By Will Vandervort.

It seemed like head coach Brad Brownell had been coaching in the NBA instead of at Clemson. His Tigers played three straight road games in six days, starting with their Jan. 7 battle at No. 5 Louisville and ending with a contest at No. 2 Virginia this past Tuesday.

In between they got a victory at Pittsburgh, while logging in 2,820 miles.

“It was a long week. It felt like a pro team to be honest with you,” Brownell said Friday. “Play, come home, pack, practice and travel again. It was hard to get your bearings, especially with the start of school and a lot of things going on.”

The good news is Clemson (9-7, 1-3 ACC) finally gets to come home on Saturday when it takes on Syracuse at 4 p.m. in Littlejohn Coliseum.

“We are definitely looking forward to playing in front of the home crowd,” center Landry Nnoko said. “We have been on the road for so long it is going to be exciting.”

It might be even more exciting if the Tigers can find a way to hand Syracuse (13-4, 4-0 ACC) its first ACC loss of the season. The Orange has won three of their four conference games by a total of six points, including an 86-83 overtime victory against Wake Forest this past Tuesday.

Syracuse has seemingly founds way to win despite adverse situations, that is something the Tigers are trying to learn. After falling behind early to North Carolina on Jan. 3 and losing by 24 points, they fought back from a 17-0 run against Louisville and cut the lead to two points with six minutes left, giving themselves a chance to win the game.

Pitt rallied from a seven-point halftime deficit to tie the game but the Tigers answered with a run of their own and took control of the game to a earn an impressive nine-point win at the Petersen Center. But just when it seemed like Clemson was finding itself and was fighting back against tough competition, it had no answer for a 14-0 Virginia run to start the second half in a 23-point loss in Charlottesville.

“We definitely have to find ways to fight when we face adversity,” Nnoko said. “We have to handle adversity better and we have to play better, together.”

At least from the head coach’s point of view, Clemson has played better and has been tougher.

“Everybody wants to blame things like it is effort, its toughness, but it is not just those things,” Brownell said. “There is basketball execution that you are not doing well is the problem. Certainly our team needs to get a little tougher at times.

“I thought we showed great toughness at Louisville and I thought we showed great toughness at Pittsburgh. I thought we showed really good toughness in the first half against Virginia. It is too easy for fans, coaches and sometimes players, who really don’t know what they are saying, to say, ‘We have to play harder and we have to play tougher.’ Yeah, that’s part of it, but we have to play better and that is the hard part.”

In those situations, Brownell says it comes down to executing plays and making shots, two things the Tigers have struggled to do a lot this year.

However, Brownell liked the way his team played in five of the six halves during the three-game stretch. The last half against Virginia was a situation where the Cavaliers were “really good.”

“It’s just good to get back home, again, and have a couple of practices here,” he said. “We will be here all next week so we got three straight home games so hopefully we can build some positive momentum.”