Clemson Men’s Basketball: Challenge ahead for Brownell’s Tigers

Good news for Clemson Men’s Basketball fans in the nether regions that may or may not get the derivative du jour of the ACC Network.

Saturday’s game against Virginia Tech is scheduled for ESPN2, which I trust my brothers and sisters in South Carolina have on their cable package.

The bad news for Clemson is that Tech’s Hunter Cattoor has returned after a month’s absence and scored 11 points in a Wednesday loss to Virginia, while also grabbing 6 rebounds and dishing out 5 assists in 34 minutes of action.

Clemson has a few things on their side, too.  Number one is having the game in Littlejohn Coliseum.

Sitting at No. 60 in the NET Rankings, the Tigers can’t afford another loss this week, injury-plagued or not.

Virginia Tech comes in one spot higher than the Tigers at No. 59, which means the game is a battle between Quadrant 2 teams.  That means, not a great win, but an even worse loss should that be the outcome.

The last we heard Brad Brownell was unsure if Chase Hunter would be able to play and that could be the determining factor, as it doesn’t appear that Josh Beadle or Dillon Hunter are ready for more than a supporting role at this point, but that’s not unexpected for the young freshmen.

Of course, Tuesday’s game didn’t necessarily set up well for those two and this one, at home, should be more in their comfort zone.

Both could certainly develop into more of a scoring threat from the outside, but right now that hasn’t been shown to be the case and without a crazy out-of-nowhere performance by Chauncey Wiggins the Tigers would likely lost by 20.

Clemson Men’s Basketball survived without Alex Hemenway, but the ask gets tougher without Chase Hunter

The point is, this team survived without Alex Hemenway, with the familiar Clemson basketball phrase – GRIT.

Without Hemenway AND Chase Hunter the road gets much much tougher.

The good news is following Saturday’s game, Georgia Tech comes to Littlejohn on Tuesday, followed by trips to Tallahassee and Chestnut Hill.

All of those are winnable games, if the Tigers play the way they have during the first half of the season.