Tuesday night, the Clemson basketball team moved to 14-4 overall and 6-1 in ACC play thanks to a road win at Georgia Tech. The 70-59 triumph kept the Tigers in a second-place tie with Louisville in the league race behind 7-0 Duke.
Any road win in conference play is worth celebrating. That's true even of wins that come over teams with losing records like the Yellowjackets.
Still, at times, it felt like the Tigers were playing with their food in Atlanta. After Clemson built a 36-25 halftime lead, they let the home team hang around for a bit and cut the lead to 37-30. However, a 20-11 run would essentially put the Tigers in the clear for the remainder of the evening.
Afterward, head coach Brad Brownell discussed what he saw from his team.
"Yeah, just kind of a grinder-type win", he said. "Thought our defense was really good tonight. Did a lot of different things that I thought were helpful, and thought our communication was really good, and certainly that was probably the better side of the ball for us. We didn't shoot it as well. Got off to a little slow start, but midway through the half, I thought we started to play a little bit better, and we were able to finish the game. So good win for us. Road wins are hard in this league."
With Clemson taking a lead into the break, Brownell was asked if there were any adjustments that his staff made at halftime. He said that given the team's effort in the first half, it was simply important to maintain their level of play after halftime.
"I don't know if we any major adjustments," he said, "just trying to sustain, you know, I thought they hurt us on the glass a little bit at times, and so just blocking out and make sure we were finishing possessions. You know, I thought we did a decent job of keeping them out of the paint. But, you know, it's just kind of one of those games you just had to keep playing. But there were no major adjustments or anything like that."
The Yellowjackets have been hit by the injury bug and were missing some players on Tuesday night. Brownell said that didn't change the way he viewed the quality of this win.
"No," he said. "I mean, yeah, there's no doubt that Damon's team has not been at full strength for much of the year, and then we've had, you know, that's one of the things that's happened to our league. Notre Dame Syracuse, these guys, I'm sure there's others. Those are ones off the top of my head, have had a lot of players, or their best players, miss a lot of games.
"And, you know, they got three or four guys who are good players that are out. So, you know, neither team played their bench very much. Both were kind of riding with our starters. Obviously, they didn't have much to go with. I don't know. You know, it changed things a little bit, just based on personnel. I mean whether they have a guy like Kowacie Reeves, who's a heck of a shooter, you got to change how you guard, maybe a little bit, versus another player."
Toward the end of the game, Brownell showed quite a bit of frustration and emotion on the sidelines. That was unexpected given that his team held a double-digit lead. He talked about why he was frustrated with his team at that moment.
"I didn't like a couple of our shots," he said. "I thought we were, I thought Victor had a couple of bad plays where he was forcing the ball inside, and then we had a couple of threes that I didn't love. You know, I'm really proud of Ian. Ian's back is bothering him. He doesn't have quite the same pop that he usually has, and so, you know, probably isn't quite as effective as he normally would be, and he's just kind of gutting it out out there. And I thought he showed great toughness. But I was just a little frustrated. We had two or three possessions I didn't like in the last five to six minutes of the game.
Speaking of Ian Schieffelin, he fought through his back pain to have a productive night. The senior forward finished with 16 points, seven rebounds, six assists, and four steals a game after he was able to score only two points and grab only two rebounds on Saturday against Florida State.
Clemson's other post player, Viktor Lakhin was also productive with 10 points, six rebounds, and four assists. Brownell talked about what makes his 6-foot-11 center so effective.
"He's just, he's got good feet," Brownell said, "he's long, pretty good timing, certainly, his ability to defend the rim helps our team tremendously. He's had a couple games this year where he's got into foul trouble, and that's been a problem for us, but his ability to help us defend the rim tonight was certainly an important part of the game."
The star of the night, though, was point guard Jaeden Zackery who had a game-high 21 points to go along with six rebounds, three steals, and an assist. His head coach talked about the steadying influence he had on his team in the win.
"Yeah, I thought early in the game...you know, one of my reminders to our team was, don't settle on offense," he said. "And I thought we did in the first, you know, 10-12, minutes of the game. I thought we took some quick ones. It's not like they were bad. Most of them were open, but they were a little forced, a little quick.
"You know, sometimes you're doing the whole good to great shot. And I thought we took some pretty good shots, but we weren't maybe taking some great ones. I do think the ball found Jaeden a couple times for great ones, wide-open transition threes, where we moved it a little bit better, and obviously he knocked them down. I thought he played very well on both ends tonight, defending and obviously, you know, he had six defensive rebounds to go along with the three-point shots that he made. He was terrific tonight."