By Will Vandervort

Brad Brownell does not know how it is going to happen, but he understands somehow his team has to get back some of the confidence it has lost in the last week.

In losses to both Boston College last Saturday and then Thursday night’s horrific outing at Virginia, Clemson lost some of its swag, if you will. Before going to Chestnut Hill, the Tigers were playing with a lot of confidence and found themselves in a position to make a run at the No. 4 seed in next month’s ACC Tournament after back-to-back wins over Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech.

But they opened up the Boston College game emotionless and fell behind by more than 20 points, and though they rallied to cut the lead to one point in the final minute, it wasn’t enough in a seven-point loss to a team that had one ACC-win coming in.

Thursday night was a complete disaster from the beginning. Clemson shot 20 percent in the first half and trailed Virginia 38-10 at the break. It did not get any better in the second half as the Cavaliers increased their lead to as many as 40 points before settling for a 78-41 victory.

“We have to shake a little of this off,” Brownell said Friday. “Somehow, we have to develop a little more confidence and get a little bit of our swagger back in terms of thinking that we are a better team than in the ways we have played in the last week.”

To get back that confidence Brownell says he has to address his team the right way when it comes to learning from the Virginia loss. He said it’s important that he has the right balance of support and criticism for his players in the next 24 to 36 hours.

“I think there are times when both are appropriate to be honest with you. That’s part of it,” he said. “I’m certainly going to tell them about some things that I have found unacceptable and I’m not happy with, but I’m also not going to tell them to throw the baby out with the bath water.

“We do some things fine, but we have to move to the next thing. And the next thing is NC State and we have to have a couple of good practices to get ready for that. So you just try to practice well for two days. The best thing you can do is practice well so you feel you deserve to win and you deserve to play well.”

The good news, Clemson has played much better at home. Though the Tigers are 0-5 on the ACC in road games, they are 4-1 at Littlejohn Coliseum, the site of Sunday’s game against NC State.

“I like to think we are the team that plays at home because that is the good team,” Brownell said. “The other team is good at times, but other times they are not good at all. That’s part of the way this is. I feel like college basketball is a sport where a crowd and home court can have a bigger advantage maybe than some things like baseball and even football to some degree.

“Fans are more into the game and on top of you and last night it felt like the (Virginia) band was on the end of our bench. They were loud. It is just not the negativity that your team faces or the adversity that you team has to deal with being on the road, but the positive feelings that kids get from making a shot at home and the crowd going crazy and now your next defensive possession you have a little more spring in your step. Now you have a little more juice and you are having a little more fun. Everyone is clapping and cheering so that positive feedback you get when you are playing at home and are playing well is the shot in the arm of confidence that you as a coach are trying to get your team to have.”