Clemson Men’s Basketball: Tigers defeat Upstate, 81-70

Clemson Men’s Basketball defeated USC Upstate 81-70 Tuesday evening at Littlejohn Coliseum to move to 2-1 on the young season.

Chase Hunter led the way with 20 points, followed by Alex Hemenway with 18, Brevin Galloway with 15 and P.J. Hall with 13.

Hunter Tyson chipped in 8 points, but led the Tigers with 12 rebounds and also had 3 assist on the night.

After a brief early 2-2 tie, Clemson led the entire way, but couldn’t pull away from the Spartans as the lead ballooned to as high as 17, but fell to single digits several times also.

The Tigers bench scored 19 points, but 12 of those were by Hall, who replaced Ben Middlebrooks early and Middlebrooks only totaled 7 minutes on the evening, with Hall totalling 21 minutes.

Josh Beadle, Dillon Hunter and Ian Schieffelin had two points apiece in a combined 40 minutes on the court.

Tyson played 37 minutes, Chase Hunter 35 and Galloway 33, in a game that should have been a breeze for the Tigers who were favored by 21.5.

Upstate was 6 of 15 on point shots, but kept the game close from the line, where they were 16-22.

The Tigers shot 56.4% from the field, including 38.1% from three point range (8-21) and finished 11 of 18 (61.1%) from the free throw line.

Clemson Men’s Basketball is going to need to increase their rotation as the season develops

Moving forward, I’m concerned about the rotation depth as this team appears to be no more than 6 or 7 deep at most and looks particularly thin at the guard spot, where Josh Beadle doesn’t seem ready to contribute significantly at this time.

Beadle scored 2 points in 12 minutes, but also had 2 turnovers tonight.

In the first two games against The Citadel and South Carolina, Beadle totaled just less than 27 minutes, with 0 points on 0-7 shooting with 1 turnover and 1 assist.

Fellow freshman guard Dillon Hunter has played even less.

Long term, it’s a tough ask for guys to play 33-35 minutes a night with the non-conference schedule coming up and then the 20 game ACC schedule and Brad Brownell needs to find a way to get more out of his bench.