By Hale McGranahan.

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. – The formula is quite simple: Hold Boston College to less than 250 yards rushing, walk away with a win.

Though it was hardly a stroll through the park, Clemson managed to ensure that formula would hold true.

Boston College is 4-0 when eclipsing the 250-yard mark. When they don’t, the Eagles are 0-3. On Saturday night, Clemson gave up 120 yards as the Tigers squeaked out a 17-13 win at Alumni Stadium on Saturday night.

Wayne Gallman knows first-hand just how difficult it can be to find room to run against the Clemson defense.

“Just going up in practice and just knowing that…this is the best defense, possibly, in the country,” he said. “Just seeing them out there, I already had the expectation that the offense they’re going against isn’t going to do anything…I just think they’re that type of defense that can take us all the way.”

Quarterback Tyler Murphy, who leads Boston College in rushing, ran 18 times for 55 yards, 43 of which came on a fourth quarter scramble.

“I feel like we pretty much kept him bottled up,” said Tavaris Barnes, who sacked Murphy twice. “He’s a real athletic guy. With the things we saw him do in the other games, he didn’t really do in this game. He got a couple runs, but, for the most part, I feel like we contained him.”

Clemson managed to contain the rest of the Boston College ball carriers, limiting them to 65 yards on 23 carries.

“We’d been working hard all week,” Barnes said. “We knew B.C. was going to be a tough opponent, we just prepared the right way. We were, basically, ready for everything they had. They got us on a few trick plays, but we prepared hard. We worked hard during the week, so the game is easy.”

Third-down, money down. Clemson gave up just one third-down conversion to Louisville a week ago. Once again, the Tigers were dominant on third-down, allowing Boston College to convert just 2-of-14 attempts.

That success, according to Dabo Swinney, is a product of what happens two downs prior.

“It all starts on first-down, though,” he said. “I looked at the stats at halftime and I think they only had one pass on first-down, so they were very committed to running the ball, and we did a nice job of creating long yardage type of situations.”

Tony Steward, who had four tackles and a sack, thinks the Tigers’ success is a credit to the work they put in during the week.

“Everything that we do, we prepare everyday for it,” he said. “Just having that film study, our coaches just harping on how important it is, and having all that just kind of makes us play with an edge, not just on third-downs, but the entire game.”

Weight room game. ACC games don’t get more rough and rugged than the annual showdown with Boston College.

“Nobody was foolish to think this wouldn’t be a hard-fought battle, just like it was,” Swinney said. “We knew it was going to be a four quarter, rock-em-sock-em-type of game. All you’ve got to do is watch the tape.”

It’s going to show up again when he pops in Saturday night’s game.

“We said all week this was going to be a weight room game. Kind of their squats versus our squats, their offseason versus our offseason, their mat drills versus our mat drills, that’s kind of how we went into do it,” Swinney said, “And our guys fought ’til the end, so did they. Somebody’s got to win and our guys were able to find a way to win.

“It doesn’t always got to be pretty. All you’ve got to do is score one more point than the opponent and we found a way to do that.”