Tuesday night, the Clemson Tigers fell from the ranks of the ACC's unbeaten as they dropped a 74-64 decision at Louisville. That coupled with Duke's impressive home win over Pitt means that for the first time this season, Clemson is not at least tied for first place in the conference standings.
After the game, head coach Brad Brownell met with the media to share his thoughts on the loss.
"Congratulations to Louisville," he said, "they played very well. Disappointed our team's performance tonight. I just didn't think we played with the type of force and toughness necessary to come into this environment and be successful. You know, obviously the late stretch in the second half is when the game flipped a little bit and Hadley was terrific, and we didn't have an answer for him. Hepburn, I think, runs the team so well that he makes so many good plays for their team, and then defensively, they were good, they were aggressive, and I didn't think we played with very good poise tonight, and just a little disappointed in the way we played."
The Louisville defense was a factor all night holding Clemson to just 40% shooting for the game and 8-24 (33.3%) from 3-point range. What's more, the Tigers turned the ball over 16 times while having only 13 assists. Brownell talked about why the Cardinals' defense was so effective.
"I think they were very aggressive," he said. "They're an athletic, strong group. I mean, they got good players now, they got really good players. Hadley, Edwards, and those guys are big, strong wings. James Scott, high-level athlete, and those three guys are as athletic as anybody. You see then Hepburn does a really good job on the ball.
"They're a good, solid defensive team, and they were active, and I don't think we played very well. I think the environment, for whatever reason, bothered us a little bit. We just, we didn't have the kind of rhythm and flow, and I felt like we were searching. I was searching to try to help our guys, our big guys did not do a good enough job of finishing around the basket."
Speaking of the Clemson post players, Viktor Lakhin and Ian Schieffelin combined to score only 17 points. That's almost seven points below their combined season scoring average. That duo was only 7-16 from the floor with Lakhin going 2-9. That was a huge factor in Clemson's offensive struggles.
Another issue Clemson had was that the Tigers shot only five free throws as a team (they made four of them). Meanwhile, the Cardinals were 16-20 at the line. That was a huge factor in the outcome according to Brownell.
"...but it was a very physical game," he said. "Obviously, they got 20 free throws. We only got five. We needed to do a better job of drawing more fouls out of the out of the paint. But obviously that was a big difference in the game."
The game was relatively even for most of the first half but Louisville closed the opening 20 minutes on a 14-1 run. Brownell didn't have a good explanation as to why that portion of the game got so out of hand.
"Yeah, I don't really know," he said. "I'll be honest with you, it happened fast and, you know, we didn't play very well. We had a couple turnovers. You know, they made a couple shots. I really have to watch it before I can speak to like, exactly the five or six, seven possessions in a row that went bad for us.
But that was obviously a turning point."
J'Vonne Hadley, Louisville's senior guard who averages 11.6 points per game had a monster night with 32 points. In fact, he set a new career-high in scoring by halftime. Brownell talked about what Hadley did to be so effective against the Tigers.
"He posted some mismatches," he said. "I thought, you know, we really tried to guard Smith, that wasn't some of what we were trying to do. We knew that he would post, you know. We actually were trying to help, not over-help, but we were trying to keep it a little bit more packed in at times. And I was really frustrated with our team at halftime.
"I didn't feel like they were doing some of the things we talked about in practice, and they were playing underneath us, and he had all kinds of space. And then, you know, we really didn't do much scratching off Hepburn. And it's not like we didn't tell our guys you can scratch at all, but we did. We just gave him a lot of space, and he got multiple dribbles and he overpowered us physically.
You know, one of the things that happened in tonight's game is we didn't win...the one-on-one matchups very often, whether it's they're throwing it to Hadley and he's backing us down, we're throwing it inside to our guys, and they're backing down. We didn't win those matchups very much and that was disheartening. On the road, you've got to be able to win more of those kinds of one-on-one interior battles, at least our team does, and we didn't do that"
Finally, Brownell was asked about the flagrant foul assessed to Chase Hunter. The play occurred late in the first half with Clemson trailing by only six points and it was part of the momentum swing that helped give Louisville control of the game. It sounds as if Brownell was not happy with that call or the way flagrant fouls are being handed out in college basketball these days.
“Flagrant” foul on Chase Hunter. 🧐 pic.twitter.com/QH32iudUgC
— Austin Pendergist (@apthirteen) January 8, 2025
"I haven't seen it enough to know," he said, "Obviously, he blocked it up top, and I guess on his follow through, he caught him on the head. I mean, I obviously, we're not trying to, I don't want anybody to get hurt, but I also think that's a there's a lot of basketball plays that are going on in these games. Now, we had a flagrant against Wake that went in our favor that I don't know.
"Anytime somebody gets hit in the head now or face at all in any kind of basketball play, it becomes an automatic flagrant, and I guess we're legislating the safety end of the game. We're going to be like, we're going to treat everybody like a quarterback. But I just said, I don't want, I don't want him to get hurt. But I do think Chase was, I mean, he blocked the shot like it wasn't like he was trying to take the kid out. It had no bearing on the game."