, we’re hanging in there. And then Duke pulls away with size and numbers. And they played well.
“Then Notre Dame was ready. I thought they had a good plan. We got punched in the mouth. Right away, we’re down double figures, and it’s hard. We could’ve caved. But I thought our kids fought, and we battled back several times.”
For the fourth straight game, though, Clemson came up short, which hasn’t happened to the Tigers this late in a season in nearly a decade. The last time Clemson had a four-game losing streak beginning in February was 2013 when the Tigers lost seven straight to end that season.
The 2012-13 campaign was also the last time Clemson had a losing season. With six games left this season (not counting the ACC Tournament), the Tigers are in danger of ending that streak, too.
Clemson fell to 12-13 overall with Saturday’s loss, the first time all season the Tigers have dipped below .500. They also fell to 4-10 in ACC play, which has another streak – four straight seasons with at least nine regular-season conference wins – in jeopardy, too.
The Tigers have lost eight of their last 10 games overall. If the ACC Tournament started today, Clemson would be the No. 13 seed in the 15-team event. Only Georgia Tech, which began Clemson’s losing streak on Feb. 5, and North Carolina State have worse records in league play so far.
Asked following Saturday’s game how he tries to go about keeping his players engaged in an effort to keep this season from further unraveling, Brownell said it starts with heavy doses of honesty and truth.
“When I think we play well, we talk about it. And when I don’t think we’re playing as well as we can, we talk about that,” Brownell said. “As much as anything, you try to remind them of their development and then remind them of the opportunity they’re in. They’re playing ACC basketball at a great school and in a program that we’re proud of what we’re doing. So it’s easy to get a little whoa is me, feel sorry for yourself and get wrapped up in all of that, but, man, there are a lot of people that would like to trade places with you. And you better be mindful of that.”
Of course, there’s a caveat to the Tigers’ skid besides the quality of competition they have faced.
Senior forward Hunter Tyson, the team’s third-leading rebounder and fourth-leading scorer, didn’t play in any of the last four games after sustaining a broken clavicle in Clemson’s last win Feb. 2 against Florida State. Clemson got yet another double-digit scoring output from leading scorer PJ Hall (19 points) against Notre Dame while point guard Nick Honor added 12 in his just his second start in the last nine games, but the Tigers didn’t have their leading rebounder in Collins, who was suspended for his flagrant foul on Duke’s Wendell Moore Jr. two nights earlier.
Clemson also missed the defense of the 6-foot-4 Collins against a Notre Dame team that shot better than 54% from 3-point range (13 of 24).
“Would’ve loved to go 3-0 this week,” said junior guard Alex Hemenway, who matched a season-high with 26 minutes and scored eight points against Notre Dame in Collins’ absence. “I feel like this is another speed bump we’ve just got to overcome this season. We’ve had a lot of them, but I still believe we can turn this thing around.”
The schedule eases up a bit the rest of the way with four of the Tigers’ last six regular-season games coming against teams in the bottom half of the league standings. It starts with a trip on Tuesday to face a Florida State team that’s without four of its top six scorers because of injuries, but Clemson hasn’t won a road game since beating N.C. State back on Jan. 8.
The Tigers haven’t lost five consecutive games since losing six straight conference games during the 2016-17 season.
“It’s easy to have some discourse right now, but we’re sticking in there,” Brownell said. “We’re battling hard. We’ve got another chance on Tuesday to try to bounce back and continue to play a little bit better.”
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