Saturday, the Clemson basketball team got back to its winning ways. On the heels of a 74-64 loss to Louisville earlier in the week, the Tigers returned home to take down Florida State 77-57 inside Littlejohn Coliseum.
Clemson remains tied for second place in the ACC standings with Louisville at 5-1 in league play. The only perfect team in the conference is Duke, which sits at 6-0 after beating Notre Dame on Saturday.
To keep pace with the Blue Devils, Clemson needed to handle its business against the Seminoles and that's what happened. Naturally, head coach Brad Brownell was pleased with what he saw from his team.
"Obviously, I'm happy for our guys," he said. "We've practiced hard the last couple of days, and good to see them rewarded for that. Shot the ball extremely well. Chase [Hunter] was terrific, obviously, shooting the ball. And, you know, I thought Del Jones gave us a real lift off the bench. That was, that was nice to see. And Chauncey [Wiggins] made some nice plays. Ian [Schieffelin] obviously assisted.
"Just one of those games where I thought we did a lot of really good things. Prepared hard with our defense the last couple of days, I didn't think we guarded as well against Louisville as we would have liked. So, you know, I thought our guys responded to my challenge of that, and we defended a good team today. Florida State's a good team. They're obviously, they're well-coached, and they have good players, but today was a day we played at a really, really high level."
One of the few issues Clemson had in this game was early foul trouble for center Viktor Lakhin. He finished the day with only seven points and six rebounds in 11 minutes played. Additionally, he has been trying to recover from a rather significant illness in recent games. Brownell discussed the importance of having Lakhin on the floor.
"I mean, he needs to be out there more," he said, "and, you know, it forced us to play smaller at times, certainly for longer stretches than we're used to. But the guys responded. Chauncey did a nice job playing the four, and Ian obviously had to play more five, and, you know, probably got Del and Jake [Heidbreder] and some of those guys dealing even a few more minutes. So it worked out okay. But yeah, we need to get we need to get Victor back going good. He, you know, obviously he was extremely sick for a week or 10 days, and it's just trying to get him back right will be important for our team."
One key to the game was that Clemson put the clamps on Florida State's leading scorer, Jamir Watkins. He entered the game averaging 18.7 points to be the third-leading scorer in the ACC. However, against Clemson, he scored only 11 points and he was just 3-12 from the floor (2-8 from 3-point range). Brownell discussed how his team held Watkins in check.
"Yeah, we did a nice job," he said, "And obviously, the crowd was helpful. Another great crowd in Littlehohn, a lot of fun. He's a terrific player. He beats you in a lot of different ways...I think we did a good job of trying to make it hard on him as much as we could and gap him some when we could, and he just didn't get a rhythm, you know? And that happens to players some games, you just don't get the rhythm that you're used to. And fortunately for us, today was one of those days."
Clemson's most physical player is Schieffelin who had only two points and two rebounds in 31 minutes of action. That came after he had only 10 points against Louisville. According to Brownell, the senior forward has been dealing with a variety of nagging injuries of late.
"Yeah, he obviously, if you saw him walking off the court," he said, "I think he had a back brace on...while he was sitting out. He's, yeah, he didn't practice yesterday. You know, he's had some calf strain. His back started bothering him here recently. Yeah, he's, I mean, he's beat up a little bit, and, you know, obviously, it's hard because he's playing a lot of minutes and plays so physically, and, you know, probably doesn't have the greatest body for it all. He's not quite as athletic and agile as some folks. But yeah, he's gutting it out. And you know, we've got to be really careful with him."