By Will Vandervort.

By Will Vandervort

ATLANTA — All the things that caused Clemson to lose three straight games and to lose its first five ACC road games this year, all came to a sudden halt Thursday night in Atlanta.

After making one of two free throws to give Clemson a three-point lead with 7.1 seconds to play, Milton Jennings blocked Mfon Udofia’s attempt to tie the game on the other end to seal the Tigers’ 56-53 victory over Georgia Tech at McCamish Pavilion.

“I’m really happy for Milton Jennings to get that free throw down the stretch, and then to get the big block and rebound in the last minute, I thought he made three good plays there to help us win – this is a good win for our guys,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said.

It’s a big win because this has been the type of game the Tigers (13-11, 5-7 ACC) have been losing all year. Clemson has seem cursed at times at seemed, stretches of poor shooting, losing big second half leads, turning the basketball over at the wrong times and making silly mistakes on the defense end.

All of those things happened again on Thursday night, but this time Clemson was able to overcome them and get the win.

“We stuck together,” Clemson center Devin Booker said. “We kept bringing in huddles and kept telling ourselves we were not going to let this one slip. We let too many slip already and we are going to stick together and play it out to the end.”

And that’s what they did. After a poor shooting performance in the first half, in which the Tigers shot just 27.6 percent from the field, they came out and shot the ball much better in the second half, connecting on 13 of 21 shots, including three of six from behind the arc.

Jennings made two second half threes to finish with 12 points, while Booker started to take over underneath as he scored 13 points and totaled eight rebounds. Forward K.J. McDaniels also got in the act as he scored 12 of his 14 points in the second half.

“It was a really good win for our guys, bouncing back after the heartbreak against NC State,” Brownell said. “We needed that win a lot for our psyche.”

After building a 12-point lead in the second half, thanks to an 11-2 run after Tech tied the game at 30-30, Clemson slowly allowed the Yellow Jackets to crawl back into contention.

But McDaniels hit two baskets late to keep the Tigers with a marginal advantage until two fouls by Damarcus Harrison allowed Georgia Tech to pull within two points, 55-53, following two Chris Bolden free throws.

Then with 32 seconds left, Rod Hall missed the front end of a one-and-one, and Tech had the ball with a chance to win the game. But, like in their first meeting back on Jan. 29, Clemson came up with a play at the other end as Jennings blocked Bolden’s layup attempt with 7.1 seconds to play.

Jennings then made the first free throw in a one-and-one attempt to extend the lead to three, and after missing the second free throw, he stepped up and blocked Udofia’s three-point attempt at the end.

“I’m not going to lie, that free throw I made was one of the more clutch free throws I ever made in my life considering what happened in that last game,” Jennings said. “The good news, I took a breath, relaxed and shot it. I got too comfortable on the second one and missed it.

“But I recovered by getting the game-winning block and actually two, the one before the free throw. Coach kept challenging us in the last two minutes and said it was a player’s game and who was going to step up. I was always like to take his challenges and try best to answer them.”

And he did, as all the Tigers did. They left Atlanta with their seventh straight win over Georgia Tech, but more importantly, they brought a little bit of confidence back to Clemson.