By Hale McGranahan.

It’s rare when 74 points won’t cut it for Clemson, but against Winthrop on Monday night at Littlejohn Coliseum, the Tigers fell 77-74.

In Brad Brownell’s first four seasons at Clemson, the Tigers lost four times when scoring at least 74 points, three of which were in year one.

Monday night’s loss, the first of its kind to a mid-major program, dropped Clemson to 1-1 on the season while Winthrop improved to 2-0.

“I just thought they did a lot of good things with their guard play,” Brownell said. “They were a hard team to guard. (Andre) Smith in the first half and (Keon) Moore in the second half, two guys that made big plays and big shots.”

Moore and Smith finished with 18 and 16 points, respectively. The duo combined to hit 5 of 13 3-point shots and converted at a 90 percent clip (9 of 10) from the free-throw line.

As a team, Winthrop shot just 38.7 percent from the field. In the second half, the Eagles went 6 for 14 from behind the 3-point line and missed just one of their 12 free-throws attempts.

“I thought their kids played really well,” Brownell said. “They made some big shots and big plays late in the game, made all their free-throws down the stretch. They came into our place only turned the ball over six times.”

Clemson’s struggles on the offensive end certainly played a factor.

Though the Tigers managed to shot 50 percent from the field, they went 3 for 13 from downtown and converted just 59 percent of their shots from the free-throw line.

“Guys have been shooting really, really well in practice,” said Jaron Blossomgame, who scored 12 points on 4 of 9 shooting from the field.

“Guys do have to get into the gym more and shoot on their own. It’s our second game of the season. You can’t say we’re not shooting the ball well. You only have two games to base that off of. As the season goes on, guys will start shooting better.”

Perhaps more glaring than the poor shooting was their struggle to take care of the ball. Blossomgame and Landry Nnoko were responsible for 10 of the team’s 16 turnovers. Rod Hall had three.

“We’ve just got to get in the gym, all of us,” Nnoko said. “All of us have to do extra stuff. Coach was just telling us we’ve got to find ways to improve, ways to improve on our own. Two hours of practice everyday doesn’t really do anything for our team.”

Brownell also hopes that someone will emerge as a go-to scorer down the stretch of close games.

“I thought we looked like a team that was nervous,” he said. “We were kind of looking for our guy out there and he wasn’t there, he was in Philadelphia.

“We better find a guy who’s willing to make plays down the stretch when we really need him. We didn’t have that as much. It’s a learning process with a team like this.”

Clemson returns to action on Friday afternoon at the Paradise Jam with a 1:30 showdown against Gardner-Webb.