By Will Vandervort.

It was a good win, but don’t think it means anything.

Friday’s 86-41 victory over Florida A&M to tip off the 2014-’15 basketball season was a good start for the Clemson Tigers, but that’s all it was – a good start.

“We are clearly way better than those guys so it should be a score like that,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said afterwards. “The way we played was good. I would have liked to have made a couple of more free throws, made a couple of more shots, but all-and-all, I thought we were unselfish, we were efficient and it was good for some guys to get off to a decent start.”

The Tigers (1-0) got off to a decent start by shooting 48.5 percent from the field, including 57.7 percent in the second half. They also made seven three-pointers, blocked six shots and forced 24 turnovers.

“Overall, we scored the ball pretty good and played good defense,” point guard Rod Hall said. “They were not a real good team, but we still held ourselves to a standard and did not play down to the competition so I think we did pretty good.”

Hall finished the game with 10 assists to go along with four points in 21 minutes. He was the only starter not to score in double digits.

Center Landry Nnoko led the Tigers with 15 points, while guard Demarcus Harrison added 10 points as well as power forward Jaron Blossomgame, who also had a team-high six rebounds. Jordan Roper came off the bench to add 13 points, including 2 of 4 shooting from behind the arc.

The story of the night, however, was freshman Donte Grantham, who scored 12 points, had three rebounds, two blocked shots and one steal in his first game and first start for the Tigers.

“It felt amazing,” the 6-8 forward said. “The first shot I made was a dunk and it felt really good. I’m just happy to be out here. I’m blessed to be in this situation.”

With Grantham playing the way he did in his debut after reports of how much he was competing with the starters in the preseason, some seem to think he could be better than K.J. McDaniels by the time his career is all said and done at Clemson.

The freshman smiles proudly to those thoughts, but he feels he has a long way to go before he can be compared to McDaniels or anyone else that has come before him at Clemson.

“I’m just trying to be Donte Grantham,” he said humorously.

And the Clemson Tigers are just trying to be a basketball team that has done nothing but win a game convincingly they felt they should have won convincingly anyway.

“It was a good performance by our guys and we clearly outmanned (Florida A&M),” Brownell said. “But having said that, I thought our guys where pretty sharp and I was pleased with our efficiency. We had 21 assists and only five turnovers. I think that showed good crisp ball movement and good decision making, which I was pleased with.”

“I was also pleased with our defensive discipline. It was the second game in a row that we got a big lead and really, by in large, guarded pretty well in the second half,” he continued. “We did not allow the other team to get back in the game. Not losing your discipline in the way that we do things, that is really important.

“I was pleased with our guys. A lot of guys got to play and it was a comfortable win.”

Clemson used a 21-2 run midway through the first half to grab control of the game. Harrison’s dunk on an assist from Hall gave the Tigers a 30-10 lead with 6:34 to play on the opening half.

They closed the first 20 minutes with a Roper dunk following a steal from Josh Smith, who pushed it ahead to Roper, who slammed the ball home as time expired for a 41-18 lead.

Clemson will host Winthrop at 7 p.m. on Monday.