By Will Vandervort.

By Will Vandervort

CLEMSON — Devin Booker says it’s going to be a long bus ride to Myrtle Beach today as Clemson heads there for Wednesday night’s 7 p.m. tip against Coastal Carolina at the HTC Center. But as long as the ride is, the Tigers senior forward is looking forward to another shot at playing the Chanticleers after last season’s surprising loss at Littlejohn Coliseum.

“They beat us last year, so we have to win,” Booker said. “They beat us at our place, now we are playing at their place. We definitely have to get this win back.”

Coastal Carolina stunned the Tigers with a buzzer beating putback when Chris Gradnigo tipped in his own miss to provide the winning bucket in a 60-59 victory last November.

“It was a little buzzer beater. You can’t do too much about it,” Booker said. “We missed a blockout at the end that cost us the game so that was pretty much it. We can’t let that happen, again.”

Clemson (6-3) needs to win for more than just revenge sake. The Coastal Carolina game last season was the second of two losses to a mid-major opponent, which virtually cost the Tigers a postseason invitation. This year, so far, Clemson has done well against the so-called “smaller schools” as it has easily beat Presbyterian, Furman and Florida A&M.

“You can never short the underdog in any game,” Booker said. “They play as hard as any team. They are going to come out expecting to win and they will try their best to do anything they can to win. We will just have to limit them in what they do best.”

What the Chanticleers (3-5) do best is play well in the backcourt. Guards Kierre Greenwood and Anthony Raffa are both experienced players that have had a lot of success, including in last year’s game. Raffa, who is averaging 20.4 points a game coming in, dropped in a game-high 21 points against Clemson last season on 8 of 13 shooting.

Defensively, under former Clemson coach Cliff Ellis, Coastal plays several kinds of defenses and like to mix things up to keep their opponents guessing.

“It will be another great environment to go to another school in the state and play them on their home court,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said. “You expect a good crowd, and we just hope to have some Clemson fans there to support us.”

Brownell says the trip to Myrtle Beach isn’t about revenge or anything like that. It’s about getting better as a basketball team, while trying to win a game on the road against a quality opponent.

“It’s more about trying to build positive play heading into the ACC and our team feeling good about where we are,” he said. “We have certainly played good at times this year, but there have been other times we have struggled to score so we are trying to work out some of those kinks.

“This is just another chance to try and do that heading into Christmas.”

Brownell says he has not talked about last year’s loss to Coastal Carolina with his team, yet, but he knows the older guys know what happened. He said they will show the team clips of last year’s game, like they do for any game, of Coastal players making plays.

“It’s not like we are big into revenge and all of that,” he said. “Every year is a new year with a new team, and you are just trying to go in there with a good mindset and try to play well. We need to just keep playing positive basketball.

“We need to do the things we need to do to be successful, not just against Coastal, but against other teams in our league later.”