By Will Vandervort.

By Will Vandervort

CLEMSON — In the last several years, the men’s basketball team at Clemson has gone on the road as one of the so-called big boys of college basketball and played the so-called little boys.

Since Brad Brownell took over as Clemson’s head coach in 2010, the Tigers have gone on the road to play the College of Charleston and The Citadel, while this year they will visit Myrtle Beach to play Coastal Carolina (Dec. 19) and Greenville Friday night against the Furman Paladins.

Friday’s game will mark the first time Clemson has played at Timmons Arena, and the first time they played against Furman in Greenville since an 82-55 win in 1992.

“In order to try and get as many home games as you can, while balancing schedules and using your guaranteed money and a couple of different factors, we decided we wanted to do that with a few schools in the state.

“That’s how it came about. We did it with the Citadel, we are doing it with Coastal and in the past we have done it with Charleston. It is a good road trip for our guys. Taking young guys on the road is always a little bit challenging. You never know how guys are going to respond and react.”

Though the Tigers (1-0) will be the favorite to win Friday, the trip up I-85 to Greenville will give this year’s young team and early road test, which will be important with a trip to Orlando, Fla., in The Old Spice Classic coming up.

Clemson will play Gonzaga in the first game on ESPN2 starting at 9 p.m. next Wednesday.

“That will be big for us as we head down the road,” Brownell said.

Against the Paladins (1-1), Brownell and the coaching staff is looking for a little more consistency from their young players, especially the sophomores.

“They have had some good games and played fine, but they have not been consistent,” Brownell said. “What I’m really looking for is who on the team is going to put forth consistent and positive performances? What can we count on? When you go in the game after four, five or six games of play, what does your productivity look like?

“Is it all over the map? Is it up? Is it down? Is it pretty constant? It may not be, ‘Wow!’ But, it is constant. So it is kind of looking at all of those things. It is not so much the freshmen. It is all the underclass guys. Then it is just trying to get Book (Devin Booker) and Milt (Jennings) to pop out a big game or two. We need those guys to have a couple of games where they are scoring 16 points and grabbing eight, nine and 10 rebounds. We need to get a couple of explosive games from those guys so they can be in the feel and get used to being big-time scorers, which is kind of taking the next step for them.”

Booker and Jennings might not get that opportunity against Furman. The Paladins will more than likely come out and play a lot of zone, like Lander did in the exhibition game and Presbyterian in the season opener.

“We will see some certainly,” Brownell said. “We have seen a lot so far with Lander and Presbyterian so I’m sure we will get a mix of 50-50 man and zone early on. That’s what they have done in the past and they did it some to us last year. I anticipate that will certainly be the case.”

And it will certainly be a nice first road test.