By Will Vandervort.

Clemson’s first five games to start the ACC season included home match ups with college basketball heavyweights North Carolina and Syracuse and road games at Louisville, Pittsburgh and Virginia.

Not many expected the Tigers to win a single game in that five-game stretch at it ranked as one of the hardest schedules to start an ACC season in the conference’s 63-history. But Brad Brownell’s Tigers found a way to win two of them, including Saturday’s impressive 66-53 victory over a Syracuse team that opened the ACC season with four straight wins.

But don’t think Clemson is out of the woods just yet. Tonight, the Tigers will host a Florida State team that has given the Tigers fits in Littlejohn Coliseum. The Seminoles have won two straight in Clemson’s home arena, including a 56-41 decision last year.

To make matters worse, the Tigers had just over 48 hours to forget the Syracuse win and get ready for Florida State.

“This is a heck of stretch,” Brownell said. “Everybody talked about the first five games. You guys (the media) talked about it. Probably my staff talked about it, and you look at the schedule, and you only look at the first five probably because Syracuse is ending it as that fifth one.

“But the sixth one is 48 hours later. This is one of those where you want to enjoy it and feel good about it, but you can’t. You have to get ready because you have a team coming in that is a little wounded and is certainly capable of beating us and in a sound way. They did it last year here.”

The Seminoles (9-9, 1-4 ACC) come into tonight’s 9 p.m. tip fresh off a 72-63 loss at home to NC State on Saturday.

“We are going to have to our reserves ready and we will have to have great effort,” Brownell said. “When it is hard to score, you have to play with tremendous effort and discipline to win. We will have to do that on Monday night.”

Tonight’s game will be the sixth time in the last three seasons Clemson has faced a two-day turnaround in ACC play. The Tigers are 3-2 in the previous five games with all three wins coming at Littlejohn Coliseum.

Last year, Clemson beat Duke and Miami on one day of preparation. In 2013, the Tigers defeated Georgia Tech with only 48 hours between games.

“We just focus on ourselves,” guard Rod Hall said. “We really did not worry about the tough stretch. We knew people would doubt us in those five games, but we played hard and in some of the games we kind of played poor, but we did the best we can as a team and we found a way to win a couple of games. That paid off for us.

“Beating Syracuse was a great performance, one we can build on. It’s a quick turnaround, but we will get in with Coach and focus on the mistakes we made and build on the good things. We will try to get prepared for Florida State the best we can.”