Clemson basketball: Tigers need to get back to basics quickly

Clemson basketball of old has reared its ugly self after a promising start.

The 2020-2021 version of Clemson basketball looked to be different than any other version under longtime head coach Brad Brownell. They had great games over Mississippi State, Perdue, Maryland, and Alabama.

However, what has taken place over their last two ball games has shown that for as much as somethings change, somethings never do.

Good teams lose, but good teams don’t lose by 35 to anyone for any reason and good teams damn sure don’t lose back to back games by 18 or more points like this team has to Virginia and Georgia Tech. Falling to 3-3 in a down year in the ACC is nothing to be proud of.

Coming out of the UVA embarrassment, everyone wanted to blame COVID and the fact that Brownell was not cleared until just before game time as the reason for that 35-point beat down. The problem with that is this team isn’t new and the nucleus of this team has spent a lot of time together and played a lot of basketball together.

Just because you miss a few days of practice doesn’t excuse coming out and losing games in the manner in which they have the last week. This isn’t a first-year high school program where guys have no chemistry.

Clemson basketball has to regroup quickly.

Two of the next three games for Clemson basketball will be on the road as they go to FSU this weekend, come back home to face Boston College, and then back on the road the last day of January to play Duke. There is a really good chance that as great as Clemson basketball looked early in the year, that they find themselves 4-5 heading into February.

If the Tigers are going to make a run at the NCAA tournament in Indianapolis, they are going to have to get back to taking care of the ball and guarding the three-point line like they were doing early in the year.

There is still plenty of time to turn this ship around but it is going to take effort that we have not seen since the start of the new year.