Clemson basketball was written in stone over much of the season: elite, suffocating defense. But that stone has crumbled in the previous two weeks.
Following an infuriating home loss to Florida State on Saturday — the program’s first four-game losing streak since 2021-22 — head coach Brad Brownell was unwavering. Brownell’s finger was squarely pointed at a defensive unit that has traded from the hunter to the hunted during Monday’s ACC coaches’ teleconference.
There, the numbers paint a grim picture for a team that until recently had the No. 2 scoring defense in the ACC. The slide fell to a low last Wednesday against Wake Forest in what Brownell referred to as the “worst defensive game of the year” after the Demon Deacons hung 85 points on the Tigers.
“Defensively, I believe it is that we haven’t been nearly as good,” Brownell said. “We didn’t defend Florida State very well in the second [half], and that was a concern.”
The fallout is sudden and severe.
Once hanging above the AP Top 25, Clemson has fallen out of the rankings and dropped to a projected No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament. And more worrying still, for their postseason chances, they are on the outside looking in for a double-bye in the ACC Tournament.
Brownell has always viewed the collective, not the individual, as a principle of his philosophy; but he added that this force isn’t living up to its end of the bargain.
“Our team and our defense are our strength,” Brownell said. “We have to have a lot of players play well on the same day to win and our defense has to be elite. It has to be one of the top defenses in the league for us to beat some of these teams … and it’s up to me to figure out a way to fix that.”
The timing (if ever there was one) of this defensive soul-searching is critical. The Tigers will welcome No. 24 Louisville to Littlejohn Coliseum this Saturday, after a rare midweek bye. The Cardinals bring one of the most explosive offenses in the country, averaging a blistering 86.8 points per game, to town. It’s the kind of classic “immovable object vs. unstoppable force” matchup, except Clemson’s “object” has recently appeared much more movable.
If the Tigers can find the defensive teeth that took down SMU earlier this year, then they can stop the bleeding and reclaim themselves as a threat in the ACC. If not? The questions surrounding Brownell’s squad are only going to get louder as March approaches.