Brad Brownell shares what he learned about his team in win over South Carolina

No. 24 Clemson moved to 8-0 on Wednesday with their five-point win over South Carolina. After going down 11, though, it was a victory that told Brad Brownell a lot about his Tigers.

Brownell shared some thoughts about the team during his postgame press conference following the 72-67 victory over the Gamecocks. He thought the comeback said a lot about Clemson’s control and ability to refocus, especially after a poor first half performance.

“We’re older so I hope we don’t lose our poise,” said Brownell.

“I talked about that at halftime – we’re just a little amped up, we’ll play better in the second half but we have to sustain defensively,” Brownell continued. “I thought we messed up a couple switches in the first half. It was loud in there so I think the guys couldn’t hear all the time, made a couple of defensive mistakes.”

Clemson got off to a very slow start inside Littlejohn Coliseum. They were down by eight right off the bat and by seven at halftime after going scoreless over the final seven-plus minutes. That slump continued over the first five minutes of the second half where the Gamecocks were able to earn their largest margin.

Then, over the final 15 minutes, the Tigers found their stride as they scored over half their points with 39. They also held South Carolina to just 23 the rest of the way as they turned a deficit into a back and forth game that eventually went in their favor.

It took a minute for Clemson to find their footing in this matchup. Still, as it progressed, Brownell says they established themselves and did enough to stay undefeated in the end.

“We were better I thought. We did a pretty good job,” said Brownell. “They do a lot of different things. They have small lineups, they have big lineups, they post you, they post guards, they can shoot with their bigs. We only had a couple of days to really kind of get adjusted to it all. It was a lot for our guys to have to tackle.”

“I thought we just hung in there and did a better job the longer the game went,” Brownell said. “We kind of just talked about that. We’re going to have to really play well defensively because they’re a good defensive team. It’s hard to score against them.”

After an impressive 7-0 start, this rivalry almost caught Clemson. Instead, they turned it around and impressed their head coach in the process.

“Just, again, it was a great, great win for us,” said Brownell.