It just wasn’t the Tigers night. Clemson Men’s Basketball shot too many three-point shots and missed 68.7% of them. They missed too many free throws. They fouled too many times and had too many dumb turnovers on the road. They allowed Florida State to shoot three-pointers at will and the Seminoles made 13 of them.
Down 80-77 with 25 seconds to go the Tigers got two free throws from P.J. Hall, a missed free throw from Florida State and a conventional three-point play from Chase Hunter with 4.5 seconds to go to defeat the Seminoles 82-81 Saturday in Tallahassee.
A surface-of-the-sun hot start by Hunter Tyson led everyone to want to try threes and the Tigers were horrid at it and lost an early 14-point lead to trail at the half.
On the night Clemson shot 32 three-pointers, 60.4% of their attempts from the floor, and hit only 10, for a 31.3% rate.
Hunter Tyson led Clemson with 27 points, Chase Hunter had 25 and P.J. Hall chipped in 17 and 10 rebounds for a double-double.
R.J. Godfrey chipped in 8 points and 4 rebounds for the Tigers off the bench.
An uncharacteristic 18 turnovers hamstrung the Tigers as the team looked disheveled in spurts, but once again found the big play at the right time to pull out a win and move to 10-1 in the ACC and 18-4 overall.
Somehow, some way, this team found a way to win when they should have lost.
On the road. Down 3 with 25 seconds to go.
Let’s rock.
CHASE HUNTER WITH ICE IN HIS VEINS!!!!!@chunt3r2 #ClemsonGRIT pic.twitter.com/bgCWg2Jw3k
— Clemson Basketball (@ClemsonMBB) January 29, 2023
Clemson Men’s Basketball coach Brad Brownell has pushed all the right buttons this season
As the clock ticked down towards the inevitable defeat, there were those on Twitter questioning the coaching, because that’s what Clemson basketball fans do when things go bad and truth be told they’ve been correct a fair amount of the time in past seasons.
But this season, Brad Brownell is making the right moves at the right time and putting the players in position to be successful.
The “Clemson Grit” tag line Clemson basketball goes by hasn’t always made its way to the court as too many times in the past this is they type of game the Tigers would lose.
But this is the second time in three games that the Tigers have lived up to the slogan, winning despite not playing their best, not giving up and, yes, gritting it out.