By Will Vandervort.

The last time Clemson played at Pittsburgh’s Petersen Center it just did not play out well.

The Tigers, who will play Pitt today in a key ACC matchup, were beat up physically, mentally and emotionally in a 33-point loss to the Panthers – the second worst defeat in the Brad Brownell era at Clemson.

When Clemson hooked up with the Panthers six weeks later in Clemson, the Tigers played much better and had Pittsburgh on the ropes before a late call against them caused the game to go into overtime and allowed Pitt to escape Littlejohn with a five-point victory.

“The last game we played well, the ending is what we didn’t want,” Brownell said.

Clemson (8-6, 0-2 ACC) will try to write a different script this season against the Panthers who are 7-0 at home and have won 88 percent of their home games in the last 13 years. The good news for the Tigers, despite their 0-2 start to the ACC season, is they showed a lot of promise this past Wednesday in taking No. 5 Louisville to the mat.

They found themselves within two points with six minutes to go in the game before the Cardinals made a few more plays to leave the KFC Yum! Center with a six-point win.

“I think getting off to a good start gave our team confidence,” Brownell said. “We are still a little fragile that way and need confidence in games. When they make a run at Louisville, and 22,000 people are cheering, it is a tough place.

“It took us a little longer to get our legs back under us (to start the second half) and that probably cost us the game, but we did get there. We finally made a couple of shots with back-to-back threes, then after we made those and cut the lead back to seven points, we really controlled the game there for the next six to eight minutes and I thought we played better than them and then it became a one-possession game with six minutes to go and we just were not good enough to finish it.”

The Tigers are hoping that being able to play through some adversity under pressure at Louisville will transfer to the Pittsburgh game.

“For the most part we did what we had to do in order to give ourselves a chance to win in the last five or six minutes,” Brownell said. “When you are playing a road game against good teams in this league that is what you are trying to do – put yourself in position to win a road game late in the second half.

“You have to do a lot of really good things for 35 minutes to give yourself a chance and we have to try and do some of those again at Pittsburgh.”