Coming off a 10-21 season Clemson Women’s Basketball has work to do and they began the 2022-2023 season with a dominating performance over Big South member Gardner-Webb early Monday in an 81-54 win.
Led by Amari Robinson’s 8 points and 4 rebounds early, Clemson raced out to a 20-point lead after one quarter (28-8) and held a 27-point lead at the half (49-22) and never looked back after cruising through the second half.
Highly touted freshman Ruby Whitehorn didn’t start, but ended up playing 25 minutes and led the Tigers with 17 points on 8 of 14 shooting from the field and grabbing 8 rebounds.
Whitehorn is the highest ranked recruit in the history of the Clemson women’s program.
Robinson (14) and Daisha Bradford (10) also hit double figures for Clemson.
The Tigers dominated on the boards, outrebounding Gardner-Webb 50-33, led by Whitehorn and Robinson with 8 boards apiece, while Bradford chipped in 7.
Clemson shot 51.7% from the floor, including 7 of 18 from three-point range (38.9%) and 73.7% from the line.
In contrast, Gardner-Webb shot only 27.5% from the field, 21.4% from three-point range and 71.4% from the free-throw line.
Thirteen Tigers played in the game and ten scored in the season opener.
Clemson’s largest lead came with 4:15 left in the first half when Brie Perpignan’s three-ball gave the Tigers a 44-12 lead, which ended up being 49-22 at the half.
Clemson women’s basketball got more than half their points from the bench in the win over Gardner-Webb
Clemson got 43 points from their bench and outscored Gardner-Webb in the paint 36-20 in the dominating win.
The one stat that wasn’t very good for the Tigers was 34 turnovers, which led to more than half of the Bulldogs points (28).
Clemson hosts Wofford on Thursday, November 10 at 7 p.m. in Littlejohn and then the Richmond Spiders pay a visit on Sunday, November 13th for a 2 p.m. affair game. Both of those games can be seen on the ACCNX.
The Tigers then host arch-rival South Carolina on November 17th, before traveling to the U.S. Virgin Islands to take on Kansas State, Arkansas and Northern Arizona in the Paradise Jam Classic from November 24-26.